Windows 8 advice.

[zerocrossing]

So, my sweet wife surprised me with a Dell xps 8500 i7 machine this Christmas. It's replacing an old xps Core Duo II machine. So far it's been a bit of a nightmare. I spent a ton of time installing and updating my software (Komplete is a bitch) only to have Windows inform me that it couldn't start and offered me the option to "refresh" my computer, which meant deinstalling everything. I have a feeling it was the Pace driver that came with Speakerphone.

Anyway, tips on dealing with Windows 8? Downgrade to 7?

[David Carpenter Wind Core]

Re-install everything from scratch first just download the drivers from support website then install OS WIN 7 . Don't install all the laptop bloatware just the drivers you need for the hardware.

Do not use the laptop recovery disk you need clean install and most up to date drivers.

This way you don't have to uninstall all the junk that comes pre-installed on laptops.

[zerocrossing]

Re-install everything from scratch first just download the drivers from support website then install OS WIN 7 . Don't install all the laptop bloatware just the drivers you need for the hardware.

Do not use the laptop recovery disk you need clean install and most up to date drivers.

This way you don't have to uninstall all the junk that comes pre-installed on laptops.

There wasn't any junk on it except for a demo of MS Office which I deinstalled. It's a tower PC. I guess I could/should get a fresh OS install disc...

[robogone]

Probably don't need a complete OS reinstall if it's brand new but you probably do have all the crap on there that needs to be installed.

[psychoxkps]

rule no.2: every second windows is good.. i love 7 and 8 looks little bit like os for pohnes..

rule no.1: use mac!:D:D

[chokehold]

I jumped on the 14.99€ deal... if you have a mobile computer with a touch display and no keyboard, you might actually like it.

But if you have a real computer on which you want to make music and do serious work, STAY CLEAR OF WIN8 for heaven's sake!

And don't even THINK about getting it if you're intending to use it inside a virtual machine on OSX.

I really tried to like this, and I guess for tablet computers it might make sense.
But for a desktop computer or even a virtual machine it's just all wrong. You're constantly pushing the mouse in some corner and swiping and waiting, these ugly full-screen "HEY I'M AN APPLICATION AND I'M STARTING HEY HEY LOOK AT MY ANNOYING COLOR" startup screens for every program, it now takes 5 work steps to shut the computer down instead of two...

At EVERY startup you first have to click once to hide the "startup standby" screen they added before the login screen, and after logging in you land inside the Metro GUI, forcedly. No chance to immediately see the desktop.
There's a workaround (putting Explorer into Autostart) but that always (guess what) opens the Explorer. Autostarting the Explorer minimized will just hide it behind the Metro GUI again.

Basically, this Metro thing is a menu that lists up all your installed programs and apps and used files, and you scroll it horizontally (left to right) ... with a vertical (up and down) mouse wheel. Make sense? Right.

Back in 7, there was a Start Button, over which you could access all your installed programs and apps and used files. That's gone and not coming back. There was a launch area, from which you could launch your fav programs with ONE click.

So tell me, for what would one need a thing like the Metro GUI? It's just the same thing as the Start menu and the Quick Launch bar ... just that it's cluttered and has widgets chewing on the system performance.

What's more, they've done their very best in splitting up features that made sense before. Where you could reach the "shutdown" button and then select to sign off, lock the computer, shut it down, re-start it ... now, you have to swipe the mouse into a corner, wait for the slide-in menu, click on the cog wheel, wait for the next slide-in menu, and then click the shutdown button. Well, at least for shutting down.
OR, if you just want to sign off, lock the machine or switch user, you have to go into the Metro GUI (swipe mouse into a corner, wait for the slide-in menu, click the Menu button) and then go to your username in the top right corner to select one of these options.

What utter idiot thought that up?!

But wait, there's more!

You can change the color of the windows' window frames ... but not the color of the text. So if you like dark window frames ... there goes your title text.

You know how quickly viewing a file works on a Mac? (I think from SnoLeo upward)
Highlight the file and press SPACE.
Done? Press SPACE again.
That's it.
No need for "default programs" and installing "viewer" apps.

You know how you view a photo on a mobile phone?
Tap the photo, and it will probably open in some full-screen application. Tap the screen again to bring up some buttons that let you go back to the browser, open the image in editing mode, step through to the next photo, something like that.
Makes sense, right?

Well, Win 8 doesn't roll that way.
You double-click a photo, it just opens the image full-screen (after displaying a full-screen "HEY I'M THE IMAGE PREVIEW APP AND I'M STARTING LOOK AT ME WHILE I START" screen) ... and that's it.
You can't even ESC or ALT+F4 your way out of it, because ESC brings you to the sort-of full-screen menu of the Photo viewer app, for "browsing" images from within the app, and ALT+F4 brings you back to the darn Metro GUI again... even if you launched the file from an Explorer window on the Desktop.

Anyway, while you're stuck inside that full-screen app, good luck trying out the various corners to swipe the mouse in...

All these new "features", like having no Start button but loads of slide-in menus, the stupid apps and full-screen startup screens and all the messy sytem managing... they're forced on you. You can't do jack about it. They're there, deal with it.

The install media weighs 2.8x GB, the basic installation is about 10GB, after all the updates I ran the other night I now have 12GB of the 30GB virtual drive left. Remember: fresh installation, no applications on there yet.

This brand-new operating system has a built-in feature that calls itself ... I dunno, in German it's "Auffrischen", that should translate to something like "Refresh" or "Recondition" in an English Win8 ... what this feature does is resetting just about everything, rebuilding the system to mend broken system files or bring back things one might have deleted by accident.

Doesn't it strike you as mildly ironic that a brand new operating system already knows it's going to f*ck itself up, and therefore offers a "soft reinstall" function? It's not even hidden away, it's right there in the ... whatever it is, sort-of a parallel System Preferences panel. Just to screw you up completely, so you never know where you need to go to change something - System Preferences, this other menu, or maybe the third variant that's near the shutdown button.
Good luck remembering what setting is hidden where...

Anyway, after all the updates - I couldn't open the Windows Store application anymore.
It would just freeze and lock up the computer for a minute or two, then die and throw me back onto the Metro menu. Again: fresh system, nothing installed yet.

So I thought some of the updates might have broken the system, or maybe that I installed Reaper and copied JKnobMan into the Program Files directory screwed something up. (Those were the only two things I installed myself!)
But no need for despair - enter the almighty hero, the Reconditioning.

I clicked on it, it said something about just refreshing the system, not deleting any user files, user settings and other user-related stuff. I was fine with that, let it run through and what it did was just that - it removed my user files, it removed my settings (colors, wallpaper, etc.) and it deleted the programs I had installed. Lying piece of sh*t!

Performance-wise it seems okay. The system is responsive, the boot-up time is impressively fast (SATA3 SSD here) ... but the built-in apps are tiiiiiiriiiiinglyyyy slllllloooooow... I mean, on a 2.5GHz i5 with SATA3 SSD and 8GB fast RAM ... does an image preview (not even editing!) app really need to display a startup screen for something close to 10 seconds before you see the actual image?

Seriously ... it seems that someone at Microsoft thought that Win7 was too successful and revived the Vista and ME team, let them watch an instructional video about tablet computers and let them go to work.


EDIT:
...and does this whole rectangular-2D-without-any-depth "tile" scheme work for you?
I think it looks like some kid was doodling around in paint, not like a sophisticated interfacing environment.
I spent the last 4.5 years designing GUIs for tablet PCs, so I know a thing or two about this.

Simplicity is an advantage, because it doesn't distract you with unnecessary things. I agree.
But Microsoft have just driven it too far, everything is toooooo simple, so that a normal person's mind can't comprehend it. And they also managed to make the whole aspect of simplicity completely useless, because the f*cking tiles re-arrange themselves automatically, I guess by going after the position of the stars or tides or something like that. So you never know where a "tile" to launch a program is going to be the next time you want it.

Just like with women: it that's the f*cked up way it's going to be, at least make it look good.

For a tablet PC -- try it first. It might work. But for a desktop system to do some real work on ...

I DEARLY REGRET spending 14.99€ on that piece of crap.

With the beer price of 2.50€ to 3€ in pubs here in Berlin, I could've had a joyful evening out. Granted, my head would've hurt the next morning just like it did after a night with Win8 ... but at least I'd gotten my money's worth.

YMMV
and if so - congratulations.

[chokehold]

rule no.1: use mac!:D:D

+1

[budweiser]

I DEARLY REGRET spending 14.99€ on that piece of crap.

I just spent 30e on this, last nite ! I believe it's recommended to wait at least sp1 or sp2 to install a new Windows. Things may change. Anyway, in my case, i used corporate xp and 7, so 30e is not that much for ten years of windows !

[chokehold]

I just spent 30e on this, last nite !

I knew of the 30€ upgrade price, which is fair for the usual Windows prices that are more like 10 times as much. (talking full version license, not System Builder or OEM)

But in the Market Place Bargains thread, someone posted a way to get 15$/15€ off. I tried it, and it worked. Boy, am I glad that I didn't pay a full 30€ for this...

A good friend of mine is involved with Microsoft and creating Screencasts for their stuff, he's actually recently brought one out on creating Win8 apps. He's the only reason I wanted to try Win8 out, because he was constantly yammering on about how fast it is, how effective it works on his Ultrabook, how easily understandable and clearly structured everything is, how much better everything performs when compared against Win7... blah blah blah.

Obviously, he's never used a Mac in his life before.

Been on and around Windows systems for 20 years, actually more by now ... and almost every time I had a relatively positive surprise when upgrading to a newer version. Vista was close, but never before did I feel SO much like vomiting.
A serious disappointment.

[maxxxter]

DELETED

[budweiser]

But in the Market Place Bargains thread, someone posted a way to get 15$/15€ off.

i ! (Don't thanx me, please )

[chokehold]

(Don't thanx me, please )

Was that you?
Well, in that case I hereby officially don't thank you.

[budweiser]

Yep, that was me . Sorry for the loss, but maybe in sp1 or sp2 we'll get rid of that crapy metro nobody seems to like. Reading the overall consensus makes me really happy i went for the backup dvd...
Anyway i won't try this before 1 or 2 years, w7 works like a charm.

[maxxxter]

DELETED

[glokraw]

I jumped on the 14.99€ deal...
But Microsoft have just driven it too far, everything is toooooo simple, so that a normal person's mind can't comprehend it.

In a future United Nations, post-U.S. you will need a simple
device for international voting, with an interface that uses
international symbols, instead of lanquage, such that Britneys
of all nations, can vote with 'intelligence' windoze 13