Installing Windows 8

Will let you know how it goes.Wasn't going to mess with it, but when I need a new laptop it will have to be Win 8 so figure I better learn it. Also, I game a little on the Xbox and they have integrated things abit in Win 8. Also, when we move we will need new phones. Currently we have basic phones from Verizon. Verizon doesn't work for shit where we are moving to. As a matter of fact AT&T is our only real choice. We figure we will move up to smart phones. I figure if I like Win 8, I might as well get Win8 phones.Already sold my soul to this devil so see no sense it selling to to another.

I'd like to hear how this goes for you. I'm trying to decide if it is worthwhile to learn to develop for yet another smartphone. I don't know anyone with any windows phone.

Why will it have to be? Microsoft has promised support for Win 7 well into 2020, so there's every possibility that people will simply opt not to move to Win 8. I recall in the Vista days, they kept selling Win XP installs for years.I recall that you're not an Apple guy at all, so I won't suggest an iPhone. Do you recall my thoughts from last year in the big iOS vs Android thread? If you do, then you should find it significant that I would recommend an Android handset over the Windows phone.

Because anything new will be loaded with 8. Microsoft is betting the farm on 8. They won't be wanting their licensees selling 7 much longer. That being said there is going to be a learning curve for 8, but looks like it is a bit snappier than 7. How can you make recommendation against something that does not exist yet? Win 8 for phones won't be released till this week. A closed mind is not a good thing. Not to sound insulting, but I find little you say significant.

Not to sound insulting, but that's probably because you're an idiot. Windows Phone has been out since November 2010, almost two years now. There will never be any such thing as a phone running Windows 8. Microsoft is flat-out misleading people in terms of the interoperability between the very different Windows Phone, Windows RT, and Windows 8 environments, as a lot of people who bought the Surface this week discovered. Frankly the notion of having one UI for three very different platforms makes no sense. Why would you expect to use your tablet and phone and desktop in the same way? What problem is Microsoft trying to solve?As far as being snappy, I read a Bit-Tech article comparing real-world usage benchmarks between Win 7 and Win 8. In every respect, on the same hardware, Windows 8 was at least 5% slower. There's just no compelling case for the "upgrade", here. Microsoft can't force OEM's to stop selling Win 7 installs if that's what customers want. (Sorry, no link cuz I'm on the phone, but it's on the front page still. Bit-tech.net)

I just googled this new-fangled OS. What a mess...Do they really expect people to use that thing?What are the advantages?It looks like something for people who want to wear foil suits and have no other use for a computer besides playing video games, listening to music, and taking endless pictures of their cats...

It probably isn't as bad as its critics say.That said, I have no plans to get it. If I should need a new laptop, this time I would go for one with linux pre-installed. I use Windows very little anyway.

I rest my case. You are incapable of considering anything then what you have already decided. Having any conversation with you is worthless because you only see black and white.How about moving on and taking your abuse to other threads. No shit. They are releasing a new phone operating system. Do you think people do? Some commonality would be nice. Not sure they are trying to solve a problem, but trying to move forward. As they are losing market share they had to do something than the same old old. If they had released something similat to 7 market share would have continued to drop and they would have been attacked for not being innovative. Now that they have made a major change they are being attacked for what??The market may not accept 8. Then again they may. I don't think anyone can tell, not even the far seeing extremely always correct Crashfrog.Oh and anyone can cherry pick benchmarks.
Benchmark testing suggests that Windows 8 is Microsoft's fastest Windows to date.
There's little to no difference on gaming performance between the two operating systems.

Honestly it's not that much different. I've been running the preview version. It's basically a couple of bug fixes, plus now instead of a start menu, there's tiles that come up when you hit the Windows key - aka that one key you've long since trained yourself never to touch. Oh, quite the contrary. I'm here to tell you that gamers aren't touching this with a ten-foot pole. It's a 5-10% performance hit with no upside. We're sticking with Win 7 Ultimate, thank you very much.

You sure? How do you know that?

No, they're releasing a new version of Windows Phone, which has been out since 2010, and has always had the "Modern UI" tiles thing. My understanding is, that's where it's from actually. I don't think anybody does, no. When you use your computer, people sit down with a mouse and keyboard and click icons. When you use your phone, you hold it in one hand and either swipe around with your thumb, or poke at it with your other finger. When you use your tablet, it's more about multiple-finger gestures and occasional keyboard input - either on-screen or physical.When you use your phone, files and resources are app-specific; you only see your music in the music player, you only see your pictures in the camera app and photo viewer, etc. There's no notion of a "finder" or "explorer" where you traverse a file system where all your resources are abstracted as files for you to move around. A desktop, you do. A tablet, kind of depends; for the most part, tablets are consumption devices as opposed to creation devices, so traversing a file system isn't what you really want to do. If you work with files, it's probably on cloud storage instead of local to the device.Moreover, the kind of user who would be confused by multiple UI's - your grandpa, let's say - doesn't have more than one of the above. Maybe he's got a tablet from his adult kids, who figure that a simple finger-pointing UI and LTE wireless is a great way to get him connected with the rest of the world. They can Skype or Facetime with the grandkids without having to fix the computer every Thanksgiving. If he has a phone, it's one of those Jitterbug phones with the big buttons. Maybe he's got a desktop but it's precisely because he can't figure out how to use it and keep it running that his kids got him the tablet.So, crisis averted. Now, though, Microsoft has created three separate operating systems that look like they're the same, and they're called the same thing - "Windows 8" - but they're not the same, they won't run the same software, except that you can run Metro apps in the Win 8 Metro screen, but they don't store data the same way. Or, as Paul Thurrott has so helpfully put it:

quote:

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Microsoft makes such a solution, in its SkyDrive desktop application for Windows. This application is completely different from the SkyDrive (mobile, Metro-style) app that ships as part of Windows 8.

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(Sadly, Microsoft is confusing matters by retroactively calling everything an app. So in its terminology, the Windows desktop application is named the SkyDrive app for Windows. Honestly, it’s more of a plug-in for File Explorer than an app or application. But I will continue to refer to desktop applications as applications, in order to differentiate them from Metro-style mobile apps.)

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When you install the SkyDrive application for Windows, it creates a SkyDrive folder in your PC’s file system and then syncs the entire contents of your SkyDrive cloud storage to that location. (We’re all hoping a future update to this application will allow us to decide which parts of the cloud storage get synced, but for now it’s all or nothing.) Everything is automatically kept in sync between your PCs and the SkyDrive.com cloud storage, so you can access your files, which are always up to date, from virtually anywhere.

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You canand shouldhave both the SkyDrive app and the SkyDrive desktop application on all Windows 8 PCs.

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I'm sure your grandpa should have no problem with that. Just remind him to call Windows desktop applications that look like mobile apps "applications", and Windows Metro mobile applications that you run on the Windows desktop "apps", but that Microsoft refers to both kinds of software as "apps", even though Windows desktop applications won't run on most Windows mobile platforms. I'm sure he'll remember, aren't you?Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Aka, the one I popped off the keyboard with a screwdriver. As a gamer, I can confirm this. I like Windows 7. I don't see any benefit for me from 8.

I loaded it on a VM environment just to try it, and IMO, it is that bad. MS is trying to force a tablet interface onto the desktop and it just doesn't work that way.

Windows 7 can be configured to behave just like Windows XP. Can one do the same with Windows 8?--Percy

Im having flashbacks from Vista...I plan to continue using Win7 for gaming. For just about everything else I run a Linux virtual machine. I have no intention of migrating to Win8 unless and until there is a compelling reason to do so for gaming...and currently the reverse is true.