Win8 is quick anyway, on an SSD it should really fly.

I run win 8.1 on an old Pentium D (3.2Ghz) with 128GB SSD (and 750GB for data - my user profile is junctioned onto the slower disk) and 6GB of RAM and it is amazing nippy for such old technology.  Not a snip on my Surface Pro 2 though.  For keyboard shortcuts win-I and win-x along with the old -r and -e from Windows 9x are the only ones I seem to need.

You don't actually need to click search on the start screen to start searching, if you press the windows button to bring up the start screen then start typing it will automatically start searching.  On top of the shortcuts mentioned here, Win+d (minimise to desktop/restore to desktop) and Win+L (lock PC) are my favourites although neither are new to Windows 8.

 

I've been impressed with Windows 8 performance on older machines as they feel quicker and responsive than Windows 7 which particularly if it can be picked up cheap makes Windows 8 worth considering for WinXP machines.

 

John

anyone else find that as time goes on, phones get bigger and more like pc's operating systems, and pc's are going the other way?

Does anyone else find snap temperamental in Windows 8?

Because of the charm bars I struggle to get it to work when I want it, and not do it when I don't want it.

Doesn't help a recent update has overridden the mouse pad settings where I disabled them (HP & Acer), and the mouse pad app settings for the charm bars now do nothing

anyone else find that as time goes on, phones get bigger and more like pc's operating systems, and pc's are going the other way?

In the late 90s I worked for a Japanese company, and when they came over to see us they had what I'd equate to a netbook. They were also much more powerful than anything we had in the office, and the management had the most expensive and highest spec laptops they could get!

In the late 90s I worked for a Japanese company, and when they came over to see us they had what I'd equate to a netbook. They were also much more powerful than anything we had in the office, and the management had the most expensive and highest spec laptops they could get!

 

Bending the topic slightly..............this has always been the case though, for example HDTV was in Japan in the '90s, tv broadcasts have been 5.1 out there for years. We here are drip-fed the "new technology" so that it makes the most money for those in control. Look at Sky boxes for example: every new technology "step" has been all about revenue, whereas the Telewest TV-drive (as was) had HDMI, separate audio, optical output, 80GB hard-drive (all of which was available for the user, so none of this "pre-loaded" stuff that you didn't want) and the ability to record 2 channels and watch a 3rd, and it was all included in the subscription, whereas Sky's box is always an extra cost.

 

In essence, we are always paying top price for yesterdays technology.

Edited 26 August, 201411 yr by RainbowFire

anyone else find that as time goes on, phones get bigger and more like pc's operating systems, and pc's are going the other way?

 

 

anyone else find that as time goes on, phones get bigger and more like pc's operating systems, and pc's are going the other way?

 

Yes there is a lot of convergence going on. Personally I'm getting a bit annoyed at the lack of ommunication between the various systems so my next purchase will probably be a small Windows Tablet running the full OS like a Lenovo Miix 8". Everything still talks to a Windows laptop or desktop.

 

My personal bet for the future is that the phone will become the main 'bit' of your personal computing. When you get home you'll dock it or it'll link to wifi and it'll offload some functions like graphics for games. It'll also act as a key for online services. So you'll maybe have terminals through your house but the phone will be the console, server, laptop everything.

But you can bet you'll have four or more competing versions of this from Apple, Google, Amazon and MS.

 

MS windows 9 is supposed to be a converged OS that will work on all device types, announcement at the end of this month apparently.

Edited 26 August, 201411 yr by Aspman

There is a useful tool called Start 8 that gives it all back and more. I think it is only a few dollars for a legit copy so well worth it

I have a Dell Venue 8 Pro for that reason, it's great to have a tablet that runs a standard operating system so you have a huge range of software to choose from and the flexibility to do what you want without needing root or jailbreak the device.  I'm generally impressed with the device (64GB for £158 delivered from the Dell outlet) as it's quick despite the bargain price although there are some frustrations with the lack of Modern support particularly as while flash is supported in the touch IE, Microsoft's own Silverlight rather bizarrely isn't which means you're kicked back to the desktop version which doesn't work as well in a pure touchscreen environment.

 

Convergence is definitely on the way, it's just a matter of time before the devices are powerful enough to serve in that role.  Motorola had an interesting punt at it with a phone that docked into a laptop chassis (good concept but the phone was underpowered) and Asus are trying a similar approach with the Padfone series where you have a phone that docks into a tablet screen that can also have a keyboard dock for a laptop form factor.  Nvidia have taken on a further ARM license so rather than use off the shelf ARM designs they can now design their own with the intention of producing a device that you'd keep on you then when you got home, dock it with your monitor/keyboard/mouse etc. as you say.

 

There's varying rumours about what Windows 9 is going to do, the recent rumours suggest that the OS interface will be optimised to suit the device it's on so if you're on a desktop the primary interface will be the desktop environment while if you're on a tablet it will be the Modern/touch interface is the primary one.  I don't think one interface for all as some are proposing is the way to go, instead the UI should be customised to the device you're using.  It's clearly one of the big mistakes Windows 8 makes because while I find it good for non-touch desktop use, it's only after I've changed it a bit so that the default file associations use the desktop applications instead of the touch versions and other similar changes, Windows 8 should be doing that sort of thing by default.  Also I think the desktop and touch applications should be the same underneath but with different interfaces, I think it's very odd that the desktop media player is completely unrelated to the touch media player so when I configured the media libraries on one, I had to repeat that on the other.

 

John

We're about to roll out a load of Windows 8.1 devices at work. Should be interesting.

Personally I don't get the hatred for 8.1. It took me a day or two to get used to the new interface then it was business as usual. 95% of apps are desktop based anyway.

I think a lot of people are prepared to hate it because they have been set up to by the press and internet haters.

 

I sold my home desktop and bought a Surface Pro 2, love it, but now feel like a paying beta tester after playing with a Pro 3 last week.

Convergence in action

 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/27/phabletphace_all_the_cool_kids_are_doing_it_in_asia/

I wonder if the new Focus or Mondeo will have the Microsoft assistant built into their systems?

 

The Ford Cortana.

We're about to roll out a load of Windows 8.1 devices at work. Should be interesting.

Personally I don't get the hatred for 8.1. It took me a day or two to get used to the new interface then it was business as usual. 95% of apps are desktop based anyway.

I think a lot of people are prepared to hate it because they have been set up to by the press and internet haters.

 

I sold my home desktop and bought a Surface Pro 2, love it, but now feel like a paying beta tester after playing with a Pro 3 last week.

 

 

I think I have mentioned this already, I have used it, it was a brand new laptop and it was slower than a dead dog, complete lack of logic in how it mixed apps and traditional programs, no integration between the two, the same programs on each part of the OS often cannot talk to each other, or even see the same files.

Pathetic.

I've been using 8 and 8.1 for well over a year on an older laptop then a new desktop, and my Surface Pro.

 

Never had an issue. It does need a minimum 4GB RAM and dual core CPU

It does need a minimum 4GB RAM and dual core CPU

 

It claims this, but it doesn't. I got it running on an EeePC 901 with 1gb of ram and a dual core... Was quite happy as well, much better than Win 7 was on it!

Win8 is supposedly very good on older less powerful hardware.

 

Win9 will probably deal with the issues people have in Win8. I think win8 will probably be seen as a bit of a Beta for the future. Win9 should be more adaptable and deal with the different way of working better.

 

I expect there to be a 'cheap' cloud version too like a Chromebook, but that might be for WinX (I wonder if X-Windows has a copyright on that name?).

Works laptop is touchscreen and I can't see it being better in any way. If anything I find it more clunky, but that could be Acers fault.

One question I do have is why does win 8 laptops consume battery when the laptop was shutdown (not sleeping or hibernate). My HP does it, works Acer does it and parents Asus does it. Seems to drop 1-2% every 24 hours.

It claims this, but it doesn't. I got it running on an EeePC 901 with 1gb of ram and a dual core... Was quite happy as well, much better than Win 7 was on it!

 

A friend managed to get Windows 8 running on her PC with 1GB of ram as well to my surprise, I thought it would be unusable but it was actually ok although for the sake of £20 I advised her to chuck a bit more ram in.

 

John

Win8 is supposedly very good on older less powerful hardware.

 

Win9 will probably deal with the issues people have in Win8. I think win8 will probably be seen as a bit of a Beta for the future. Win9 should be more adaptable and deal with the different way of working better.

 

 

There are issues with the latest SP for Win 7, which now means that older Dual Core AMD chips are no longer supported (they were supported pre SP1), so sadly some older hardware is now being forgotten.  This applies to my brother with his AMD machine, but fortunately my Pentium D lives on :-)

As with Rob above, I use Win 8.1 on my desktop, laptop and Surface Pro 2.  My old Pentium D only takes 10 seconds from me pressing the power button to a logon screen (inc BIOS stuff), and the surface about 3-4 seconds.

 

Certainly win 8 was very much designed to support the touch screen way of working, so some operations might seem a little odd if just using a traditional mouse and keyboard.  At times I find myself wanting to touch the screen of my desktop PC 

I've been using and programming computers since my pimply, adolescent years way back in the 1980s.  Sinclair ZX81 with 16K RamPack anyone?

 

So my viewpoint might, just might, carry some authority.

 

Windows 8 lasted about half an hour on my setup.

 

On Windows 7, I hit the Start Orb, hit the Excel icon and I'm off and running, for example.

 

I asked on a Windows 8 forum how I could get into Excel via two mouseclicks (as above) and I got banned for asking a "provocative" question.

 

Now we all know that internet forum moderators are a weird bunch who all have 58" waistlines and live at home with "mom" (I was banned here previously for daring to question why someone was allowed to spam the forum with "we can supercharge your engine" posts before it dawned on me that the person doing the spamming "sponsored" the site)........but Windows 8 was a car-crash and anyone who thinks otherwise has been puffing too many Jamaican Woodbines.

Edited 30 August, 201411 yr by TroyChallenger

I've been using and programming computers since my pimply, adolescent years way back in the 1980s.  Sinclair ZX81 with 16K RamPack anyone?

 

So my viewpoint might, just might, carry some authority.

 

Windows 8 lasted about half an hour on my setup.

 

On Windows 7, I hit the Start Orb, hit the Excel icon and I'm off and running, for example.

 

I asked on a Windows 8 forum how I could get into Excel via two mouseclicks (as above) and I got banned for asking a "provocative" question.

 

Now we all know that internet forum moderators are a weird bunch who all have 58" waistlines and live at home with "mom" (I was banned here previously for daring to question why someone was allowed to spam the forum with "we can supercharge your engine" posts before it dawned on me that the person doing the spamming "sponsored" the site)........but Windows 8 was a car-crash and anyone who thinks otherwise has been puffing too many Jamaican Woodbines.

 

 

Start Screen>Excel (assuming you have it pinned)

 

or copy excel shortcut to the desktop (which i will admit isn't intuitive)

 

I still don't see the issue people have with windows 8.1 (windows 8 I can kind of understand). I find it just as easy to use as 7, maybe working in IT support I am faced with having to keep myself on the latest OS so i'm a step ahead of our customers, but still I find it very easy to use. As do my two parents who are both well into their 60's and hate computers.

 

Microsoft aren't attempting to reinvent windows 7, why would they? They are trying to move customers to newer versions of software otherwise it will be XP all over again where companies accept slow development of software and stick with what they know (and again I accept that large banks etc cannot always run the latest versions).

 

Get a touch screen laptop and you will see it all makes sense

Edited 30 August, 201411 yr by ashrobinson

At times I find myself wanting to touch the screen of my desktop PC 

 

I haven't found this at all, what sort of situation do you mean? The times you'd need to "swipe" on a touchscreen, like in the App Store or when viewing the full list of apps and programs on the pc through the metro thing, you just use your mouse scroll wheel and it scrolls sideways. Anything else you can just click as normal. If anything, I think that's easier than a touchscreen as you don't even have to move your hand! It is already on the mouse. I really can't imagine ever wanting to prod my monitor all the time. Also, I cannot abide being on top of my monitor, I like it as far away as possible.

 

On Windows 7, I hit the Start Orb, hit the Excel icon and I'm off and running, for example.

 

I asked on a Windows 8 forum how I could get into Excel via two mouseclicks (as above) and I got banned for asking a "provocative" question.

 

I don't understand this, am I missing something? If you boot to desktop you can have it pinned to the taskbar and open in one click, if you boot to metro you can have it as a tile in there and open in one click. Or do you mean something totally different?!

I actually accidentally got an app thing that might turn out to be useful, think its called pokki. It sits next to the old start button and if you click it then it opens up like the old start menu and you can access everything from there. Think it can be configured to hold apps and programs too, as well as links to all your drives etc and a shutdown button. Only got it yesterday so not tried it out or decided whether to keep it, but it does seem ok. Win 8 is definitely easier to personalise and have the way you want it.

Shhh, don't point out that the expert had missed something simple. Don't you know how much authority his viewpoint holds?