Windows 8 Short Review of My Experience.

[hookbill]

Somewhere in the Forum I posted a thread about going from Windows 7 to Windows 8 a while back. I thought I posted it off topic but I can't find it.

I love updates! I don't care what it is, if I can update it I will. This time however I was a bit cautious, I had quite a bit of trouble with getting Airport Express to work with Windows 7. And in my investigations I found out I would have to deauthorize my iTunes and while that didn't scare me both my iPad and iPhone are backed up to it.

So I waited a while. I can't say I was reading things that made me think Windows 8 was that great but it would definitely be different. No start button. How would it work? Still I held off.

Yesterday I came across something on the internet that showed how you could get it for half price. Now I'm not going to explain that to you but if you're curious, Google is your friend. So I placed my order and the download started.

As the download took place nothing unusual happened. I just kind of kept an eye on it. All of a sudden I heard some nasty sounds coming out of my speakers. I have Bose Companion II speakers and I couldn't seem to control this noise with my keyboard but I do have a volume knob on my speakers. I turned it down.

As it went into a series of restarts the noise seemed to stop. But once the install resumed I got more noise, this time it kind of sounded like a wah wah noise. A test tone I thought? Nope. Just a better sounding noise.

I looked at my connections in the back, of course everything was correct I didn't change anything. Finally after about an hours time it completed. With the noise still there.

In the volume control was a mixer for Realtek Audio and I muted that. End of the noise issue and the speakers were working fine. So was iTunes, Airport Express, and variety of other stuff.

I had some updates come in immediately so I had to reboot and it looks like every time I reboot I will have to mute that mixer. Not a big deal, but I didn't have to do that with Windows 7.

I always say "I've never met an update that didn't underwhelm me," and this is no exception. It was exciting trying to figure out how to get to all the programs I didn't see on the new "home" screen but I figured it out.

I can't say that this isn't worth what I paid for it but it wasn't worth 39.00 IMHO. You be your own judge. It doesn't come with a DVD player. Windows Media is there but for the deluxe version you can purchase that if you fail to purchase your update before 1/31/13 and that version does have a DVD player. But who watches DVD's on a computer?

Just in case though I asked Microsoft for a copy and they said they will send me an authorization code within 24 hours. I thought it would be instantaneous but nope, gotta wait. McAfee does not work with it but Microsoft says Windows Defender is all you need.

So that's my review. Purchase at your own risk.

 

[Gregoris]

I have yet to upgrade from windows 7 and this review has helped a lot so thanks for your in depth review *thumbs up*

 

[hookbill]

Just want to add that the sound issue I had I was able to resolve. Just clicking on the muted icon brought up an opportunity to remove it permanently so I did just that. Now no strange at boot.

One of the things I found that is an improvement since I wrote this thread was reboot speed. It's about 25% faster. Matter of fact in general it's faster all around. Just something I didn't mention on my first go around.

 

[hookbill]

Here are an example of the "two" main screens. One is the Start screen, the other is the desktop
As you can see the Start Button is now a whole screen. But when you actually bring up an app your actual desktop comes up which is more like the familiar Windows we've worked with before. Just no Start on lower left.

Moving your cursor down on the right of the desktop screen brings up the search, applications, devices and settings. This is where you will find all the apps that don't appear on the start screen. Since Windows Media Player is a free "upgrade" (how is it an upgrade when I had it on Windows 7?) you click on the search and then settings. You type upgrade system in search the click settings. Now before you would download the app and get a passkey. No more. A dialog screen pops up and ask you if you have a key. If you do you say yes and enter the key number. Then Windows and gets your app, upgrade whatever, and installs it for you. That's how it worked when Windows sent me the key for Windows Media Player. BTW there is no difference in the Media Player they took away from me and the one I had previously. At least I don't think so, I never did play with Media Player once.

If you do upgrade make sure you get your copy of Windows Media Player while it's still free.

 

[hookbill]

There hasn't been much response to this thread but I just want to say that the more I get to know Windows 8 the more distinct the difference is between Windows 7.

Let me warn you right now, a "refresh" isn't exactly what they say it is. I was having some issues trying to use the Windows 8 backup instead of the still installed Windows 7. My External drives wouldn't connect and I saw someone else who had the same issue do a refresh. It says it won't remove your programs. Bull. iTunes, Office, anything that wasn't nailed down was gone.

Two good things. It actually made a list of what it took out and the list had links in it where you could at least get in the ballpark for reinstall. Not every program though.

I spent most of the day restoring things. My iTunes, once reinstalled had my playlists and none of my music was erased Matter of fact all of my files were there, just the programs that ran them were gone.

I tried to restore via system image but that failed so it all had to be done manually. I've still got some stuff to figure out, like why I don't see the caps lock on the screen when I lock and unlock them.

The killer thing about this is while I was fixing all this stuff I found the real solution to my problem connecting the backup would have been solved if instead of telling it to move the old files "yes" I should have said "no."