Yay! #MrPotatoBack

Trigger :D

So called cos he often had a masked man riding on his back.

It's a toughy. It is very geared towards touchscreens, but a lot of that can be got rid of. There's freebie start menu replacements like Start8 which make it more usable, plus there are some themes out there which look less drab and dire than Windows 8's defaults - if you don't mind swapping out system files!

Of course, a lot of the effects from Windows 7 and Aero have been removed from Windows 8, so if you like a flashy desktop, it's never going to be as flashy with Windows 8. Of course, if you're not into this, it's less of a problem.

Personally having used it, I do prefer Windows 7. It just does pretty much everything right straight away without having to install all manner of add-ons and hacked system files to fix. But then again, my Windows installation is about 3 years old and still running nice and fast (I take care of my PC!)

I don't have a problem with Windows 8.1. As Radio said, I pin my most used applications to the taskbar and on the rare occasions that I ever use the start screen, it just works and never bothers me. I've said this before, but it's worth reiterating, it fundamentally works exactly the same as the Windows 7 start menu in that you open it by pressing the Windows key on your keyboard, you type the name of the application you want, optionally select it with cursor keys and press enter to start it.

If you're a mouse user who always clicks on the start button and navigates down a deep folder structure, the Start screen may still be better for you, as now you don't have to work within that restricted "All Programs" section of the Windows 7 start menu. I still think the traditional expanding Start menu structure in Windows XP is better and easier to use with a mouse than Windows 7 and I don't know why Microsoft chose to make Windows 7 so difficult to browse. Of course the type to search in 7 is much better, but if you're adamant about using a mouse it's clumsy and awkward to use.

The most obvious issue with Windows 8/8.1 is that it's radically different from predecessors and people don't like change because we're all inherently lazy and don't want to have to retrain. It reminds me a lot of the discussions that were had when Windows 95 first launched and people were complaining that it didn't work like Windows 3's Program Manager.

Regarding the flatness of the UI that Dave mentioned, I don't mind that. Some people hate that the window borders are larger than they were in Windows 7, but I usually work with my applications maximised so don't notice them. As for themes, I usually pick a neutral colour scheme anyway as I don't want or need my Windows UI to be distracting me away from the application I'm using.

There are some nice new touches that Windows 8 has that Windows 7 doesn't. The built-in multi-monitor taskbar being my favourite. No longer do I need any 3rd party software to add a taskbar to my second monitor like I did / do with Windows 7. Hurrah!

As for the differences between Windows 8 and 8.1. Go with the latter. 8 is good, it's obvious 8.1 is what Microsoft were aiming for, like Windows 7 is what they were aiming for when they released Vista, but the bean counters demanded they release it before it was ready.

>> I've said this before, but it's worth reiterating, it fundamentally works exactly the same as the Windows 7 start menu in that you open it by pressing the Windows key on your keyboard, you type the name of the application you want, optionally select it with cursor keys and press enter to start it.


You forgot the massive, inexplicable pause while it says "searching" and seems to be actually doing sweet Fuck all. Same as in 7, really.

Also, I like to be able to browse a nice, compact list of programs installed (especially as I quite often forget what stuff is called/what I have installed :$ ) and 8 seems to make that impossible - on the all apps page everything is huge and fully expanded, so I end up scrolling 3 pages to see everything (and always seems to have stuff missing, too)

I don't see any pauses while typing here in neither 7 nor 8. You haven't done anything silly like disable the background search service have you? Lots of people turn that off because they think they're optimising their PC by disabling it as it means its not constantly scanning their PC when it's idle.

Missing icons know the Start screen is probably the apps creating shortcuts in folders that Windows 8 doesn't look at when considering for the Start screen icons.

First thing I always do with Windows 7 is to expand the start menu to fill the height of the screen. OK it doesn't expand into multiple pages, but it's good enough for me!

That does help a little, but still quite difficult if you have multiple levels of folders which would naturally expand horizontally across the screen in Windows XP.

True, but surely the lack of hierarchy makes the Start Screen even more of a mess. It's always looked that way to me, just a jumbled sea of icons.

It's called windows rot. It's what happens when you install and uninstall software over the years. Uninstalling never gets everything and so you're left with bits if old shit clogging up the registry.

I have grown fond of 8.1. I think it really shines on a touch enabled device like my laptop or a surface but I have also used it on desktops and it's pretty much the same as 7.

Windows 8 Startscreen could definitely do with a way to delete icons without having to open Windows Explorer to do it, but I don't think the grouping is really any worse than folders, it's just a different way of doing things.

And of course it doesn't help that application installers like to create an uninstall icon, a help/readme icon and a link to their website which clogs up the Start Screen with useless icons that you can't get rid of, except for the above method of finding them in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs or C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu.

Maybe Windows 8.1 Update 1 (Really, Microsoft? Why not just Windws 8.1 or 8.11?) we'll get some better management options.

Not my computer, but no. It's been like that since day 1 (Dell i5 laptop, few months old).

That's a bit of a reversal from what you were saying before. I think I might as well try it out for a bit. Be nice to have my main drive back as C instead of D too, not sure how that happened.

Not heard Windows rot before. I find a fresh install is always better running than one a couple of years old.

More positive feedback on here than I was expecting.

Yeah, I still maintain that the changes they made were not for improvement but just for the sake of change and to be able to sell it as a new OS.  They are hell bent on one OS for all devices, and I'm just not sure if that's the correct approach or not.  I guess time will tell.  But for the way I use it 99% of the time it's just Windows 7 + 1.1!

"it's obvious 8.1 is what Microsoft were aiming for"

Really? IIRC at least some of the changes in 8.1 (such as boot to desktop and a vestigial start menu) were apparently introduced in response to 'customer feedback' (i.e. people hated what they'd been given instead).

Whether the W7 start menu is useful or not is, of course, a matter of personal opinion. Personally I prefer the W7 version to the rather half-hearted sop included in W8.1. Yes there are third-party alternatives out there that are popular. That in itself should have told Microsoft something.

But even with the boot to desktop and being able to sleep/shutdown without having to incant the charms bar it's still not good enough IMO. The charms bar cannot be fully disabled, and I found it popping up unnecessarily when mousing to the top and bottom of fully expanded windows. And the flat metro look still encroaches even if you do your best to get rid of it. I recognise that it's a matter of personal opinion, but I find metro rather offensively ugly.

I only hope that Apple learn the folly of taking convergence to its brain dead extreme and recognise that there are some things in iOS that simply should be different in OS X.

(BTW is it just me? I find that adding a new paragraph in the desktop version of BH requires three or four returns while lite mode only requires two)

Yes, that pause is annoying. I wouldn't mind if it showed y the programs first quickly then searched through documents and stuff.

I do both of those, depending how close my hand is to the keyboard. Maybe more often I use the mouse. But most of what I use is pinned to the taskbar.

The 7 list of programs is less easy to find something if you're not sure what it is called then the XP list with everything showing.

Yes, the return of the persistent start button and boot to desktop are obvious backtracks, but the changes to the search on the start screen and the ability to add smaller tiles are things that should have been there from the word go. A lot of the changes to 8.1 only came about after Steven Sinofsky "resigned" and was replaced with the Windows 8 Mobile team leader, who almost bought with him most of his UX/UI and technical team.

It is odd how you have problems with the Charms bar always popping up, I tend to have problems with it not appearing when I want it to, but I think that might be more to do with my dual monitors and that when I try to make it appear I'm always trying to do it on my left-hand monitor. The Charms bar only opens for me if I move the mouse to the bottom right, not sure if that is an 8.1 change or a peculiarity to dual monitor set ups.

Apple have been treading the down the path of converging the desktop and mobile platforms for much longer than Microsoft have been seen to be doing. However, they do seem to have slowed down their conversion of Mac OS into an iOS for the desktop though and I can't help but wonder if that is because they've been keeping a close eye on the criticism of Windows 8. I do think it's something that will eventually become all OSes though as even Linux (Ubuntu at least) is heading down this route of a single UI for all platforms.

(Beehive doesn't actually do paragraphs, pressing enter should insert an <br> tag each time. On Mobile, enter inserts a new line which are then converted to <br> later.)

The charms bar is a strange thing. I had problems getting to show when I wanted it, and problems getting it to not show when I didn't. Rather like some idiot cousin it seemed to do the opposite of what was needed. IMO the whole implementation was retarded. There was a hack (registry? I can't remember now) to stop it showing up when mousing to the middle right of the screen, but I still couldn't disable it properly, even what it was no longer needed (i.e. when the lightweight start menu introduced a more user-friendly way of shutting down.)

Oh yes, and not all of it's been good. But hopefully now that idiot Forstall been shown the gutter things will improve. I think MS looked at what Apple were doing and tried to beat them to the logical conclusion, thereby showing the world how unhelpful the logical conclusion is. What works on a mobile device doesn't necessarily work on a desktop (et v.v.). I can't imagine why anyone would've thought otherwise. hey ho.

Yeah, I realise that BH creates the visual representation of paragraphs by inserting line breaks. What I meant was that in order to create this effect on mobile I pressed return twice. But on desktop I have to do it three or four times (just tested...this is IE10 on W7). The first return gets a new line, then two or three may be needed for the next line.