Why Haven't You Bought Windows 8

Star Trek world economy can't be applied to RL yet as it's not like current ours one: "produce as much junk as you can, sell it cheaper than quality stuff and kill quality with quantity".

This is what in RL Discounters do. Electronic shop chains, for example, or grocery discounters. Local examples are : Saturn, Mediamarkt, Lidl, Aldi.
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,908
Location
Old Europe
Well my post was 100% from a personal perspective and opinion. So it IS a con if I can't play Skyrim on win8 for me. I wasn't trying to speak for other peoples ideas of pro/cons. I was just writing up my own personal experience.

Win7 failed to find two network drivers I needed and had to install them from the disk I got with the PC. I also had to install a sound driver. All three were found by Win8. I was making no inference about anything beyond the fact that the drivers were there when I installed so that was a plus for me. It was not meant as a negative. More I was just surprised at how easily win8 installed for me and that it went smoother then my win7 install … if only by three drivers which was really a non-issue anyhow. Everything worked except my network card and I was prepared for that.

Again just my own personal experience on my own personal machine .. which I would have thought was pretty obvious since I only did it on my PC.

I am already on an SSD for my OS. Win8 is still much faster on boot up on SSD then Win7 on SSD. Again on my own PC. Others mileage may vary … again would have thought that was obvious.

Being able to add an app to create a start menu was just a pro in the sense that it could be done versus not having the option at all. If other people want to view it as a con they can.

As for Skyrim and bugs *shrug* and *meh* I really haven't had any problems with Skyrim. I played it w/out any mods at all for 300 hours. I reached 500 hours before I started modding the hell out of it and installed the unofficial patches over winter break. I never encountered a game breaking bug so I guess I was lucky. I had a few random CTD and yes some quests bugged out but nothing that broke the game for me ... course I wasn't playing on a PS3.

Irrelevant anyhow as I don't use a PC for its OS I use it for what I can run on it that I want to use … and in case I need to state the obvious again … that is within a given context of expecting something to run on it. In this case I expected Skyrim to run because it ran on win7 and numerous forum posts indicated other people ran it ok.

I don't have anything against Win7 - I like the OS and it runs nicely. I don't really have any strong feelings on win8 either. Who cares? I can't see getting so passionate over an OS myself. I dislike the metro aspect but only because I don't need it.

*shrug* I was just giving my own personal impressions of my weekend spent with win8 nothing more.
 
Joined
Jun 4, 2008
Messages
3,959
Location
NH
Lidl sells mostly crap. Okay, you can get some cheap pet food there, but other than that, I'm disgusted. We have Lidl stores, if that can be called stores, here. My foot stepped in those just a few times and each time I was more and more disgusted.

Mediamarkt however is awsome, their discounts don't apply only on crap or stuff that's expiring soon only - if the advertisments and catalogues are true. I wish they had a store in my country too.

Dunno about Saturn and Aldi…

But I wanted to say something else. A good example is the textile industry. It's killed worldwide by the cheap rags from China. You know, those stuff you can throw away after just one wash. Or two max. And still, most people buy it not realizing that quality clothes are in the end cheaper as you don't throw away a pile of those daily nor need to buy a new ones soon.
How is that connected to windows? If you were "lucky" and bought ME or Vista, soon you've bought a new OS. If you've however initially bought XP or 7, you payed less. I won't say win8 is crap best to be avoided as it isn't crap. But do we really need a new OS that soon after win7 proved as a great OS that can be used, upgraded and polished for years after it's made? No. For whatever reason instead of optimizing it and adding Metro as an add-on that costs some pocketchange (DLC) for those who want it, Microsoft decided to make a completely new OS and expected some huge sales of a big nothing.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Apr 12, 2009
Messages
23,459
I bought it on the cheap upgrade ($45 or something I think) for two reasons:

1) I figure at some point I'd want it due to program requirements and its cheaper now
2) If you bought it now, you got Media Center free. In the future that's another $15 and they may stop offering it. My HTPC will stay on 7 for now, but I think with the Metro GUI there is some nice potential for an HTPC running 8.

I'm about to rebuild my desktop and I'm probably just going to go ahead an move it to 8. With some of the options out there for restoring the start menu (which I rarely use anyway thanks to 7 Stacks), it basically becomes a 7 clone that runs fast and is more secure. So long as there are no software incompatibilites, that's a win (and I'll probably keep a 7 partition anyway just in case).

I'm planning on buying a tablet next month and it's going to either be a Surface Pro or one of the other Win8 tablets. The GUI is fantastic on a tablet (test drove a few over the last month) and I need a windows OS so I can do work. If I'm going to have 8 on my tablet, it makes sense to have it on my desktop as well I think.

I don't expect that people are going to run to 8 on their laptops and desktops at anytime. There's really no point for most people's existing hardware. I think MSFT knows that and doesn't care. They built this OS to get into the tablet market, while bridging in their desktop market. New hardware will have the things (like touchscreens that more and more laptops are coming standard with) that make use of the metro GUI, which will make programming Win8 apps more and more appealing to developers. Some people don't like that as it is a closed system for the most part, but that's irrelevant, that's simply the way it is moving.

As my father once told me when I was complaining about something that changed that I didn't like: The world is turning, I think I'll turn with it.
 
Joined
Jan 10, 2008
Messages
4,353
Location
Austin, TX
My wife ended up with windows 8 on her new laptop, seems alright to me but she moans about it. Obviously designed for touchscreens though.
 
Joined
Feb 2, 2007
Messages
2,351
Location
London
Use one of the startmenu products out there and she'll think its still7 and be much happier.
 
Joined
Jan 10, 2008
Messages
4,353
Location
Austin, TX
Its not the new OS's fault, or even the game's, if a user made mod fails to work.

Also, ME was still better than W98. Remember the rule of thumb with 98 was to reboot the machine at least once daily. I had customers try and fight me on that.

If there as no ME would folks have transitioned to XP?

That Registry article on the blame game is more opinion than news.

Here's a question, has anyone tried this on a tablet or a touchscreen?

Finally, there's a load of new interfaces coming down the pipe that are essentially better Kinect devices. Here's one that's already available for phones and tablets:

virtualkeyboard_2.jpg


the celluon virutal keyboard - $120
 
Last edited:
Joined
Oct 19, 2006
Messages
5,212
Location
The Uncanny Valley
What I am woundering is…. when will games stop being XP compatible ( No more DX 9 and 32-bit…) that would move grahpics in games a lot more than new hardware from Nvidia….
 
Joined
Oct 25, 2006
Messages
6,292
As I've said, the problem is the price. Cheap keyboard you can throw into someone's head or expensive touchpad you need to be careful with, what would you buy?

Star Trek world economy can't be applied to RL yet as it's not like current ours one: "produce as much junk as you can, sell it cheaper than quality stuff and kill quality with quantity".
Hmm maybe try out some anger management techniques instead of destroying your gadgets? Though I agree touchscreens are still too expensive to become mainstream. This will change in time. The Star Trek comment wasn't meant as serious anyway.
*shrug* I was just giving my own personal impressions of my weekend spent with win8 nothing more.
I for one appreciate that wolfgrimdark - as I haven't had a chance to test a lot of games on Windows 8 yet. Skyrim is on my playlist so you might have saved me some time with your overview - thanks!
Here's a question, has anyone tried this on a tablet or a touchscreen?
If you mean Windows 8, yes - I have it running on my tablet PC. Overall it works quite well on a tablet, and I like it better than Windows 7 which the tablet shipped with.

I've done limited gaming on it but so far I've had Grimrock running fine with the touchscreen. I only wish DOSBox would add proper touchscreen support as mouse-based DOS games aren't quite playable on the touchscreen until they add an absolute mouse coordinates option. But that's not a fault of Windows 8.
 
Joined
Aug 19, 2011
Messages
510
Location
Oregon
Hmm maybe try out some anger management techniques instead of destroying your gadgets? Though I agree touchscreens are still too expensive to become mainstream. This will change in time. The Star Trek comment wasn't meant as serious anyway.
Sorry but no. In my country it's perfectly legal to break things apart publically. Not on one's head, of course.
Because we do that when angry, noone gets killed, just junk returns to what it is - junk.

EDIT:
Worth reading:
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/8_things_we_hate_about_windows_841
 
Last edited:
Joined
Apr 12, 2009
Messages
23,459
Joined
Oct 19, 2006
Messages
5,212
Location
The Uncanny Valley
I upgraded namely because it was cheap. $40, put it on mine and my 2 sons PC's.

My impressions:

@wolfgrimdark is right. I have installed every version of windows and 8 is by far the fastest and easiest in my experience.

It did have a driver for everything in my system but almost every one was old. So it is still very important to check for new drivers. I had to update chipset, Nvidia, Creative, IRST, Well, basically every driver. Also do your windows updates.

I typically install my chipset driver then do all my windows updates, then install all other drivers to avoid windows over writing some of my drivers during the update process.

I assume @wolfgrimdark updated all his drivers before giving up on Skyrim and I know all systems will vary but I have no issue with Skyrim on win 8 with 97 mods running and my 2 sons, 2 brothers and a number of friends also run Skyrim without issue. So if you are thinking about getting windows 8 I wouldn't worry about it not running on wolf's computer but I wouldn't put any stock in the fact that me and some others have it running without issue. In short when it comes to specific games you'll just have to install it on your system and see what happens. This isn't meant as a negative towards your post @wolfgrimdark in anyway I appreciated your input.:)

I use Stardock's start 8, Fences 2, Windows FX 5 and Object Dock. It by passes the useless (for me) metro interface and makes a great Organized desktop. It also makes it nothing like windows 8 vanilla experience and could just as easily be done on Windows 7. Not sure why Microsoft didn't look at some of these desktop enhancements before making Windows 8. They make any version of windows much better imo.

As for navigation, it's very easy. The windows key plus x,d,r or c will take you pretty much anywhere you want to go. Not sure what the confusion with the power button is about. Press windows key-c ( or move the mouse to the bottom right of the screen) and the charm bar will open, select power and then choose shut down, log off or sleep.

The metro interface is very ugly imo and I haven't found a worth while app for it yet. You can use it as a giant start menu but I found that very annoying as you had to keep switching to metro then launch the program and it would send you right back to the desktop. Then repeat if you want to open multiple programs as I often do when working or modding.

I have 3 monitors so I thought it would be great put the metro interface on 1 and then quickly open my programs on the other 2. Nope, when I open a program even on a different monitor the metro interface closes, so I have to reopen it and do what I explained above.

My last 2 biggest annoyance with Metro is it likes to hijack media even though I set other programs as the default player several times and the browsers don't sync. If you have a browser running in metro and bookmark something it won't show up when you run the desktop version. ( this was the way it was at launch as I haven't used Metro in quite a while I don't know if that's fixed.)

I would say there is no major reason to get 8 if you have 7. There's some security,8 probably works better for a home server, better boot times and will be supported longer. If you do want to get it keep in mind it will be going up to $200 in feb. I believe. At that price I wouldn't recommend it to anybody but at $40 I feel it's worthwhile if you want the small benefits.

I haven't run into anything I couldn't run that I could run on windows 7. I also benchmarked skyrim on both and saw virtually no difference. Other than boot time and faster install I haven't noticed any change in speed.
 
Thanks for the information @Sakichop.

Just curious - do you also use SKSE and ENB? My main issue had to do with those - removing them also removed the CTD I was getting (although I still had Skyrim running in window mode ... not sure if that might be fixed by running as an admin or some other setting in windows 8 I don't know about ... as I had skyrim checked to run in full screen mode but it refused to budge from window mode for some reason - it was a full size window - but had the window edges and tool bar at bottom).

My mods also ran okay. Windows just didn't seem to like the SKSE or ENB code running. I tried both together and each separately and both caused CTD. Now I am wondering if it was a security issue or some odd Directx thing I needed. I know I was missing one DLL when I first started but that was fixed by the download from MS. But perhaps something somewhere got corrupted or screwed up with those drivers.

Ah well I will try again this spring once things slow down and I have another long weekend.
 
Joined
Jun 4, 2008
Messages
3,959
Location
NH
found two benchmark articles from back in the day: one lauding it (ziff davis, no surprise); the other saying there is no difference (tweaktown)

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/benchmarks-windows-7-rtm-versus-vista-xp/22006

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/2...cpu_memory_performance_comparison/index7.html

Wow, Windows XP actually shuts down a little faster than Win7 and Vista.

Anyways you have linked to articles that compare Win7, Vista and XP, but I was asking about Windows 8. I already know Win7 is faster and generally seems to be more stable than Vista.

So far I don't see any point in upgrading from Win7 to Win8 unless there is significant improvement in performance for demanding applications and games.
 
Joined
Jan 15, 2011
Messages
1,477
Location
Chocovania
ah, I thought you were talking about how Win7 was deliberately made faster.

One of my points is MS always seems to claim this: they did this with 95, 98 and XP and its a complete lie. How does adding code and bloat make an OS faster?
 
Joined
Oct 19, 2006
Messages
5,212
Location
The Uncanny Valley
What I am woundering is…. when will games stop being XP compatible ( No more DX 9 and 32-bit…) that would move grahpics in games a lot more than new hardware from Nvidia….

I don't think we'll see many 64 bit only games anytime soon, but I agree that devs need to leave DX 9 behind (for AAA titles). I think you'll see a lack of WinXP compatibility sooner though.
 
Joined
Oct 21, 2006
Messages
39,133
Location
Florida, US
Personally I just love Windows 7. Its the closest thing to Windows 95 which was my favorite OS (minus the crashes :)). Win7 is simple, light weight, fast, intuitive. It may not be sexy but why replace it?

I'm not opposed to Windows 8 and would accept it on my next build but I have no interest in its features really. The only reason for me to actively avoid it for the time being is driver support.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
3,593
Location
Boston MA
What I am woundering is…. when will games stop being XP compatible ( No more DX 9 and 32-bit…) that would move grahpics in games a lot more than new hardware from Nvidia….

As long as consoles sell the majority of games then games will only advance as fast as consoles do. Considering the ridiculously long release cycles console have things will move quite slowly.

If the rumors are true and the new Xbox has dx11 and 8 GB of memory then you may start to see pc games with full dx11 support and 64-bit after its release.

On the plus side even some developers are getting fed up with the limitations of current console hardware and are putting more focus on pc. ( crysis 3, bio shock infinite )but still other are just making direct ports.( dark souls, dead space 3)
 
Thanks for the information @Sakichop.

Just curious - do you also use SKSE and ENB? My main issue had to do with those - removing them also removed the CTD I was getting (although I still had Skyrim running in window mode … not sure if that might be fixed by running as an admin or some other setting in windows 8 I don't know about … as I had skyrim checked to run in full screen mode but it refused to budge from window mode for some reason - it was a full size window - but had the window edges and tool bar at bottom).

My mods also ran okay. Windows just didn't seem to like the SKSE or ENB code running. I tried both together and each separately and both caused CTD. Now I am wondering if it was a security issue or some odd Directx thing I needed. I know I was missing one DLL when I first started but that was fixed by the download from MS. But perhaps something somewhere got corrupted or screwed up with those drivers.



Ah well I will try again this spring once things slow down and I have another long weekend.

Yep, SKSE and quietcool enb. A while back I had a missing direct x dll. I installed the latest direct x and it said my files where up to date.

I then went back and looked up direct x 9 and 10 download. I downloaded them and installed them and what do you know? It actually installed several files and 1 was the one I was missing. That surprised me because the latest direct x download should have all the files but for whatever reason it didn't.

Now after a fresh install I download direct x 9 runtime and I believe there is a feb and June 2010 release as well. I install them all with the latest dx version as well. Then I reinstall them to make sure I get the message that my direct x is newer and no new files are installed. I also then manually install any direct x versions that come with games .

I know that's a little anal but what can I do that's who I am.:)Also It insure I have all the dx files I need.
 
Finally, there's a load of new interfaces coming down the pipe that are essentially better Kinect devices. Here's one that's already available for phones and tablets:

virtualkeyboard_2.jpg


the celluon virutal keyboard - $120

When I was in grad school (2000), one guy in my MBA class (who had a PhD already strangely enough), was working on a patent to something very similar to that, might actually be involved in that. His device was something that attached to your wrist though, but the concept of a virtual keyboard was the same.
 
Joined
Jan 10, 2008
Messages
4,353
Location
Austin, TX
Back
Top Bottom