A few things that should be mentioned to friends/family:
Windows 8 comes with a new “feature” on that prevents you from running having full admin rights to your own computer, even when you use an admin account with UAC turned off. After searching Google, I eventually found a hack hidden deep within the registry, which gives you back control of your OS. Another new UAC “feature” I should mention, is that you absolutely can not use any Metro apps without it. Not even basic apps, such as Windows Mail, the built-in weather app, or even the built-in picture viewer . Users, therefore, are forced to either be locked out of there own system (a power user’s worst nightmare), or find a suitable replacement for each app.
On top of that, the “old” pre-installed games (solitaire, minesweeper, ect.) have been removed. Microsoft was “kind” enough to replace them with the Microsoft Solitaire Collection, which, guess what, is a Metro app. If you have an older Beta, there’s an X-Box live version, which has a bad reputation, and was removed from later pre-release vesrions. And don’t think you can just copy the games from a Windows 7 source, as that would be too easy. Microsoft doesn’t want you to play these games on a newer OS than they were intended to be installed on. But, Google was there to rescue me, by finding a simple instructions for someone like me (who has no knowledge of writing/modding software whatsoever) to “fix” these games (with a simple hex editor) to work on 8.
And am I really the only one here who h8 the new task manager? Seriously, I installed three different third-party managers, then, having been unsatisfied with all three, hacked the NTFS security settings on the new taskmgr.exe file to rename/replace it with the old one. Also, the new MSConfig doesn’t allow users to modify the startup items. Instead, it tells the users to use the (new) task manager, so if you deleted the old taskmgr.exe, you’ll need to download something like Starter to change startup items.
And to think, we are forced to do all of this, just to make 8 behave as good as the previous OS. Don’t get me wrong. Once you get past these ridiculous barriers, things do start running smoothly. I, myself don’t use Windows Mail, as I prefer to use Thunderbird. And, thankfully, Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player both work fine with or without UAC. It’s particularly important that IE work without UAC since, without it, downloading another browser becomes an absolutely ridiculous chore (like everything else I just mentioned). Windows Media Player makes for a good replacement for the built-in “Music” app (which uses Metro). I should also mention that regular, non-Metro generally behave just like they would on a previous OS.
Also, I do love 8’s speed improvements over 7. Having a complete anti-malware solution right out of the box is nice, too. As a Start Menu replacement, Metro could be worse. Plus, there seems to be more and more ways to replace or compliment it with the old Start Menu.
However, because of all these flaws, I would recommend to my friends/family to wait for Windows 6.3 (which Microsoft will deceitfully call “Windows 9”). Hopefully, Microsoft will learn from there errors. However, I’m betting that by the time they do, desktop computers will be dead, and people will have moved on to mobile platforms, which will probably continue to be dominated by IOS and Android. Too bad.
