News - Windows 8 promotional pricing will end on 1st February

[vicar]

Is thery any advantage upgrading from Vista to Win 8?

[floppybootstomp]

Is thery any advantage upgrading from Vista to Win 8?

Now there's an interesting conundrum

In my personal opinion: probably.

I think it would almost amount to an upgrade from 'Tortoise-powered' to 'Confusing'

Seriously: Most certainly, for 15 quid you'd be better off and there many Win 8 mods available to give you a more familiar UI and/or start button.

All three actually started life from the same plan, Mk II got it right then Mk III thought desktops were just the same as phones and tablets

[Saracen]

.... People are still living in the past using winXP.

I've got a chisel I bought about 35 years ago. It still does the job I bought it for. Why buy a new one?

Similarly, I've got several PC's doing the job they were acquired for, and they do it on XP. Those machines won't run Win 7, and in one case, the software I use won't run on it.

So, to not "live in the past", I have to :-

1) buy a new PC
2) pay for a new OS
3) find new software to replace what's currently running quite happily
4) spend either a small fortune or a lot of time porting the data

.... all to manage to do exactly the same job I'm currently doing quite successfully on XP, and have been doing quite happily for years.

You shouldn't be so judgemental if you don't know what other people's circumstances are.

[vicar]

Many thanks for your advise. Seems its time to give an old rig a new lease of life.

[Zeven]

I already exclude a large amount of games from my wishlist just because I dislike the publisher and others because they use SecuRom or other unnecessary DRM so excluding games because they fail to support Linux would be a far better reason to not bother with a game than the reasons I currently use. It may take a very long time for mainstream gamers to use Linux, or be able to, but for me it won't take more than a few years before I would gladly give up on games that don't offer Linux versions.

I remember a time when the thought of DRM free games being released would be unthinkable yet games like The Witcher 2, Alan Wake and Omerta(coming soon) are available DRM free from gog.com. I expect Linux support to be similar, it probably won't take over mainstream gaming but there will be enough games to play to keep people like myself happy.

It's pretty much the same for me. Glad you typed all that out in my place!

[TheAnimus]

.... all to manage to do exactly the same job I'm currently doing quite successfully on XP, and have been doing quite happily for years.

But what happens when the security updates run out? Or the hardware starts to break.

There is a cost involved with not keeping up, which is sometimes unknown. The problem is a lot of people have been burnt not keeping up, at uni I ended up spending days writing a device driver that was only in 8bit, to run on NT. Because I wrote it well I understand it even compiles on windows 8 without any issue. The cost of support was shifted upfront, rather than unknown later on. That cost luckily for the uni was free, because I wanted a challange, but if it hadn't been, think of the cost of paying someone to port 6502 assembly to modern standards. It might well have been more than the CNC machine was worth.

[Saracen]

But what happens when the security updates run out? Or the hardware starts to break.

There is a cost involved with not keeping up, which is sometimes unknown. The problem is a lot of people have been burnt not keeping up, at uni I ended up spending days writing a device driver that was only in 8bit, to run on NT. Because I wrote it well I understand it even compiles on windows 8 without any issue. The cost of support was shifted upfront, rather than unknown later on. That cost luckily for the uni was free, because I wanted a challange, but if it hadn't been, think of the cost of paying someone to port 6502 assembly to modern standards. It might well have been more than the CNC machine was worth.

Horses for courses, though.While all circumstance-dependent, my use is for home, and home-office. Admittedly, my home office isn't the typical home office, though, with a dozen or so machines, not all of which run all the time.

Without going into too much specifics, I'll answer those two particular issues.

First, security patches? For the machines I'm talking about, I don't need them. They are on a network which has the very strongest security protection available .... it has no public connection. The machines can talk to each other, but have no internet connection, nor for that matter, no connection to my other network.

Nobody but the wife and myself have physical access to that room, either .... short of a burglar, and there are some measures to protect there, too. Some of that is pretty recent.

As for hardware failure, well, that's true. But I have considerable redundancy available, and a whopping great collection of bits. My server, for instance, is a RAID 5 setup, and I have several spare identical hard drives, a hot-standby drive in the array (5 live drives, 1 hot standby), and 3 spare identical RAID 5 boards. And, I have a couple of spare 3-disc drive bays. And for good measure, a full spare basic system (case, mobo, cpu, ram, video board and psu). And if push really comes to shove, I could transfer the active bits to a completely different chassis, with a choice of several. And a cupboard full of psu's, motherboards, etc.

So I have a choice. Fork out thousands to update everything, bringing eight or nine systems up to date, or just keep machines that are quite happy going, and only fork out if I am forced to replace something I can't keep going.

Another thing. I have a large supply of parts for those old machines. I do not have a corresponding supply of parts for modern machines. A few bits, but not a huge collection. So if I replace the machines in order to upgrade the OS, I'm then stuck into sourcing a suitable collection of bits, at even more cost, to replace the collection of old but currently useful bits.

Yes, generally, you're quite right about the risks of obsolescence. But, as I said in my earlier post, it's about my circumstances, not "living in the past". And bear in mind, Animus, I'm not in my 20's. Haven't been for over 30 years. So there's a limit to how much longer I need to keep this lot running.

Given what I've said, would you upgrade that lot to Win 8, at a cost of a LOT, or simply keep the old kit going.

To refer to my previous analogy, that old chisel is still doing the job just fine, so why buy a new one every couple of years? In fact, a couple of my chisels (I'm being literal now, talking about actual chisels), belonged to my father, and before that, my grandfather. They still work fine. I just sharpen them as needed.

A good tool is a tool that does a job, not just a new one. My old XP machines are doing the job, and as long as they do it, I'm happy.

[crossy]

Hm i've tried using it and fail each time, i can understand it but its all just jumping through to many hoops to open "wordpad" know what i mean? i want something that is simple yet if i want to dig deep i can do as and when i please with a click...not 5 clicks!

Click on the right-hand top corner, this brings up that sidebar (charms?). Click the Search icon and type "wordp" (or even "wo" if you don't have Office installed). Click the resulting wordpad icon. Done.
I'm very familar with this because it seems to be the only way (other than installing some classic shell) to actually use MUI for the majority of programs.

Is thery any advantage upgrading from Vista to Win 8?

Yes, anything is better than Vista in my book - although I will admit that this means swapping Vista's inherent sloth and unhelpfulness for MUI's clunkiness.

People are still living in the past using winXP.

Agreed. What "amuses" me is that security experts like Steve Gibson are pushing the advantages of staying with XP (namely stability) but I would have thought that an OS that's no longer on mainstream support and isn't going to be a priority for any security-related patches was a bit ... short-sighted? And remember April next year it's no support - so that's NO patches at all! Okay, I'm not pushing the "this is new and therefore better" foolery, but on the other hand Windows7 has been out there long enough surely to gain stability (that said, I had to do a rebuild of a Windows7 laptop last week because an update seemed to have borked some device driver - resulting in BSOD's in anything other than safe mode). Of course if your app is "stuck" on poor old WindowsXP, then maybe this'd be a good time to bite the bullet and think about jumping to Linux?! (roflmao)

It's interesting to me to see the number of people who are saying that Windows8's UI debacle has been enough to start them looking at Linux - presumably Ubuntu, since it's going to be the basis of the Steam product. Then again, Ubuntu's been through it's own UI "debacle" with Unity. Speaking as a long term Ubuntu user (it's my main OS, not Windows) I loathed and detested Unity for the first couple of versions, but the version that came with the last LTS release is actually pretty usable.

So I've got to wonder if MUI is going to follow the same process - so the first version (this one) will be hated and reviled, but successive versions will be as liked and accepted as the Windows7 UI has been (actually there's another example - Vista, I seem to remember, was also criticised for it's new UI. But Vista mk 2 - Windows7 - seems to be well liked). Maybe it's the case with new UI's that they have to be "perfect" from day one otherwise users will start hailing it as the biggest disaster since the big bang?

[TheAnimus]

Agreed. What "amuses" me is that security experts like Steve Gibson are pushing the advantages of staying with XP (namely stability) but I would have thought that an OS that's no longer on mainstream support and isn't going to be a priority for any security-related patches was a bit ... short-sighted? And remember April next year it's no support - so that's NO patches at all! Okay, I'm not pushing the "this is new and therefore better" foolery, but on the other hand Windows7 has been out there long enough surely to gain stability (that said, I had to do a rebuild of a Windows7 laptop last week because an update seemed to have borked some device driver - resulting in BSOD's in anything other than safe mode). Of course if your app is "stuck" on poor old WindowsXP, then maybe this'd be a good time to bite the bullet and think about jumping to Linux?! (roflmao)

Steve Gibson is just an expert troll, nothing more.

[fuddam]

Click on the right-hand top corner, this brings up that sidebar (charms?). Click the Search icon and type "wordp" (or even "wo" if you don't have Office installed). Click the resulting wordpad icon. Done.

Even easier: just press the Windows button and start typing. No need to use the charms.

To shut down, I press Win & 'I', which brings up the charms = faster

There are a lot of peeps freaking out about Win 8, but it is kinda funny. They tend to be techies, who therefore don't like change from what they are accustomed to using. Put a kid (i.e. no preconceptions) on to Win 8 and they love it. Same as it was with Office 2007 & 2010

Moving from Win 7? Agreed, no need to splash the cash.

Moving from XP? A VERY good move, if the machine supports it - security, stability, SPEED, searches etc. I'm running Delta Force (yes, the original game) on Win 8 without issues, while Win 7 doesn't want to know anything about it, despite trying all the compatibility options - I certainly didn't expect that.

[Steve]

There are a lot of peeps freaking out about Win 8, but it is kinda funny. They tend to be techies, who therefore don't like change from what they are accustomed to using. Put a kid (i.e. no preconceptions) on to Win 8 and they love it. Same as it was with Office 2007 & 2010

I disagree. I've tolerated all kinds of interface changes, such as Ubuntu Unity. I've been using Unity for a year now I reckon - I'm used to it, but I still don't really like it.

Office 2007 was an amazing leap forward. It actually makes it obvious how you're supposed to use Office, correctly classifying and formatting your document; using the tools of the word processor rather than reformatting everything by hand. Office 2007+ is great, although my endorsement is somewhat hollow as it's not installed on the machine I'm on right now, and I'm currently writing a paper in LaTeX.

But Win 8 - tried it, friggin' hated it. If I can give things like Office and Unity a go and either like it or get along with it, then MS did something really wrong to make me so Win 8 averse.

[Agent]

Office 2007 was an amazing leap forward. It actually makes it obvious how you're supposed to use Office, correctly classifying and formatting your document; using the tools of the word processor rather than reformatting everything by hand.

And that's the issue with Windows 8.

It's my main OS on my laptop, but when I had to Google how to shut the machine down, it's a bad start:

1. Mouse over the little gadget in the lower right corner of the screen. (You can also move your mouse cursor to the upper left corner; same result. Or, you can press Windows-C on your keyboard.)

2. In the slide-out menu (known as the Charms Bar) that appears, click Settings.

3. Click the Power button, and then click your desired action: Sleep, Shut down, or Update and restart.

So, there you have it. In Windows 8, it requires four actions to shut down your PC: hover, click, click, and click.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. It's always been something of a joke that shutting down your PC required a click of the Start button. Now the joke has turned downright cruel, with Microsoft seemingly going out of its way to hide one of the most basic computing options. In. The. Settings. Menu.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/20122...windows-8.html

The "Charms" menu is terrible when using a keyboard and mouse. Power in the settings menu? Totally unintuitive.

[shaithis]

As much as there are some things wrong with Windows 8 (and some of them quite fundamental) shutting it down shouldn't be one of them.

How many people are using AT instead of ATX systems? like no-one. Just press the power button once.....voilà.

[Willzzz]

So on Win8 shutdown is swipe, click, click.
On WinXP it is click, click, click.

Is there really any difference here?

[Agent]

As much as there are some things wrong with Windows 8 (and some of them quite fundamental) shutting it down shouldn't be one of them.

How many people are using AT instead of ATX systems? like no-one. Just press the power button once.....voilà.

Apart from the power button doesn't shut it down - it puts it into standby. So when I said "shut the machine down", you know, I actually want to shut the machine down?

That to one side, I never said there was anything wrong with W8 shutting down - it shuts down fine. It's just not in an intuitive place.

You're also not taking into account that a lot of people don't have the PC within arms reach. I can't remember the last time I even touched my tower. My parents PC is on the floor which has never been an issue - asking them to start hitting the power button isn't exactly a solution when they have crippling arthritis.

Anyway, I'm not about to get into a debate about a blinking power button. My only thoughts on it were that it's placement isn't an obvious one. Given how many articles there are out there on how to do it, I'm clearly not alone on this thought.

[cam1986]

Glad a took up the offer, yes I am running classic shell on it so its now like windows 7 but better.

Which shell do you use please?