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Windows 8

WeeWillie

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,556
Location
UK
Type of diabetes
Treatment type
Insulin
Dislikes
Dictators who positively go out of their way to force misery, tears and fears, upon their countryman's lives.
Politicians who, in dealing with dictators, have a wishbone where a backbone should be.
Me better half gave me an unexpected surprise, a new PC with flat screen, including
an internal Hard Drive (might be old hat, but it's amazing) with Windows 8 OS.

I've been re-installing everything from the older PC to this new one and trying to accustom
myself to the OS at the same time.

I was never interested in Win 8, so I don't know anything about it however, the first thing
I noticed immediately...."No Start Menu" I'm bewildered by MS's decision to abandon it.

One positive aspect though, it's accepting an old unavailable app (2005) I use practically
every single day.

Anyway, I'd love to read any member's thoughts/experience, good or bad, of the OS.

If you have the time to comment, I'd really appreciate it.

As the saying goes...Thank you in advance.

willie.
 
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ive only played with it a little its a complete mystery to me, worse ive bought a apple mac as my work computer and oh my thats is a nightmare, this is no help at all i just wanted to moan lol, good luck with it
 
I use windows 8 at work. Its not bad but then I do still have to keep asking where to find stuff. I find if you hover the mouse in the bottom left corner it brings up the bit to click on to take you back to the home screen. Thats about my knowledge. I still miss the accessories bit you could find on the start menu,, like calculator etc, it might be there somewhere, but I haven't found it.
 
Hi Wee Willie, I,m also on win 8.1 & I had XP but it was getting old & went to it happy hunting ground now getting use to this os now .I had 8 but it offer 8.1 to down load it give a limit start menu of sort a but I must admit I like it now , only thing it will not install some of my old programmes on it
best of luck with it billchilds31
 
Click on the windows key at any time takes you back to the start menu Willie, there's some good tutorials on the net on how to get around Windows 8.
 
Used Windows 8 for a long time, never fell in love with it. It's clunky and slow, especially the apps. The lack of app choice is also astonishing. You should be able to update your machine to patch 8.1 and get the start menu back - getting rid of that was definitely the biggest mistake Microsoft ever made.

I think the only machine I genuinely enjoyed windows 8 on was a Dell XPS 12. If you have some tech-savvy friends or relatives, you can probably convince them to help you downgrade to Windows 7
 
I do IT and software development for a living so I need a real computer not one that does a bad impression of a pad or a phone.

I run Windows 8.1 but have purchased a number of cheap utilities from Stardock

Start8 - Gives you back a fully functioning Windows 7 style start bar (see below) and allows you to boot directly to the desktop totally avoiding the Metro screen
ModernMix - Allows those new Metro style apps to run in a window and not full screen
WindowBlinds8 - Gives you back the Windows 7 Aero graphics UI rather than the Windows 8 windows flat and ugly style that looks so like the style you use to have in Windows 3.1 in the early 90's!
WindowsFX5 - Again addsmore neat features to the UI experience

Once I installed them Windows 8 & 8.1 are as usable as W7 and XP were in fact I'd say it is faster than Windows 7.

 
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xyzzy said:
WindowBlinds8 - Gives you back the Windows 7 Aero graphics UI rather than the Windows 8 windows flat and ugly style that looks so like the style you use to have in Windows 3.1 in the early 90's!
Click to expand...
Is there no way to patch the uxtheme.dll file on Win8? I never tried doing that but it's a much less resource intensive way of changing your theme. First thing I ever do on a fresh Win7 install is patch that dll. Used to use Windowblinds but found that it was nibbling away at my RAM like there was no tomorrow
 

I tried various freeware libraries that did just that but they were all pretty unstable and msoft kept killing them off every time you did a Windows update as they treated the libraries as malicious content.

WindowBlinds8 is only taking 500K of RAM on my machine but I agree its an overkill just to get aero back but its the only way I've found so far.
 
Ah bloody Microsoft. I remember having that issue on XP too back in the day. My computer liked to chkdsk all the time and flag up any system files that had been changed then reset them back to the defaults, so I'd have to patch the uxtheme.dll every time I booted!
 
Folks, I'm delighted with all your replys, Thank you.

I intended to reply more fully but 02:15 has come around so quickly.

My apologies, I'll need to come back.

Again a (huge) thank you for your extremely informative and helpful posts.

CUL8R.... as they say.

willie.
 
I have a new Dell 17" lappy waiting for me to start working with, but without the usual start menu I could not even find out how to shut it down. In the end I resorted to hitting the actual start-up button and it shut down instantly.
Since then I have been back using this old but thoroughly reliable Dell 6400 lappy running XP, which I still think works exceedingly well for me.
I only bought the new Dell becuase once April arrives the old XP wont be supported any longer with security updates :cry:
 
Was never a fan of Win8 and don't think I ever will be one. Setting it all up like how a smartphone looks (with the apps) was a bit wonky imo. I even read an article today on yahoo news that they are working on Windows9. Bonkers.
 
It's such a shame they won't be supporting XP anymore. It's probably the Windows OS I see used most often, followed by 7. I feel especially bad for small businesses that will need to spend money on getting their systems updated.

BradClark said:
Was never a fan of Win8 and don't think I ever will be one. Setting it all up like how a smartphone looks (with the apps) was a bit wonky imo. I even read an article today on yahoo news that they are working on Windows9. Bonkers.
Click to expand...
I think the intention with Win8 was to make it more accessible for people who use all-in-one PCs with touchscreens, or use tablets. It does work remarkably well if you use it on a touch screen.

Let's just hope that Microsoft follow their pattern of good windows, bad windows, good windows, bad windows.

 
I'd agree 100% on your list of good and bad microsoft operating systems-I'm sticking with windows 7 for now.
 
For starters Windows 8 was built on Windows 7, with most of the latter being upgradable to the former with a paid software.
Microsoft's nod to the tablet market really, a touch screen experience if you will.
They are already alpha testing Windows 9 and are said to have learnt from the mistakes offered into 8 (Vista anyone?)
As others have said here and as Microsoft will address next time- The traditional start menu/screen will probably return.

Sent from the Diabetes Forum App
 
Hi again,

xyzzy, funnily enough I just came across IObit's "Start Menu 8" today.
http://www.iobit.com/iobitstartmenu8.phpI
I don't know how long they'll they'll allow me to use it, but it feels soooo good.
It comes with their own free "Advanced System Care 7" app but I didn't install it.
I've used it before and discovered a few niggly problems after I used it a couple
of times.

Anyway, a good selection of views and advice on Windows 8.
I understand the points made and can identify with some of them, the others will
help me for future reference if I stay with 8, I can't quite make up my mind.
I could easily remove Win 8 and install Win 7.
I do have to admit though, 8 does feel a bit faster than 7 however, I'd put that down
to me using a new PC

Mentioning Windows 7, I've plugged in an external partitioned slave drive to the new
PC containing many folders in the second partition that I use constantly.
The first partition has Windows 7 installed.
At the moment, when I attempt install an App in Win 8 it automatically chooses to install
it in the Win 7 external slave drive, but I'm a bit concerned about that, so choose to install
in the Win 8 OS instead.
Anyone know if I were to use Win 7 in the slave drive, would it conflict with Win 8?

Giverny, I feel it's more than "such a shame that they (MS) are ending support for XP.
They're abandoning them, leaving them no alternative but to upgrade.
It's a form of blackmail really.
Typical multi-billion dollar company being disloyal to their customers of many many years.
It's not as if XP was going to shrivel up and die on its own, they're deliberately killing it off, and
as we all know there's thousands still using and are content with XP, let alone Win 7 which
will be the next OS to be abandoned by MS.
Dirty rotten scoundrels.
Just one little side issue, brilliant as they are, the guys at MS, when designing new
OS systems appear to assume all their customers are as (I'll use your words)
tech-savvy, as themselves. Most annoying. lol.


With a "Respectogram"


Once again, thank you....

Andy.
Lenny.
chalkie.
noblehead.
Giverny.
xyzzy.
Hobs.BradClark
Paul.
MCMLXXIII.


Best wishes to you all.
willie.
 
WeeWillie said:
It comes with their own free "Advanced System Care 7" app but I didn't install it.
Click to expand...
Yeah usually it's best to stay away from the System Care or System Repair software (especially when they come bundled with other software, since that tends to be a paid download placement). More often than not, they cause more problems than they solve.
 
Giverny said:
I

Let's just hope that Microsoft follow their pattern of good windows, bad windows, good windows, bad windows.
Click to expand...

You missed one. What about the legendary pile of poo that was Windows ME.

It isn't just a good / bad pattern imho. The bad ones are where the marketing department has done the design and the good one where the techies have designed it or in recent years fixed the marketeers balls ups.
 
Eurgh yes, ME was vile. I tend to class 2000 and ME as the same OS since they came out in the same year and were both as cack as each other!

I do agree that the techies need to design operating systems, not the marketers. They should well... stick to marketing the finished product
 
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