I'm A Pc And Windows 8 Definately Wasn't My Idea

[screech]

How shockingly bad is Windows 8.

Anybody out there having any thoughts about purchasing this new OS from Microsoft, don't bother.

I went back to Windows 7 a week later after installing Win 8 as a dual boot, how high on drugs was Steve Ballmer when he signed this OS off?

If you are going to use this on a tablet, I can see this would work for you, but most of us wont be. It's truly dreadful, avoid at all costs.

[TRL]

Indeed, good on tablet woeful on laptop or pc. Don't get me started on having to use two versions of ie!

Did you ever find your favourites.

This has windows me written all over it.

[bcfcbs20]

I was going to update but thankfully the chap round novatech said it's shite and you will be better off with windows 7 for the time being so gave it a miss.

[Akira]

Two versions of I.E?!

The interface of it is just awful, tablet, yeah, maybe, but for a PC?! horrendous.

[Barrs Court Red]

Hmmm was thinking about updating.

Happy to stay with Win 7 but my worry is new Direct X versions being win 8 exclusive. That said I managed to miss out Vista wihout a problem.

I wouldn't be surprised is there will soon be a patch to make win 8 feel more like Windows.

[SimplyRed]

Get a Mac...

[Monkeh]

Hmmm was thinking about updating.

Happy to stay with Win 7 but my worry is new Direct X versions being win 8 exclusive. That said I managed to miss out Vista wihout a problem.

I wouldn't be surprised is there will soon be a patch to make win 8 feel more like Windows.

windows 8 is proving very unpopular with devlopers from what I've read expect it to go the way of vista and disappear very quickly,

[Guest]

Windows 8 is fine.. as long as you install 'Start8' - once you've got that it's fine.. and in fact its a touch quicker than 7 and a little better polished in certain areas.

MS biggest problem was Win 7 was a fine creation and unless they did something radical it wouldn't sell anyway. They shot themselves in the foot removing the start button. The enterprise market won't touch it.

It runs lovely on a Surface mind.. very impressive bit of kit that.

[Smokey]

Get a Mac...

[TRL]

Windows 8 is fine.. as long as you install 'Start8' - once you've got that it's fine.. and in fact its a touch quicker than 7 and a little better polished in certain areas.

MS biggest problem was Win 7 was a fine creation and unless they did something radical it wouldn't sell anyway. They shot themselves in the foot removing the start button. The enterprise market won't touch it.

It runs lovely on a Surface mind.. very impressive bit of kit that.

Got to agree very very impressive on the surface, and there it should stay.

There is no way this will be rolled in a enterprise. But for surface mobile device, it could really stuff up apples bring your own device hopes, and should sit far more happily in a sharepoint ad and exchange environment.

[Barrs Court Red]

Got to agree very very impressive on the surface, and there it should stay.

There is no way this will be rolled in a enterprise. But for surface mobile device, it could really stuff up apples bring your own device hopes, and should sit far more happily in a sharepoint ad and exchange environment.

Oh it will. Having the same os is perfect for a small 1500 person company like the one I'm in. Can reduce build costs and offer different tools for different ways of working all with the same compatibity.

We're doing it cheaper still, and embracing google apps. Risky

[Nibor]

Buying Windows is like buying a VW Golf. Skip every other model, even more so now it's on a 2.5 year cycle - it takes that long just to polish the turd.

Many big corps aren't going to be buying Win8, some are only just hitting Win7 because XP super extended life runs out next year.

I'd still avoid Macs, massively overpriced hardware and the apple walled garden / dictatorship approach limits your choices hugely.

Either stick to Windows 7 and buy a Windows 8 key if you get a cheap one just before the upgrade offer runs out (but don't use it until SP1 at least is released), or try Linux if you don't need 3d games. Many distros are easy enough for mainstream use now, and you can try it from a USB stick without committing.

[screech]

Buying Windows is like buying a VW Golf. Skip every other model, even more so now it's on a 2.5 year cycle - it takes that long just to polish the turd.

Many big corps aren't going to be buying Win8, some are only just hitting Win7 because XP super extended life runs out next year.

I'd still avoid Macs, massively overpriced hardware and the apple walled garden / dictatorship approach limits your choices hugely.

Either stick to Windows 7 and buy a Windows 8 key if you get a cheap one just before the upgrade offer runs out (but don't use it until SP1 at least is released), or try Linux if you don't need 3d games. Many distros are easy enough for mainstream use now, and you can try it from a USB stick without committing.

Sound advice about WIN 8. i bought it because there was an offer of purchasing it for £15 if you had bought a PC within the past 6-8 months with WIN 7 installed. I hadn't purchased a pc but looked up a similar model to mine, tried my luck and was accepted for the purchase. At £15 it is about the right price.

[SimplyRed]

I'd still avoid Macs, massively overpriced hardware and the apple walled garden / dictatorship approach limits your choices hugely.

As an MCSE for the past 12 years, a user of PCs since 1988, and experience of practically all Windows versions, I used to think the same and avoided Macs - particularly since their market share was inferior to M$.

However, while I agree that Apple hardware is overpriced, the build quality is superb, and the Apple software pricing is very good. The advantage Apple has in regards to your 'walled garden' comment, is that with their strategy, they can practically guarantee that all their software will work (because it only runs on their hardware) as compared to Windows which will prostitue itself on any piece of Intel hardware you want to throw at it. The O/S is also based on the tried, tested and highly rated Unix. Most of the major software giants do a Mac version of most professional software (I recently traded in my Windows Photoshop CS5 license for a Mac version to run on my Mac without problem). You can even get M$ Office for it, if you want.

My business is PC-based and I need to maintain a Windows presence, but when Macs went Intel-based, I was tempted - and earlier this year, transferred my business and personal machines to Mac - I've never looked back! They just work!

I have several PCs/Laptops which I use for my business when troubleshooting problems for clients, or writing software. I can also dual-boot my Macs to run windows, and even run a virtual windows from within OSX.

Best thing I ever did!

[Gazred]

As an I.T engineer myself, i can only thank MS for keeping me in work for the last 15 years or so. Please feel free to keep releasing substandard operating systems that take years of patching to get right, hardware compatability issues and a need to issue security and critical updates on an almost weekly basis.

Best thing about Microsoft is the fact it made Bill Gates one of the richest men on the planet, allowing him to become the keen philanthropist he is today.

As SR says, Apples software is designed for their hardware, always going to be more stable and efficent. When i first got into I.T, the only time you heard a Mac mentioned was in the same sentence as desktop publishing or graphic design. Now that you can get many of the familiar PC apps on a Mac, plus the fact Apples in house software generally pisses all over Microsofts and you have much more robust choice.

For the record, i still have a PC at home....stick to what you know i guess

[Barrs Court Red]

Tablets and Smart PC's might make it too late for macs to become more widely accepted. Fact is for general use there is just no need of having a desktop these days.

[Nibor]

As an MCSE for the past 12 years, a user of PCs since 1988, and experience of practically all Windows versions, I used to think the same and avoided Macs - particularly since their market share was inferior to M$.

However, while I agree that Apple hardware is overpriced, the build quality is superb, and the Apple software pricing is very good. The advantage Apple has in regards to your 'walled garden' comment, is that with their strategy, they can practically guarantee that all their software will work (because it only runs on their hardware) as compared to Windows which will prostitue itself on any piece of Intel hardware you want to throw at it. The O/S is also based on the tried, tested and highly rated Unix. Most of the major software giants do a Mac version of most professional software (I recently traded in my Windows Photoshop CS5 license for a Mac version to run on my Mac without problem). You can even get M$ Office for it, if you want.

My business is PC-based and I need to maintain a Windows presence, but when Macs went Intel-based, I was tempted - and earlier this year, transferred my business and personal machines to Mac - I've never looked back! They just work!

I have several PCs/Laptops which I use for my business when troubleshooting problems for clients, or writing software. I can also dual-boot my Macs to run windows, and even run a virtual windows from within OSX.

Best thing I ever did!

My experience with Windows 7 is that it "just works" for me, I've never had to re-install or suffer any compatibility problems, all software I've used with it (and I'm a developer so it's quite a range, VMs, application servers, oracle, middleware) has worked without problems and I can leave it running for weeks and only reboot to install updates really.

From Windows 7 I think M$ have nailed compatibility quite well now, so the walled garden doesn't seem to offer anything to me, and I can build a PC that outperforms a Mac for just over half the price which is why I wouldn't recommend them to people, the value isn't really there. Plus I like the odd bit of gaming, and I won't suffer iTunes again ever, so I couldn't use one anyway.

Each to their own though, I've got a couple of mates who will swear by Macs and won't even try a PC.

One thing I would recommend to anybody doing any intensive stuff (work or gaming) any type of PC - get a solid state disk to run your O/S and applications from. I've just put two in my work machine and the difference is really quite astounding. I was expecting it to be but I was still amazed.

[Gazred]

One thing I would recommend to anybody doing any intensive stuff (work or gaming) any type of PC - get a solid state disk to run your O/S and applications from. I've just put two in my work machine and the difference is really quite astounding. I was expecting it to be but I was still amazed.

I can certainly echo that, SSD is the way forward. Smaller footprint, less power and more reliable/robust due to no moving parts.

[Barrs Court Red]

My experience with Windows 7 is that it "just works" for me,

That was the whole point if it. It was designed to work well with addidtional hardware and sftware going forward, as the pace of change was at its peak.

They got it bang on.

[TRL]

SSD is not the way forward at the moment imo, and a definate no no if using any type of encryption on the drive. Very expensive and very quick but any pc or laptop that is written to a lot seems to kill them off pretty damn rapidly. Having tested various SSDs for both deployment of ESXi and on various Server, Desktop and Laptop configurations, the fail rates seem to be massively higher than a standard disk, which is quite bizarre consider the moving parts in standard Sata and SAS drives More worringly many SSD's have had worse failure rates than booting servers we have tested from a bog standard SD card and controller!

Buyer beware would be my advice... at them monemt.. Once the reliability is there SSD all the way

[Nibor]

SSD is not the way forward at the moment imo, and a definate no no if using any type of encryption on the drive. Very expensive and very quick but any pc or laptop that is written to a lot seems to kill them off pretty damn rapidly. Having tested various SSDs for both deployment of ESXi and on various Server, Desktop and Laptop configurations, the fail rates seem to be massively higher than a standard disk, which is quite bizarre consider the moving parts in standard Sata and SAS drives More worringly many SSD's have had worse failure rates than booting servers we have tested from a bog standard SD card and controller!

Buyer beware would be my advice... at them monemt.. Once the reliability is there SSD all the way

If you're using encryption I'd steer clear yes. The problem is that software encryption causes a lot more re-writing to happen than is necessary.

Without encryption they're fine provided you have the newer ones with wear levelling built in. The mean time between failures is pretty comparable to spinny discs on more recent ones.

On the expense side, don't use them to store media, you don't need access speed for that. Don't use them to store data that is often rewritten (e.g. database files). Using them for the O/S and applications makes a lot of sense though.

[TRL]

If you're using encryption I'd steer clear yes. The problem is that software encryption causes a lot more re-writing to happen than is necessary.

Without encryption they're fine provided you have the newer ones with wear levelling built in. The mean time between failures is pretty comparable to spinny discs on more recent ones.

On the expense side, don't use them to store media, you don't need access speed for that. Don't use them to store data that is often rewritten (e.g. database files). Using them for the O/S and applications makes a lot of sense though.

We were using them generally for booting up ESSXi hosts to ensure quicker boot times when we apply updates. We have god knows how many petabyte of SAN and NAS space anyway, we hardly hold anything locally any more other than the operating system, and most of these san boot nowadays.

For the actual speed they give the end user in say a laptop, I am still not sure they are worth the money. in a enterprise environment where laptops have to be encrypted, like you say a big no no. For me Working as a infrastructure engineer, in enterprise environment, I personally wouldn't be happy using them given the alternatives.

A end user using their laptop own laptop, probably quite a good idea, as long as (as you quite rightly say) they have theri secondary drive holding data that is over written a lot.

Give it a few years, and I am sure the technology, the reliability and the the prices will be right. Unfortunately, they are not using the Military grade SSD's that are very very reliable, but prohibatively expensive for most companies.

[Nibor]

We were using them generally for booting up ESSXi hosts to ensure quicker boot times when we apply updates. We have god knows how many petabyte of SAN and NAS space anyway, we hardly hold anything locally any more other than the operating system, and most of these san boot nowadays.

If you're moving VM images between hosts you're probably doing a lot more writing than normal so it would be more prone to faliure. Most users will have an O/S that is fairly static, even when doing O/S updates it's more that new files get written than existing ones get re-written.

For the actual speed they give the end user in say a laptop, I am still not sure they are worth the money. in a enterprise environment where laptops have to be encrypted, like you say a big no no. For me Working as a infrastructure engineer, in enterprise environment, I personally wouldn't be happy using them given the alternatives.

In the corporate environment I'm in at the moment they are security paranoid. Safeboot, five or six different data leak protection agents, permanent system scanning. Booting a laptop without an SSD into a working state takes about 15 minutes. Hibernate doesn't work. Booting with an SSD takes about 90 seconds. For technical work that's read intensive, the time saved is huge as well.

A end user using their laptop own laptop, probably quite a good idea, as long as (as you quite rightly say) they have theri secondary drive holding data that is over written a lot.

Give it a few years, and I am sure the technology, the reliability and the the prices will be right. Unfortunately, they are not using the Military grade SSD's that are very very reliable, but prohibatively expensive for most companies.

They're not that pricey though. You can get a 256gb SSD for £130, less if you're not buying at list price which most big corporates aren't. That pays for itself in about two weeks of saving fifteen minutes per boot.

[TRL]

If you're moving VM images between hosts you're probably doing a lot more writing than normal so it would be more prone to faliure. Most users will have an O/S that is fairly static, even when doing O/S updates it's more that new files get written than existing ones get re-written.

In the corporate environment I'm in at the moment they are security paranoid. Safeboot, five or six different data leak protection agents, permanent system scanning. Booting a laptop without an SSD into a working state takes about 15 minutes. Hibernate doesn't work. Booting with an SSD takes about 90 seconds. For technical work that's read intensive, the time saved is huge as well.

They're not that pricey though. You can get a 256gb SSD for £130, less if you're not buying at list price which most big corporates aren't. That pays for itself in about two weeks of saving fifteen minutes per boot.

VM migration (Vmotion) is not really writing a whole amount to local disks, if anything, all the vmdks are on SAN storage, and the vmotion itself is dealt with by memory. We SAN boot them now anyway. Like I said they have sat for a long time sitting on SD cards, which I think we all know are not the most reliable of things! No problems what so ever.

We have sent many many laptop SSD to specialist data recovery companies due to Numpty directors not following their own policies, and saving work onto their laptops instead of central storage areas! The encryption on the laptops have buggered the SSDs beyond our techies ability to repair them, the costs and time involved in restoring these, and I may add not all the data was recoverable, came to a lot more than the time wasted in booting the laptops themselves.

No the aren't that pricey, but for what they are, I still think they are over priced, get the storage capacity up another 250gb and I think the price will reflect quite nicely and will come down more in the future. in the personal world great, not a fan in the corporate world.... at the moment

[Gazred]

Id agree its not so easy to intergrate SSD into every enterprise environment at the moment, ive seen a few places adopt them in particular machines. We have zero where im based at the moment, possibly some running in dev machines for testing but all the PCs are being phased out here as they move to a thin client terminal setup, which certainly from the terminals point of view is far more reliable than a PC.

[Guest]

I think the thing is with Windows 8 is it will just work fine out of the box, in fact as I've previously said its a touch quicker than 7 from my experience. I've not found any of the typical first pre SP1 bugs you'd get on previous MS new OS's - the whole thing you have to negate is the metro start interface. Bypass that - as I say Start8 is my preferred 3rd party solution - and you actually are running what I guess really is Win 7 second edition.

SSD's do seem to have a higher MTTBF rate but they are improving. Our office pretty much entirely uses them on a desktop level - they are a very good upgrade solution, on a more personal basis, to a 2-3 year old machine offering a significant improvement for not a lot of dosh.

Looking forward to the surface pro.. i could actually get away with not needing a full laptop