The Metro App interface is a little strange at first, but all you have to do is just click the desktop tile and you’re back in essentially familiar territory. There’s a way to make it boot directly to the desktop, but I can’t remember what it is. I’ll look it up later. Win 8.1 does some pretty slick stuff. I like it a lot. I revert to Win 7 when I’m in a hurry and don’t want to have to think through what I’m doing, so right now I’m dual booting. This coming Tuesday I’m getting my grubby little fingers on a completely free, legal copy of 8.1 Enterprise. I’m planning to install it as my default OS and attach 7 Ultimate as a VHD. If someone put a gun to my head and forced me to choose between the two, Win 8.1 would prevail hands down. I think just having Client Hyper-V built in is enough to clinch it for me, and Windows To Go is seriously cool. The benefits of being able to just stick my desktop in my pocket are incalculable.
I’m hearing rumoursthat the next update (8.2) may bring the actual Start Menu back (with jump lists, and apparently with the ability to pin tiles to it as well)
I think I will concede that Windows 8 is another of Microsoft’s rushed-out-the-door-before-ready releases - clearly not ready for market (or the market wasn’t nearly ready to throw away familiar UI metaphors, but it’s the same thing)
But I will argue that, unlike ME and Vista (to which it is frequently compared), Windows 8 was lacking breadth in usability. Obviously that is a significant gaffe when you consider that the UI is the big change in this release.
Windows Vista and ME were bad releases for quite different detailed reasons - but yes, I will agree that the common factor is Microsoft rushing their product to market. I suspect we will see that again and again - going off half-cocked is bad, but so is waiting too long.
Windows ME was kind of a special case. Back then, Microsoft had two different operating system lines, the “windows” line (3.1, 95, 98, ignoring the earlier stuff) and the NT line (NT 3.51, 4.0, again ignoring earlier stuff). While the operating systems looked similar (NT 3.51 looked and felt like Windows 3.1, and similarly NT 4.0 looked and felt like Windows 95) they were structurally very different. The NT operating system line was built around the HAL, which is the Hardware Abstraction layer. Instead of directly accessing hardware, programs had to go through the HAL to get to it. This gave NT much better stability compared to Windows, especially when running multiple programs, as misbehaving programs could be stopped from trashing the entire OS by the HAL. This also broke backwards compatibility with a lot of programs that were used to directly accessing hardware, which was mostly games since they needed the direct hardware access to the graphics card in order to run fast enough to be playable.
Microsoft didn’t like having to maintain two different operating systems, and they liked the better stability of NT, so with Windows 2000 they decided that they were going to “merge” both operating system lines into one. You can’t merge an OS that doesn’t have a HAL with one that does. They are just fundamentally different things. Microsoft marketing hype aside, what they were really doing was killing off the Windows line and forcing everyone to NT whether they liked it or not. They were quite a ways through development though when they realized that NT just wasn’t going to run a lot of software that was designed for Windows, and they were forced to switch gears. Windows 2000 would be focused on business customers (as NT had always been) and they would have to come out with something new for their home customers. The problem was that they hadn’t done any development on the Windows line. So they basically took Windows 98, ported a bunch of stuff that they had written for 2000 to it, slapped it together and called it an OS. Unsurprisingly, it was a rushed, buggy piece of crap.
Now that they had announced they were moving to NT, pretty much all new software came out NT compatible, so by the time XP came along, most of the common software out there would run under NT, and Microsoft made their “merge” then.
Vista wasn’t rushed in the same sense that ME was. Vista’s problem was more that Microsoft arrogantly decided that everyone needs to run top of the line computer hardware for their operating system, and designed Vista to do a bunch of pre-loading and to play all other kinds of games to run faster. But it only worked on computers with a fast processor and a lot of memory. And since Vista was a major operating system jump (5.1 to 6.0) it did break a lot of things with respect to backwards compatibility and it did have some bugs in it. The backlash was so bad that for Windows 7 (which is actually 6.1) they spent most of their effort fixing its performance issues and bugs, then tweaked the user interface and a few other things so that they could claim it was an entirely new OS (Windows 7! It’s not Vista! Honest! It has nothing to do with Vista!)
Windows 8 is just Windows 7 (which is again underneath the hood Windows NT version 6) made to work on tablets. Microsoft saw PC sales slumping and everyone seemed to be buying tablets, so they wanted to take over the tablet world. So they forced the tablet interface down everyone’s throats whether they liked it or not. And a lot of people did not. I don’t think Windows 8 was rushed at all. It was just a really bad marketing move on Microsoft’s part.
Well, I’ve read (and tried to digest), all the comments and advice given to my original question - 7 vs 8.1. And I thank everyone who responded.
Taking everything into account, and the fact that my beloved Excel 2003 won’t work on W8, I’ve decided to get my new computer with Windows 7 installed. Down at Best Buy they are having to essentially build a custom system for this.
Microsoft says that Office 2003 is not compatible with Windows 8, and their solution very helpfully suggests going to the Microsoft store to buy a later version of Office. :rolleyes:
However, a lot of people have installed Office 2003 on Windows 8 and have reported that it works fine (including Excel). I’ve seen success stories on both Windows 8 32 bit and 64 bit. I wouldn’t guarantee that it will work on your particular machine, but it seems like chances are pretty good that you could run it without problems.
Upgrading a machine to Windows 8 however may cause Office 2003 no end of grief.
Then it’s not an UPgrade, is it? It could totally prevent you from working, and force you to re-train your employees while losing money.
If a software system already does everything you need, then changing it should be called a DOWNgrade.
I’m not very surprised that attempting a major version upgrade of the OS, but trying to preserve installed applications, could result in disappointment - especially for something as complex as the Office suite - I imagine stuff like AutoCAD and Adobe CS could be similarly screwed up.
When people tell me how awesome WinXP was/is compared to Vista, Win 7 or 8.
How little went wrong and how solid XP is/was – I have to think back to the first year XP came out and nothing would really run on it, except Office.
It was a nightmare to get XP working,
- poor and non existing driver support
- lots of software people used/needed did not run at ALL
- people did not know how to use XP or a computer full-stop.
In Win 8, its just people still don’t know how to use computers, sure some badly programed software from 1997 does not work anymore, but so what.
I call this quite an achievement from MS.
Win 8.1 even has a turn OFF feature again, next to your name – so MS even listen to the people.
I’m kind of wondering what the market researchers told Microsoft:
“Get rid of that stupid start button. I hate that thing”
“It’s fun to try to find the power button when I need to turn of my computer”
“I’m planning to stop using my mouse and keyboard and am going to run out and buy a touchscreen, so please make it a tablet interface”.
“Being able to see Internet Explorer tabs make it look cluttered”
“I keep closing programs by mistake hitting that stupid ‘x’ in the corner. Why can’t programs stay running all the time?”
I remember when Windows 95 came out, introducing the “Start” button and how everybody made fun of it: Everything compacted down into that annoying little menu, and to shut the computer down you had to click “start” which is the opposite of intuitive.
I think Windows 8 was when MS finally started listening to customer complaints about Windows 95. 
As noted upthread, the new off button just does the exact same thing as the main power switch does, and computers have not had a problem with being shut down this way since the late '90s. It’s just that in 1987 they were so effective at drilling “don’t just power off the computer – the drive heads aren’t parked” into people’s heads that decades later people are still afraid to just push the button.
Yeah, good old Windows 3… needed to be installed on top of DOS.
Yes, that power button thing. :eek:
I’m not scared of just hitting that actual switch/button myself anymore - after I tell Windows (XP/Vista/7/8) to shut down when pushing that power button.
In the way-way back machine, that switch turned off the actual power supply unit of the computer, which means it was the same as pulling the plug.
However, now its a software switch - which is configurable to do nothing, hibernate or shut down.
Jeppers, parking a HDD… 
… haven’t done that for a good while now.
I use 7 with a solid state drive. Everything is lightning fast.
While there may be improvements in the newest generation of Windows there is still a MS mentality of “we know better what you need”.
What we need is stable secure code. We don’t need to relearn basic computer functions. It’s like any other product. Nobody wants to get in their car and find the accelerator pedal replaced with a horn button.
I have a cool looking case (a Raidmax Smilodon) that someone, probably someone who had interned at Microsoft or Apple, put the power button behind a door, and the whole thing sits on my floor under the desk, so my physical power button isn’t exactly convenient to get to- I have it turn on via a mouse movement.
More like Honda putting in a pair of motorcycle handlebars in place of the steering wheel in their cars so you’d have the same user interface no matter which product of theirs you use.
I disagree. Their cars and their motorcycles are two distinct product lines, and this is demonstrated by the fact that they continue to produce both. It’s not that one is an upgrade of the other.
But Win XP, Win 7, and Win 8 are upgrades in the same product line. They are not distinct products. This is demonstrated by the fact – amply shown by many posters in this thread – that if an updated version of XP were available, many would be purchasing it today. [del]They[/del] We would prefer a better version of something that we’re familiar with, without having to learn something new.
Mdcastle might have been referring to phones, tablets, gaming consoles and PCs - four separate product product lines that Microsoft was sort of trying to converge here (visually, if nothing else).
Well, you can do everything at the Command Prompt as well, so why ever having a GUI?
By your logic, XP is an upgrade from ME, 98, 95, 3.11, 3.1, 3, 2.11, 2.0, 1.04, 1.03, 1.01 - and that’s just the standard versions.
Things worked differently, there was NO taskbar or start menu before Win95 - how far do you want to go back to have the “original” functionality of Windows?
There are always people that hate any change, may it be Vista, 7 or 8+.
Win 8.1 is solid or as solid as any operating system that is exposed to people can be.
The main problem is, that most people did not use a PC prior to XP and still don’t know how to use XP 12 years later, now Win 8 is completely messing them up.
It’s like driving a Ford Model T - I doubt, that a driver of a Thin Lizzie would be able to drive a modern car or the other way around - without being taught.
Last time I checked , I don’t have a throttle, spark lever or a separate rear pedal in my car… and my handbrake is not the accelerator.
Thanks, ** Doughbag **. I’ll just repeat what I wrote two weeks ago above in #53:
Your analogy isn’t quite right.
The Model T is ancient and irrelevant.. If it were a computer, it would be the ancient model from 1980 Radio Shack, which you had to insert a set of floppy disks into as you turned it on, so it could boot up a primitive version of DOS .
Windows XP isn’t like the Model T car, which nobody knows how to drive. It’s more like a classic Chevrolet or Ford from the 1960’s or 70’s, which everybody knows how to drive.
Today’s cars use identical procedures…The steering wheel is identical , the brake pedal and accelerator pedals are still in the same place , the rear-view mirrors haven’t moved, etc,etc… Sure, it’s important to read the owner’s manual to learn about the new sound system…
But any user with 10 years experience can use a modern car right from the start, following his standardized, familar procedures…
Unlike Windows 8.
(and thanks for the fascinating link about the Model T!)