chrissmeuk

This times a million. As a home worker, I spend over 2000 hours a year on an RDP connection. Wonderful tool.

Excellent. Thanks for pointing this out!

Thanks didn't know that (can't say I looked). Will have a play.

Sorry this is a new account but I'm not a new HN reader. Shill argument here we come.

To be honest I'm not enamoured with windows 8.1. It's just marginally better for me than windows 7 was and I'm trying to spread some help for those who will be picking it up today who will no doubt expect it to work a bit like windows 7.

If I was a shill, surely I'd be saying "metro is fucking awesome!" and other such things which it clearly isn't based on the fact I want rid of it.

I've got 15 years of UNIX and Linux experience as well and would rather have my head in an old Sun workstation than this shit, but it's not where the world is for me unfortunately.

I did a fresh install from MSDN iso onto a disk cleaned with diskpart from a USB stick (see [1]). I didn't do an upgrade. I wouldn't ever upgrade Windows manually after a screw up going from Vista to 7.

To do a full clean install on my Lenovo T400 with Samsung 840 Pro SSD off a fairly old Sandisk Cruzer took less than 10 minutes.

[1] http://wudt.codeplex.com/

No - winkey+X (the actual X key) throws up a new menu. See below:

http://i.imgur.com/Tmq3iWp.png

Been using this for a few days already since it was released to MSDN. Definitely better than Windows 8.0 and even Windows 7.

If you don't like Metro, it's pretty easy to get rid of now but not entirely (it occasionally pokes you in the eye). My setup guide:

1. Use group policy editor to get rid of lock screen.

2. Set IE to open tiles on desktop.

3. Set start menu to display apps only and turn off hot corners. Then set to boot to desktop.

4. Uninstall all the metro apps that come with it.

You will still get the "start screen" but in apps view and the search stuff but to be honest it's pretty good. I rarely see it though as everything I use is pinned to the taskbar.

Use Windows+X as your new start menu afterwards - it rocks. In fact I wish earlier versions of windows had that!

Reasons to upgrade: faster boot, power management seems more stable, Hyper-V, explorer UI enhancements, nicer file copying, new task manager, better Powershell integration.

PuTTY and Firefox still work which is the most important thing for me though...

Edit: just to add I haven't installed a start menu replacement or metro killer.

Edit 2: I haven't figured out backups yet. Windows 7 backup was trivial with an external disk.

Edit 3: to bypass microsoft account login/creation on installation (I did this on Pro edition):

1. When it asks you to sign in, click "create a microsoft account".

2. There is a link at the bottom to "use a local account" on the page this sends you to.

Good point. I do however feel that the government departments that have failed miserably on projects will start looking at more successful projects for inspiration. We'll be a few more £billion down by then but things will improve.

HMRC's systems are pretty good these days as well (I just did my tax return online). Relatively smooth process for a large Java behemoth.

I beg to differ. The UK government (finally) has got its act together in this department. We're seeing the NHS's core "Spine" system being rewritten using open source software (riak/erlang/ubuntu + others) and we have the excellent http://gov.uk/ as well.

That whitepaper is for management and purchasing. The security patches are for the poor sysops who have to look after the mess left behind by the former.

Every large commercial software company is just as bad. It was only a few years ago that Microsoft were doing the same, until they realised they could monetize open source software themselves[1] as well and decided to stop the badmouthing.

[1] through azure and buying into major open source ecosystems to gain mindshare.