[QUOTE=voxsmart;2705100]This is a stupid question slightly off topic.
Why are you guys wanting to load Windows 8/8.1 in to your rigs. I can understand Dee and others need to evaluate it for our benefit, but why are the rest of you using it? I find Windows 7 perfect for the job and I wouldn’t spend the time or money on an OS that as far as I’m concerned is inferior. and just released by Microsoft far too early just to make money.
Yes I have tried 8 and 8.1. It seems Microsoft has removed everything I like to use every day. I’ll stick with 7 until I have no choice.[/QUOTE]
There are some things in Windows 8.1 that Windows 7 does not yet have. Most Windows 8.1 users here already have copies of Windows 7 as well. I can always go back to Windows 7 or have a separate PC running Windows 7 only. Having a Windows 8.1 PC in addition does not hurt even if for tests and for fun. For work, I use Windows 7 primarily, but that’s mainly because of compatibility and compatibility problems always arise with every new major version of Windows OS.
I don’t miss “Start” button. What I do miss is some kind of tools for organizing and managing files and applications that were as simple-structured and intutive and customizable as NCD and MDIR of MS-DOS days. I have no objection to Windows marketplace introduced to Windows PC. What I do want is the kind of proliferation and the rates of growth that happened during the early years of iOS. Windows became to dominant OS not because Bill Gates was greedier than Steve Jobs and some former IBM CEO’s, but because there were more inexpensive applications and contents for MS-DOS and Windows than any other competing operating system. That’s where Google and Apple will compete against Microsoft. Others like Samsung and Sony and Linux will all try, again and again, but only Google and Apple have been able to maintain the kind of growth rates and the mass in ecosystems and profits. Borland, Lotus Development, Yahoo, Netscape, IBM, AT&T, Xerox, Word Perfect, Novell, Oracle, Sun, Nokia, RIM, Mitsubishi, NEC… and thousands of others have once or twice tried.
Which of the two OS between Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 to use is not much relevant if you have no wish to use future generations of touch screen and other new sorts of hardware along with Microsoft proprietary ecosystem based on Windows marketplace apps and contents. Windows 7 has always been there. Windows 8 was designed when Microsoft’s share price and profits seemed threatened by Apple since PC sales was not just slowing down, but actually diminishing every year, and Apple and Google were trying to merge PC and mobile. Nobody would want to use word processors available in iPhone in 2013 to replace Word for Windows. But that was exactly what Apple and Google wanted to make happen. Microsoft has so far made little progress. But none out of the thousands wanting the same pie made much progress in the same time span. PCs running Windows 8.1 of today is so much more useful than some of the fourth- or fifth-generation Samsung smartphones running Windows Mobile 6. It’ll become hundreds of times more useful someday.
Lack of touch panels and lack of killer apps at the Windows marketplace do not bother me too much. I can wait 10 years for that.
Anyway, I still can’t see why MyCE should have a Windows 8 forum when there are like 499,900 Windows 7 admirers and 100 Windows 8.0/8.1 betatesters. This has been the least productive, the least contributive place on MyCE. I understand and respect people’s need to spam the net world with negative messages to attack certain targets, but I feel it does more harm to MyCE than to Microsoft.