OT: Windows 8

[Huge]

Fortunately, I am only peripherally involved (*). And won't be involved at all after August 31st.

(* So far as Windows goes, I am only a user. I'm on the Unix/Linux side.)

[Huge]

The former.

Much as I would love to heave out the Windows cr@p (not that it's my decision), the cost of changing a 300,000 user, world-wide enterprise to Linux would be prohibitive. It cost ~$20M to change from XP to W7.

[John Rumm]

There is Winreducer:

(not tried it, so won't comment on how well it works)

To an extent W8 is already somewhat cut down - they have eliminated lots of support for "legacy" hardware.

I have it here on three machines (one of which I use) - and don't get many complaints from its users once I have given them a start menu back.

(on balance I would rather have installed 7, but licenses for 8 were very cheap when it first came out)

[Andy Burns]

No, without third-party utilities you can't get Windows8 user interface to work like Windows7. Microsoft back-tracked a little with 8.1 and I understand are back-tracking some more with 10, but I suspect there's further to go ...

[John Rumm]

Don't know about all, but some certainly...

In settings on classic shell, tuen on the "show all settings" option. Then you can "disable active corners" on the win 8.1 tab.

If you then look at the controls tab you can change what is activated for each of the main control keys... so windows key opens start menu rather than display start screen etc.

I still can't work out how to make the network connections control work like a real one (you get a blue thing slide in from the right edge of the screen - and it does not play nicely with the rest of windows - you can't for example click elsewhere on the screen to cut and paste without it consuming your click and closing itself). Probably not an irritation to many users, but if you make extensive use of VPN connections, its cumbersome.

[John Rumm]

Since MS moved the whole GDI subsystem into the kernel for NT4 there is not much advantage to be gained not having the GUI visible - you are still lumbered with loads of code in privileged space that is only there to boost performance on the desktop.

[Tim Watts]

And I am not a proper Windows admin (happy to admit that) since NT4. Needs must however... And none of these are exposed to the Internet so there's not too much to worry about... But I hate MSSQL with a passion - resource hungry fat bastard that it is (Both vCenter and Veeam need MSSQL - or Oracle )

[John Rumm]

Now if you can work out a way to make the networks gadget work properly, please tell!

[John Rumm]

Perhaps you would prefer - "its usable, but I would prefer not to use it in the way they designed it to be used".

[newshound]

8.1 is better, it's a PITA if you start with laptop running 8 because the free upgrade takes ages to install. (Just had to go through this *again* with a laptop which died, I know I *should* have taken a disk image).

There is still a substantial learning curve though (but perhaps less than for Mint let alone other Linux).

I'm beginning to find my way around Office 365 after the best part of a year. A few of the new features are starting to make sense and at least the "old" stuff is mostly still there, you just have to dig a bit. Still don't like the fancy icon based interface though.

[Huge]

[Shakes head sadly.]

[Huge]

[32 lines snipped]

We're moving away from the "egg" model of security towards an "onion" model and starting to treat all networks and endpoints as untrusted. It's going to take decades. :o(

[T i m]

If upgrading from 8 to 8.1 is something you might do regularly (or even more than once) it might be worth downloading the image and running it from the DVD. That's what I did recently with a Sony Vaio that didn't want to upgrade from 8 to 8.1 over the net and even if the actual upgrade takes as you can cut out the (not insignificant) download stage. ;-)

(Although I did it from the W8 laptop without looking to see how and it was all pretty intuitive).

Cheers, T i m

[Tim Watts]

I hear the same - current best practise is firewall everyone, internal or external - but obviously with different rulesets.

Of course, someone will still put their password on a postit on the monitor and still be scribbling customers' credit card numbers down on a notepad...

[John Rumm]

Its possibly worth keeping in mind that Win 7 was not a paragon of perfection either, and there are ways it could have been improved - so with careful design win 10 could be better than going back to 7.

[newshound]

Good tip, I will do that. Saves spending ages deleting all the Acer bloat too!

[newshound]

You'd think that they'd want to make this upgrade a bit easier for people with Windows 8 because they give the impression like our upgrading to 8.1 is actually pretty important to them.

Yet, they make it exceedingly difficult for anyone unable or unwilling to do it through the Windows Store.

[T i m]

I'm not sure if it is a straight installer image (I don't believe it is in fact) but just an upgrade (from 8 to 8.1). ;-)

I initially downloaded it for a W8 laptop that wouldn't upgrade and again on another that I thought I'd save some time with. These were factory installs of W8 though.

Agreed.

If what you say about the OEM issue is true then again yes.

Ironically, on the first laptop, a Sony Vaio, after downloading it from the Vaio and saving the image to my server ... then burning it on my W7 PC, I realised the Vaio didn't have a DVD drive (doh!) and I CBB to look for my USB one. So I shared the W7 PC DVD drive, accessed it over my LAN from the Vaio and ran the 'Setup.exe' from that and it worked first time (much to my surprise may I add!). ;-)

So, in some case it looks like they make this upgrade 'easier'?

Cheers, T i m

[Mr Pounder Esquire]

Yes. It's shit. If you want Windows 7 Ultimate and the loader I can post them to you. Dead easy to load, even I can do it.

>

[T i m]

Thanks for that John, I'll pass that on.

I can't remember if I ever saw the 'std' version and don't have it still to play with.

I wonder if it was designed that way for 'touch' use (where it would probably work well).

The W8 Vaio I looked at the other day had a touch screen but they guy never used it! How 'irrelevant / unwanted' must an interface be (touch) when people don't use it, even when it's available!

I did like the picture recognition login though but I'm not sure if it was part of Windows 8 or a Sony addon?

Cheers, T i m