What the hell were they thinking? Bought a new laptop last week and am about ready to return it and never buy a new PC again. I’ve had a litany of problems since I got the PC and it has less functionality than my old Win XP Netbook (RIP). The Metro UI thing is next to useless, like Microsoft Bob but as executed by an idiot. The ESC button doesn’t seem to work if you’ve accidentally selected any of those goddamn Metro Apps. It appears to be impossible for me to use the Start button-less desktop with the trackpad without superfluously calling up the Metro UI multiple times. The whole thing is a halfbaked disgrace. Nothing is intuitive. What were Microsoft thinking?
Other problems, that may be hardware related but who the fuck knows. The trackpad intermittently stops working. The keyboard has reverted to some foreign setting even though it still says it is in the Irish config. I need a PC for work, no bells, no fucking whistles, and things that have worked grand for close to 20 years in Windows PCs have been thrown out the goddamn window because some people use tablets or some shit. I can’t even find SPIDER FUCKING SOLITAIRE!!! Fuck Microsoft and Toshiba.
Yes, this was a big mistake. I think Microsoft screwed up due to their ongoing belief that there must be One Product. In this case, they tried to write an operating system that would work for both keyboard systems and touch screen systems. What they developed was a hybrid operating system that does two different things in a half-assed fashion.
They also threw away one of their biggest advantages - the built-in familiarity people have with Windows systems. People use Windows because they already know how it works - they don’t want to learn a new system. They just want an improved version of the existing system.
But brace yourself. You’re about to get hit with a flood of posts from people who’ll will tell you that whatever problems you’re having are entirely your fault and all Microsoft products are perfect.
BTW I do agree that what Microsoft did was dumb, there should had been a desktop or laptop edition for computers with no touch screen and a with windows 7 like desktop.
As soon as I got my latest laptop I installed classic shell with the Ninitesite and used it also to install all the basic tools I use with no extra garbage like toolbars and extra “utilities”.
I understand that Classic Shell is invaluable for Win8. But I see from the website that it improves upon Win7 and Vista as well. Comments? Should Win7 and Vista users consider installing it? I was intrigued by the possibility of a Start Menu where application links could be sorted into directories, just like XP.
Also, I am deeply disappointed by the OP’s failure to mention any of the practical advantages of Win8 over Win7. I list them below:
Windows 8 is a piece shit, true, but I’ve managed make it work for me without resorting to a shell. It is still possible to do everything from the desktop and you can disable the mouse swipes in the control panel. You have to use the windows button instead of esc to exit from the bulshit metro aps, which isn’t that bad. Just remember to close them in the task bar. Nothing is intuitive, but if you fuck around with it long enough, you can find settings that will work for you. They are in some strange fucking places (it took me half an hour to figure out how to bypass the lock screen when awakening from sleep), but they are there and it is possible to do everything from the desktop. But that’s me, I never liked the START menu anyway and would just slap an icon to “My Computer” on the desktop and use that instead if I needed to.
I’m more concerned with the fact that it’s Toshiba. Fuck those bastards. Fuck 'em. Fuck them, their mothers, their pets, and whatever breakfast cereal they eat before they drive into work to make their piece of shit laptops. I have a Toshiba Sattelite that’s less than one year old. The hard drive failed. In the interest of brevity, I’ll just say that getting Toshiba to honor their warranty was the worst customer experience I have ever ha and still cost me almost $100. Fuck those assholes.
According to my other half, this disastrous OS has been made one size fits all, from phone to tablet to laptop to desktop to server. It’s that last one that enrages him. Trying to hit the right pixel in the corner of the screen to bring up the charm bar on a server that he’s remotely accessing has reduced him to frothing rage on more than one occasion. Who in their right mind would think that a phone and a server should both run the same interface?
(Bolding mine). I believe the answer is the software engineers at Microsoft.
Actually, to be fair, it was probably a very very bad idea that was promoted by Sales & Marketing and then implemented poorly by a badly managed gigantic set of competing teams who don’t get along well with each other.
It has become an axiom that every other release of Windows is going to be pretty horrible. We can only wait for Windows 9 to solve this problem. What really makes many folks angry is that you can’t get a laptop preloaded with Windows 7 from many of the usual suspects.
Has anybody tried the windows 8.1 preview? The full release was supposed to be released a couple of days ago as a free upgrade, but all I can find is the preview.
Me personally… I don’t have much need for OS changes. Far as I’m concerned, XP was great and they should have stopped there. I’ve even had occasion to un-do certain updates beause I felt the changes didn’t help me. Never had any security issues, so whatever they do under the hood can’t be that important. So I always make a system restore point before allowing any updates.
Not a tech luddite - far from it. But I do believe we have a culture of useless updates to software. How about a dose of “if it ain’t broke…”?
Well, there was that change from 32-bit to 64-bit going on the hardware side. XP wasn’t going to be able to address that. It’s just reality that the OS has to change eventually at least to account for changes to hardware.
That said, there was no overriding reason to push Win8 except as a revenue generator. I get the idea that Windows wants to push the concept of the same OS for all devices. But you either need it to really be “must-have” or leave consumers no other choice. Neither of those is true for Windows.
Worse, businesses are only just now ditching XP for Win7 in sufficient numbers, so what’s the impetus for them to move on to Win8 when they’re only just now wrapping up transitions to a different OS?
The official release date is Oct 17. I’ve been running the preview for about 4 weeks and just upgraded to 8.1 on Friday (Microsoft Partners and Volume Licensing customers get early access).
There were a few annoying bugs in the preview, but they seem to be cleared up in RTM. I’ve even taken off Start8 to get used to the native interface improvements and I think it is working for me.
Yes. This right here, along with the constant updates and “restarting your computer in 13…12…11” bullshit pushed me, my wife, and my mother into Apple computers. Since we must relearn an operating system from the same company, we did our mandatory new operating system learning on Apple. Either way, Microsoft or Apple, we would be required to learn the new system.
If Microsoft would have kept things consistent and logical instead of renaming and relocating most things, we might have stayed in their systems. They are a foolish company that should have figured it out by now.
There is no going back. I will never again purchase a computer using a Microsoft operating system. As a bonus, the Apple hardware is fantastic.