Why I use Windows 8

http://owened.co.nz/why-i-switched-to-windows-8

by namzo • 14 years ago

24 55 14 years ago

owened.co.nz

barbs• 14 years ago

I wonder if he's thought of using Classic Shell to get rid of the metro interface: http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

s_henry_paulson4• 14 years ago

I've used 8 for about a month now, and I don't miss the start menu at all.

It's just a lot of un-necessary clutter. If you want to start a program, if click start and type the first letters of the application.. done.

If you want to dig through a giant list of apps, that option is still available, but it's much nicer that it's not the default.

I think the things like the Classic Shell will help the elderly and those resistant to change, but for any power users, the new interface is an improvement.

As far as metro, I never use it either, so I don't see it as an issue.

owenw5• 14 years ago

Hi! I wrote this, and I've not heard of that before now... I'll check it out. It looks useful to me :)

madprops• 14 years ago

I've had those combined file operations on nautilus for quite some time, the pause button is nice though

eyko• 14 years ago

Seems like he's apologising for using Windows 8, and that we don't really care.

eckyptang8• 14 years ago

He's pretty much spot on.

My encounters with Windows 8 so far have lead to literally zero interaction with Metro other than for searching for stuff and starting programs for the first time which it's quite good at.

Win+X is my start menu.

s_henry_paulson4• 14 years ago

This is super nice. Thanks!

With all of these options, I have to wonder why they wouldn't include a link to Network Connections.

It's the one thing that I seem to always need to change, but something that is always like 8 clicks to get to it.

eckyptang8• 14 years ago

Just hit start -> type connections.

seanalltogether• 14 years ago

And this is by far my biggest complaint. They've poured all this effort into something that people are actively trying to avoid. I had so much hope for the store...

owenw5• 14 years ago

I didn't even know about Win+X (I knew you could right click the "start" tile, but this pretty awesome. Thank you :)

quickie• 14 years ago

the file copy/move/delete dialog combination was something that BeOS did 10 years ago. I always why Windows never picked that up...

eckyptang8• 14 years ago

I agree. It's one of the easiest wins as well and one I've campaigned about for years.

scrrr• 14 years ago

Yes, good points, and good for Microsoft. But a sleeping Mac wakes up in about 2 seconds. And OSX had the copy dialog nailed down before. Not sure about multi-monitor support. I really wish Microsoft would make a real competitor to OSX in terms of perceived quality.

archangel_one• 14 years ago

Well, I assume a sleeping Windows machine wakes faster than it takes to boot from scratch too. You don't have to shut Windows down completely every time you're finished with it.

eckyptang8• 14 years ago

My Lenovo T61 does the same and has done since I bought it a long time ago.

There is perceived quality and actual quality. OSX has perceived quality, but little actual quality. You'll experience that if you have to deal with projectors, other monitors and hotdesking regularly - it's utterly frustrating. Windows - seriously just plug it in and it works.

When you see a Windows "workstation class" machine (Dell Precision) with an uptime of over a year on a trading desk with 6x 1600x1200 monitors off the back of two Matrox cards, you'll understand what I mean. They just don't go wrong.

nicholassmith• 14 years ago

Weird, every time I've used projectors and monitors with a Mac I've never had any problems, but had significant issues getting a multi-monitor setup to work. Granted, this was way back in the XP SP2 days so maybe the situation is improved.

Adirael• 14 years ago

I've never had troubles with multi-monitor setups on a macbook, I've been using OS X since 10.4. I've pluged it to multiple proyectors, screens, TVs... It always recognized everything and the image was shown instantly.

Same happens with an Apple workstation (Mac Pro, even if it's been VERY neglected lately).

m0skit03• 14 years ago

"Windows - seriously just plug it in and it works." - biggest marketing lie ever. Do you seriously believe this?

arethuza• 14 years ago

"uptime of over a year"

So how do they apply updates?

UnoriginalGuy4• 14 years ago

Windows 8 boots faster because Windows 8 lies to you when you "Shutdown." Windows 8 actually hibernates instead of shutting down for real; and you can get the same effect by enabling hibernation on Windows 7 (or disabling "Fast startup" on Windows 8).

I'm also very surprised it took 20 second to boot in Windows 7 with an SSD. I have an SSD (an M4 specifically, on a SATA-3 connection) and Windows 7 never took 20 seconds to boot (with a UEFI "bios"). Closer to 10~12 seconds I would say.

I've been running 8 now for weeks and my biggest complaints are, firstly that they removed tons of "desktop" software (e.g. Picture Viewer, Media Player, the Games, et al) and secondly that they removed DVD playback (and even if you purchase it, it still only works in Media Centre).

Metro is something you can ignore. I will say that most Metro apps like the built-in Mail app are just horribly bad. So bad in fact that they're beyond use in some cases. Hopefully third parties can do useful things with Metro, because right now it doesn't have many use-cases.

cabirum• 14 years ago

Photo viewer and Media Player are there. When you first open a picture or a video, Windows asks what app to use - Metro or desktop one. It can be changed later in Program Defaults.

s_henry_paulson4• 14 years ago

Regarding your biggest complaint, they did not remove "tons" of desktop software. In fact, all of the software that you mention all exists in Windows 8.

If you want to use Windows Photo Viewer or Windows Media player, just right click whatever you are trying to view, and set your default program.

josteink3• 14 years ago

Incorrect. This is provenly false. Windows 8 boots faster from a cold boot than Windows 7. It really does. The memory footprint is much smaller. The runtime environment is much more optimized and snappy.

You can tell Microsoft has cut out lots of cruft and optimized critical code-paths, especially with regard to boot.

Hibernation which you refer to is a different feature, and provides you with the same session and programs and state as you had running before, just like a normal sleep would do on a laptop, except it will survive a flat battery. It does so by persisting your entire RAM to disk for reloading on boot. This is completely different from booting which would give you a new, empty session.

So if you end up with an empty session, it's provenly not hibernating, it's booting. And boot is much, much faster.

On all system's I've had, hibarnation, designed to save time, has only caused increased latency for shutdown/sleeping/hibernation, and similar increase in boot times since not only Windows needs to load, but all that persisted state must be restored as well.

On machines with more than 4GBs of RAM this leads to horrible performance and I've permanently disabled the option for the OS to use this due to the performance issues involved.

On Windows 8 I've kept the defaults and things are just flying.

davedx2• 14 years ago

"This is provenly false"

Citation needed.

rbanffy• 14 years ago

> So if you end up with an empty session, it's provenly not hibernating, it's booting.

Not necessarily. You can hibernate the machine after the user is logged off and restart from that point.

UnoriginalGuy4• 14 years ago

Respectfully, you have no idea how Windows 8's fast startup mode works. You also don't seem to know that Fast Startup is the default (so when you hit "shutdown" it actually hibernates most of the system's state).

Essentially in Windows 8 (out of the box) if you hit "Shutdown" then it logs the user out and then "hibernates" the kernel, the registry, services, drivers, and all other "system" level processes.

The computer is then ordered to power off (just like hibernate). When you turn the machine back on, a notice appears on the screen which reads "Resuming from Hibernation" and it loads the Hibernation file into active memory.

Fast Startup is essentially Hibernation without a logged in user.

Windows 8's boot times with Fast Startup enabled is very competitive to Windows 7's boot times using Hibernation (instead of "Shutdown"). It is also very comparable too as Windows 8 doesn't truly shutdown in the traditional sense.

If you boot Windows 8 without Fast Startup enabled then the boot times are very similar to Windows 7's boot times.

As I said, Windows 8 lies to you. It isn't faster, it is just pushing Hibernation in a new deceptive way in order to appear faster.

mtgx• 14 years ago

I wonder if Windows 8 will include some behavior research by default, to see if people actually use Metro or not, and if too many ignore it, maybe change course with Windows 9.

owenw5• 14 years ago

You are correct, sir, but if you press "restart" you forgo the "fast boot" hybrid and you do a cold boot. This is talked about in the article I reference on MSDN.

P.S - Picture viewer, Media Player, etc are still there, just not default. It's a pain.

dschiptsov• 14 years ago

What antivirus software you're using?)

Achshar• 14 years ago

I am not OP but i use win 8 for my primary OS too and i don't use any AV. IIRC, win8 had some built-in virus protection. Also my usage is primarily pro and don't use thumb drives etc on my workstation. Also my internet habits and chrome protect me from internet side of things.

gworf• 14 years ago

windows 8 has microsoft security essentials already installed (they call it windows defender)

owenw5• 14 years ago

Hi! I use the built in Windows Defender since it does AV now. I don't see the point in slapping on another layer of protection since I don't tend to visit dodgy sites anyway.

m0skit03• 14 years ago

Oh and when is tab file browsing coming? Windows 10? Dude these features are available in other OSs since long time ago. I still don't see why I would go back to use Windows (be it 8 or any version) at all. There's no coming back, Microsoft is outdated.

owenw5• 14 years ago

I don't think tabbed file browsing is necessary, but you're right, Microsoft is waaaay behind.

Why I use Windows 8

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