Anybody upgrade to Windows 8 yet?

[Brian Ashton]

The only problem I have with waiting is that the $40 price tag only lasts until the end of January.

Larry it sounds like all you want to do is play - just like you would with any interest or hobby. So buy it and play. No need to justify or rationalise anything. If we all did that Lee Valley would be out of business.

Some people have come up with some excellent ways to play without risk - as you mentioned one earlier using virtual box (or something like that). And then there is cloning your present system over to a new HDD and then upgrading that.

I like that one myself. Might buy one of those HDD trays that replaces the DVD drive and muck around with it.

[Bill ThompsonNM]

Virtual box is definitely the way to g with new os installs. Even if it "eats" your activation, I've always been able o call Microsoft and explain I have new drives, e and get a reactivation. A pain in the keester, though, therearevlotnof ways they could make that work and not have to include a phone call.

As an aside, with all of the Linux discussion...consider
We have 3 laptops and one desktop machine that we use frequently but consider our OS inventory
Satellite modem: Unknown OS ( if any)
Netgear wireless router: Unix
Three cisco powerline Ethernet connectors: unix
cisco (linksys) wireless router: Unix
engenius wireless routerr: Unix
MacBook Air: Unix derivative
dell laptop: win XP
newer Dell laptop. Dual boot. : defaults to Ubuntu Linux, other boot to Win 7
Hp desktop machine: was win xp, died, installed Ubuntu ok and win Xp no longer running
ipad: Unix derivatives
two iPods : unix derivatives
two iPhones: unix derivative
and I have a strong suspicion that my two hp printers may be running a unix derivative

hmm, that's about fourteen unix systems in the house with only one system that I normally boot windows, despite the fact that I'm he sole support for about 20 windows machines a work!
hmmm

[paul cottingham]

Virtual box is definitely the way to g with new os installs. Even if it "eats" your activation, I've always been able o call Microsoft and explain I have new drives, e and get a reactivation. A pain in the keester, though, therearevlotnof ways they could make that work and not have to include a phone call.

As an aside, with all of the Linux discussion...consider
We have 3 laptops and one desktop machine that we use frequently but consider our OS inventory
Satellite modem: Unknown OS ( if any)
Netgear wireless router: Unix
Three cisco powerline Ethernet connectors: unix
cisco (linksys) wireless router: Unix
engenius wireless routerr: Unix
MacBook Air: Unix derivative
dell laptop: win XP
newer Dell laptop. Dual boot. : defaults to Ubuntu Linux, other boot to Win 7
Hp desktop machine: was win xp, died, installed Ubuntu ok and win Xp no longer running
ipad: Unix derivatives
two iPods : unix derivatives
two iPhones: unix derivative
and I have a strong suspicion that my two hp printers may be running a unix derivative

hmm, that's about fourteen unix systems in the house with only one system that I normally boot windows, despite the fact that I'm he sole support for about 20 windows machines a work!
hmmm

hmmmmm
what are you trying to say?

[Brian Ashton]

Probably the biggest annoyance to date is the native pdf reader only has a full screen option. Might have to find a third party reader that allows me to have access to multiple windows...

[Curt Harms]

BTW: has anyone installed virtualbox and installed it that way? That looks like it might be fun to try.(I have no experience with this type of software) Then if I don't like it I can throw it away. ( At least that's how I think it works)

I did a virtualbox install on an Ubuntu host and it was surprisingly easy. The main virtualbox install didn't support USB ports, I had to install guest extensions I think they were called. It's been some time since I did this and it was just an experiment, I deleted the entire partition. I've never tried running a Windows VM on a Windows host so don't know how that would go. You can check out virtualbox.org. I think VMware has a free player too though I haven't messed with VMware at all.

Edit: There's one other consideration. Check your Windows EULA. I believe some Windows licenses do not permit running in a VM.

[Curt Harms]

Larry it sounds like all you want to do is play - just like you would with any interest or hobby. So buy it and play. No need to justify or rationalise anything. If we all did that Lee Valley would be out of business.

Some people have come up with some excellent ways to play without risk - as you mentioned one earlier using virtual box (or something like that). And then there is cloning your present system over to a new HDD and then upgrading that.

I like that one myself. Might buy one of those HDD trays that replaces the DVD drive and muck around with it.

Brian, if you go that route don't get a cheap setup. I had one - still have it in a cabinet - but the connectors were fussy. I'd plug in a hard drive and it wouldn't be recognized. Power down, wiggle, jiggle, restart, hope. You can get racks where you can install two 2.5" drives in one bay. What I haven't seen lately (though I haven't looked for it) is a switch to select among several installed drives. I can see where those were fairly large and complex with IDE - 80 conductor cables - but with SATA (4 conductors excluding power)they should be pretty easy & cheap.

Edit: Such an animal does indeed exist. Not cheap though - $99 to swich 4 devices.
http://www.usbgear.com/JMB321-SW4.html

[George Gyulatyan]

Here's what I don't understand. Why do the developers think that making a desktop OS look and feel like a smartphone is a good idea?

[Andrew Pitonyak]

Here's what I don't understand. Why do the developers think that making a desktop OS look and feel like a smartphone is a good idea?

My guess is that the developers did not make that decision....

[Chuck Wintle]

My guess is that the developers did not make that decision....

you are right..driven by the marketing people to make the product more appealing. Too bad they did not spend more time making it less vulnerable to hackers and the like.

[Brian Ashton]

Here's what I don't understand. Why do the developers think that making a desktop OS look and feel like a smartphone is a good idea?

So everything you have has an identical look, feel and usability... I suspect they've done their homework and the majority of people want familiarity. Apple I'd say can attest to that, iPad, iphone and ipod are all identical and osx is moving that way. And once you have them locked in they're much more reluctant to move from what becomes familiar with. Look at how many spit the soother every time microsoft changes the os look and feel. You have to change or go extinct. You think these are radical changes just wait and see what will be around in 10 years.

[George Gyulatyan]

So everything you have has an identical look, feel and usability... I suspect they've done their homework and the majority of people want familiarity. Apple I'd say can attest to that, iPad, iphone and ipod are all identical and osx is moving that way. And once you have them locked in they're much more reluctant to move from what becomes familiar with. Look at how many spit the soother every time microsoft changes the os look and feel. You have to change or go extinct. You think these are radical changes just wait and see what will be around in 10 years.

Brian, valid points and I've heard that before, and yes, the drive for unified look and feel across product ranges is what's driving it. I am just questioning whether that's the right way to go, simply because how the devices are used.

On smartphones and tablets the interface makes perfect sense, mainly because you're not concerned with content creation on those types of devices, at least not to any major extent. However, it does become clunky on computers where people typically generate content (documents, files, etc).

You can argue that the vast majority of home computer users don't generate content, but use their computers mainly for web browsing and gaming, but I'll argue that the better device for these types of users are smartphones and tablets.

While I love my iPhone and think it's got one of the best and intuitive UIs ever created, I don't necessarly want my computer to become an equivalent of a car dashboard.

[daniel lane]

WRT Windows 8 - my local Office Despot (not a typo, just what I call it) has a touch-screen model on display to play with. It may be a good opportunity to try before you buy, Larry (et al.).

I've been a mid-grade technoweenie since I supported the library network in college to pay food bills (back when I worked on Telex machines and upgraded one of the libraries to 80386 machines). I've used 3.1, then WFW, then 95 (incl. a pre-release copy of Win95 months before it was in stores - had a friend at MS), then XP, and only recently moved to Win7. I tried the Win8 machine mentioned above and didn't really like it, but a 2-3 minute trial isn't enough to really judge by. I'm building a new PC for my business soon, and will probably install 7. Don't like being a guinea pig, don't like free beta testing, and definitely don't want to get used to working with one OS on the desktop and another on the laptop. Toying with buying a surface pro when they come out, though...

A darn fine idea. And a good argument for having all your data on a separate drive from you OS.

Years ago I started doing all my builds with two drives - one OS and one docs. Problem with the OS? Clean install on the OS drive, then mount the docs drive - no restore needed. Once I'd done enough builds and I had spare drives sitting around, I'd often swap out and do a clean install on the OS drive, keeping the original as a drop-in "backup". If everything worked, I'd wipe it and use it for the next 'backup'. This system was also easier to do backups of docs and OS separately, leaving me smaller backup files to handle, and shorter restore times. My OS drive I used to split into two logical drives - one for OS and one for swap file. Been a while since I've done that, though - decided it wasn't really worth it. Now I'm running OS on SSD and docs on HDD, although my next build will be HDD for OS, SSD for OS HDD cache (via Intel Smart Response), and HDD for docs. Anyway, blah blah, babble babble, +1 on the separate drives thing.


daniel

[Steve Meliza]

If you had Linux you could have been keeping your OS and documents separate and safe while still on the same hard drive. Once I even pulled the hard drive out of a working Pentium-II computer and plugged it into a Pentium-III computer and the only change needed was to change which driver to load for the network card. Until I can get my hands on Win8 and be sure I can easily have some kind of separation with my data and documents I'll not be "upgrading".

[paul cottingham]

It was always considered a best practice to separate the data and os partitions in any work machine. I can't imagine a reasonable argument for not doing this.
It sure makes upgrading less painful, as you don't need to worry about your data if you exercise even a small amount of care.

[Chris Fite]

I stayed with XP because of the shortcomings of Vista. When 7 came out, I could not justify upgrading for $100+ when what I had did what I wanted on this old machine (2007). When the test version of I came out, I gave it a try. Not feeling that one, I went back to XP. When the release version of 8 was offered for $40, I thought I would give it a try.

All I read said that if it runs under Windows 7, it will run under Windows 8. I put Windows 8 on this old machine. I was pleased at the faster boot time.

It took a little clicking around and remembering the keyboard shortcuts, but I was up an running with 8 in a short time.

The tiles are strange, but you can click on one and go to the app, as they are now called, or just press the Windows key to get to a regular desktop.

My computer seems to run better with Windows 8. For $40, it seems like a good deal.

Overall the learning time for Windows 8 did not seem to be any more than for Windows 7 on my laptop.

Chris