So, any additional thoughts on Windows 8?

I see the upgrade price goes up at the end of the month.... and I am on the fence of whether or not to upgrade.

I have a 2012 Levono laptop... use Microsoft Outlook... nothing fancy.

Thoughts? :)

I love it, but it seems to have a serious love/hate dichotomy in the public. It's a serious change from the old Windows 95 start button paradigm, but IMHO it's a positive change.

There is nothing in Windows8, imo, for the type of user that you are (and my patterns are similar, although I don't use the execrable Outlook :D) that is worth the upgrade.

The built in Hyper-V is worth the upgrade fee for me alone.

I don't use the 'Metro' front end - I just boot straight to the normal desktop.

For £25, it's a no-brainer to upgrade IMO.

Can you translate for the non-technical among us? :)

Got a refurbished Latitude ST tablet on very reduced sale (< $300) from Dell to try out Windows 8 on touch hardware. I'll now grant that a lot of the decisions they made make sense in that context, although demoting the desktop to a second-class citizen makes no sense for power users, and the hacks involved in running the desktop as primary are a PITA.

It is, however, still not as good a tablet OS as Android or the iOS, and they have a high bar to catch up.

As an aside, the Latitude ST is the slowest machine relative to its current generation of software that I've used since abandoning floppy disks, and the slowest windows machine (in absolute terms) that I've used since 2002.

I can't recommend it for any purpose, and it's probably going back to Dell.

That said Windows 8 is much faster than the Windows 7 on it; it came out of the box with Aero, and everying crawled...

If you want to see the Metro Modern interface then you can just use the OS out of the box. However there are a number of programs that give you the look of previous OS versions i.e. with a Start button and menu rather than the tiles. Classic Shell is one of these that is free, Start8 is a paid for one.

Hyper V is described here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-V

I upgraded a Dell Inspiron N5110, fairly current specs, at the release and was impressed at first. After way too many phone calls to tech support and hours of wait time and actual time fixing problems, I do not recommend upgrading. Every problem I have had was due to known issues that had not been addressed before the release. Give MSFT some time to fix the many, many bugs before switching.

When it works, it's great, it just does not work as well as 7. Lack of support for BluRay is still a big issue for me.

Why did I expect that I would hear both sides... and be no closer to a decision... :)

OK, they're down in terms of home usage but businesses rely heavily on IE because devs can't update their software each time Google decides to update their browser. :)

Like I already said, I rely on more than one browser for what I do on my PC, be it work or just personal stuff.

To be honest, I do not understand why some people just say that W8 is a stepdown if they did not at least test it for a couple of days. I agree, at first I was a bit annoyed by how Microsoft reorganized everything but after a while I felt comfortable. I am not bothered anymore by not having a CP shortcut in the start menu (Win+X works like magic) or the Program Files shortcuts. I find it that it's a lot faster to simply search for anything using the Charms bar; back in W7 I used the search function so now it feels natural.

I bet that in six to eight months once W8 becomes more main stream, everybody is going to like it as much as they liked 7. Probably the most useful thing I find useful in W8 is the fact that I'm able to restore the OS just like I would do on my Galaxy S phone.. http://www.onebitzero.com/six-featur...nt-know-about/ At least for this one would have to give credit for MS, as it is a first for them and necessary in the tablet/mobile environment. :)

Well, this is FT. If you ask 10 people something on FT, you're likely to get at least 17 different answers from those 10 people...

Regards

To be clear from my standpoint...

DO NOT DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You could always buy a boxed upgrade copy and sell it later on (possibly for more) if you decide not to use it.

Thank you. Finally I read some instructions that make sense and get me into familiar territory.

Here's a nomination for alanh for computer saint of the year. ^

Hit the window key at the bottom left and then "X," and I get a long list of options that finally get me back into familiar territory!

FlyerTalk has once again come through! ! ! !

Question for the powers that be, whoever they are, in the amorphous computer clouds, who got us all into this mess: Why can't computers come with instructions? Would it be too much trouble to enclose a list of instructions of how to start the thing, how to switch from screen to screen, how to access lists such as above for Run, Task Manager, and the like?

In the meantime, the above has helped a lot. Nominate you for saint of the year. (No, I said that, didn't I?)

Now if I could just figure how to stop this screen from enlarging/shrinking, etc., as if I had hit Control and +. Or the charms from appearing when I don't want them to, or vanishing when I am trying to click on them.

But anyhow, I can find "Run" and "Task Manager" and "Control Panel" now. I have even (per another post) figured out how to forward my Verizon email to what's-its-name, Windows Live or Windows Outlook or whatever.

Computer life is (reasonably) good once again. (Until I try again to tackle learning Skype. :D)

:)

Addendum: What's this cheat sheet for Windows plus keys you mention? TIA.

http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=list+of+windows+8+hotkeys&l=1

:)

QL