Computer Question

My computer's video card has gone to the service shop in the sky. I'm temporarily running on the motherboard's built-in video, which lacks a lot.

It's time for a new desktop machine.

I'm debating whether I should upgrade to Windows 8.1 or stick with Windows 7. How good is Windows 8.1? How easy to use? How bug free?

I'd really appreciate feedback from those of you using it.

Thanks in advance.

Roger

Have you had a chance to try out that new Windows UI?

Is your desktop PC a 4-10" touchscreen phone or tablet? If not, the new UI has no place on it. Whoever inside Microsoft thought it was a good idea to force it on PC users should be drawn and quartered.

That said, the core of Win8 is actually good. They just ruin it with the UI. If you install a $5 program called Start8, disable hot corners while in the desktop, and associate all of your media file types with desktop programs, its not bad.

Bottom line:

If you're buying a pre-built PC, don't avoid Win8 since it can modified to work like Win7.
If you're building your own and already have a valid Win7 license, I wouldn't upgrade.

Win 8.1 is a solid OS that has a few speed advantages over Win 7. Metro is useless and annoying for me, but I have my machine set up such that I never see it. I boot right to desktop and use an application called StartIsBack+ that gives me an exact copy of the Win 7 start button. I also get rid of the Charms popup and open files using desktop applications instead of the Metro apps.

IMO by doing the above I have a setup that is a slight improvement over my Win 7 computer. The only thing I'm missing (and why I won't upgrade my other PC from Win 7) is XP Virtual Machine. It's not available for Win 8, while I feel is a huge mistake for MS since many corporations are only now getting rid of XP.

Hopefully with the next version of Windows OS MS will give up on trying to push people using a desktop towards Metro, which IMO is just a way for them to try to make money by selling apps. On a tablet or convertible laptop touch makes a lot more sense.

ReFS and storage spaces are great features of W8.1, I may upgrade because of it. I wish I could try it first. I like W7 just fine and I'm not a big fan of the W8 interface, but if you can make W8.1 work like W7 then I could probably live with it. I'd love to hear thoughts though.

tim wrote in post #16564363
ReFS and storage spaces are great features of W8.1, I may upgrade because of it. I wish I could try it first. I like W7 just fine and I'm not a big fan of the W8 interface, but if you can make W8.1 work like W7 then I could probably live with it. I'd love to hear thoughts though.

Download Oracle VirtualBox and an evaluation copy of Win8 and give it a try.

Good idea, I have a spare SSD so I could install onto that. I'd like to hear ideas about how to make it work like W7 if anyone has them

tim wrote in post #16564480
Good idea, I have a spare SSD so I could install onto that. I'd like to hear ideas about how to make it work like W7 if anyone has them

It'll run faster from an SSD, but you can put the VM on any local disk. I just installed a Win8.1 64 bit VM and its using about 12GB of disk space.

The short version for living with Win8: Install a $5 program called Start8, disable hot corners while in the desktop, and associate all of your media file types with desktop programs.

mike_d wrote in post #16564497
It'll run faster from an SSD, but you can put the VM on any local disk. I just installed a Win8.1 64 bit VM and its using about 12GB of disk space.

The short version for living with Win8: Install a $5 program called Start8, disable hot corners while in the desktop, and associate all of your media file types with desktop programs.

Thanks Mike, good tips. I'd just take all my drives out and install W8.1 on the spare SSD, rather than using virtualisation.

mike_d wrote in post #16564497
It'll run faster from an SSD, but you can put the VM on any local disk. I just installed a Win8.1 64 bit VM and its using about 12GB of disk space.

The short version for living with Win8: Install a $5 program called Start8, disable hot corners while in the desktop, and associate all of your media file types with desktop programs.

Do you folks mean programs *on* the desktop, or just not Metro programs or applets or gadgets, or whatever they are?

Hen3Ry wrote in post #16565219
Do you folks mean programs *on* the desktop, or just not Metro programs or applets or gadgets, or whatever they are?

By "desktop app" I mean traditional windowed applications that have been around for 20+ years, as opposed to crappy metro apps.

This applies to various file types, but I'll use jpg as an example.

Starting with Win8, double clicking a jpg takes you to a tablet-land Photos program. This is because Microsoft now thinks everyone is using a 4-10" phone or tablet. Your entire screen is now dedicated to looking at that one picture. There's no taskbar or X to close. You have to hit Win+D to get back to the desktop but since most people don't know any shortcut keys, they'll struggle to find their way back to where they were.

I carry mp3, gif, jpg, png, tif, avi, m2t, m4v, and wmv files on my flash drive so when I set up a new Win8 PC for someone, I can manually associate these file types with either the Windows Photo Viewer (thankfully they didn't actually remove it from Win8) or Windows Media Player. Installing Acrobat Reader or any other PDF viewer will take the association for PDF files away from Win8's useless "reader" app.