6 ms·
Why I use Windows 8
- barbs 14y agoI wonder if he's thought of using Classic Shell to get rid of the metro interface: http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/ http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/
- s_henry_paulson 14y agoI'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.
- owenw 14y agoHi! I wrote this, and I've not heard of that before now... I'll check it out. It looks useful to me :)
- madprops 14y agoI've had those combined file operations on nautilus for quite some time, the pause button is nice though
- eyko 14y agoSeems like he's apologising for using Windows 8, and that we don't really care.
- eckyptang 14y agoHe'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_paulson 14y agoThis 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.
- eckyptang 14y agoJust hit start -> type connections.
- s_henry_paulson 14y agoNo luck :( http://i.imgur.com/6EWJO.png http://i.imgur.com/6EWJO.png EDIT: Ok, I see that I have to also click settings. Thanks!
- pca 14y agoWin+W lets you search Settings directly instead of Apps. You can also press if after you've already typed your search term. (In case you don't want to reach for the mouse)
- eckyptang 14y agoThanks for this - very helpful :)
- freehunter 14y agoYou can also hit the arrow key down to get to Settings.
- manojlds 14y agoI'm good with Win+R -> ncpa.cpl
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- quickie 14y agothe file copy/move/delete dialog combination was something that BeOS did 10 years ago. I always why Windows never picked that up...
- eckyptang 14y agoI agree. It's one of the easiest wins as well and one I've campaigned about for years.
- scrrr 14y agoYes, 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 14y agoWell, 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.
- eckyptang 14y agoMy 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 14y agoWeird, 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.
- eckyptang 14y agoIt did suck a bit on XP. Vista pretty much fixed it all to be honest. It's pretty much perfect in Windows 7.
- Adirael 14y agoI'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).
- UnoriginalGuy 14y agoWindows 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 14y agoPhoto 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_paulson 14y agoRegarding 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.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- josteink 14y agoWindows 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 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.
- jezell 14y agoFrom zero to suck in under 6 seconds!
- dschiptsov 14y agoWhat antivirus software you're using?)
- Achshar 14y agoI 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 14y agowindows 8 has microsoft security essentials already installed (they call it windows defender)
- owenw 14y agoHi! 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.
- m0skit0 14y agoOh 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.
- owenw 14y agoI don't think tabbed file browsing is necessary, but you're right, Microsoft is waaaay behind.