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I Hate Windows 8.

I got one, and now I use my desktop once or twice a month. There are constraints in performance (don't run 50 extensions like I did) or heavy duty things, but for a tiny thing with crazy battery life at a dirt cheap price, it was worth the money. No moving parts is awesome. It is the right niche of software and hardware for me.

Yeah I get the feeling it's pretty much what I need from a computer
 
Did you install Classic Shell, though?

Otherwise you can't get around Metro.
No, I didn't. I'm not sure what you mean, though. Very occasionally, I'll need to run an app that don't often run, and I'll have to flick over to the Start screen, but that's pretty much the only time I see Metro. I certainly don't run any Metro apps.
 
No, I didn't. I'm not sure what you mean, though. Very occasionally, I'll need to run an app that don't often run, and I'll have to flick over to the Start screen, but that's pretty much the only time I see Metro. I certainly don't run any Metro apps.
This has been my experience too,
I just set my pc to open on the desktop, as far as i can see this OS is just as easy to use as my last OS.

I did switch from XP though, not 7.
 
This has been my experience too,
I just set my pc to open on the desktop, as far as i can see this OS is just as easy to use as my last OS.

I did switch from XP though, not 7.


Same here, and I'm past the sixty mark, so it ain't my callow youth.

Also switched from XP. One would think that would be even more difficult, but I never had an problems of any significance. I expected a few new approaches to deal with. There were, but they were not the least bit serious or some sort of deal breaker. Nothing that wasn't easily resolved.

I've been quite pleased with Win 8.

Even the Metro start page always had a list view. Using the icon view was never mandatory. Although I always went straight to the standard windows view (one whole click extra before 8.1) I didn't find anything off-putting about Metro's list view.

I still don't get what all the whining has been about.
 
Well after trying several variations of restarts (and getting messages that none of them worked) it seems to have completed the restore I selected. I thought it was not supposed to do anything with files but apparently EVERYTHING is reset to that point. I had recently migrated all my documents and emails from my older computer. Now I have to do it again. ("Never delete anything unless you have a backup of your backup.")

Refresh is intended to get the system back to a usable state without affecting data. Apps need to be reinstalled.

Reset
is intended to do a destructive factory recovery. Data, programs, Metro apps will need to be backed up and restored/reinstalled.

Sounds like it may have done the latter.
 
Refresh is intended to get the system back to a usable state without affecting data. Apps need to be reinstalled.

Reset
is intended to do a destructive factory recovery. Data, programs, Metro apps will need to be backed up and restored/reinstalled.

Sounds like it may have done the latter.

I think the only words I saw were "Repair" and "Restore". Neither of which worked the first several times I did them.
 
I think the only words I saw were "Repair" and "Restore". Neither of which worked the first several times I did them.

This is one thing I really dislike about Windows: it doesn't give the user any progress information when running important tasks. All you get is the silly little rotating circle thingy. A person attempting a system repair has no idea if Windows is working, stuck, gone into a fruitless loop of A - B - C and back to A again, reformatting the hard drive ... nothing!

Sure, show the little rotating circle thingy, but also give an option for the user to see what Windows is actually doing, how long it's been at that task, and (when possible) an estimate of the amount yet left to do.
 
This is one thing I really dislike about Windows: it doesn't give the user any progress information when running important tasks. All you get is the silly little rotating circle thingy. A person attempting a system repair has no idea if Windows is working, stuck, gone into a fruitless loop of A - B - C and back to A again, reformatting the hard drive ... nothing!

Sure, show the little rotating circle thingy, but also give an option for the user to see what Windows is actually doing, how long it's been at that task, and (when possible) an estimate of the amount yet left to do.

Bad communication to the user is one of the general problems I have with Windows for a long time. In fact, it started already with MS-DOS, where one of the common errors was a missing disk, which resulted in the options "Abort, Retry, Fail" which all did the same.

Beside the crappy, missing, or useless progress bars, my current beef are the "descriptions" of Windows updates, which never tell me what the updates are actually updating. Sure, they give you a cryptic number that you can google, but a simple one sentence description beside the generic text they use sure would be nice. I usually do only the "important" updates, but recently I decided to check out the "optional" ones. There were a bunch of "security" updates in there. Why the heck were they tucked into "optional"? How is the status of an update decided? My theory is that a whole bunch of developers working simply don't care, or are so overworked that they cannot care, about the descriptions. The updates are, in fact, truly designated, but the people finishing them simply copy'n'paste standard names and descriptions. If my theory is true, neither of the two options are really trust inspiring for a major company supplying security relevant and mission critical products.

To be true, there are tons of little annoyances like that in Windows that could be explained by the two options.

I don't say that as a Microsoft-hater or -Anti-Fanboy, either. They DO supply an important product that does security relevant and mission-critical functions throughout the modern industrial world, and it's scary to see them go down like that.
 
Beside the crappy, missing, or useless progress bars, my current beef are the "descriptions" of Windows updates, which never tell me what the updates are actually updating. Sure, they give you a cryptic number that you can google, but a simple one sentence description beside the generic text they use sure would be nice. I usually do only the "important" updates, but recently I decided to check out the "optional" ones. There were a bunch of "security" updates in there. Why the heck were they tucked into "optional"? How is the status of an update decided? My theory is that a whole bunch of developers working simply don't care, or are so overworked that they cannot care, about the descriptions. The updates are, in fact, truly designated, but the people finishing them simply copy'n'paste standard names and descriptions. If my theory is true, neither of the two options are really trust inspiring for a major company supplying security relevant and mission critical products.
I find this peculiar. From time to time I do go and check the descriptions of those updates in the 'optional' section, and I don't think I've ever noticed one in there that was a security update.
 
I find this peculiar. From time to time I do go and check the descriptions of those updates in the 'optional' section, and I don't think I've ever noticed one in there that was a security update.

Sorry I didn't think of making a screenshot. To be fair, that was a fresh re-install of Windows 7 as a VM. I did run Windows Updates once, with the usual setting of "Important updates only". I also turned off automatic updates -- this is a VM that I do not use daily, so when I use it I don't want to be forced to be bogged down by updates. After all, I can easily cut off network access for the VM, or roll back to a safe copy.

The next day or so I checked optional updates, and found a whole bunch of updates labeled "Security" in there. A lot of them were for components like .NET, though, but I felt they should be applied, as much as you could tell from the short 'descriptions' offered right there.
 
I find this peculiar. From time to time I do go and check the descriptions of those updates in the 'optional' section, and I don't think I've ever noticed one in there that was a security update.

I believe in the latest updates for my computer I saw the same, and did think it was odd. This was the bunch I installed right before having my recent problem.
 
Bolding mine... You were fine with Vista?!:eek:

What sort of weirdo are you?;)

XP and Win 7 were fine. Vista was a bigger abortion of an operating system than Windows 8 is. At least most of Windows 8's 'problems' can be understood if you assume it's designed for a touchscreen and to try and catch up on the whole 'apps' market approach.

I disagree. Vista was a cludge at first. Later, it was fixed .
I have both Win 7 and Vista on different machines and find very little difference in functionality.
I have never felt any need to switch the Vista machine to 7.

I have no experience whatsoever of Win 8. In fact, apart from demo machines in stores, I have never seen it. I don't know anyone in real life who uses it at all, which may reflect the age of my acquaintances - who do not tend to own tablets or smartphones.
 

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