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Win 8 .... who needs it..?
advid
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..all I want from ANY os is just to switch on my laptop or desktop and 'quickly' boot up and get into my required software... ( eMAIL / Web / Word / Excel / Powerpoint/ Photohop ect ect) and get on with what I need to do...
I really doesn't matter what my opening screen is like - tiles / icons or even a good old text menu - just click and go and get on with what I need to do....
Is all this colourful 'easy to use' stuff that Win 8 gives us actually what people who 'use' their pc's for work (and occasional pleasure) really want ?
I'm still quite happy with XP on a couple of desktop PC's....and my laptops run Win 7...
I really doesn't matter what my opening screen is like - tiles / icons or even a good old text menu - just click and go and get on with what I need to do....
Is all this colourful 'easy to use' stuff that Win 8 gives us actually what people who 'use' their pc's for work (and occasional pleasure) really want ?
I'm still quite happy with XP on a couple of desktop PC's....and my laptops run Win 7...
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I will stick with Windows 7, I have had it installed on my desktop since it came out and to be honest I have never had any problems with it and it does everything I need.
Being that Windows 8 is the fastest booting version of Windows to date, it sounds like you need it.
It certainly shuts down faster but I'm not convinced to boots up faster than Windows 7. If anything it seems a bit slower for me.
Not sure I'd bother if it wasn't touchscreen though.
Definitely boots way faster than Windows 7 on my laptop.
And to the OP, you can have a link to all your favourite programs right on the Start screen, so when you boot in, all you have to do is press 1 button to launch it. Simples.
..i'm not really bashing Win 8 ...as I said - all I want is for an OS to boot and run quickly...then use my required software...
Maybe - as someone mentioned ... Win 8 may be good for this...!
Why not put a 'basic' (boot up) OS onto an SD card - plug in and go straight to the software ?
Don't worry about all the stuff it being for developers, it's still a fully functional version of Windows 8 that can be activated
for 90 days. Download it, install it on a spare hard drive or partition, install all your usual apps, and use it as your main
operating system for while and see how you like it ... or not ... however the case maybe!
Even add a traditional Start menu if you're the new Start Screen doesn't float yer boat!
Nor me, anyway how many machines shut down completely these days? My desktop is always in sleep mode, I may do a complete restart once a week if i remember.
My laptop also used to be in sleep mode, now it can't as the battery have gone and will not hold any power what so ever.
So start and shut down speed is not really relevant these days.
To get the full benefit of improved boot times, you'll need a PC with an SSD and UEFI.
I know another operating system that boots up really fast
Or, a Hackintosh version of Mac OS X running on a standard PC!
One thing did puzzle me watching the BBC review of Windows 8 on Click, the two parts of the system (the tablet mode and desktop mode) don't seem to share info, as they showed with the web browser, that I find odd, does anyone know if that's correct?
Also no start button, I've just got so used to Windows XP I even installed an app on my Windows 7 machine to give me the XP style menus, I just like them.
I remain to be convinced that outside of the surface tablet Windows 8 is really worth bothering with, having said that the firm I work for may well be looking at something like the surface tablet as we do a lot of work on the road where the tablet mode is more useful but also then want to work traditionally at a desk.
Like I say my concern is apps being able to share data between the two interfaces.
45 seconds here, of which 27 seconds is the BIOS/POST screens and it has to get through a dual boot screen too, as well as fire up Classic Shell and Kaspersky. That's from pressing the power on button to firing up Firefox on the desktop and using it online.
A newer faster BIOS should speed it up more, mine's 4 or 5 years old. PC is a 4 core Athlon 965, with 3 physical hard disk drives inside.
Windows 8 seems to learn what it needs based on your usage and pre-prepare startup files, because when you first use it it takes about 30 seconds longer but that soon comes down to the 45 second area (BIOS + 18 s). Shutdown to power off takes about 15s.
Either of those will do nicely, though I use the second OS you mentioned Haven't used the first one yet.
Bah, its in the slow lane compared to my Xfce
For users who use their PC for business I think should have the option to boot straight into desktop mode. This will make it more enterprise friendly.
Not just businses but anyone. i know a a few game players and they would want the desktop right away, I do video editing, I would want the desktop right away, a mate of mine uses his Pc for multi-track audio editing, he would want to go to the desktop right away.
I wonder how many people will buy a windows 8 computer and go no further than the Modern UI, that would then by a waste of money and power.
The one problem with windows 8 is that the two interfaces are separate, it is as if they took windows 7, just got rid of the start menu and added some tile UI on the front end.
Can any software from the desktop pass info to a Modern UI app?
Oh, as for who needs it, no one needs it, they are not going to die without it.
They're certainly correct regarding the web browser. I have Chrome installed on the preview, which seems to load a different profile depending on whether it's launched from the Start screen or the desktop. I was hoping it was only doing that on the preview version, obviously not!
Other that that weirdness, I like W8 a lot. I run a small business (just me and OH), and am thinking of installing it on my business PC. I think the Start screen will be useful once there's a good range of business-relevant apps, and being able to have the desktop on one screen and the start screen on another will be very useful (my main PC is a laptop extended with a large screen).
Good idea but note that once the 90 days are up you cannot buy it to continue to use it.
For years OSX trounced Windows for boot-up times. However running Windows 8 on a PC with UEFI and an SSD, it makes OSX's boot up look slow!
Literally, my boot sequences goes UEFI screen, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it flash of the Windows 8 logo and then I'm at the logon screen. That's about five seconds - with most of that being the length it takes to get past UEFI. A cold boot takes about ten seconds (that'd about fifteen seconds to do a restart - five to shut down, ten to cold boot).
It's shockingly fast.
I'm sick of them messing about with stuff.
My old laptop was full so I bought a new one in the summer and it was Windows 7 - but I couldn't use Outlook.
That was a real pain.
Do you mean Office Outlook, or Outlook Express and the new version called Windows Live Mail?
Either way, there's no problem with Windows 7
You an use Outlook on Windows 7 or 8. Unless its a really old version of Outlook, that is. Outlook 2003 onwards definitely works on Windows 7, as I've installed it for lots of people. I think prior versions are not compatible, though.
Not sure about how far compatibility goes back with Windows 8, but Outlook 2010 and 2013 both work, as I've used both with it.