Upgrading Win 7 to Win 8

[Mental Trousers]

Maybe it's time to upgrade from WinXP .... nah, fuck that. Everything works.

[James Deuce]

I might actually give Windows 8 a miss for a few more months for some of the bugs to be fixed before I make the change, and for drivers to become more mature (I can only get beta drivers for my motherboard for 8).

Bugs? I'd be waiting for them to separate the desktop and tablet O/S before I go anywhere near 8 on a PC or laptop.

[SMOKEU]

Maybe it's time to upgrade from WinXP .... nah, fuck that. Everything works.

People still use Windows XP?! Might as well live in a cave and hunt game with sticks while you're at it.

Bugs? I'd be waiting for them to separate the desktop and tablet O/S before I go anywhere near 8 on a PC or laptop.

Due to the number of sheep who blindly follow whatever Apple says, I think MS is forced into making everything more "Apple like" to stay afloat. People still don't understand that a tablet or a laptop is NOT a substitute for a desktop.

[Mental Trousers]

People still use Windows XP?! Might as well live in a cave and hunt game with sticks while you're at it.

Do you have to continually prove you're an idiot? Aim higher and surprise people a bit.

People who get sick of fixing everyone elses shit use WinXP. Win7 has nothing I need (not a gaming pc) and Win8 successfully pissed me off in the first 30 seconds. I run various flavours of linux at work and I can't be bothered at home.

WinXP works. The end.

[steve_t]

Maybe it's time to upgrade from WinXP .... nah, fuck that. Everything works.

Agree!
Win SBS 2003 with 7 workstations running XP Pro. It all just works and I have a general understanding of how it works. No way I'll change unless I have to.

[James Deuce]

Due to the number of sheep who blindly follow whatever Apple says, I think MS is forced into making everything more "Apple like" to stay afloat. People still don't understand that a tablet or a laptop is NOT a substitute for a desktop.

People don't. Enterprises and their support organisations do. Most of them are just about entertaining a wholesale upgrade from XP to Windows 7 about now, largely due to the lack of support for the O/S from Microsoft and licensing model changes, etc, etc....

If Microsoft don't provide an Enterprise edition that has none of this giant swishy icon nonsense, they will be dead in the water. I suspect this is why Mr Grumpy abruptly quit MS because he's very aware of that but Steve "I'm not a Gorilla, pass the turnip ice cream" Ballmer wants one OS.

[Gremlin]

Well, if we're going all nostalgic, I still maintain (odd word... nothing required for them) several instances of Windows 2000 and Server 2000. Moving them to a new OS would simply increase demand by the OS and add no functionality.

There's a security system running in DOS with serial connectors. Update log stopped in 1991 I think

[SMOKEU]

People who get sick of fixing everyone elses shit use WinXP.

So are you saying that XP is a better OS than 7?

[Gremlin]

So are you saying that XP is a better OS than 7?

Define better...

I can't really think of anything I NEED in 7. It is nice tho, with the odd feature like auto-snapping windows and start menu you just type what you want.

Otherwise... XP did just fine and used a hell of a lot less memory and disk. I've got W2K3 installations, cut down, running on 200mb of memory and still performing very quickly.

[SMOKEU]

start menu you just type what you want.

That in itself is enough for me to keep well away from XP. I didn't realise how much I used that feature in 7 until I used an XP computer again. It also works on 8, so I guess that horrible start menu isn't as bad as I initially thought.

In saying that, XP was an excellent OS in its day, and it still is a good OS, but it's 11 years old and times have moved on to better and newer things. Don't forget that MS is going to stop supporting XP in the not too distant future, so it will become nothing more than a malware box after that.

[steve_t]

That in itself is enough for me to keep well away from XP. I didn't realise how much I used that feature in 7 until I used an XP computer again. It also works on 8, so I guess that horrible start menu isn't as bad as I initially thought.

In saying that, XP was an excellent OS in its day, and it still is a good OS, but it's 11 years old and times have moved on to better and newer things. Don't forget that MS is going to stop supporting XP in the not too distant future, so it will become nothing more than a malware box after that.

XP support til April 2014

[Mental Trousers]

So are you saying that XP is a better OS than 7?

Define better...

I can't really think of anything I NEED in 7. It is nice tho, with the odd feature like auto-snapping windows and start menu you just type what you want.

Otherwise... XP did just fine and used a hell of a lot less memory and disk. I've got W2K3 installations, cut down, running on 200mb of memory and still performing very quickly.

Pretty much as Gremlin said. WinXP simply works and uses fewer resources. I don't care how old it is because there isn't anything I use that I have to upgrade for, at least not on this machine. Typical usage is email, multiple browsers (both Firefox and Chrome with the occasional Opera), 3x text editors and multiple ssh windows. That's it. You don't need the latest i7 with 32GB of RAM running Win8 to do that lot.

[pzkpfw]

... That's it. You don't need the latest i7 with 32GB of RAM running Win8 to do that lot.

I remember using electric pencil on a TRS-80 Model I. When you typed, text would go off to the right. The paragraph didn't re-format until you pressed some key combination.

As computers got faster, paragraphs were able to reformat automatically, as you typed.

Then they got faster, and WYSIWYG was possible. Not just character-based screens, but text darn in graphics. Any font, any style. (Kids today won't even know what a character mapped display is.)

A little faster again, and now the Word processor can check your spelling and grammer as you type, and give you squiggles without interrupting your typing.

I suppose one day, the word processor will watch what you type, and automatically look up cross-references from Wikipedia for you to insert.

But eventually, you hit a wall. Why does the PC need to be faster? So you can keep typing while it's also updating the Facebook statuses of all your best buddies?

[steve_t]

A little faster again, and now the Word processor can check your spelling and grammer as you type, and give you squiggles without interrupting your typing.

LOL. The ironing is delicious

[Gremlin]

Don't forget that MS is going to stop supporting XP in the not too distant future, so it will become nothing more than a malware box after that.

Next you'll tell me I need anti-virus. I only installed some when a gf managed to wander onto a malware site. PC had been fine without it for 6 odd months. I don't care if they're "supporting" it, as I only ring Microsoft to fix licensing issues. Last time I rang them was an activation problem a few weeks ago. The end game was I had to order manufacturer disks for a 6+ year old machine... Haha, I cracked activation instead and now the user can login and use the legit paid for Windows. Microsoft is their own worst enemy.

That's it. You don't need the latest i7 with 32GB of RAM running Win8 to do that lot.

Oh, but if the bloated versions of OS's keep going, you'll need it. I haven't switched to my new laptop yet. Current one is WinXP generation but 7 installed. Win7 idles consuming about 1GB of memory...