Anyone use Windows 8?

[Jim Shooz]

we bought a new laptop recently with win 8, and i'm not a fan so far. i don't use it like SO does,
but it's confusing going between modes to get to the app she wants to use.
and the computer is not touch screen, so , the touchpad scroll is backwards!
rolls up when i motion to move down, ok if your used to it i guess.

.

Somewhere in the settings you can change that to down instead of up. I stumbled across it sometime/somewhere in the 6 months it took me to "accept" 8.



Friends don't let good friends use Windows 8.

 

[riptides]

How's the mifi work? Is it a separate device you have to carry around besides a cell phone and surface? I'm ignorant so please pardon the basic questions.

It's an LTE/EVDO/WiFi hotspot. Is very small. Has external antenna ability. Perfect for the mobile user who needs to support a lot of devices and needs a network in a hurry. Has pretty good battery life, too.

 

[Tollster]

I've read a little about Windows 8, but can't get past the technical jargon. Can someone explain how it is different from windows 7? I read where it is a touch-screen system like they have on telephones and laptops? Pardon my ignorance, I don't have a phone, can't even answer my wife's without screwing things up. Thanks in advance;

Dennis. P.S. Windows isn't a free download, is it? You have to pay for it as an upgrade?

If I had to do it all over again, I would have never gotten windows 8 and purchased windows 7 instead! Office 2003 is not compatible, there are many strange things that are not carried over from any of the previous programs. It takes 3-4 mouse movements and clicks just to shut it off. And everything is tied to a "cloud" including your email, so even if you clean up your inbox, it all stays on your server, and over runs can get expensive. It also difficult to view pictures as you have to open and close windows after ever images, rather than just click an arrow as in the past.. and believe me.. the list goes on and on! Having used windows since windows 95, I believe Apple with be my next, and I personally can not stand apple heads.. its that bad, at least to me!

 

[DB Pilot]

I bought a HP Pavillion 23 All in one PC. It came with windows 8. Have been using it for about a year now. I need a password for everything and then they don't work. Played daily games for a while and then the only password for it no longer worked. Email had to download special programs for it to work plus had to call the help line to get it working. Windows 8 is a joke. :thumbdown: I get done what I need to get done but, stop promising me stuff that doesn't work.

 

[RobertN]

mv -r * /dev/null

Command line is ... WIN key + R

 

[RobertN]

I kinda liked Solaris when I was using a Sparc-20 some years back. Started on a Vax 11-780 with VMS.

I mess with Win8 a lot at work for test systems. Even getting used to it, I am not impressed. It is very touch oriented; do not like it without touch. Even with touch, meh...

Don't laugh, but I thought DOS was easier than WIN!

 

[flyerdan]

I'm still running XP as it seems to be one of the best things they came out with. Kim Komando says on her radio show that when XP isn't supported anymore next year all of us holdouts will have to buy new boxes. Makes it sound like pirates will come right out of the screen and rape our faces and steal everything in the house. I wonder at how dire the vulnerability will be with current firewall and antivirus running. Also I wonder if MS might have thrown a few sabotage bugs in to help us along, as I sometimes have some unresponsive script hangups that pretty much render things unusable until a reboot.
If I have to, I'll get a Win7 box off ubid, but I hate the thought. Took ten years to get this one where I like it.

 

[crash325]

I started playing with these things back in the DOS days. About the time I learned DOS, Windows came along,. It worked OK but had problems. There was a competitive program called (I Think) Nat Geo that was better, but MS pushed them off the market. As they did with the internet competitor, Can't think of the name at the moment. (Net Scape?)

Window's 3.11 was the best Window's program they ever made. Never crashed and was hard to overload. I had a retail business, in the front window was a 19 inch TV/Monitor that ran a slide show, played music & talked. While it was running I could also run word processor & Photo Shop + print & scan. All with a 486 processor & 4 megs of ram. If they had upgraded it to the 64 bit processor it would still be great.

Did I mention that I hate Uncle Billy & MS.:thumbdown::thumbdown::thumbdown:

 

[Egbert]

I believe you are speaking of GeoWorks. Netscape morphed into Mozilla and probably the closest/best browser today is Firefox.

Micro$oft has bought out and killed almost every serious competitor that came along. Often times this took superior software off the market.

 

[Midniteoyl]

The setup.



View attachment 335612

:thumbsup:

 

[Midniteoyl]

Ah, that answers that. Yet another device we have to carry around, keep charged, etc... why didn't MicroSoft build cell service into the Surface? frustrating.

Because there would be 6 different versions just in the US.. .. Best thing in the world is to NOT build in Cell service..

 

[Midniteoyl]

I'm still running XP as it seems to be one of the best things they came out with. Kim Komando says on her radio show that when XP isn't supported anymore next year all of us holdouts will have to buy new boxes. Makes it sound like pirates will come right out of the screen and rape our faces and steal everything in the house. I wonder at how dire the vulnerability will be with current firewall and antivirus running. Also I wonder if MS might have thrown a few sabotage bugs in to help us along, as I sometimes have some unresponsive script hangups that pretty much render things unusable until a reboot.
If I have to, I'll get a Win7 box off ubid, but I hate the thought. Took ten years to get this one where I like it.

Kim is a joke.. You dont have to buy anything..

And your scripts hanging up are due to running old IE software... you wont get the newer stuff in XP.

 

[Midniteoyl]

Should just call this the 'whine about MS thread'... jeez, like any large company today didnt/hasnt/isnt buying people out, screwing up software, handing over personal info, raping our privacy, putting out crappy hardware, ets, ets, ets...

Yeah! Go Apple! Go Google! Go! Go! Go!

Steve had his way, we'd all be stuck in 1999 with one, white, pos to work on, and if Google gets its way, we'd all have androids and absolutely NO privacy.

 

[kidr]

I bought a new laptop with 8 installed. I had it configured to work like XP. A friend did it for me, so don't ask me how to do it. It took me an hour to figure out how to shut down 8.

 

[Bird]

Window's 3.11 was the best Window's program they ever made.

I don't think I ever used 3.11, but I'd sure like to go back to 3.01 which I thought was the best, and ME was the worst. And I've avoided buying another computer since they started coming with 8 installed.

 

[Ken]

I don't think I ever used 3.11, but I'd sure like to go back to 3.01 which I thought was the best, and ME was the worst. And I've avoided buying another computer since they started coming with 8 installed.

Don't buy the Win 8 or will take up drinking the strong stuff. Coffee no longer will help the thinking.
Purchased a Win 8 after the Sys 7 was unable to function due to McAfee and Win Essentials got in to a argument as to which will slow up the computer the longest .
So after a year still will not use for record keeping or pictures because of confusing conflicts.
Also being left handed the touchpad is terrible. have to reach over the left 1/2 to move curser and a finger curled will cause the left side to go in-to (Well they call children with the condition as ADHD) Then have to go the Win key to return where was before the left touch.
Tried to give to 2 different teen agers going to college. both said no prefer to use Apple instead.
Have the sys 7 fixed keep all record and tax information on it no problems .
For me wish it would just die and so I would be relived of the concern for its disposal.
ken

 

[dirt ditch]

My wife has a new i7 laptop with windows 8 and it took her a while to learn it. It really slowed down her work until she got use to it. I have used it and can't even find a way to shut it off except let the battery run down. My computer runs Vista and thanks to ebay just replaced the 1.8 GHz processor with a 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo... Impressive ain't it View attachment 335731

 

[Gator6x4]

I don't think I ever used 3.11, but I'd sure like to go back to 3.01 which I thought was the best, and ME was the worst. And I've avoided buying another computer since they started coming with 8 installed.

Bird I am like you. I started with DOS and have worked my way up the tree. I stopped with Win 7, Ultimate. I have looked at Win 8 and each time I come away with, that is just like Windows ME.

 

[LD1]

I'll admit, I'm not much of a computer geek, so I dont know much of the differences of windows versions, but it sounds like I lucked out skipping windows ME.

I went from 2000 to XP to vista and now 7. Never had ME, and I guess I am glad. I have 7 now installed on a computer that came originally with 64-bit vista. I honestly dont even notice much of a difference there for what I do. Which is basically internet, word, and excel as well as just some storage of pics and videos.

 

[droptop]

I bought the Wife a new notebook with Win 8 on it. Neither of us liked it. I found Classic Shell which makes 8 look and act like Win 7....much better.

Classic Shell - Start menu and other Windows enhancements

I would classify myself as a power user, but not a computer geek. So when I got my new Win 8 machine running and became frustrated:confused2:, I totally sympathize with any casual user hating the new Windows. After talking with our head IT guy at work, he said that he's planning on using the Classic shell program on any new machines that we buy to reduce he headaches in training people to use Win8.

I installed it at home and it made my new computer usable. Try it! You can have the menus look like XP, Vista or Win 7, and gets rid of the stupid Metro screen.

Also other hints to make it work like you are used to:

1. Download and install Adobe Acrobat, the pdf reader that is installed is terrible, you also need to go in and make Acrobat the default program to open pdf files.
2. Change the default program for opening pictures and videos to the old Windows media player, its already installed but they made the Metro viewer the defalut, again the Metro viewer is terrible.
3. If you already created a Microsoft user and don't want to have to enter the password every time, add a new user and Don't create a Microsoft user for that account. Give the new account administrator rights and you will not have to use the original account again.