Windows 8...OS of merde...or clue to the World of Tomorrow??

I just got my wife, The Bear, a new laptop. 64bit Dual Core, 4gigs memory and a 750 gig hard drive (but...strangely...no DVD reader/writer). And it's a little hummer. $229 semolians! Pretty soon they'll be payin us to just take em. Only thing, it's got Windows 8 on it and me no understand or likey. But I'm learning. I finally got it all setup and got all the crapware off it. But it was no "cakewalk" (see what I did there?). My biggest problem is I can't figure how to easily "get back to where I once belonged". Or find commonplace files or folders or controls. But, of course, I'm a dimbulb. Or am I??

Ya..it's got that. And you can actually load a "classic" desktop view. But getting around is h e double hockey sticks.

http://www.classicshell.net/
 
You're welcome.

Here ya go ol pal.........
 

 
 
 
Also, ask your ol pal google how to make yourself an off button (tile) for start screen, turn off the charms bar and all will be well.

Mucho helpful Paulo, ol pal!

Glyn Barnes
+1 for classic shell. However there are some potential advantages with the Win 8 start screen such as building groups of programs, my main beef is the tiles are big and ugly. I wish there was an option to reduce them to icon size.
 
There is a lot of crap "apps" bundled with it as opposed to "programs" and once you get rid of them things improve. There too much stuff pulling things off the internet all the time. I never understood why you need a special "app" for, say, Facebook when it works perfectly well in your favourite web browser.
 
Other nastys are things like the PDF reader app, install Acrobat or Foxit or whatever and associate PDFs with that.
 
The OS itself is very good indeed.
 
 

The 8.1 update gives you the option to do this. They can be 1/4 the size of the 8.0 small size. Haven't been brave enough to install it yet because of the stories about it being v e r y  s l o w compared to 8.0. The tile size doesn't bother me at all and I could go as far as to say I ike it, but then I don't have masses of programmes to sift through. I can see how it might be an issue for those that do, but IMHO the old menu wasn't great for this either and as you say the grouping thing is a big plus.
 
Agree with your other points, first thing I did was get rid of the social disease crap. I think the idea behind the apps is that you can divide the screen up and have more than one on screen at a time (and maybe because it forces the use of IE ?). Again, not a facility that I want to use, but seeing as I don't have to, then I guess there's no harm in having the ability to do so if that's your thing.

Glyn Barnes ...
The OS itself is very good indeed.
...

The 32-bit version was crap, and had networking issues with losing the name resolution information and not connecting to the other computers on your networking. The folks at Microsoft would NOT check it, or try to fix it, and they were not helping the support folks in India that tried like hell and heaven! In the end, after a complaint to the State Attorney General (it's online, too!), I gave up on their bullmerde and some lady trying to soft-step the whole thing, and not doing a thing except wasting time on emails. I mentioned that to the lawyer and he smiled, and agreed that she was just ... doing emails!
 
I gave up, and installed the 64-bit version and have had no issues whatsoever. And this is the Windows 8 PRO version, btw, not the Home variety, which is far worse, since it is designed for offices and professionals. It kinda tells you that Microsoft did not test this and did not take notes and fix what was wrong.
 
One of these days, Microsoft is going to take it in the shorts, just like Apple will, when their stock finally falls off the California coast into the sea, and they are shown to be the biggest rip off there is. Both of these are in dire need of a serious humble experience to learn something about success.

Yeah, I've been watching these developments with a lot of interest.  Is this finally some serious market competition to the iPad?  It's got iPad beat on price, keyboard and USB connectivity (and I'm not sure, but I've heard that MS Office is standard issue for the basic price).  I've been very tempted to buy one for my wife, just to keep her out of the computer room for hours a day doing emails.
 
I wonder if the amount of crapware depends on who you buy it from.

dmbaer
...
 I wonder if the amount of crapware depends on who you buy it from.
...

A bit different. It's the same thing. It's that if Microsoft or Norton do it, it's OK, but if someone else does it, it's considered "malware" or whatever other name for that cancer we can give it!
 
In the end, this is about Microsoft (and any others) getting money for their code, and it not being "legal" to be used without a license.

Moshkiae

dmbaer
...
 I wonder if the amount of crapware depends on who you buy it from.
...

 
It's that if Microsoft or Norton do it, it's OK, but if someone else does it, it's considered "malware" or whatever other name for that cancer we can give it!

Norton? No way in my book.  The worst virus I ever had was Norton Internet Security.  Took a massive effort to get it off my machine.  No Norton for me, ever again.

Bert Guy
Yo Yoro,
 
Call me an atavistic Luddite if you will, but my DAW still has XP on it. And I like it just fine. (I could be missing out on all kinds of cool functionalities, but I doubt it.) My general purpose laptop I'm on right now is Win7. And I like it just fine for that.
 
My wife had a VISTA machine a while back which I think we left in a dumpster in Louisiana 4.5 years ago.
 
One thing  that I have learned from hard experience (sad to say more than once): never allow upgrades to WINDOWs on a fully functioning DAW!
 
Cheers,
Bert

I happen to quite like W8 on my laptop, but totally agree about XP. I only installed W7 on my DAW PC because of X3. If it would have run on XP I wouldn't have bothered. I also never really liked Vista - it seemed to have a lot of quirks, would often say that things that I had just installed didn't exist and wouldn't even run some software thar was pre-installed on the machine.

dmbaer
...
Norton? No way in my book.  The worst virus I ever had was Norton Internet Security.  Took a massive effort to get it off my machine.  No Norton for me, ever again.

I won't touch Norton or recommend it. They used to create some serious problems for technical support, like close down your internet connection and not tell anyone, and guess where the customers were calling to get support.
 
Not Norton!

Let me amend something: I will allow neither upgrades nor updates to WINDOWs in a functioning DAW.
 
Bert

I had Windows 7, moved to Win 8, and now on 8.1...

Piece of Cake(walk) (see what I did there)

All I do is when it starts I immediately hit the "Desktop" Icon and I'm good to go...
No need for anything else.  File Manager, Internet are in my taskbar...

If I need to launch a program, I go to the start menu...other then that I stay in Desktop view...
again...no need for an additional program.  Once you get it..it's pretty simple.  The problem is it
is "different" out of the gate, and that's where the confusion comes in.  Really, it's the same
on the sub level with new interface.  It is snappier and has been EXTREMELY stable for me,
more so then any previous version of Windows, and I beta tested all of them...

Granted, the DAW and hardware companies are usually late to the table, but it's been solid.
I even have my XP Version of EWQL Symphonic Orchestra (NATIVE-INSTRUMETS VERSION) installed
and it runs flawlessly, both stand alone and as VST 32 bit.

I like it...