Windows 8.. Bag of Fail

My 3 month old Laptop is driving me INSANE! Windows 8 is the biggest pile of fail. I HATE it. Everytime I touch the touchpad some wierd crap happens where strange things fly out of the borders of the screen. I'm not sure how Microsoft managed to ruin the idea of browsing photos I've saved in directories on my computer but.. They did. Who the hell thought it's a good idea to install some strange PDF/document viewer that HAS NO PRINT COMMAND and NEVER SHUTS OFF! And then to shut the damn thing off I literally have to navigate to the stupid AP screen.. RIght click.. click on my user name.. Log out.. and then find the power symbol and finally I can shut it off. Also you wanna find the control panel.. good luck again you have to go to the App screen, right click, go to all apps, scroll all the way to the right and there it is.. finally because you know who would want to setup things on their laptop thats insane. Don't worry though it's really easy to search for cat pictures on Bing.

The ONLY thing it does that is nice is when it's locked touching any key brings up the password window. That is all everything else related to Windows 8 is horrible.

That said as near as I can tell through the limited use I've been able to beat out of the machine the ~$290 HP laptop is quite nice. Seems quick, decent graphics/screen, nice keyboard with number pad, good weight and good battery life for a ~$300 laptop. Well other than the HP update app that's on it.. Damn you factory installed malware. I'm sure I could shut it off.. IF I could figure out how to find the place to do it on Windows 8..

Rant off..

So the old 'every other OS from Windows' thing still hold true. (I like Win7 and WinXP)

This might help:

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/software-and-web-apps/how-to-make-windows-8-look-like-windows-7-50009546/

http://www.classicshell.net/

Somebody at MS has their head up their butt. Design an operating system that is optimized for touch screens and tablets realizing that touch screens and tables are what 5% of the market... brilliant!

Oh yeah I like all of the other windows.. XP and 7 was nice and I really didn't mind the Vista computer I had at work before Windows 7. I wasn't a "power" user and we had a policy requireing sutdown everyday, and startup was "on the clock" so Vista never gave me issues.

Yeah dude. Xbox now uses the stupid Windows 8 style theme. It is unnecessarily difficult to navigate. This is how I knew I didn't want it on either of the computers I bought in the last year.

This is about normal. 95 was great. ME sucked. 98 was ok. 2000 was great. XP was pretty great. Vista sucked*. 7 is awesome. Apparently no one likes 8.

*I have Vista on my home PC, and when I use XP and 7 every day at work I am reminded how much I dislike Vista.

aircooled wrote: EVERYBODY at MS has ALWAYS had their heads up their butts SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME.

FTFY!

My brother spent the first 30 minutes he had his Black Friday HP Win 8 laptop open making sure he didn't have to bother with the Metro interface ever again.

RossD wrote: So the old 'every other OS from Windows' thing still hold true. (I like Win7 and WinXP)

Yep. M$ was supposedly even offering free downgrades to 7 for people that hate 8.

I have managed to work my way out of having to deal with Metro except at startup. Once you get to the desktop and set your file preferences, it pretty much acts like Win7, but faster and with better security. I can live with it.

But yeah, that default photo viewer that you can't easily turn off once it's running? The worst. I installed Picasa Viewer and set that to be my default viewer for jpegs and such, and I'm fine now.

Honestly, I don't think I know anyone that actually likes what MS does. I think most are like me, we put up with it because the switching cost is too high to go with Linux or OS X or whatever.

Tom_Spangler wrote: I have managed to work my way out of having to deal with Metro except at startup....

Please elaborate.

I do not have to deal with Win 8, but someone I know is getting a new laptop and I want to be able to help them out with getting around the CF parts of Win 8.

Tom_Spangler wrote: Honestly, I don't think I know anyone that actually likes what MS does. I think most are like me, we put up with it because the switching cost is too high to go with Linux or OS X or whatever.

It doesn't cost money, just effort, and it's a 1-time investment that leads to big savings! (in both money and effort).

Only my gaming PC runs Windows and I think when the software needs upgrading I'll switch to running games on Wine.

Free downgrades to 7? Hmm, I might have to look into that. My father-in-law got a new desktop for Christmas, and it's like My First Computer on that thing. A dumbed-down smartphone OS on a 19" screen. All he does is email and websurfing, and they even screwed that up by hiding "favorites" as much as possible.

Of course, the other computer in the family is a Vista laptop. I love being the family IT guy post-purchase...

I have very few problems with Windows 8. Installing Start8 should be considered mandatory. Not free, but it's only $5. It gives back the traditional start menu and, perhaps more importantly, gives you control over Metro. I have mine set to show me the older start menu when I tap the left Windows key and the new start screen when I press the right Windows key. There are additional options for keyboards with only a single Windows key, like laptops.

My only nits are I don't like that they removed Aero, and older keyboard shortcuts in Windows Explorer no longer work.

As for finding Control Panel (or anything else), hit the Windows key to bring up the start screen, then just type 'control.' A link to Control Panel shows up instantly. Takes three seconds to get to it. This method of searching was introduced in Windows 7. To shut down, press Ctrl+Alt+Del and you'll see the power icon in the bottom right corner.

I hated 8 at first also. Then I read a tutorial and realized it seems ok for a touchscreen device, so I bought my wife a new laptop. It seems ok if you remember to use her laptop like a touchscreen.

I really think Microsoft was trying to one-up Apple, and failed miserably. I cannot see the business world ever adopting 8.

And yeah, if you disable metro its pretty much like previous versions.

GameboyRMH wrote: It doesn't cost money, just effort, and it's a 1-time investment that leads to big savings! (in both money and effort).

Yes, but time and effort are costs, too. Especially when you are as lazy as I am.

I think part of it is that I'm old and set in my ways. I've been using Windows since 3.0, and I've come to know it's quirks and weirdness. I just don't have the patience to re-learn that on another system. I've played around with Ubuntu some, and it's a fine, well-thought-out system, and if I was starting from scratch, I'd probably use it. But I'm not.

Then there's the legacy software issue. EVERYTHING has a Windows version. No other OS can say that.

As far as avoiding Metro, for me it basically came down to setting my default software types. When I first loaded Win8, it wanted to use it's awful picture viewer, it's video player, etc. Once I changed that, the only time I see Metro is when I first boot up. Which, by the way, is lightning-fast on my system with Win8 and an SSD. Like, 5 seconds. And I can start apps up as soon as I hit the desktop and they open right away.

Loved XP on my desktop, hate Vista on my laptop. Daughter has 7, love it, works great. But at least I've learned to turn off Vista's most irritating features which appears to be unpossible with 8. I will do the 'every other' and wait for whatever replaces 8 to buy another laptop.

Windows 8.1 aka Windows Blue is rumored to have the option to bypass metro on boot. As mentioned, Classicshell does a great impersonation of your favorite version of windows start menu (Nt/2000/xp/vista/7). Personally, I don't get the hate on 8. I've had it running for close to a year now (counting Beta & RC versions).

I find it very stable and quicker to find programs and files (hit win key and start typing name).

There is a few neat features like copying files will show the bandwidth usage, etc

petegossett wrote: I hated 8 at first also. Then I read a tutorial and realized it seems ok for a touchscreen device, so I bought my wife a new laptop. It seems ok if you remember to use her laptop like a touchscreen.

This - I've been using a Surface RT for a few months now and a lot of the UI works reasonably well.

OTOH I have to get Win8 on my desktop here (need to run some software that's Win8-only) and I'm not looking forward to that too much.

Grtechguy wrote: There is a few neat features like copying files will show the bandwidth usage, etc

As a data geek, I like that one a lot, actually.

I'm loving my windows8.

In reply to Grtechguy:

If you like the ability to pull up a program from the start menu by hitting a special key or key combo and typing the name, try this;

http://www.launchy.net/

I love this thing.

I don't remember where I saw the article but it said PC sales were down 20+% since the release of windows 8.

Here's one: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/10/windows-8-sales_n_3055157.html

This guy says no: http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/17/technology/windows-8-pc-sales/index.html

People have been fairly quick blaming the decline on PC sales on Windows 8. I'm not exactly a big Win8 fan but I'm not sure that this is really the underlying reason. We have two combining trends at the moment, one being the increased availability of tablet devices that provide enough computing power for a lot of people who would have bought a PC before, plus the fact that there isn't a lot of performance gain to be had in upgrading hardware like there was up to 4-5 years ago.

The latter is mainly because in order to take advantage of new performance features, the software will have to be updated to make use of said features, which is a slow process so the software is lagging behind. Plus, for most software, there simply isn't that much of a performance gain to be had anymore anyway. Heck, I'm writing this on a machine that's fast enough for my developer needs, yet it is five years old.

BoxheadTim wrote: People have been fairly quick blaming the decline on PC sales on Windows 8. I'm not exactly a big Win8 fan but I'm not sure that this is really the underlying reason. We have two combining trends at the moment, one being the increased availability of tablet devices that provide enough computing power for a lot of people who would have bought a PC before, plus the fact that there isn't a lot of performance gain to be had in upgrading hardware like there was up to 4-5 years ago. The latter is mainly because in order to take advantage of new performance features, the software will have to be updated to make use of said features, which is a slow process so the software is lagging behind. Plus, for most software, there simply isn't that much of a performance gain to be had anymore anyway. Heck, I'm writing this on a machine that's fast enough for my developer needs, yet it is five years old.

I have noticed this, too. I don't remember when I built this current computer, but it was in the early stages of the i7 processor. I still haven't had the need to overclock/replace it.

I've run into graphics issues, not enough ramm, not enough hard drive space, but that's all easily cured without a new computer. I don't even have 6x sata or a top of the line video card and I still don't have a problem running new games.