One year on, Windows 8.1 hits milestone, nudges past XP The number of PC running Windows 8.1 nudged past Windows XP for the first time in November. Windows 8.1 broke the global 10 per cent market-share barrier a year after general release, and has now hit 10.95 per cent, according to latest data from StatCounter. Windows XP, released in 2001, slipped down 1.26 percentage points to …
I paid for Win7 when my last laptop died (XP) and won't replace it until it also dies.
Hopefully there will be a choice other than 8.1.
Given that every even version of windows has been terrible you have to wonder Microsoft are skipping 9 and jumping straight to 10.....
Vociferous: "Run a checkdisk and/or replace the HD. A bad sector in the swapfile will make your windows machine crawl for seemingly no reason."
Exponential algorithm making Windows XP miserable could be fixed
A decade of patches makes svchost.exe a very sad boy indeed
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/exponential-algorithm-making-windows-xp-miserable-could-be-fixed/
"Given that every even version of windows has been terrible you have to wonder Microsoft are skipping 9 and jumping straight to 10....."
Really? Where does this stuff come from?
Windows NT 4.0 was good, Windows 2000 was good, Windows XP was good, Windows Vista was a heap of sh*t when first released, was very usable by SP2 (which was the base of Windows 7). Windows 7 was good, Windows 8.0 & 8.1 are cr*p.
Hope you were not going to use Windows 95,98, 98SE or ME in your alternate windows argument, as they are a completely different product line and don't have the NT kernel.
"Windows Vista was a heap of sh*t when first released, was very usable by SP2"
Made little difference. Most PCs were delivered with 2GB of RAM, some laptops couldn't even be upgraded further than 2GB. Vista did not run, with any traditional sense of the word usable, on 2GB of RAM. Windows XP, fine, WIndows 7 "usable".
Source: Currently in my possession a total of 4 PCs from various sources (2 x laptop, 2 x Desktop) running Vista. 3 came with 2GB, 1 was upgraded from 1GB to 2GB RAM.
"Given that every even version of windows has been terrible you have to wonder Microsoft are skipping 9 and jumping straight to 10....."
Correct. Windows 3.11, 98/SE, XP, 7, and 8.1 were all odd versions and were market successes.
Win 3.1, 95, ME, Vista, and 8 were even versions and all market duds.
Sales of odd versions were market successes. Sales of odd versions were market failures. Notice how the successes were improvements based on the failures.
This applies to market sales of Microsoft CONSUMER operating systems. Windows NT and the great Windows 2000, as solid as they are, were not marketed as consumer OS's.
Funny to me that the techie crowd doesn't like the fastest, most secure version of Windows ever. I've been onboard since day one - no regrets whatsoever. I've put both my parents on it, wife, kids, co-workers, never heard a single complaint or issue. Classic Shell handles the start menu issues for free.
"Go on, enlighten us. Just don't try and punt the security swiss cheese known as linux as a "more secure" option...."
Well on the desktop we have OS X for starters, and those who care about security on their servers will be using something with a long-standing reputation for it - OpenBSD.
Indeed, so many desktops running Linux are hacked. infested with malware and pointless browser toolbars and parasitic AV software that didnt do its job, leaving the poor users to wipe & re-install from scratch, and left hunting for their license key to re-enable the OS and the recovery DVD they (failed to make) made when it was new.
Oh wait, got the wrong OS...
@AC - "The reason for "the techie crowd doesn't like the fastest, most secure version of Windows ever" is simple: they prefer other faster and more secure OS instead. For legacy or windows-only stuff, there is 7 which works just fine."
I use Linux for servers and number crunching, but if I've got to use Windows apps, why not use it in the latest, most secure and fastest form? All this bullshit about interface is just stupid when you can install Classic Shell on a system in about 1 minute for free to get your start menu back.
All this bullshit about interface is just stupid when you can install Classic Shell on a system in about 1 minute for free to get your start menu back.
It's not bullshit and it's not just the start menu, which I've personally never liked. I've given Windows 8 a spin and swapping between classic and metro is incredibly jarring and disorientating. I've been using GUIs of all types since Windows 2 but I still hate Ribbon and Metro the most.
Given the clusterfuck of Vista and WPF there's plenty to optimise and improve on so I wouldn't be surprised if Windows 8 isn't a bit snappier (the way Windows loads drivers is still fucking retarded though) and more secure, though we do notice those patches being issued for exploits on it all the same. But the real problem is that Microsoft still hasn't decided what the UI toolkit should be and that after XML, Silverlight, etc. is starting to unnerve developers as Tim Anderson recently pointed out.
>>Funny to me that the techie crowd doesn't like the fastest, most secure version of Windows ever.
Maybe because it's a techie nightmare. Simple things like user management are incredibly hard. Features that used to exist are simply gone or so buried it's nearly impossible to find. Or it might be simply that the user experience is good for a tablet but horrible for those of us that actually try to get real work done.
Win 7 is, by any real metric, a rock solid OS. It simply works. In other words there is NOTHING that 8/8.1 brought to the table that was necessary. Even the latest version of office didn't bring anything truly useful. Users simply didn't have a problem with the UI design of the OS. Numerous applications were garbage, but changing out the OS certainly didn't fix that.
Not only did Win 8 bring nothing new to the table, it was a giant step backwards because it forced everyone to relearn how to interact with their computer. 8.1 was a small step back to were it was. The screen shots I've seen of Win 10 appear to be a giant step that way.
As to performance, hardware has improved to the point that any real OS performance improvements were unnecessary.
@Chris Lively - "Maybe because it's a techie nightmare. Simple things like user management are incredibly hard. Features that used to exist are simply gone or so buried it's nearly impossible to find."
Control Panel. It's still right there. More features than ever in fact. And more administrator apps and options than I recall on Win 7. The only real hassle is with UEFI, but that's becoming universal, so what are you going to do?
But, whatever. I've spewed as much M$ hate as anyone over the years, and I'm relatively devoted to Linux. I just don't see the reason for the extreme hate for this particular version - it's closer to what we've wanted from Windows than any previous iteration, what with baked in security, significant performance enhancements, etc etc.
I wasted a Sunday around a relative's house. Their XP machine was running slow (as it was full of malware), so they went to John Lewis on Black Friday and ended up being fobbed off with a HP desktop with Windows 8.1
By the Saturday, once they realized none of their stuff was on it, and called me for help, it was already loaded with Malware, as one of them decided to download a FarmVille game.
They had been back to John Lewis as they discovered it didn't have Office on it, where they sold them Office365..
Some people you just can't help. A £170 Chromebook (or Chromebox) would have been just the ticket for what they use a PC for (web/email/basic office), and would have been secure too and would have just worked as soon as they signed in, no need to copy stuff across, or worry about backups.
As it is, they spend 6x that, for something that's already full of malware as I sat there and watched them struggle with Windows 8, I just sighed to myself... Still it's a great money earner for me... So can't complain too much. If everyone owned Chromebooks, how would I earn beer money?
@AC - "Some people you just can't help. A £170 Chromebook (or Chromebox) would have been just the ticket for what they use a PC for (web/email/basic office), and would have been secure too and would have just worked as soon as they signed in, no need to copy stuff across, or worry about backups."
Now that I agree with - many people would be better off with a Chromebook. They think they need full MS Office, but don't ever use its advanced functions and wouldn't know how to. What they really need is a cheap device with good internet connectivity that updates itself and is relatively secure.
I wasted a Sunday around a relative's house. Their XP machine was running slow (as it was full of malware), so they went to John Lewis on Black Friday and ended up being fobbed off with a HP desktop with Windows 8.1
By the saturday, once they realised none of their stuff was on it, and called me for help, it was already loaded with Malware, as one of them decided to download a FarmVille game.
They had been back to John Lewis as they discovered it didn't have Office on it, where they sold them Office365..
Some people you just can't help. A £170 Chromebook (or Chromebox) would have been just the ticket for what they use a PC for (web/email/basic office), and would have been secure too and would have just worked as soon as they signed in, no need to copy stuff across, or worry about backups.
As it is, they spend 6x that, for something that's already full of malware as I sat there and watched them struggle with Windows 8, I just sighed to myself... Still it's a great money earner for me... So can't complain too much. If everyone owned Chromebooks, how would I earn beer money?
Everuy version has been terrible, but still he uses it. He hopes there will be an alternative when he buys his next laptop, but there was when he bought his last two laptops and still he chose windows.
It doesn't matter which camp you sleep in (windows sucks or windows rocks) this man's arguments make no sense.
For the record I run Windows on the household laptop purely for my sons gaming needs. None of the software I run requires windows. I'd choose Mint, but then laddo couldn't play his games. When he's old enough to have his own PC I'll be moving back to Linux.
I have a forced-purchase Windows 8 sitting on an unused partition in my laptop. It never gets booted. Just like my last laptop had a force-purchase copy of Windows Vista, which never got booted.
Oh for the days when you bought DOS and windows separately, if/when you wanted them. Apart from anything else, it gave you a real DR path.
From the obvious omission in the article, I take it that Gavin Clarke doesn't actually use Windows 8. Otherwise he would of included that other contributory reason for both the dip in Win8 and the increase in Win8.1, namely the forced update of Win8 machines on auto-update via WUP.
Also what the Statcounter chart clearly reinforces is that Win7 is the dominant release of Windows (and due to its enterprise usage is likely to continue to be so until 2020). I suggest the trend lines indicates that with the announcement of Win10 next year, Win8.1 is highly unlikely to achieve a marketshare of 20% (XP's marketshare in Nov 2013). The enterprise usage of Win7 also sets a limit on the potential market for Win10, meaning it will be focused more on XP, Vista & Win8 upgrades.
Forced indeed.
I recently had to explain to a new windows 8 user, coming from win7 how to use it.
To open pictures, click start. Ignore all the massive flashing, distracting changing tiles that are trying to sell you things, you want that tiny discreet, no discript box at the bottom...
The realisation that windows 8 was a turd came very quickly to them at that point.
Not so much the traditional laptops, but mini-laptops with touch screens and in some cases detachable screens. They start from really low prices (to me) as well - a full-blown Windows 8.1 Intel-based touch-screen laplet (is it a thing?) for £300 or less. Compared to an i5 or i7 they must be very underspecced but I was unexpectedly surprised how little you need to spend to get W8.1 running reasonably.
W8 has no true bearing on the market, it is un unwanted system that is being installed by the few people that don't understand that "choice" is something they can have. W8 is a dead in the water.
What is far more important is the trend that will be created with Windows 10 ( W10 - ie : the North Kensington Edition - hint - look up London postal areas in order to understand ).
Windows 7 is rock solid and appears to be "relatively" secure. Hopefully W10 will provide the extra effort required to make it seriously secure.
The problem I see with W10 though is that it will become synonymous with Office 201x ( >= 2013) and the various Office Web editions which for the moment are unliked ( those interfaces make ones eyes scream). MS have to come back down to earth and fire the bloody interface designers that they have had of late.....
I really can't imagine where the Tablet market is going though as it does have an influence on the PC market.
[Relatively = in relation to previous MS efforts]
It's not just the lousy interfaces. It's also the plumbings (pl intentional) behind the lousy interfaces. First you've got the lousy plumbing that insists on putting your data in "the cloud." While I might under duress consider backing up my data to "the cloud" I generally prefer that my data live on my drives. Next up you've got the all apps, all the time, and always from the App Store approach they want to take on the software. I expect to purchase a perpetual license that lets me move my apps from one OS to the next.
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Tell you what; print all your documents on an Epson FX80 grot dot-matrix printer. Any whinging and I'll tell you that it's in your head, and you can't really see the difference. After all even an A5 printout from the printer has a resolution of 996*696.
I remember using computers before windows even existed I can still see the difference between a Galaxy Note 1 screen at 1280*800 and Note3 at 1920*1080.
I'm keeping to XP until a decent OS comes about. A friend was bought a laptop for his birthday. it came with win 8.1. he had it a week then out of dispair bought a new 1T hard drive and a copy of Win 7 Home. then handed it all to me to replace hard drive and install win 7. He is now a lot happier and joins the seeminly growing number who do likewise.
I have a Microsoft Surface (given by work). loaded with win 8.1 - now over loaded with Classic Shell. Just wondering how many of the 'bought' win 8.1 machines have similar desktop refashions installed to make it look Win 7 ish.
...to 'upgrade' from v7 to v8.1 or even to v10 when it comes out. At the moment I'm quite happy with the PC's running v7 which seems rather stable and predictable. There's no software or hardware I want/need at this time that demands v8. So, whats going to make me pay out £100 per PC to upgrade? There's other things I'd rather spend the money on.
Re: Hyper-V
Well whilst Win7 doesn't provide full Hyper-V, it does have a reasonable level of support for VM's, either through the (now unsupported) XP mode, or through the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) for Windows 7. Which should satisfy many 'casual' VM needs. Also as others have pointed out you can install VMWare or if you are really adventurous Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2...
My home PC usage has dropped from 100% two years ago, to 5% today.
I have no real need for a PC anymore, except for a couple of very small edge cases. Why would I spend money on a new PC or an "upgrade" to WIndows 10? The answer is, I won't.
By then, I think I should be able to get rid of that last 5% that means a Chromebook/Chromebox and a scattering of Android phones and tablets are more than enough for our house, with no backup worries, and no security nightmares, and proper privacy/parental controls.
OK, OK, I hear ya. Lots of Windows H8tred to be had, and I agree with much that has been said. As I see it, Microsoft are yet again under the thumb of their marketing folk and the beancounters that infest them, trying desperately to market their latest poop despite the poor opinion that is generally to be had of it.
The giggle I get is, and you can check back through comments I've made on this very site if you want, I can recall specifically stating that tablets were a fad. While I have nothing against tablets per se, the push by some for these devices has led to the development we now see in Windows 8.x.
The pressure to put everything in a server farm controlled by a corporation or other faceless body, euphemstically referred to as a "cloud", is the next fad and we can already see some of the effects on the development of operating systems (not just Windows 10 either) and some of the fallout resulting from poor design, poor security and the very fact that not everyone wants to be on the net every minute of the day. A good example was the suggestion back before Microsoft caved in that users wanting to play games offline were better advised to buy the XBox 360 rather than the XBone; W10 is the same thing, so it seems.
Until Microsoft stops doing things like this and actually starts listening to its users, that is unlikely to change.
I tried the previews up to the point when they to force new sales by insisting that only recent CPUs could be used. Was there another way to turn the PC off except to press the silver button on the front? It blue screened with almost everything. and I found the way to make it usable was to cover the desk top with batch files to load what I wanted. The kiddie bricks were all deleted from the silly oops start screen as none of them were any use at all they did nothing except for the desktop screen. Then the flak from other started.
The good point was that the underlying OS was slick and fast, the bad news was that it was hidden by crap and stupid fluff. The stupid store for example that expected you to add access to a payment method do I look cabbage coloured? The drive for cloud usage where your data is controlled by the leaky sieve/CIA/GCHQ?NORKS?whom-so-ever company was take it or leave it, I would for ever leave it alone, - to the point of searching out a hack to remove it from ever appearing if I could. If you like it that is fine, but too much of it was hard marketing to sell new stuff, be it PCs or other devices, printers scanners, print servers or the 'store' by not working with existing items.
If Windows 10 avoids those stupid moves it might be attractive for the future, but otherwise; - do I really want a PC any more?
If you're going to bash M$ for something at least have a real argument backed by some actual facts that exist in the real world instead of "M$ is sh** and everything they do is sh** because I'm sheep and think it sounds cool to bash M$" ... whatever!
Windows 7 and Windows 8 are basically the same under the bonnet ... In fact windows 8 was an improvement and is superior to 7 in most areas, the only thing people seem to see though is the vomit inducing tile start menu that M$ said on day 1 ... "we did our research and found no-one uses the start menu so what's the big deal?"
... And yet I see comments like "W8 is crap" all the time ... what exactly is crap about it?
The tile based start menu, sure, because it's blatantly obvious people don't like that but 1 menu does not make an entire OS.
So, someone tell me exactly what is so crap about Windows 8 without being a total retard about it?
Show me some actual fact that says Windows 7 is a superior product, or that a Linux distro is better supported / Easier to use for the average consumer and at the same / lower cost?
Microsoft took 7, made it faster, more efficient and work on more platforms, then started working on creating a single "windows" that runs on even mobiles making development, support, and flexibility unlike any other platform on the market.
... seems to me like a bunch of people that don't use windows still don't use windows but still moan about stuff Microsoft did and was fined for in the 80's just because they can.
Also, those of you complaining you got a windows install "forced upon you" ... you really aren't that smart are you? Go buy a PC without an OS, virtually any main dealer will provide that, or better still do what I did and build a PC from scratch buying each part individually ... second thoughts don't do that, you may end up burning the house down or something.
Indeed, it's the same under the bonnet. However with Windows 7 you drive it like a normal car and with Windows 8 you drive it like Fred Flintstone.
Personally, I can't be arsed with it, life's too short. If people ask me my opinion I say don't get it. However if people do get it and I'm feeling charitable, I can make it work as much as possible like Windows 7 or XP for them, which is oddly enough what they want it to work like.
The jarring mode-shifts and complete uselessness of the interface as sold ( as a mouse and keyboard user ) is a good starting point- if I have to install extra software to make a consumer operating system usable at all, that is not my problem, that is the OS Designers'. But that isn't all.
Originally with 8 it was very hard to shut down your computer- a three step process where it used to be one-step. All of these places where they make it more difficult to do things that every user needs to do on a routine basis, they are failing.
When I want to browse through images in a folder, Windows 8 jumps me to a full-screen ( or tile or whatever it is ) gallery application and after the initial image I have opened it just seems to pick at random from the pictures stored on my machine. It is massively unintuitive and means that this is another function for which I simply don't use Windows any more.
A few months after I set up the machine, I edited a couple of photographs and deleted the originals. For some reason Windows 8 interpreted "delete" to mean "Smear file contents across everything on the hard drive" and proceeded to wipe out half of my music library and cost me weeks of work. Call me old-fashioned but I consider manipulating files to be the primary purpose of an operating system. If it can't do that, then no amount of annoying interface tics is going to win me over.
The desktop search in Windows is very good, enough so that I use it a lot of the time. But in 8 it can be hard to know whether when you're looking for a way to change system configuration you are going to get bounced into a Tile Interface view or something useful.
The Windows Store- they obviously want to drive people there, but they have done a terrible job of making it useful and it is largely full of junk. I wouldn't buy from it, in fact I would go out of my way to avoid buying through it.
Compatibility is surprisingly poor - the other day I used a USB display adapter that caused the system to bluescreen at boot. Not Microsoft's fault, of course, but it all makes the operating system seem bad. If I have a new piece of hardware that doesn't appear to work in Windows, I can boot into Linux on the same machine and test it there. With Mint I find the hardware I add works first time every time, which used to be the case in Windows during previous versions. When the 8.1 update came in my wireless card started randomly dropping connectivity. It's an Intel card on a Windows system, which is about as mainstream as you can get, and they have hundreds of reports of the same problem for the same card. It's still marked on Microsoft and Intel's sites as "Compatible With Windows 8" even though this is self-evidently a lie.
All these things create cognitive friction. In almost all cases, when a user notices your operating system that is a bad thing, and I am constantly being reminded that I am using Windows 8 in a way that hasn't happened with any of the previous versions of Windows I have used.
Also, by way of comparison, I have found Mint to be smooth, easy to use and very reliable. If I had to choose between that and Windows 8.1 when setting up a computer for my mum, I would choose Mint.
I don't have a passionate dislike of Microsoft ( my day job involves using their development tools so I benefit from their work and understand their systems reasonably well ) but I have developed a passionate dislike of W8, even once I got a start-menu replacement installed and curbed it's most irritating excesses. Hopefully 10 will be a little less tiresome.
I do not like Microsoft's licenses.
With GPL & BSD I can install all the software I want on any number of computers for free. I can move software from one computer to another without having to ask permission or having to buy another license. If I want the software to work differently, I have the source code. If someone has not already made the change I want, I can change it myself or hire any competent programmer to make the change. I do not have to beg a monopoly to make the change and accept whatever price the choose to charge for it along with any other 'improvements' they decide to bundle with it. My data is in documented standards compliant formats implemented royalty free by multiple suppliers.
I know Microsoft despises the GPL and would rather juggle porcupines than release software under that license. They keep telling me that BSD is 'business friendly', so when they release Windows with a BSD license I will take a look at it.
know Microsoft despises the GPL and would rather juggle porcupines than release software under that license. They keep telling me that BSD is 'business friendly', so when they release Windows with a BSD license I will take a look at it.
Well, I do write and contribute to open source software and I also despise the GPL but fortunately it looks to have served any usefulness it ever had (if it ever had any) and on the way out.
It was only ever FUD at Microsoft about open source and the retards who fulminated against interoperability and open source seem to have left with Ballmer. The .NET stuff is Apache licensed and could be very interesting and useful. It's certainly bound to annoy that other software cancer: Oracle.
To those who say Windows 8 was fine once Classic Shell was installed and hopefully Windows 10 will correct the errors of 8.x, from the Tech Preview build 9879, Classic Shell refuses to install, due to compatibility issues. It won't install in Compatibility Mode either.
But it installs if you rename the installer, e.g. to fuckyoumicrosoft.exe. Or just Classic.exe. Or probably even Classicshel.exe. It appears to run fine. I had one crash when I tried to install the hack for disabling the Explorer ribbon which, like Classic Shell, ran fine prior to 9879. And one crash since which, searching on the info from Event Viewer, appears to be caused by one or two files from the Start Screen system that folk were reporting in Windows 8. If that is an incompatibility between the Start Screen sub-system and Classic Shell, IMO the fault is with the Start Screen.
I believe that the absolute top priority of Microsoft with Windows 10 is unchanged from that of 8 and 8.1, being to put those tiles for Windows Store in your face. That is it. That is the purpose of Windows since 8. I remove all the Windows Store app links that allow uninstallation and install Classic Shell to get the others out of sight and out of mind. Microsoft don't want us doing that. The main difference in 8.1 and then 10 is the effort to reduce the smash-you-in-the-face-with-Windows-Store approach of 8 to where we'll be worn down enough we'll accept it still being there. Me, I use the 9x/Classic-style Start Menu in XP, W7,W8,W8.1, and W10. And the equivalent in Mint KDE. I did use the Luna menu for about a year before finally getting fed up with it, and I used the W7 menu until Classic Shell came along and I thought to see if it worked in 7. Just a simple list of expanding shortcuts is all I want for a Start Menu, with 'recent everything' turned off. If ultimately I can't even have that, Windows 10 is going to be the last new version I'll try. Windows 8 with Classic Shell is better than Windows 10 with it's default Start Menu.
And - as someone running all the above-mentioned operating systems - I have to admit I don't get the improved security/speed over Windows 7 arguments. I don't see either. If there is a difference in speed it is so slight as to be not worth timing, while the monthly security updates usually apply to each Windows version (bar 10, for obvious reasons) and if anything it seems to me in those months when one version has exclusive security patches, they are more often for 8/8.1 than for 7. Which isn't to say that 8/8.1 are inherently less secure rather than, say, being newer there are more undiscovered flaws; but I really do not see where this argument that they are more secure than 7 comes from, unless from Microsoft hype.
And, back in 10 for the first time in a couple of days, I see there is an update - KB3020114 - 'Explorer.exe continuously crashes after you upgrade to Windows Server Technical Preview or Windows 10 Technical Preview', the exact crash I saw (twice). Although and fwiw, after the 1st crash I formatted it then re-installed from the iso, so the 2nd crash happened from a clean install. After which I used 10 for a few hours without a repeat, including a few boots and reboots.
Now the patch is in place, and Classic Shell is still blocked for 'compatibility issues'. Still runs if you rename the installer.
Also, those of you complaining you got a windows install "forced upon you" ... you really aren't that smart are you?
Oh, how we laughed! Thanks to MS volume licensing deals (trade secret so we can't give you the details) you get to pay for the licence anyway… Microsoft has used the same deals to forbid manufacturers from offering anything other than Windows 8 to consumers. That's what I call real market power! Just not in a free market.
Can someone hit this fool with a clue?
Only comment that hit on my theme (in quasi-math form):
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice ≠ (Beer | Speech)
Microsoft may make most of the world's worst software, but their business models are great, basically with two innovations. #1 breaks my equation by marketing to the makers, not the actual victims who have to use the software. #2 is the EULA denial of all liability for any damages caused by any degree of badness in the software you agreed to use.
Still haven't found any feature in Windows 7 (or later) that would induce me to upgrade from XP for any positive reason. In other words, Microsoft is rewarded for their bad software by making us too scared of their old bugs to stay with XP.
I see it all the time, I'm doing something on my windows PC and someone says "I tried to do that on my Mac and iTunes / Some OS feature got in my way, it's ok though coz apple is kewl".
Or the other classic:
"I downloaded these 15 different parts of the thing that does this on linux but they don't like each other due to versioning hell, this build of component x won't agree that verson of component y on this particular linux distro" ... and where's the support? Ah yes, some public forum where they basically tell you you're an idiot for not understanding why these 15 different things weren't built to work on common distros but only "obscure linux v0.0.1" instead of "BullBuntu v20".
And yet M$ put 1 menu in a place that no one uses and uproar ensues ...
Oh, the irony!
Umm...not to be rude Wardy, but I've been through the whole cycle....
I'm a Mac user, that at my previous company ran Win 7 in a VM, to administer systems and do work, then I trialled Win 8 to check for O365 and Dynamics stability, and assess it's suitability for handing out to the workforce. I kept using Win 8...even though it would f**k me off every other day with the way everything was hidden.
Moved job...got a Win 7 laptop again, and breathed a sigh of relief...until my new laptop came with 8.1
Now...in single screen mode it still f**cks me off just as much as Win 8 did...but with a dual display, I can live with the fact that one screen becomes an oversized start menu, it doesn't interrupt my work flow as much while loading up VS 2013, or RDP'ing into one of our many servers.
But the fact is that whilst you say "all this fuss over a start menu", the fact is..it's hacked off enough end users...for it to become a non obtrusive, non workflow disturbing again in Win 10. This is the price Sinofsky paid, for ignoring months and months and months of preview users screaming at him "WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE TO WINDOWS"
Even now though...win 8.1 still hacks me off, mostly because there are STILL settings split between the actual control panel, and the TIFKAM settings...and my TIFKAM is broken and won't actually let me access those settings without nuking and paving the whole machine.
I thank the lord that my new job meant I could format my Macbook Pro and leave it unsullied by Windows.
I have a laptop that boots in about 2 seconds after upgrading from 7 - it was about 8 before - so sleep never gets used anymore, runs very, very smoothly and is hassle free.
What's not to like? Seeing as a rarely used the start menu I don't miss it (start button and type name of application and it's there, just the same as windows 7). On top of that all of my most used applications are pinned to the task bar anyway.
I wonder how many people who claim how poor windows 8 is have used it longer than to go 'start screen is crap' and turning it off?
No, it really doesn't shut down when it does that, it's in what I believe they call a "hybrid sleep" mode. If you want to see how fast it boots from cold you have to hit restart, then you get a genuine reboot.
I'm not slagging it off, I like this behaviour, means it comes on quicker, but it's misleading of MS to not make it clear that this is different behaviour to all previous versions of windows.
No, that would selecting the hybrid sleep option. Which IIRC I have disabled, as I want off being off. It shuts down. All programs close, all unsaved documents are gone for ever and the machine powers off totally.
Speed from restart(after the shut down): 2 seconds still... (admittedly the laptop has a kick ass Ssd in it, but is it still a quarter of the time for windows 7)
The logo appears but unless updates are installing you don't even see the swirly dots, it goes straight to the login screen.
The three options are "Sleep", "Shut down" or "Restart", there is no hybrid sleep menu choice.
>> In Windows 8, the default shutdown behavior puts the system into hybrid shutdown <<
But you can go to power options and turn off "fast start-up" to change this so you may well have disabled it. My Laptop boots in 6 seconds with fast start on, and 12 without. If you're managing 2 seconds for a real boot you have a very fast pc... Have you tried it from a reboot without updates to see if it's still 2 seconds?
Yes. Hitting restart still gives a 2 second startup as I said. (it has a Sony bespoke raid 0 ssd in it - 1000MBps read and write according to the ssd benchmark application)
Fast boot is off as I wanted a off to be off - Sony doesn't have the best support For Windows 8 for my laptop and so I want clean memory when I start the machine.
> No, that would selecting the hybrid sleep option
Tell you what, after your computer has performed its magical 2 second boot, open a powershell window and paste in the following command:
$boot = Get-WinEvent -ProviderName Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-boot -MaxEvents 10 | Where-Object {$_.message -like “If the result is 0x1 you're comparing apples to oranges*”}
By the way, my Win7 machine cold-boots in 7 seconds.
The latest version of Windows 8.1 is finally at the point where you can easily use a keyboard and mouse. I have a touch screen notebook PC, so I have a touch pad, touch screen, keyboard, and mouse. I find myself using the touch screen less and less. There are also a lot of little but important updates, such as putting the power icon right on the home screen instead of burying it under menus.
The problem is, it took Microsoft way too long to get to this point, so Windows 8 will now always be labeled as a failure no matter how good it is now. The other problem is that their apps suck, so nobody is willing to put up with the new UI (Metro/Modern/Whatever is the name of the day) to use to those apps.
W8 is now a marketing liability for MS regardless of how technically good it is. W10 will be brought in asap. More W7'ish in interface, more cloudy underneath. Pick your poison.
Personally I find both systems obscure and hide too much. W7 has a usable menu, but I find it easier to pin browser, control panel, file explorer and major apps to the taskbar in order to avoid the start menu.
I just find admin things too hard in Windows. I have a dhcp/tftp/http server combination on which I can dump linux ISOs. Yes, I can dump an ISO on a web server and install an OS from it. Bingo, instant network installation/upgrade mechanism with standard protocols. Now, network install with Windows? There's probably an app for that - some custom thing that will change from version to version. Might have to pay for it. It looks really complicated. Network boot? Now you're having a laugh! You want to boot off an ISO on web server and run the OS from it?
MS just seem to make easy things hard so they you become reliant on their software to do it for you. Obviously you need a The Microsoft Windows 3000 network installation and patching server! Er, no thanks. But we have Special Technology to slowly transfer patches across your WAN links for distribution! You mean like a private torrent with a bandwidth cap?
Don't get me wrong, the Windows desktop is very robust - perhaps more so than Linux's, but they don't seem to have moved much beyond making a really good version of W3.11 It is still very much a client with the server side costing big(ger) bucks. At least with 3.11 you felt MS were doing they best they could, now they hold things back because licensing differences can make it more profitable. Apple are doing the same with hardware - removing features not because its expensive to leave them in, but to protect the higher-end products.
I know there will always be people hoping Windows N+1 will be freaking awesome, good for them.
But if you have a look at the last versions of Windows (from XP to 8.1), it's always the same thing, with a completely different UI, because some idiots thought they needed to change all the UI to justify the tax.
Same goes with MS Office (from 2003 to 2010): very few improvements to speak of, change of UI, new bugs ...
Today, and MS hasn't got that, almost no-one can afford, each and every 2 years, to spend 2 weeks solid, to learn the new UI, before being able to work.
I can't, I don't want to, and f**k them !
Since they haven't understood, they're history in the whole house.
If you take into consideration that Windows 7 is dominating the market (50.4%?) I cannot help wonder if the strategy of not selling it (the consumer version) won't have an opposite effect: instead of stimulating Windows 8.1 I think it also creates a serious potential for the use of warezed copies.
In my profession its the most heard of excuse when it comes to Microsoft products: "I'd love to buy it if I could, but I can't. So....".
If the people prefer Windows 7, why not sell it? Sometimes I think Microsoft still have no clue, what so ever, to appeal to the market.
Which I personally consider a tremendous shame. Despite of my criticism sometimes I'll also be the first to say that if there's one thing Microsoft has its a lot of potential. Some of their software is really pretty solid and of good quality (your mileage varies of course).
If only they learned how to sell it...
"Lots of potential"!?
That's a laugh. Are you forgetting they had over 99% of the business market over the years?
That's what they are throwing away, that legacy. Bill got it right, and left with his billions, to do with as he pleases, before it all sank. Or stank.
Wow. I can't believe there are so many tech people hating Win 8, while loving Win 7.
Win 7 was an improvement over Win Vista. Win 8 was an improvement over Win 7 and Win 8.1 is an improvement over Win 8. It's sleek, fast, stable, reliable. Sure, the Metro UI sucks, but with 8.1 that's almost completely gone, except for the Start menu. Install ClassicShell and you've got yourself a very nice OS.
@CJ 5
After you've had to support enough WinUsers at work who come in and finally ask the $64,000.00 question: "Why is it so difficult? My iPad is much easier to use,
Then it becomes something different from hate, but somehow like it.... you'll know it when it infects you!
...also, someone covered all the primary controls with vaseline, nails and razor blades.
It's been said before on here and it'll be said again - Win8.x is technically pretty tasty, the interface, however, is shonky as fuck - and I shouldn't have to install a third party piece of software to make it usable when I've just paid for the software from a billion dollar company with the resources to not get this so horribly wrong.
It's a moot point for me these days though - I'm mostly linux wrangling. It's not for everyone, but I'm finding the transparency of most *nixy systems to be a welcome relief after the obfuscation of most Windows releases.
I'll probably still fiddle with Win 10 once it gets to beta/RC stage though - I may gripe, but this stuff is interesting and quite fun to an extent. I guess a lot of us, regardless of our biases, are the same in that regard.
Steven R
But the main problem is the UI has gone backwards just to sell rubbish phones..
Touch screen unless in tablet form give you arm ache so forcing the new UI is just dumb.
And the less said about the damn ribbon the better..
When your wife phones you complaining about win 8 suddenly going to a full screen App, just because she tried to open a PDF and then having to press the power button to get rid of it due to no visual hints as to how to close it, you know they have got it totally wrong.
You have perfectly described the 'Lipstick on a Pig' scenario. Underneath it is still a pig.
I'd even prefer to battle with the Ubuntu U/I (I'm a CentOS/Gnome-2 person) than Windows 8.whatever.
So what if if it cheap. 1366x768 screens on cheapo laptops are beyond a joke these days. Dell were selling 1600x1200 laptops in 2003. Where is the progress?
I've just returned home to VietNam after a couple of months in China.
It's unbelievable but I've seen the infamous MS Blue Screen on many ATMs.
At night, when the cash registers are idled I've seen after screen of XP at rest!
Same here in VietNam, thousands of ATMs still running XP, I have a friend who an ATM tech and he confirmed what I saw on the screen of some crashed ATMs - XP Rules!
Ditto in supermarkets and larger stores, more XP territory.
When my old XP machine was dying, again, and support for XP had stopped, I replaced it with a brand new Win 8 machine. Scrubbed the drive and installed Linux. Took the old laptop running Veranda, scrubbed it, and installed Linux.
Recently I bought a used laptop with Win 7 on it, I plan on going in soon and deleting the gateway from the configuration. As an aside I was in an "Office type" store and a 70yo+ guy walked in saying he wanted to buy a new laptop, but only if it had Win 7 on it.
It's better. You could argue that's like watching only odd numbered star trek films, but I use win 7 at work, and there's really not a problem with win 8.1 compared to that either. Its way faster than both Vista and Win 7, it's stable, and it runs everything I want to. Can't complain about it.
Worth upgrading from 7 - no. However when you're on Vista (or as someone suggested they were, still on XP) it's not only a better OS, it actually runs stuff you need to use nowadays. In my case the forced upgrade came from needing to use Visual Studio 2012 (will not install on Vista). I can see why 8.0 was hated, but 8.1 is really quite smooth.
The only annoying thing for me is that other people with these high res laptops are automatically being put into 125% dpi scaling which is making my job as a developer way harder (admittedly, I should have accounted for it, but wpf is not really helpful with that and I thought I could get away with it).
Reading the comments here, I wonder why many of the commentards ever bothered upgrading from Windows for Workgroups?
WIn 8 /8.1 isn't a bad system and while it does work nicely with a touchscreen, it's very usable with a mouse - but it's different to Win 7 and older systems ... and that's what you all hate - the fact it's different.
Fact is, you put a young person in front of a Win8 system and they are very productive because they don't have the hate baked in like so many older folk do - change is inevitable, please try and get with the program.
Don't forget drivers.
Pretty much any more recent internal peripheral (*) now only has drivers for v8.x, and 8 only.
You can't even buy new hardware and expect to shoehorn Win7 onto it - there are simply no drivers.
In contrast, you used to be able to get drivers for whatever is current, going back two versions in some cases, but nope, now you're stuck with 8.
And for THAT reason, they can all get screwed. I'm keeping my current hardware till they either pry it from cold dead hands, or it dies, whichever comes first.
They could give us choice, which would break that stalemate, but I won't be holding my breath.
(*) I should mention the problem is firmly steered toward the direction of laptops and tablets, quite less so for desktop peripherals. When the majority of your market has existing sometimes expensive cards, you either supply "legacy" drivers or you go out of business. Looks like they DO understand general economics after all, let's see how long it takes Microsoft to get it.
>Built some Win 7 PCs this year no issue with drivers
Obviously didn't have any HP printers in there :)
HP seem to have drawn a line with their printers, so you need to download one set of drivers for all versions of Windows XP-to-7 32/64 then download a second set for 8 32/64. Once you have tripped over this once, you remember to double check next time - oh and don't forget to update the printer firmware (particularly if using Win8 and iOS systems)...
All I saw as "valid arguments" was ...
It's hard to use or confusing
- What are you like 5?
- Any IT professional should know how to take this sort of thing in their stride, get a clue moron.
- It took me about 10 minutes to get to grips with it, yes it's different but that doesn't mean it's bad.
- I accept that the 1 start menu "feature" aka TIFKAM isn't ideal for a desktop, but I use hotkeys when in it, rarely do I need a keyboard or mouse to get around in there.
- What was that about not being able to manage your photo library ... uh was that a TIFKAM app you complained about ... I think it was, again nothing to do with windows it's the app you hate not the OS, so don't use it or browse through images with explorer like I do then you don't need an app at all.
We don't like paying licence fees.
- tough crap deal with it, welcome to the real world.
- free stuff just isn't as good, the money makes stuff better, even ubuntu / macOS are not free these days, there's always cost it's just a question of where.
- Some manufacturers do only sell PC's with windows on yes, but that's some not the whole industry, if you can't figure out how to do a google search please stop using a PC forever.
Windows 8 UI is crap and useless because 1 menu works differently.
- as above it's called progress and you don't have to use the start menu at all in which case its still windows 7 just better.
- yeh the "whole UI is wrong" ... right ok ... its the windows 7 UI with 1 menu changed ... eh, wtf?
It interrupts me all the time (switching to TIFKAM).
- You are a minority, no one uses the start menu as much as you do, learn to use your OS properly.
- This is backed by a ton of research done by M$, which they blogged about, less than 1% of all windows usage is typically spent in the start menu, many users don't use it at all.
The beta version is buggy.
- Yeh all beta versions of all products ever made are, deal with it!
- Why am I even arguing this point?
There was once a really bad issue with IE that caused it to crash.
- And? IE is an OPTION you don't have to use it and it's still not windows 8 it's a completely different product, it nothing to do with the OS.
- You're basically complaining about a free bit of software M$ threw in you idiot.
It's not compatible with my device
- wow, 1 device don't work because that device vendor didn't update a driver ... that's not M$ fault.
- Vendors get lead times well in advance and are told the underlying specs months before any release, if they choose not to bother updating their drivers what do you really expect M$ to do about it?
So ... WTF?
I stand by my previous point ... There's nothing "majorly wrong" with windows 8 and all you haters are just hating because you like to rant and M$ is an easy target.
All morons may now proceed to down vote this post.
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