Windows 8 - Combining a toaster with a fridge

**adrianh** · 08-May-13, 09:43 AM

None of my software needs to be connected to the net to work.

**Dave A** · 08-May-13, 10:25 PM

Originally Posted by irneb

though some have stated that they found W8 to perform faster on the same hardware as W7. It's as if W8 is lighter on resources.

It's the one thing I really liked about Win 8 - it definitely is lighter. A lot lighter.

Compared to Win 7 Pro, it installs super quick (I actually thought the install had crashed, but no - it's just super fast).
It boots up super fast too.
And despite all the active apps by default, it leaves more memory open than Win 7.
It also seemed to open stuff like Outlook, Word, QuickBooks a lot faster too - quite possibly because I was using MS's Bitdefender as the security rather then my usual non-MS options. (Yeah, I know, I checked the comparisons and it's not the strongest defence out there, but none of them are perfect and frankly I think MS is a pretty good future bet as leader on this front one day - they're just in the best position...).

I know all this because I got so pissed off with Win 8 Pro I ended up uninstalling it and loading Win 7 Pro on exactly the same machine, so the comparison / impressions above comes off the same machine.

Going back to a Start menu would get rid of 50% of what ticked me off about Win 8. Trying to remember how to do something as simple as navigate your way to shut down the PC kinda wore me down after a few days. Spreading menus around the screen edges might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but it's not exactly intuition friendly. More like rambling around the woods until you happen on the clearing you're looking for.

The killer blow though was its hopeless Workgroup functionality - which pretty much rendered the machine useless to me in our office network situation.

**irneb** · 09-May-13, 06:52 AM

Another thing is the trends in Windows sales: http://techland.time.com/2013/05/07/...-1985-present/

Clearly W8 is NOT selling as well as W7 did. Not that it's not being bought though, just a lot less. How much is due to the new UI and how much is due to the new fad of tablets / smartphones running iOS/Android is probably another discussion on its own.

To pick up about the Mal-ware on Android. Yes of the free stuff there is 99% cr#p-ware on the Google Play Store, most of which are nothing more than links to a web page, and if not that then those banner ads. But I've seen the exact same thing on the Apple App Store and all the other "app stores". Not to mention, nearly all the "freeware" on anything is in actual fact "Mal-ware" - either some form of ad-ware or worse (theft-ware - stealing your info and/or security, just take Google Docs as an example).

So AFAICT it's not anything limited to Android only, it's more often than not limited to "free"-ware. Very few programmers would spend years on a decent app and expect nothing in return. So either they'd sell the app, or get their money back a different way (anything from ads to physing). Thus far the only thing I've found to be both "free" and "decent" is Open Source programs (and that's on all OS's including PC-based ones). Not all, but at least with FLOSS the source code's available so you can see what's actually happening behind the scenes (tends to stop stuff like physing). Though paid-for apps tend to not have these things, I've seen some which still do some ads and or stealing info - this is usually where I despise the "cloud": all your data is kept by someone else, no matter what "guarantees" they give you've lost control over it, even though you pay for that.

**irneb** · 09-May-13, 06:54 AM

Originally Posted by Dave A

The killer blow though was its hopeless Workgroup functionality - which pretty much rendered the machine useless to me in our office network situation.

So you're saying W8 should only be used in a Domained network? Not a simple Work-group/Home-group network? Now that's irritating! Reminds me of how Vista/W7 didn't want to play well with XP and not at all with W2k/NT.

**Dave A** · 09-May-13, 07:49 AM

Originally Posted by irneb

So you're saying W8 should only be used in a Domained network? Not a simple Work-group/Home-group network?

I could set a Homegroup, but the Workgroup options just wasn't there. At first I thought I'd been sold Home or Basic editions, but sure enough, these were Pro editions, and should have had proper work network functionality.

I worked all the usual online MS support channels for 2 days - they simply didn't have a solution for if the "Set Workgroup" option wasn't there. And I wasn't going to reconfigure everything else on the Workgoup to try to work around it.

Error or mission creep on MS's part I don't know, but my solution in the end was dump it.

**irneb** · 09-May-13, 08:12 AM

BTW, It seems that the hype on moving towards cloud-based has gotten another kick-start. They've now gotten even decent 3D-Games running through JavaScript on a web page:
http://blog.bitops.com/blog/2013/05/...al-javascript/

So if they can do that, I'm seeing lots of other programs capable of running on something like a ChromeBook. And if they can get the programs running through JS, it means it runs through the browser - which means the OS doesn't matter anymore. I.e. death to Windows, OSX and Linux Desktop ... all you need is an absolutely minimal bootup system which launches a web browser. Note, it need not be "cloud" based - there's nothing stopping anyone from running the JS code from a local saved html file. It's just that the cloud pundits would use this as another reason to entise people onto their servers.

**popayetwo** · 10-May-13, 10:10 AM

Long Live WinXP

**DeonT** · 10-May-13, 01:22 PM

Just thought you'd like to know that Microsoft will stop supporting Windows XP next year: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windo...ofsupport.aspx According their their website, business software products get only 10 year's support.

**irneb** · 10-May-13, 01:51 PM

Originally Posted by DeonT

Just thought you'd like to know that Microsoft will stop supporting Windows XP next year: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windo...ofsupport.aspx According their their website, business software products get only 10 year's support.

If that's the case I see some people start to move onto ReactOS. Even though it's still in Alpha stage, it might get a boost if more people start using it because they can't use XP legitimately anymore.

**irneb** · 15-May-13, 08:42 AM

Just came across this: http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=74

Seems that at least one of MS's programmers admit to Windows becoming poorer as time goes on. And he gives some reasons why it's happening. But since W8's performance has increased, might it be that MS heeded this and are at least trying to fix the broken beast?