windows 8

prowla

someonesgottosayit wrote: »

Added a start button, got rid of the UI and win8 looks exactly like win7 now.

Does your Windows 8 have translucent window borders?

prowla

Johnmcl7 wrote: »

You don't have to use any of that if you don't want to, the machine can boot straight into the desktop mode and you can completely ignore the tile mode. Windows 8 is not worse than Vista (although I never had any problems with a variety of Vista installs, the main problem was the perception of it rather than the OS itself), people seem to be getting hung up on the modern UI and completely ignoring the fairly wide range of improvements it makes particularly in regards to performance improvements.

John

How do you boot straight into desktop mode and avoid using the start screen?

Removing features to make it run on lower powered systems and added in a clunky retro/kiddified front-end is certainly an interesting use of the word "modern"

NiftyDigits

prowla wrote: »

Does your Windows 8 have translucent window borders?

It's possible to tweak it so that it does.

custardy

prowla wrote: »

How do you boot straight into desktop mode and avoid using the start screen?

Removing features to make it run on lower powered systems and added in a clunky retro/kiddified front-end is certainly an interesting use of the word "modern"

http://www.7tutorials.com/how-boot-desktop-windows-8-skip-start-screen

prowla

That avoids Windows starting up with the start screen, but you still have to go there to run programs (or else find them and put shortcuts to them on your desktop), and you have to do the pull-from-the-right thing to shut down.

So, in the context of the comment "You don't have to use any of that if you don't want to, the machine can boot straight into the desktop mode and you can completely ignore the tile mode.", you can have a half-way house.

Also, the linked page suggests that one of the methods might cause genuine windows authentication to fail.

closed

sunrise27 wrote: »

i bought an external hard drive earlier in the year so i didn't lose photos etc

have you still got more than one copy in different places, if you've moved all data to an external hard drive, it could fail leaving you with nothing

the avast bsod mentions I could find were fixed a while ago

http://www.avast.com/pr-first-free-antivirus-certified-for-windows-8-avast

custardy

prowla wrote: »

That avoids Windows starting up with the start screen, but you still have to go there to run programs (or else find them and put shortcuts to them on your desktop), and you have to do the pull-from-the-right thing to shut down.

So, in the context of the comment "You don't have to use any of that if you don't want to, the machine can boot straight into the desktop mode and you can completely ignore the tile mode.", you can have a half-way house.

Also, the linked page suggests that one of the methods might cause genuine windows authentication to fail.

wheres the issue?
click the start button and go to the program/app
W7 you have the small program list before you view them all
I still have my computer etc on my desktop
you can still have shortcuts on the desktop

As for having to pull to the right for shut down. and?

spud17

With Windows 7, I've always used Classic Shell, it works equally well with Win 8.

prowla

custardy wrote: »

wheres the issue?
click the start button and go to the program/app
W7 you have the small program list before you view them all
I still have my computer etc on my desktop
you can still have shortcuts on the desktop

As for having to pull to the right for shut down. and?

Well, the point is that there are three (or maybe four) different user interfaces, actuated in different ways and presented in different styles. That is just plain bad UI design (or lack of).

To run a program...

Windows 7: click on the Windows logo (Start), the start menu pops up, either the program is there if recently used, or one or two pull-right menus away. The rest of the display does not change and all running applications remain visible.

Windows 8: click on the far left of the taskbar (not labelled), the computer screen repaints with the base set of tablets, use the scroll bar along the bottom of the screen to go to the next page (as your chosen program will probably not be on the home page, click on the program and get returned to the desktop screen. (Or to be put into a full-screen tablet-style app such as the PDF viewer - and how the heck do you cut & paste content from that into a Word document?)

How is that better, or even as good?

Now, to shut down:

Windows 7: click on the Windows logo (Start), the start menu pops up, click on the "Shut Down" button.

Windows 8: move the mouse pointer to the right edge of the screen, try it a couple of times just to see if you've not done it in the right place, a panel of huge flat text moves in from the right (I run a 1920x1080 display), click the thing that looks like a power symbol (a circle with a vertical line through the top half).

Windows 8 makes you change windows UI styles and perform extra actions to achieve the same thing.

RobTang

prowla wrote: »

To run a program...

Actually I just pin all the common programs and have icons on the desktop for the less common ones, no change from windows 7 to 8

prowla wrote: »

Now, to shut down:

My pc as this cool piece of hardware called a power button, it works great on both windows 7 and 8 in exactly the same way.


Oh fyi the full screen pdf reader app you can just drag select and then copy (ctrl-c, or right click n copy) then paste to wherever, you know like every other windows applications since the dawn of windows.

I have previously commented on why I think the new start menu is better...