Windows 8?

Anyone here using/trying it?

I have a Gateway laptop on my bench right now, and it's my first exposure to the OS. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I'm not particularly impressed. It appears MS made everything more difficulty and confusing just for the sake of (attempting) coolness.

Oh, and my biggest peeve - every time I try moving the pointer with the touch pad, the goddam camera turns on! And the only way to get it off, is hover the pointer over the lower-left corner of the screen for a few seconds until the start menu appears, click it, then click desktop - but as soon as I try to move the pointer again, it does the same damn thing!!! Arg... I'm going back to Ubuntu, Mac and Win7...in that order.

Yeah it's weird, I'm sticking to 7 for now. I don't feel the need to try and get used to 8. In my eyes it's like Vista and I avoided Vista as well.

Sigh. WTF is it with Microsoft? XP = good. Vista = teh suck. 7 = good. Now, 8 is like Vista all over again?

Curmudgeon wrote: Sigh. WTF is it with Microsoft? XP = good. Vista = teh suck. 7 = good. Now, 8 is like Vista all over again?

That's why I have never upgraded from XP.

petegossett wrote: It appears MS made everything more difficulty and confusing just for the sake of (attempting) coolness.

I'm pretty sure that's Microsoft's mission statement.

Their trying to integrate all their equipment. Phone, computer, xbox, tablet, etc. They just need to change less, an it would be ok and still integrate just fine. I'll be sticking with 7 until I need my next computer. That should be a while.

Really, my first impression is that 8 is more like a room full of idiots tried to clone features from Mac and Android, but only managed to half-assed capture the worst parts of each - and then changed around all the normal Windows features just to berkeley with people and make life difficult.

Hal wrote:

Curmudgeon wrote: Sigh. WTF is it with Microsoft? XP = good. Vista = teh suck. 7 = good. Now, 8 is like Vista all over again?

That's why I have never upgraded from XP.

you and me both, Hal

petegossett wrote: Really, my first impression is that 8 is more like a room full of idiots tried to clone features from Mac and Android, but only managed to half-assed capture the worst parts of each - and then changed around all the normal Windows features just to berkeley with people and make life difficult.

When they released Vista I was asking IT folks what we were going to do. From a industrial standpoint, not much else is supported. Then 7 came quickly and everyone relaxed. Now that 8 is here, I see the same issues. I wonder when it will happen, maybe not now, but with the drive to the typical tablet/phone centric market, they are going to lose their base and someone else is going to sweep all of the businesses that live on things like Outlook, Excel and the like, not to mention boutique stuff like NI or AB which has a huge following.

4/5 laptops in my house right now are XP Pro :-) The outlier is a Windows7 laptop, and that's only because it's newer...

I've been running the consumer preview ver of 8 for several months now. personally i like the Metro gui, but if a "Start" button and the classic menu's are a must, you can run this: http://classicshell.sourceforge.net

cool feature of the new menu bar is this: hit the windows key and start type the name of ANY installed program, document, etc and it finds it. quickly.

In reply to Grtechguy:

Since you've been using 8 for a while, any idea why the camera keeps turning on when I use the touch pad? Just a single-finger short swipe across the blank desktop causes the camera to turn on. And then I couldn't find a way to exit either?

it's a "Gesture" I'm guessing you'll find a Synaptics icon in the taskbar (might look like a little touchpad)

Just got a new comp with 8 installed. Liking it so far, no complaints. I came from xp.

Grtechguy wrote: cool feature of the new menu bar is this: hit the windows key and start type the name of ANY installed program, document, etc and it finds it. quickly.

Doesn't win7 do that as well?

In reply to Grtechguy:

Ahh...gestures. I can think of one our two offhand. Thanks!

I just bought a brand new, very nice Samsung laptop. It has Windows 7, but lacks a touch screen. Therefore, I see no advantage to "upgrading" to Windows 8.

This is another crap release I recommend skipping, along the lines of ME and Vista.

As a cable technician, I am not looking forward to meeting my first Windows 8 computer.

I have no pressing need to upgrade. I stuck with XP until Win7 two years ago, so....

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: As a cable technician, I am not looking forward to meeting my first Windows 8 computer.

Why is that? Putty should handle all the telnet/ssh/serial connections you need.

People will always need a keyboard and mouse. I think it is dangerous for them to focus so much energy on designing a system not made for a keyboard and mouse. Instead, they should focus on getting the best out of a system for the longest period of time, ie without upgrading.

Oh I'm sure Microsoft would just love to help you off of their upgrade treadmill...maybe Apple could slow their release of new iShinies too!

Curmudgeon wrote: Sigh. WTF is it with Microsoft? XP = good. Vista = teh suck. 7 = good. Now, 8 is like Vista all over again?

For at least 10 years now, and likely longer, every other operating system release from Microsoft has been okay.

Avoiding like the plague, next desktop will probably run osx w/ Win7 in a vm for a few basic tasks I can't easily migrate.