This is not my month.

[Spec8472]

Actually, you'll see a quite significant improvement in performance by switching to SSDs, pretty much regardless of what your use-case is.

Hmmm... I knew about how they worked and why they were different but did not know that you can notice difference in simple programs !! Honestly speaking, I have a pretty new system with a HDD and will not be switching to a SSD any time soon just to check it out. But what about the failure rates and other such problems ? I have read on several tech blogs about their draw backs. Or are the websites exaggerating ?

Oh, sure - failure rates are still not pretty on SSDs. But they're getting better.
As long as you stick to good reputable brands you should be fine.

But, y'know - you've got backups, right? The kind that operate completely automated and only complain if something went wrong?
If the answer to either of those is 'no' - then relative reliabilities between SSD and spinning rust are irrelevant.

[Grommley]

Personally, I have been using Windows 8 for a while now and 8.1 more recently. Yes things have been moved around a bit, but they are still there. I really like 8.1. They put back the thing that most people were missing, a button to access the start menu (screen). I have also found the Windows 8 and 8.1 run faster and better than any previous version of Windows so far. As an IT professional, I actually recommend moving to Windows 8.1. Using an old outdated operating system such as Windows XP now is asking for trouble. There will be no further security patches for that OS and this leaves you at higher risk for security breaches. Not everyone is that concerned about security, but would you go on holidays and leave your house unlocked? The reason for staying up to date is to stay current with new security protocols and to take advantage of new features that have been added into the new hardware. Refusing to move forward is silly in my opinion, on the level of saying a horse and carriage is a better option than a car because it is less likely to have a mechanical problem....

As for an alternative to MS Office, OpenOffice and similar derivatives like LibreOffice often can fill your needs. OpenOffice was owned by Oracle for a while (my brother worked on the documentation team when it was owned by Sun, sold to Oracle and subsequently sold off before he also moved on). I believe it is now in the hands of the Apache group. I still go back to it from time to time, but due to other available options I have, not as much as in the past. I do not know what the current releases are like. I have heard that LibreOffice is a good alternative though.

[bdrosen]

For those who really like XP, but need to upgrade to windows 7 or 8, you should look at windows XP mode - http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... ws-xp-mode . This is basically something Microsoft offers for free to be able to run XP under virtualization in the newer windows. It was primarily intended for Windows 7, but should also be able to get working under Windows 8 http://lifehacker.com/5965889/how-to-ru ... -windows-8

Personally, I don't see why anyone would ever want to use XP over Windows 7 unless there is a rare legacy application that can't be run under Windows 7. I've found that Windows 7 is far more stable, faster, leaks less memory and is more secure than XP. I think it also better supports removable devices as well as other peripherals and has much more built in like remote desktop. I think that Windows 8 is likely to be even better, minus the UI changes, which I know can be worked around and which sound like they are less of an issue in 8.1 .

As for 64 bit vs 32 bit OS, I would definitely recommend the 64 bit OS as others have mentioned, since it can handle much more RAM for the OS and I don't think Windows is functional with less than 8 Gigs these days and I personally prefer 16 GB. Plus, I think it handles larger file systems better. Most apps don't need to be 64 bit unless they require a large amount of memory like databases or java programs such as eclipse. I have found that some web browsers do better under 64 bits if you have a lot of windows or tabs open though, particularly if the pages have a lot of javascript in them.

[bdrosen]

Forget to mention also that the newer Windows versions handle multi core, hyper threading and all the newer CPU features like virtualization support properly and I don't think XP does. Plus if you want to support something like RAID you are also probably better off with a newer version.

64 bit OS will also be pretty much a requirement if you want to run virtualization software like virtual box or vmware.

[Spec8472]

My dislike of Windows 8 goes far beyond just having a start button icon.

I believe that they're trying to make one UI work for too many devices. Metro works great on tablets and mobiles where the primary interaction is via touch.
On desktops - they're primarily keyboard/mouse. Even when you have a touch screen on the desktop, people don't spend their entire time holding their arms out in front of them - Its just too uncomfortable.

Then there's this whole divide between 'Desktop' apps and 'Metro' apps. You can only install Metro apps via the Windows Store, and Metro apps don't play well with others - their UI model is almost completely dependant upon touch, and getting out (unless you hit the Windows key) is difficult to impossible without a touch-screen.
Take a look at what they've done with IE - there's two (well, three) versions now - Metro, and Desktop. One supports plugins (desktop), the other doesn't. You can't switch between the two modes if you did need an extension. Last I looked any favorites, history and open tabs don't sync between them (although that might've been fixed).

Plus, they've made Metro a whole walled garden thing - the only way to get in there is via the Windows store. Want to build a small app that you can distribute to your friends which won't pass Store certs (say it only works with a local ISP or something)? No can do, unless they install dev tools.

I'm a dev, and work with an office full of geeks. How many Windows 8 machines are there? Three, total - One sysadmin, one for the Mobile dev, and one for the Mobile QA guy. Everyone else, Windows 7.

The end result is that I've told family and friends that if they install Windows 8, or get a machine with it - that I can't and won't help them. Windows 7 is the only version of Windows I'll support.

I'm certainly not alone - Windows 8 has a worse take-up rate than Vista.

[sOmeone]

My office is running completly on Windows 8. It is not too bad when you get used to it, however, I do avoid metro mode like the plauge.

[bdrosen]

Plus, they've made Metro a whole walled garden thing - the only way to get in there is via the Windows store. Want to build a small app that you can distribute to your friends which won't pass Store certs (say it only works with a local ISP or something)? No can do, unless they install dev tools.

By dev tools do you mean PowerShell and appx module, as that seems to be all you need to sideload an app from what I can tell. Not sure if this is something that would be installed standard or not.

Not that this really surprises me much. Most of the mobile OSes do something similar (iOS, Android) and you likely need to jailbreak the device in order to install non approved apps, and the process of jailbreaking is usually more complicated than merely side loading a metro app, so this would not bother me too much. Plus you do still have the option of creating standard desktop applications. Personally, I would expect that Metro apps and desktop apps to be enough different that this should not be an obstacle. (Metro apps would be primarily a touch interface and desktop apps would not. Desktop apps are more flexible) If my computer is not a mobile device, I would also expect that I would never use Metro at all if I can avoid it. Hopefully the tricks listed here http://www.zdnet.com/the-metro-haters-g ... 000018398/ still would be relevant for this.

[Spec8472]

Most of the mobile OSes do something similar (iOS, Android) and you likely need to jailbreak the device

Actually, you don't. Android, it's a one-tick option to enable "third party" sources.
iOS any developer can enter your iOS device's serial number for apps that haven't yet been certified and it gets presented to you in the AppStore. (TestFlight and similar software make this process a little easier for iOS). There's no time restrictions on this. Not as free as Android, but easier.

...in any case, this is a Desktop OS, not a Mobile one. The apps are not the same, you'll note this by the wonderful distinction between Metro (Desktop) and Windows Mobile apps. (ProTip: The available libraries on each seem to have been chosen at random, and are not consistent).


...oh, and while we're talking about standard Desktop applications. That's all fine, unless you made the mistake of getting a Windows RT device. Oh, it still has the desktop, but since it's ARM based, nope - no desktop apps.


As for sideloading, iirc you can't install non-Microsoft-Signed apps without Dev tools installed on your machine. The only way to get them signed is via Microsoft.
Enterprises can get their in-house apps signed outside the store, but it's an expensive process.

As for the article, they still don't get it: "We restored the start button." Congratulations, now bring the actual start menu back - and kill off that Metro Start behemoth. (Yes, I know it's coming back, sort of, in Windows 9.)

Oh, and it reminded me of the other 'fun' part to Windows 8: Open a picture on the desktop and... bang, it's back to a Metro app to view it. And getting out is a pain in the arse unless you know where the secret clicky spots are (or press the start key).
Several other things are like this too. Trying to configure a Wireless network is a pain in the arse. Instead of Right click the wireless icon and Properties it's this dance through Metro-i-fied settings panels. Setting up a printer was also (apparently) stupidly hard - I don't have one, but someone I know said they spent 10-15 minutes trying to figure that shit out before giving up, pulling out a USB stick and copying the file to a Mac, plugging it into the mac, and hitting print.

Then there's the other bits of fun where if you move your mouse onto the side (say, to scroll down a maximised window or to click a button over there) - you have to ensure you don't trigger the 'hot areas' and bring up charms or running processes or something. It's excruciatingly difficult on a trackpad not to trigger those accidentally.

[Greymist]

@Spec8472 - Amusingly, from my perspective, I think the people who can use Windows 8 the best are the geeks who know all the keyboard shortcuts, and how to change the default behaviours.

I use Windows 8 at work (it was imposed on me/I work at a consultancy so we're expected to have the latest and greatest), and I've got used to it, but only after changing all file extensions to open in non-metro apps. I've also only installed one metro app which I use for notifications before....using a browser to actually look at the thing I was notified about.

All this though isn't the right way to do it, and I could see people who can't be bothered customizing it hating it. I also completely understand your comment about the walled garden and lack of interoperability between metro and desktop apps.

One final comment, the 8.1 upgrade was a HUGE improvement, it means that search actually works properly, and you can find things by typing in fairly standard phrases into the searchbox/start menu.

Edit: To try and regain geek points, I use an Android phone...

[Andygal]

I've heard somewhere that Microsoft manages to bungle every 2nd version of Windows. Seems to have been the case for a while anyway. Vista was shit, and Win 8 is shit. Hopefully the pattern will continue and Win 9 will be decent.

And I am using LibreOffice currently, seems to work at least as well as OpenOffice.

[physicalard]

Its been that way for a long time. 3.1 good, 4.0 aka 95 not very good, 4.1 aka 98 good, 4.2 aka Windows ME Terrible, 5.0 and 5.1 aka Windows 2000 and XP Great, 6 aka Vista terrible, 7 great, 8 terrible. Lets hope it continues. ME and Vista were nearly unusable, 95 and 8 are merely poorly designed and full of bugs.

[bdrosen]

Its been that way for a long time. 3.1 good, 4.0 aka 95 not very good, 4.1 aka 98 good, 4.2 aka Windows ME Terrible, 5.0 and 5.1 aka Windows 2000 and XP Great, 6 aka Vista terrible, 7 great, 8 terrible. Lets hope it continues. ME and Vista were nearly unusable, 95 and 8 are merely poorly designed and full of bugs.

While I agree with the general ideas, you missed a few - Window for Workgroups - not so popular but introduced networking and was sort of a bridge to windows 95. Windows NT - very popular for servers, but not for consumers and was the basis for 2000, etc .

I also disagree with you about 95. Windows 95 was very good when compared with 3.1 as it introduced Win32, virtual memory and true multi tasking, even though later versions of Windows were less buggy. Although Windows 98 greatly improved things like hardware drivers, USB support, FAT32, I don't know that I would consider 98 great when compared to 95 as it was mostly incremental improvements over 95 and in some ways it seemed more prone to crash until 98 SE came out which was much more stable (Windows 98 SE could be considered good, but should be considered a different version than the original 98). However, Windows 2000 came out only a few months after 98 SE, and I think that in some ways it helped to overshadow 98 SE since it had all of the benefits of NT as well as those of Windows 98 SE, making it almost a prototype for XP.

Personally, I think it is much more interesting to look at the time between the releases as well as the size of the releases. Over time, the releases have generally taken longer and longer to come out and the releases have included much more. I would think it would be interesting to graph how long it took for a version following a great release to be released vs one following a horrible one. (For example Win98 was over three years after 95, but 98 SE was more like six months after 98. XP was less than a year after ME, but Vista was over 5 years after XP. WIndows 7 was about 2 years after Vista)

[Kendog]

The big reason for the delay of Vista following XP was because there were several high profile security threats/breaches that appeared in XP and as a result, Microsoft basically pulled most people off of Vista to fix the security holes in XP.

[Spec8472]

People bitch about Windows Vista, but personally I liked it.

The main reason for slowness was because Microsoft finally pulled the rug out from device manufacturers, in particular the Graphics Cards manufacturers. Traditionally device manufacturers had a terrible reputation for producing drivers which caused a huge majority of the crashes in Windows. Their terrible software was running at a particularly low level which allowed them to cheat and do bad things to get better performance.

Vista came along and yanked their access to the low-levels of the OS from them to which the driver manufacturers screamed blue murder. Of course, Vista was the first time that a graphics card driver crash didn't mean kicking you out of Windows - instead, the screen blanked for a moment, and came back sans-Aero effect with a pretty message saying "Your graphics card drivers are buggy, we restarted them again for you". NVidia and ATI were particularly not happy about that one and helped fuel the "Vista sucks" campaign.

There were some slow bits to Vista, sure, but that was gone with SP1.

[Fawks]

People bitch about Windows Vista, but personally I liked it.
.....
There were some slow bits to Vista, sure, but that was gone with SP1.

I switched to Vista 64 early on because I actually had 8GB of ram in my system and wanted to use an OS that actually had device drivers (which XP64 did not). It crashed on me a lot more than XP did, but being able to utilize the extra ram made my system much faster overall.

Windows 7 is the rock of Gibraltar compared to Vista 64, Windows ME, Windows 95... I have no desire to even try 8 unless MS returns the full desktop/start button.