Windows 8.1

prowla

RumRat wrote: »

Your opinion and you are entitled to it. Agreed it's Marmite, but it's not a bad OS. I think everyone should try it (Properly) before they just blindly stick Classic shell on it.
After reading some of the negative feedback on the net people have often been surprised how quickly they get used to it.
On a PC/Laptop, once on the desktop, you rarely need to go off it, should you not want to.

Fanks.

I've previously detailed the drab interface which looks like Windows 2, the inconsistent behaviour, the confusing flat colours which are hard on the eye, artifacts from touch interface appearing on a non-touch screen, the removal of aero glass effects, the clashing style guides where it is a mish-mash of previous Windows dialogs/Metro styles/varying font sizes, and so-on.

Classic Shell kind of puts back some functionality, and Microsoft accept that was a mistake, as 10 reinstates the Start menu. I tried Window Blinds for the Aero Glass effects, but I really don't want to be paying for add-ons to put things back.

Who knows, maybe they will put some effort into making Windows 10 more consistent and pleasant to use, but if not it will continue to fall further behind other vendors' offerings.

spud17

When folk tell me that Windows 8 is rubbish, I ask what other operating systems they are familiar with.

The answer is generally, I've only used XP, or else, they don't know what they do use.
Often they then back-pedal, saying " It's only what I read on <insert your own site>"

Personally I don't have a problem with it, but haven't yet felt the need to move up from Win 7.

I am trying out Win 10 on a 2006 laptop and an old desktop.
MS do seem to have listened to the criticism, and so far it's looking pretty good.

warehouse

Windows 8 is great on a touch screen but utterly dire on anything else. Windows 7 or Windows 10 is the way to go.

Bollotom

I'm with Rummers. I put on 8.0 and was a bit disappointed and ran Classic Shell which improved 8.0 a lot. Then 8.1 improved it more and brought back the 'Start' button. Once I got to grips with it it was good. Now I'm running Windows 10 and it's a vast improvement. I've had all the OSs from Dr Dos to Windows 3,6,6.1,7, Vista, 8, 8.1 and now 10. I've also had Unix and various Linux distros but I think 10 will be the canine sphericals when it's ready to roll out. But isn't the exciting part of home computing handling the problems? :cool:

spud17

Bollotom wrote: »

I've also had Unix and various Linux distros but I think 10 will be the canine sphericals when it's ready to roll out. But isn't the exciting part of home computing handling the problems? :cool:

Agree, Win 10 looks very good.
I have it on 2 machines, and keep thinking I'm missing something obvious because it all seems to work so well.

The older one is a Dell Optiplex 210L, 2.8GHz P4 and 1.25GB ram, installed no problem, tidied up the installation using a couple of the Dell XP drivers using compatibility mode.

prowla

spud17 wrote: »

When folk tell me that Windows 8 is rubbish, I ask what other operating systems they are familiar with.

The answer is generally, I've only used XP, or else, they don't know what they do use.
Often they then back-pedal, saying " It's only what I read on <insert your own site>"

Personally I don't have a problem with it, but haven't yet felt the need to move up from Win 7.

I am trying out Win 10 on a 2006 laptop and an old desktop.
MS do seem to have listened to the criticism, and so far it's looking pretty good.

OS X (various versions, currently 10.10)
Ubuntu Linux (various versions, currently 1404)
Solaris
Red Hat Linux
Various other systems since the 1980s.
Windows (desktop) since version 2.
Windows Server.
IOS on an iPad, iPod and iPhone.
Blackberry phones & Playbook.
Windows phone & CE.

Windows 10 seems to be an incremental improvement over 8, but the interface style is still being dictated by the capabilities of mobile phones - modern PCs have high quality graphics processors which have the power to support transparency, shading, and so-on, but Microsoft decided that the desktop will only be allowed to do things which can be achieved on a low-end mobile phone.

I haven't checked out yet whether Windows 10 still gives you the silly full-screen single-tasking Metro apps when you are expecting a windowed one (eg. running IE from a fresh install).

spud17

prowla wrote: »

OS X (various versions, currently 10.10)
Ubuntu Linux (various versions, currently 1404)
Solaris
Red Hat Linux
Various other systems since the 1980s.
Windows (desktop) since version 2.
Windows Server.
IOS on an iPad, iPod and iPhone.
Blackberry phones & Playbook.
Windows phone & CE.

I did say,

The answer is generally, I've only used XP, or else, they don't know what they do use.

Jivesinger

prowla wrote: »

I haven't checked out yet whether Windows 10 still gives you the silly full-screen single-tasking Metro apps when you are expecting a windowed one (eg. running IE from a fresh install).

They appear in a sensible window. I imagine they multi-task but haven't checked that. (Of course IE can be run in a Desktop in Windows 8, but you need to ignore or change the tile/icon they put on the start screen.)

I have an idea that if you had a touchscreen tablet, the Metro apps in W10 might behave differently - it seems Microsoft haven't finished those bits (like the Metro version of IE) yet.

prowla

spud17 wrote: »

I did say,

Just letting you know... :-)

prowla

Jivesinger wrote: »

They appear in a sensible window. I imagine they multi-task but haven't checked that. (Of course IE can be run in a Desktop in Windows 8, but you need to ignore or change the tile/icon they put on the start screen.)

I have an idea that if you had a touchscreen tablet, the Metro apps in W10 might behave differently - it seems Microsoft haven't finished those bits (like the Metro version of IE) yet.

They probably re-introduced DOS Box, to run the metro apps in...