Weekend Open Forum: Chime in on Windows 8.1 Preview

[captaincranky]

I So, with 3 simple programs all the complaints about Windows 8.1 disappear! And for less than $10.

And so do two, "it's not delivery, it's DiGiorno" dinners.

Being happy to pay for stuff that really should be in there, sounds like the old military meme, "thank you sir, may I have another"?

 

[earthquake10]

Of course you are correct in that these options should have been incorporated into the OS to begin with. But, I am into Windows customization and find that there are quite a few freeware programs, in addition to the paid, that really allow me to make my computers all mine in terms of appearance and operation.

By the way, don't you own an antivirus program that you got from a third-party company? Shouldn't that also have been built into Windows?

 

[captaincranky]

....[ ]....By the way, don't you own an antivirus program that you got from a third-party company? Shouldn't that also have been built into Windows?

Yes and no. I do use a third party AV, but I also use MSE.

M$ is in a marketing predicament with the AV issue. If they built AV into the OS, aftermarket publishers would scream to high heaven. When they don't the user base is blasting their OS for having more holes than a leaky rowboat.

So, (IMHO, of course), they took the high road with MSE. What they didn't offer at all before, is now a free download. It's presented as an AV program, so the user knows he or she is getting that type protection. M$ gets bragging rights, and good PR for offering the program.

BTW, I have never had a problem with MSE letting anything get by. But, I do use good judgment when surfing with it as my prime AV client. I think the program is better than its test score would lead people to believe, and the histrionics that follow one of these big AV roundup sensationalist reviews, is largely unwarranted.

The cream rises to the top, and the top is a percentage of the whole. Now when you get down in the pack as far as "Clam Free" or whatever, then you're on you're own.

So Bill Gate has done a Emperor Tiberius by appointing Caligula to succeed him. Well both Caligula and Bulllmer both give public displays of madness.

"History ignored is destined to repeat itself".....and now boys and girls, it's time to be diverted from the real news, by the sports and celebrity gossip portion of our program. I'll be right back after these brief commercial messages.......(sure).

 

[ShadowDeath]

So initially I had lots of freezes and crashes. Most seemed to have been fixed by upgrading my drivers to the preview drivers from nVidia.

 

[earthquake10]

I, too, used MSE for years and you are right on about it being better than the sensationalizing summary reviews. Although I hate paying astronomical prices for multi-PC licensed AV products, I now use Norton Internet Security which for $79/year gives me 5 PC protection. It offers a lot more protection than MSE. But, it just depends on whether you're able to handle the sticker shock. If not, then MSE is a great choice in my opinion.

 

[Guest]

I've not yet seen anyone mention the complete ignorance of Microsoft regarding the "Start Button" issue. The problem is clearly that Microsoft either cares not or is too ignorant to realize that us power users want the "Start Menu" back, not a shiny button "Start Button" that leads right back to the $hitty tablet/touch interface.

Please Microsoft for the love of god and all that is holy, bring back the classis MENU, and stop treating your customers as children. There is ZERO reason why Windows 8 couldn't have been launched with a dual GUI.

Mode 1 (Desktop/Non-Touch)
When touch hardware or tablet hardware is not recognized, enable the classic UI, start menu and everything, boots right to the desktop, no full screen overlay during lock.

Mode 2 (Tablet/Touch)
New/Modern/Hipster sugar coated pretty UI enabled.

Problem solved? Expected release, Windows 9.

 

[captaincranky]

I've not yet seen anyone mention the complete ignorance of Microsoft regarding the "Start Button" issue. The problem is clearly that Microsoft either cares not or is too ignorant to realize that us power users want the "Start Menu" back, not a shiny button "Start Button" that leads right back to the $hitty tablet/touch interface.

Is this supposed to be an acute observation of this forum? Because basically, that's all everyone here has been bellyaching about since Windows 8's "first release". If you haven't seen it it this thread, you can be damned certain it's understood.

This was a great "guest" post on the topic, in this thread, and it's all about the history of the start menu:

ROTFLMAO! The real icing on the cake " how when Windows 95 came out everyone nobody hated the Start menu" ... because they had no reason to since the old interface remained as a choice! People who actually moved from Win3x to Win95 were too overwhelmed by an actual 32-bit OS with pre-emptive multitasking ( finally! ), unlimited virtual memory available to programs, much less crashing and fairly reliable PnP to complain about the new Start Menu which they didn't *have* to use in the first place. We wouldn't even be talking about this if Microsoft had included the Start Menu as an option in Win8.

A lot of MetroTards repeat this meme because they obviously don't know any better having seen it at some website in a MetroTard comment. But it is hysterical to read it if you were actually a part of the Win3x transition years. The Start Menu killed in Win8 was 17 years old at the time. By comparison ProgMan in Win3x wasn't a day over 5 years old when Win95 came along ( and that was only true for the few of us that used the earliest versions of Windows 3.0 ). Most people got it with a new computer and that would most likely be Windows 3.1 in mid-1992. So the overwhelming majority of people would have only used the Win3x Program Manager about 3 years total, hardly enough time to become wedded to it, let alone hate the replacement! Killing the Start Menu after 17 years with no official way of going back is what led to the massive revolt now. And for the love of God, everyone I know hated that damn Win3x interface and ran as fast as they could to Windows 95. That's the actual truth of the matter.

I note that you used the curious phrasing: " the changes coming in the free 8.1 update ". This is wording you would expect used by Microsoft shills, the astroturfers that are flooding the net trying but failing to save this dog. Regular people would have said: "the changes coming in Windows 8.1" period. So why exactly would you do that?

It pretty much a given here that M$ has been far past tasteless and cavalier with their disrespect toward long standing desktop users.

So, it is with a heavy heart that I feel obligated to inform you, your post was well intentioned, but fairly clueless.

 

[captaincranky]

....[ ].... Although I hate paying astronomical prices for multi-PC licensed AV products, I now use Norton Internet Security which for $79/year gives me 5 PC protection. It offers a lot more protection than MSE. But, it just depends on whether you're able to handle the sticker shock. If not, then MSE is a great choice in my opinion.

I don't want to belabor this or drag the topic too far afield, but....!

Once upon a time, Norton AV was horrible, beyond useless. Every piece of malware it came into contact with seemed to survive, while the Norton died ignominiously. Plus, it used about 10 to 15% of the computer's resources, slowing things to a crawl. All of that notwithstanding, it was damned near $80.00 (*) for a one PC license per year.. Many of us are still smarting from "the good old days", and won't go near it. I'm not going to debate the efficacy of today's Norton product, as I hear tell it's pretty darned good, and light on its feet as well.

But I will say that $80.00 for 5 PCs, certainly doesn't cause sticker shock for me. That price tells me that Norton has done a serious reality check about what today's traffic will bear. If I was willing to pay anything, (which I'm too much of a cheapskate to do), $80.00 seems pretty reasonable, when viewed in history's light.

(*) $40.00 AV only $60.00 Internet security maybe, but for only one PC. It's been a while, and I don't want to exaggerate too much.

 

[Capaill]

I have yet to meet someone who enjoys using the Metro UI on a desktop. I was surprised to hear recently from a friend who said she got a new PC and has no problems with the Win8 interface. Last week I got to see her new PC and found that her friend who installed it bypassed the Metro interface so it boots to the desktop When I showed her the Metro page she thought it looked terrible.

So ya, I know a total of zero people so far who use it (on a PC).

Also my company's IT department have told me that if they ever go to Windows 8 (don't hold your breath) they will have to disable the Metro interface, purely to avoid the hassle of retraining all of the staff.

I use the Classic Shell on my home PC (free, start button, start menu, boot to desktop, disable hot corners) but it's a shame I had to go looking for this kind of software after giving almost ?100 to MS. Let's hope they don't block this option in future updates.

Windows 8 seems to be a fine OS. Boot times are great (although I also installed an SSD for the first time so I don't know how much of that is down to the OS). But I just don't see any major improvments over Windows 7. There is simply no reason to upgrade and lots of perfectly good reasons to stay on 7.

 

[Capaill]

On an unrelated note, how did that hypertext link appear in my comment? I didn't put it there.

 

[ShadowDeath]

I, too, used MSE for years and you are right on about it being better than the sensationalizing summary reviews. Although I hate paying astronomical prices for multi-PC licensed AV products, I now use Norton Internet Security which for $79/year gives me 5 PC protection. It offers a lot more protection than MSE. But, it just depends on whether you're able to handle the sticker shock. If not, then MSE is a great choice in my opinion.

I ended up snagging a virus that completely removed MSE.. I'm not even sure how actually. After that I started looking for a decent alternative. I have to admit, I sank into BitDefender pretty nicely.

 

[tipstir]

MSE is in now call defender again in Windows 8 integrated. Windows 8 and the Windows 8.1 update are going to be what Microsoft wants you to use and forget about Windows 7. New Era is Windows 8 and Windows 8 Surface Tablet together can make your life so much better in the eyes of Microsoft. All of this made them open up new Microsoft Stores / Best Buy/Microsoft Departments. Kinda make you think what's Microsoft really doing is really.

Those of us in the Information Techology Business will have to stay on top of what Microsoft Release even though we might now want to run Windows 8 we are force too. I feel just keep one PC and one tablet running the OS. I have to use backup image to switch between the two OS so I can test. I still like Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1 on a tablet at lease when you need to use the keyboard the system will say he you need to use the keyboard. Under the old Windows 8 it didn't do anything. I had to try to get it to works.

Chrome for Windows 8 was buggy and so was Evernote for Windows 8. I had to run the Windows 7 application for the desktop and not run the Windows 8 applet version for the tiles. Found Amazon Windows 8 Applet buggy also. Netflix didn't want to load either.

 

[Raoul Duke]

I must admit I despise the Microsoft Store concept where you spend large amounts of time and find there is nothing there that you are interested in. I find as well, perhaps because I have a relatively powerful computer, that Windows 8 is no faster than Win 7 either in booting or in desktop although I turn off some of the animation effects in Win 7. By default how fast windows open is actually slowed down. When you turn that off, the windows just pop up in a flash, easily as fast as they appear in Win 8