63 replies to this topic

[Merc14]

Render, on 03 December 2012 - 07:23 AM, said:

Windows 8 Sales Well Below Projections, Plenty of Blame to Go Around


Uncertainty could turn Windows 8 into the next Vista

http://winsupersite....blame-go-around

The sales numbers and such may be Vista 2 but the OS itself most definitely isn't.  It is a very solid very fast OS that installs easily.  Vista was a buggy POS and a resource hog to boot.  ANother thing is sales of PC's has dropped over 20% from this time last year, mostly due to tablets I believe.  Where MS made a huge mistake was charging top dollar for Surface instead of discounting it to take market share from Apple.

Edited by Merc14, 03 December 2012 - 06:54 PM.

[little_dreamer]

Not sure if I should upgrade my Windows Vista desktop from 2007 or let it die a natural death.  I've gotten used to the Vista quirks.  Adding memory helped.   I may buy a new laptop soon.

I found out the hard way that the Windows Restore point function only partially worked in Vista.   Better to backup your files to an external source.

[Merc14]

little_dreamer, on 04 December 2012 - 01:36 AM, said:

Not sure if I should upgrade my Windows Vista desktop from 2007 or let it die a natural death.  I've gotten used to the Vista quirks.  Adding memory helped.   I may buy a new laptop soon.

I found out the hard way that the Windows Restore point function only partially worked in Vista.   Better to backup your files to an external source.

A lot of malware will erase your restore points so restore  should definitely not be a part of anyone's back-up plan.  That is an older PC and although it can run 8 easily but  be aware that unless it is a quality machine it may die soon.  You can burn Windows 8 to a DVD and install on another machine but unless you build your own, like me, that isn't much of an incentive.

That said, I just upgraded a customer's Vista All-In-One to Windows 8 (hell, it is only $40!) and they are really happy!  The original Hard Drive had died so the factory image was gone and I suggested that a used hard drive I have in stock and a $40 Win 8 upgrade may be worth the effort.  I used the registry tweak I posted earlier and did a fresh install with Win 8 Upgrade and the customer, who was, possibly, skeptical of my intentions, is now thrilled!  The machine runs much faster, it is more stable, a lot more "peppy" (their words) and the touchscreen is now actually worthwhile.  Only downside is a slight learning curve and the photo editor sucks (I suggested they download Picasa).    They were going to move to an Apple at Christmas but are now holding off till this one dies.

It really did make that All-in-one a lot better and I was surprised at the quality of the HP All-in-one.  I am not a fan of HP but this machine was nice.  The HDD died young but the rest of the rig seemed solid.  Got the whole job done, with parts and software for under $200 and hopefully it lasts another 3-4 years.

[Eldorado]

little_dreamer, on 04 December 2012 - 01:36 AM, said:

Not sure if I should upgrade my Windows Vista desktop from 2007 or let it die a natural death.  I've gotten used to the Vista quirks.  Adding memory helped.   I may buy a new laptop soon.

I found out the hard way that the Windows Restore point function only partially worked in Vista.   Better to backup your files to an external source.

I had XP and Vista on this desktop but wanted a fresh OS and I'm grateful for this thread.  I was gonna buy Windows 7 OEM and a new hard drive for £125; like Merc I built my own system and the hardware is fine for a few years yet and I like messing with the configuration.
£30 and I now have a new OS that, after a week of customizing and not much effort, looks and works like a fancy brand new XP-Ultra.  

p.s. I also had the choice after running the Windows 8 Upgrade advisor of downloading for £30 or having an Install DVD sent to me for only £12.99!!!

[Render]

Merc14, on 03 December 2012 - 06:51 PM, said:

The sales numbers and such may be Vista 2 but the OS itself most definitely isn't.  It is a very solid very fast OS that installs easily.  Vista was a buggy POS and a resource hog to boot.  ANother thing is sales of PC's has dropped over 20% from this time last year, mostly due to tablets I believe.  Where MS made a huge mistake was charging top dollar for Surface instead of discounting it to take market share from Apple.

I appreciate this thread you started because I, like others, am having my doubts about Win8.
One of my main doubts was because this OS is clearly oriented towards touchscreens and regular laptops and desktops are being pushed away in a dark corner. Or so it seemed.
I searched if it was easy to switch to the desktop layout instead of the metro style. You write it;s just a click of a button, but when i searched the net i found all these overly complex ways to do it. For example: Going into the registry and changing a value, or even deleting certain .dll files. So i have to wonder, why are they putting all those complex ways out there if it can just be done by a click of a button, or is it less user-friendly than that?

Also, someone wrote they had immens problems with installing a SATA drive. So im wondering if this Win8 version could have other driver and install problems.

And usually, according to Windows tradition and my bias, you always have a stable version and then the next version is total crap, and after that they bring out a stable version again. See Win xp - Vista - Win7.

[Merc14]

Render, on 04 December 2012 - 10:30 AM, said:

I appreciate this thread you started because I, like others, am having my doubts about Win8.
One of my main doubts was because this OS is clearly oriented towards touchscreens and regular laptops and desktops are being pushed away in a dark corner. Or so it seemed.
I searched if it was easy to switch to the desktop layout instead of the metro style. You write it;s just a click of a button, but when i searched the net i found all these overly complex ways to do it. For example: Going into the registry and changing a value, or even deleting certain .dll files. So i have to wonder, why are they putting all those complex ways out there if it can just be done by a click of a button, or is it less user-friendly than that?

Also, someone wrote they had immens problems with installing a SATA drive. So im wondering if this Win8 version could have other driver and install problems.

And usually, according to Windows tradition and my bias, you always have a stable version and then the next version is total crap, and after that they bring out a stable version again. See Win xp - Vista - Win7.

The registry changes you are seeing are folks that want to  launch directly to the desktop and never see Metro.  Seriously, you click on the desktop tile and you are there or hit Windows key + D.  I usually put my computer to sleep so when it wakes up I am at desktop anyways and rarely see teh metro UI.

Another good shortcut is Windows Key + F brings up the search where you can type in anything you want to find.

This version is rock solid and I have no idea what the problem is with installing a SATA drive.  I suspect that they are installing a new drive and boot is getting shifted to that drive.

It is different, however, and the metro ui seems unnecessary on a desktop, like they are forcing the issue but it is not a hard system to lean.  I know that moving to Apple is a much more radical change but people do it all the time.

Edited by Merc14, 04 December 2012 - 01:10 PM.

[Render]

Merc14, on 04 December 2012 - 01:04 PM, said:

The registry changes you are seeing are folks that want to  launch directly to the desktop and never see Metro.  Seriously, you click on the desktop tile and you are there or hit Windows key + D.  I usually put my computer to sleep so when it wakes up I am at desktop anyways and rarely see teh metro UI.

Another good shortcut is Windows Key + F brings up the search where you can type in anything you want to find.

This version is rock solid and I have no idea what the problem is with installing a SATA drive.  I suspect that they are installing a new drive and boot is getting shifted to that drive.

It is different, however, and the metro ui seems unnecessary on a desktop, like they are forcing the issue but it is not a hard system to lean.  I know that moving to Apple is a much more radical change but people do it all the time.

Alright, thanks for the additional info!

[Merc14]

I have officially given up offering Windows 8 to any but the really needy.  The underlying system is awesome and one of the best OS's ever but the UI is beyond my power to defend.  Maybe on a tablet or phone but not on a desktop.  Too hard to offer my trusting customers this UI.  Good luck MS.  I like the OS but I am a geek and therefore not a great sample set.  You guys were an awesome sampling and did help my decision process. thanks

Edited by Merc14, 26 December 2012 - 03:06 AM.

[little_dreamer]

Well, I bought a laptop on sale with Windows 8. Boy, what a learning curve!   I miss my Start button and Programs menus. It kept having to reboot many times due to an error.   Seems to be more stable now.    I can't imagine running Win 8 in a corporate environment yet.

Though there are some decent free games from the Microsoft store.  I'm just a casual game player.  Solitare and things like that.

[Eldorado]

Merc14, on 26 December 2012 - 03:04 AM, said:

I have officially given up offering Windows 8 to any but the really needy.  The underlying system is awesome and one of the best OS's ever but the UI is beyond my power to defend.  Maybe on a tablet or phone but not on a desktop.  Too hard to offer my trusting customers this UI.  Good luck MS.  I like the OS but I am a geek and therefore not a great sample set.  You guys were an awesome sampling and did help my decision process. thanks

I'm still impressed and grateful for your tip , mate!

A geek also (a desktop system-builder hobbyist), I've messed about with it and reinstalled via the disk image and it reinstalled superbly.  Not a single driver or personal setting had to be sorted.

Edited by Eldorado, 27 December 2012 - 01:06 PM.

[Merc14]

Eldorado, on 27 December 2012 - 01:06 PM, said:

I'm still impressed and grateful for your tip , mate!

A geek also (a desktop system-builder hobbyist), I've messed about with it and reinstalled via the disk image and it reinstalled superbly.  Not a single driver or personal setting had to be sorted.

I may be rethinking this whole thing because I am starting to see reasonably proced touchscreen monitors appear.  Newegg has a 21.5" Viewsonic for $316.  Touch changes everything when considering Win 8 for your everyday user.

[Merc14]

Article wityh links tio everyrthing you want to know about how to optimize windows 8
http://www.pcworld.c....html#tk.nl_pwr

[Classified Document]

Thanks for starting up this thread Merc. I didn't know Windows 8 even existed up intill a little while ago. Now, I know a few interesting things about the OS thanks to you guys.

I might consider switching to 8, but I want to see how it plays out first. Wait till it gets a few updates etc.

[Merc14]

Classified Document, on 31 December 2012 - 10:31 PM, said:

Thanks for starting up this thread Merc. I didn't know Windows 8 even existed up intill a little while ago. Now, I know a few interesting things about the OS thanks to you guys.

I might consider switching to 8, but I want to see how it plays out first. Wait till it gets a few updates etc.

Just be aware that the $39.99 deal for Windows 8 Pro ends on January 31st.  I just bought a 120Gb SSD for my main shop desktop and am going to upgrade it to windows 8 this week.

Edited by Merc14, 01 January 2013 - 01:47 AM.

[Merc14]

Just installed Windows 8 Pro on my desktop with a new 120GB Kingston Hyper-X SSD I got for $99 at Newegg.  I turned my RAID 0 2x150GB Raptors into a RAID 1 for real time storage and then installed Win 8 on the SSD.  My desktop specs are Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 overclocked to 2.9GHz on air with 8GB of Corsair DDR2-800 memory.  All I can say is wow, this thing is fast and this is some older equipment.  I haven't upgraded because the rig is rock solid and still very fast and now with an SSD and Win 8 it is smokin' hot.

For those that care, I have the SSD as the OS and programs disk, the two raptors in RAID 1 for storage and I set the My Pictures, My Documents, My Videos and My Music defaults to the RAID 1 to keep that data off the SSD. I have a 640GB on line as well for more storage and a 1TB in an external for backing everything up.  I leave the external off 99% of the time to keep it isolated.   Most of my other equipment is used, believe it or not, from benchmarking buddies that were moving up or souldn't getthe stuff fast enough (I always did).  I had the Q6600 on water and overclocked to 3.6GHz daily for years.  It is now running at a 500MHz OC (2.9GHz) on air which is plenty for what I do now.  Memory is cheap so load up.  Using a Radeon 5750 a buddy gave me for building a computer for him.  Case is a Lian Li a customer gave me for swapping her to a smaller Lian Li she bought that I had recommedned to begin with.  I installed a USB 3.0 card in a PCIe slot and hooked it to a f3.5" bay card reader with a USB 3 slot on it.

7.2 on the Windows Experience Index but win 8 has a top score of 9.9 compared to Win 7's 7.9 but still, pretty damn good I'd say.

Edited by Merc14, 06 January 2013 - 04:36 AM.