Anybody upgrade to Windows 8 yet?

[rogers kevin]

Same here, It is quite difficult to use, our windows 7 is far better than that of windows 8.

[Scott Shepherd]

I know the "news" is that it's been selling great, but in the tech world news, they fired the President of the Windows Division in charge W8 and all the tech news geeks insist he was fired because of the way it's being received. Who know what the truth is, but something can't be good when they let go the President of the Division at the time of the release of his star product.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

I know the "news" is that it's been selling great, but in the tech world news, they fired the President of the Windows Division in charge W8 and all the tech news geeks insist he was fired because of the way it's being received. Who know what the truth is, but something can't be good when they let go the President of the Division at the time of the release of his star product.

I expect that most new computers are sold with Windows 8 on it, which means that Windows 8 will at least keep up with the hardware sold with it. So, it may not really indicate how people feel about the OS. I think that at least one person posted here and said that they liked it, but I don't remember for sure.

[Larry Browning]

I expect that most new computers are sold with Windows 8 on it, which means that Windows 8 will at least keep up with the hardware sold with it. So, it may not really indicate how people feel about the OS. I think that at least one person posted here and said that they liked it, but I don't remember for sure.

I work in an office full of programmers and techie types. I haven't found a single one who doesn't love it. Well, maybe one (me), and I don't hate it, I am kinda neutral.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

I work in an office full of programmers and techie types. I haven't found a single one who doesn't love it. Well, maybe one (me), and I don't hate it, I am kinda neutral.

I am astonished, I work at a large company in the field and I am one of those techie programmers.

No client of which I am aware has expressed any interest in using Windows 8. Ipads, Android, Windows 7, and even Windows Vista yes, but not Windows 8. Note that this would be relative to government and corporations.

I was asking around a week ago, and found it strange that I do not personally interact with a single person that has admitted to having any interest in Windows 8. The closest I have found was a UI person that was evaluating the interface elements to determine if they should be integrated as a good UI design element in active software projects.

Normally, all of the geeks are all excited to talk about it, rip it apart, love it or hate, etc. The typical response I receive can be categorized as "total junk" or "Don't know anything about it". Most of the articles that I have seen are along the lines of a recent review by some professor at MIT that categorized it as "a Christmas gift for someone you hate".

Ironically, this guy (see link below) categorized it as a design disaster, but in this article, he seems to be refuting the MIT guy.

http://www.zdnet.com/mit-professor-w...te-7000008479/

So now I have actually heard of an office full of people that rave about it.

Have not had a chance to try it. Don't see any particular reason yet, primarily because my company claims that it will not fully connect to their network from outside (because the VPN stuff required fails on windows 8). You cannot connect your personal devices to their network directly, so an external VPN is the only method for your own device.

Ask your enamored coworkers how many things stopped working when they went to 8. I had many things fail when a move was made from XP to Windows 7; for example, the HP software for a smart scanner was totally unusable. Most software did function, but there were probably 10 major packages in use by my parents that they needed to update.

How long did it take you personally to figure out how to use it? I spent time studying how long it takes for people to migrate from say MS Office to OpenOffice. The answer was that a casual user would hardly know the difference and be fully productive in a week. A power user took a month. Ironically, the learning curve was longer to move from older versions of MS Office to the first version when they introduced the ribbon (I still dislike that version of office even though I use it often.... I spend too much time saying "now where did MS hide that special feature that used to be easily found just by poking around menus").

My developers license allows me to install any MS OS, perhaps I should fire up a VM and give it a try when I have a day to kill....

[Brian Elfert]

I've used the new interface just a little bit and I would just as soon do without it. For someone used to Windows 7 and/or Windows XP it is a major change in how things work. Sure, one can get used to it, but for the average user there is no advantage to the new GUI. For a new user who has never used Windows it might be better, but most folks who will buy Windows 8 are not new to Windows. Microsoft hid a lot of stuff that power users use all the time.

I work in IT and was surprised one of my co-workers paid the $40 to upgrade his PC to Windows 8. He did say the only real good thing about Windows 8 is the backup and restore.

It is kinda like if you went to buy a new car and it drove from the right seat instead of the left seat with a steering wheel that worked opposite of expected. This new car also has the ignition switch and gear shift hidden out of view. Sure, one could drive this new car after a little time, but it sure would be strange for a while. Now, a brand new driver probably would have no trouble driving the car because they have never driven a traditional car before.

[Curt Harms]

John, your opinion of Ubuntu's new UI is pretty common. Quite a few of people think highly of it once they learn how to use it, maybe like Windows 8, dunno. It's funny you mentioned CDE, I believe that was recently open sourced and is freely available. The graphics vibe from the screen shots I've seen is Windows 3.1, I haven't installed it. If someone wants something that feels very much like Windows XP, try a distro with Xfce desktop, very 'classic' feel about it. Another nice choice IMO is linux mint with Cinnamon. Mint is built on an Ubuntu foundation and uses Ubuntu software repositories but uses a different interface. Mint also includes many multimedia codecs by default so for instance you can watch Youtube videos from a liveDVD, something you can't do from many linux distros due to licensing concerns.

[Larry Browning]

Andrew,
Let me qualify my answer a bit. I work as a business analyst / software developer for a large electric motor manufacturer in a mainframe large system environment. The folks I was referring to also do what I do. In our business environment, Windows 8 is pretty much a non-issue in that we are not even considering it as a workable OS yet. The context I was referring to was more of a recreational use of Windows in a home environment, using it for streaming video, web browsing, gaming, etc... This is really the type of thing I was thinking about when I started the thread, and that is also the context my co-workers were thinking of when they expressed their opinion. I actually have no idea as to their opinion of Win8 in a business context. It was not discussed.
I tend to separate the two environments, thinking of them as completely different subjects. I suppose most people think of business applications first and then home applications as an after thought. My thought process is that Windows is something I use at home for entertainment that sometimes can be used for business purposes as well. (Probably not the norm)

[Andrew Pitonyak]

Win8 is fully compatible with Win7.

ActiveX apparently does NOT work on Windows 8 and IE 10, which sounds like some things that work on Win 7 will not work on Win 8.

I did not spend time pondering the corporate message of "blah blah blah will NOT function on Windows 8, so if you buy it, you can no longer do blah blah blah". I just assumed that since the usual connection was through a VPN portal inside a web browser, that it was likely related to ActiveX or some other component that they (my employer) uses to connect.

This was relative to home users, not office machines

I expect that a Windows 7 VM would work around the problem.... and since I usually use VMWare, and that apparently works on Windows 8 it would not be a real problem for me personally (if I decided to buy or build a computer and use Win 8 rather than Linux).

[John Coloccia]

But then again I don't understand the people lining up to buy an iPhone on release day either...
(seriously, I wait months before upgrading Mac's also. It's not just a windows thing. I always wait 4+ months for bugs to shake out.)

They're not in line to buy a new phone. They're just lost and stopped to ask for directions.