Anyone here try to install Windows 8.1? I downloaded and installed it, all I got after logging into my account was a totally blank desktop with a start menu in the corner that didn't do anything. I literally could not access anything on my computer, no way to access windows explorer, the control panel, command prompt. Basically it fucked it up so bad that I had to do a total factory restore. I have no idea what caused this....but think twice before installing this piece of shit.
Why haven't people figured out the system? Every other version of windows is good. Windows ME was bad, XP was good, Vista sucked, Windows 7 was good, and now Windows 8 is horrible. I'm sure the next iteration will be fine.
I'll think twice before buying a Windows computer again if they keep going in this direction. I've avoided Macs in the past because the hardware is over-priced, and you can't run many games on it. But the new Windows 8 interface is terrible. Out of the box, you have to do quite a bit of setup to get the desktop to work like an actual desktop interface rather than a tablet (sorry MS, nobody wants to buy your god damn tablets, you can't be #1 at everything) they should have just stuck with their desktop OS instead of trying to turn PCs into tablets.
Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 are both perfectly fine. They never crash, they run fast, and they do what you want. The only trick is you have to download Classic Shell, which turns off all the bullshit tablet crap and makes it behave like Windows 7. Once you do that, I swear you'll never notice that a bunch of MBA's at Microsoft circle-jerked all over a perfectly good OS. Classic Shell is the perfect cum mop--you'll never notice a drop of their vile effluence.
The problem is, if you want a new computer you have to get one with Windows 8, unless you buy Windows 7 separately, but it's an extra $100. Honestly, windows 8 is not actually worse than Windows 7, in terms of the technical aspect, it's just that the interface royally sucks and you have to do a lot of work to get the desktop set up to work like Windows 7. I have no idea what happened with my upgrade. Now it did force me to create a microsoft live account to associate with my windows account. I didn't have one, so had to click an option to create one on the fly. It then sends me an email with my security code, and asks me to enter it. Umm...I can't check my email right now because I can't fucking get off this install screen! Anyway, I've never had a windows update fuck up so bad, but a lot of people have been having problems.
I installed classic shell, and a few days later, my PC would not wake up from hibernate mode...I rebooted and some OS files had gotten corrupt, Not sure if that's a coincidence but I shy'd away from classic shell after that. So this is actually my 2nd time restoring this damn thing.
From the ZDNET article: These are words I never thought I'd be writing. After more than two decades of being a dedicated Windows power user, someone who over that time has installed and supported countless systems running versions of Windows spanning from 3.0 to 8.1, I've now all but given up on the platform. It might sound odd, but writing these words actually makes me sad. I devoted my 10,000 hours to mastering the platform, plus thousands more, and got the point where there wasn't a file, registry entry, or command line trick that I wasn't familiar with. I knew how to make Windows work. But now, other than for test systems and virtual machines, I carry out my day-to-day work on a variety of OS X, iOS and Android systems. I barely giving my Windows PC systems a second glance. My primary work system is a MacBook Pro, and in the ten months I've had it it's flawlessly done everything I've asked of it, from run Microsoft Word to render 4K video. I've lost count of the number of notebooks I've owned over the years, but this MacBook Pro is, by far, the most reliable system I've owned, and I put part of that down to the fact that it doesn’t run Windows.
I feel what that guys says. Problem for me is that I own literally thousands of dollars of Windows software that I can't bring myself to walk away from. I'm on the upgrade loop, where to cut ties would just be brutal. That position of dominance is the only reason Microsoft makes money. But life is short and at some time I'll have to bite the bullet. I've lost faith in Microsoft. If you aren't in the same boat as me, run, run away to Android (if you just want browsing/basic spreadsheets/word processing) or Mac (if you are a more advanced user).
What I did was install Parallels and windows in that. That way I was able to run my mission critical Windows software on the Mac. It didn't take long to realize how little of that Windows software I actually needed. OSX' Office suite, for example, is now $free and can read and write M$ Office format files. And OSX' programs are way easier to use, IMO, but just as powerful if not more so. Where I worked, many people were bringing in their personal Mac laptops and using them on the company Windows network. There wasn't any incompatibility problem for them. If you're spending big money on software like Quick Books, they now have an online version that you may want to check out. If you built your WWW site on .NET, you have my condolences.
For me it's Adobe CS6 (Illustrator/Photoshop/Dreamweaver/InDesign/etc). Plus the Office stuff. Plus some proprietary stuff we used to write our cookbook software. I probably could walk away from Windows, really, if I just devoted some energy to it.
CS6 runs on OSX; costs like $500. That's Adobe for you. Proprietary stuff really should be done with WWW technologies these days. The OS shouldn't matter ... Ultimately, native office software is going to go away. With Google and Apple controlling the browser and proprietary cloud back ends, they can make the two work together outside of the standards. That is, Google Chrome connected to Google Apps or Apple's Safari connected to iCloud.
I'm curious when Microsoft will eventually become extinct. They just don't get it. The users are lifetime programers that have used the platform for many business application software. They were able to allow programers to design special programs to suit their model. Now they are trying to work into the "apple type" platform, which they are just terrible at. The OpenSource capability for the iOS and Android OS has completely cut into what made Windows a great business OS. Someone there needs to be fired
iOS is not open source. You have to go through Apple's closed source App Store to get an app onto a device.
A company I work with decided to move from a gmail-based system to MS Outlook about 5 months ago. It is perhaps the dumbest upper management decision I've witnessed in the past decade. Downgraded pretty much every aspect of the email system and forced everybody to use a new system with absolutely no discernible upside. Literally none. Microsoft succeeds out of lethargy (that's me) and stupidity (this other company).
The only issue with moving to cloud based apps, even gmail in browsers, is the company all of a sudden uses a lot more bandwidth to access the cloud. That can cost to upgrade I haven't run virus protection software or done a malware scan on my macs. Ever. How much $$$ of your time is wasted on that sort of thing? That's the tip of the iceberg, too!
The market is undergoing a sea change and Microsoft doesn't appear to be adapting very well to this shift in the industry. Chances are fifty-fifty they become a dinosaur in the next ten years as more and more companies realize that they don't need MS to get their work done. The DOI (where I work) has already made a huge switch to Google's cloud based services (email for now with more coming) encouraging people to move away from MS office applications.
