Windows 8 - best to pass it up: review | Hacker News Reader

Windows 8 - best to pass it up: review

sfgate.com

5 pointsseminatore9 comments

His only big complaints were that upgrading didn't go smoothly, in part because he was running Norton Antivirus (seriously?) and turning the computer off was different?

I can agree that Windows 8 isn't necessarily going to be everyone's favorite thing, but this was a terrible review.

I've been turning off my computer by pressing its power button for ages. I rarely found the need to dig up the Shutdown button (which was a little unpredictable in Windows 7 anyway, altering between meanings depending on the system state).

Nope, I disagree with the review. Although the interface looks like you have to use it with a touch screen, I haven't had any problems while using it with mouse and touchpad. The boot speed is outstanding, outlook and web service integration is superb and all in all it is a good operating system. Maybe not your cup of tea, but all in all it is good.

Yeah I don't think the interface requires a touch screen at all, or is even beneficial for it, at least on a desktop. I spent maybe 1 or 2 seconds combined in the 'start screen' simply cause its easy to use it to launch random stuff by hitting Windows key then typing a few letters then hit enter.

It's definitely worth upgrading since task manager stuff and a lot of the file system things were dramatically improved. Quite a good experience once I learned the Windows+X key combination.

The same complaints can be had for any operating system. I don't know of any OS upgrade I've had where it's run perfectly every time I used it. Windows 7 has crashed numerous times. Xubuntu and Ubuntu crashed less, but still enough times to get annoying.

And I think I had to log off to be able to shut down my laptop running Ubuntu for some time. I couldn't find any Shut Down button. So this review is pretty bad if this is as far in-depth as he goes.

I've already gotten rid of the Metro start menu[1] (this is a dual screen desktop), and I've been very pleased with the results. Windows 8 is unsurprisingly superior at working out of the box with drivers, which I've enjoyed. I can't say it's worth that much of an upgrade though. I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to buy it.

[1] = http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

Trying to run a newly released OS on a 3 year old machine? Hey, let's try running Windows 8 on a Commodore 64, I'm sure some people still have those around. Sure Microsoft has made it affordable but they also have a minimum required hardware spec. Ignore it if you like but don't expect it to work on out of date equipment. That's just generally bad advice.

I'm running Windows 8 on a three year old machine (which wasn't even top of the line when I bought it) and it's incredibly smooth. The secret, a $100 SSD.

I do not understand why people upgrade OSes very quickly.

There are always bumps for the first few months.

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