Overreacting. Trolling stuff only goes so far until it gets dumb.
Windows 8.1 has the exact same things as windows 7 with different start menu.

It may be worth pointing out that Windows 8 did apparently fix the messed-up-colors-until-you-kill-Explorer bug that affected various games (including Starcraft) in Vista/7.

But that's not much of a reason for using Windows 8 instead of Vista/7.

TELVM wrote:

Malik wrote:

... Suggest get 7 and wait (with fingers crossed) for 9. 😁

And better sooner than later: Microsoft to Kill Windows 7 sales for consumer PCs in October

TELVM wrote:

Wow behold this fresh gem ladies & gents 🤣 :

Windows 8 UX designer on Metro: "It is the antithesis of a power user"

tl;dr "Waa waa waaa, stop liking what I don't like!"

Well, I think we can safely conclude that opinions on this matter are mixed here 🤣

Actually, one thing I find hilarious is how many people are so confused by the differences in Windows 8 that they don't realize something incredibly basic:

The Win 8 Start Screen = The Win 7 (and prior) Start Menu

You typically never open the Start Menu in Windows 7 and prior unless you intend to run a program or shutdown/restart/logoff/etc. And then while it's open, you typically don't pay attention to any of the windows you have on screen, since you're focussed on hunting down the program you want to run through the mess of folder names that get listed. If you change your mind about running something, you just click away from the menu.

With this process in mind, when you want to run something from the desktop on Windows 8, you just click on the bottom left corner to bring up the start screen and click on what you want to run. If you change your mind about running something you just click the bottom left corner again to bring the desktop back. To shut down or restart, you run the mouse over to either right corner for a moment until a set of five icons appear. You click the settings icon and the shutdown/restart button is right there.

Windows 8 also has some other easy-access shortcuts. Right clicking on the bottom left corner produces a menu chock-full of power-user options, such as the ability to open a command prompt, run the task manager, access the control panel, or even offers another menu option for shutting down or restarting or such. Clicking on the bottom right corner hides all the windows and shows the desktop.

It only starts getting complicated if you want to deal with Live Tiles apps, as those things are primarily designed for touch screens, so using the mouse with them is weird. But then, one of the first things I did after installing Windows 8 was remove almost every single Live Tiles app from the system. (Yes, you can do that.) The only one I left in place was the weather tile, since it shows current weather conditions without having to open it. :P

So yeah, Windows 8 is scary and different, but to put it mildly, you can still make it your b____ just like any other operating system. >;)

That's what worries me about the future and why my hopes on Windows 9 are slim.

They should be apologizing for the turd, blaming Sinofsky and uncle Fester for the debacle, and promising us to bring back what we want ASAP.

Instead they keep pretending that Tiles 8 is a marvellous success, and keep insulting the intelligence of their user base with hogwash like "if you don't like it it's because you're a grandma/luddite/computer illiterate".

Which is beyond surreal when their very creators confess that the Metro crap was designed for computer illiterates.

Who is trolling who?

Its not normal to dislike a complete system only because of visuals.
If that were the case, Ubuntu would be the worst thing ever made, since its UI's buggy as hell and horrible to use side menu thats almost impossible to change for a new user. Unlike W8.1 where it is easy to get used to new start menu.
Metro applications are like widgets crap in windows 7.

Nah, Microsoft has their beta releases that they get people to purchase and then they fix it in the following release.

HOME LINE

1-2 - Sucked
3-3.1 - Good
95abc - Sucked
98FE-98SE - Good (for 9x)
ME - Sucked
XP - Good
Vista - Sucked
Vista SP2 - Much better.
7 - Good
8 - I won't say sucked but they definetly should have listened to feedback. Whoever they had beta testing the interface were idiots.
8.1 - Getting there but these changes should have been in 8 from the beginning.....Listen to your users Microsoft.
9 - Hopefully will be good. Mabye they will make task manager actually display when programs crash...It worked all the time on NT4.....

ME wasn't that bad though. It was way better then 98FE anyway 😜

And I like almost all aspects of the start menu. By scrolling through the list of programs I often see a program I forgot I had installed, giving me new ideas or perhaps making me remind I should uninstall said program.
I really don't see the downside of the start button and start menu tbh so why not just give people a choice??

A fully functional start button for the people who like that and that metro stuff for the people who prefer that.

DosFreak wrote:

Nah, Microsoft has their beta releases that they get people to purchase and then they fix it in the following release. […]
Show full quote

Nah, Microsoft has their beta releases that they get people to purchase and then they fix it in the following release.

HOME LINE

1-2 - Sucked
3-3.1 - Good
95abc - Sucked
98FE-98SE - Good (for 9x)
ME - Sucked
XP - Good
Vista - Sucked
Vista SP2 - Much better.
7 - Good
8 - I won't say sucked but they definetly should have listened to feedback. Whoever they had beta testing the interface were idiots.
8.1 - Getting there but these changes should have been in 8 from the beginning.....Listen to your users Microsoft.
9 - Hopefully will be good. Mabye they will make task manager actually display when programs crash...It worked all the time on NT4.....

Agreed...almost word for word, except I am not a fan of Win8 at all and I do have to say Windows XP is the best overall and has been around forever for a reason and can still can transcend into modern computing if you are not concerned too much about playing the newest and latest games. I can still make due with older versions of Adobe Photoshop, CAD software, and MS Office in terms of Graphics and productivity software, and I am not really into many games beyond XP era...I use XP (SP3) on my Crossfire Core2Duo ASUS system with 4GB RAM and a speedy hard drive and it is rock solid and fast. No reason for me to upgrade.

jwt27 wrote:

What exactly is the advantage of using Windows 7 over XP-64? It just seems like a downgrade to me in every possible way, except for DX11 support. I don't like how they "fixed" things that didn't need fixing, especially the audio/midi stack.

Could you elaborate on that?
Last year I installed 7/64 on a PC that previously had XP with a DAW set up... sooner or later I'm going to need it again for audio recording, so I'd like to know how badly I'm going to get screwed over by these changes.
(I don't really use midi though, for what it's worth - emphasis is on the digital audio recording part.)

Also, I'm not sure what's with this recent obsession about boot times. How often do you guys boot your PCs that this is such a concern? Both my XP and 7 rigs typically last at least a month between restarts, unless there's a power cut or something, so minimizing the booting time (or more accurately, the time until the OS signals that it's ready for user input even though it's still busy initializing its hidden guts in the background) isn't really a priority...

VileRancour wrote:

Also, I'm not sure what's with this recent obsession about boot times. How often do you guys boot your PCs that this is such a concern? Both my XP and 7 rigs typically last at least a month between restarts, unless there's a power cut or something, so minimizing the booting time (or more accurately, the time until the OS signals that it's ready for user input even though it's still busy initializing its hidden guts in the background) isn't really such a concern...

For me, it's less about how long it takes, and more about the fact that if it takes longer to boot, it usually means there are things going on during boot-up (especially if you are connected to the internet) that someone like me, who's just a "mild nerd" doesn't know about, plus it means the OS is loading a bunch of crap that I most likely don't need.

I don't really care how long it takes to boot up, but it is a good indicator of what is happening during boot-up is what I'm trying to say.

As long as I knew my OS wasn't loading crap and trying to access the internet during start up and my OS took even longer to boot (within reason of course), I really wouldn't care waiting.

retrofanatic wrote:

For me, it's less about how long it takes, and more about the fact that if it takes longer to boot, it usually means there are things going on during boot-up (especially if you are connected to the internet) that someone like me, who's just a "mild nerd" doesn't know about, plus it means the OS is loading a bunch of crap that I most likely don't need ...

If you're interested in getting rid of the crap in your system, run msconfig.exe, click on the 'Startup' tab, expand the 'Startup Item' column so that all entries are wholly legible, then make a screen capture (you'll need several captures if the list is long) and post here the pics, like in this example:

TELVM wrote:

If you're interested in getting rid of the crap in your system, run msconfig.exe, click on the 'Startup' tab, expand the 'Startu […]
Show full quote

retrofanatic wrote:

For me, it's less about how long it takes, and more about the fact that if it takes longer to boot, it usually means there are things going on during boot-up (especially if you are connected to the internet) that someone like me, who's just a "mild nerd" doesn't know about, plus it means the OS is loading a bunch of crap that I most likely don't need ...

If you're interested in getting rid of the crap in your system, run msconfig.exe, click on the 'Startup' tab, expand the 'Startup Item' column so that all entries are wholly legible, then make a screen capture (you'll need several captures if the list is long) and post here the pics, like in this example:

Thanks for the tip...if you read my post, I do not have any issues with extra stuff loading on my system...I think you misunderstood...I am aware of msconfig...I use it all the time, I was just responding to VileRancour's comment about people's obsession with boot times, that's all.

But if you were hinting that I do the same with win7, I have to say, I find that with win7 compared to XP, even if you 'control' what is being loaded during startup, XP seems to always boot quicker, so I believe (mostly assuming) that win7 loads more crap at startup than winXP, and that's fine, it's just not for me.

TELVM wrote:

blaming Sinofsky and uncle Fester for the debacle

I guess you misunderstood this news? I thought you referred to it earlier in the thread.

Windows 8 is a disaster. Period.

Paul Thurrott shares some of his inside information, and it's pretty damning. According to him, Sinofsky's team - even up to his major supporter, Steve Ballmer - were removed from the company after it became clear just much of a disaster Windows 8 was.

http://www.osnews.com/story/27558/What_the_he … ning_to_Windows_

retrofanatic wrote:

...I am aware of msconfig...I use it all the time ...

I misunderstood then, I see you know the drill 😉 .

retrofanatic wrote:

... I have to say, I find that with win7 compared to XP, even if you 'control' what is being loaded during startup, XP seems to always boot quicker, so I believe (mostly assuming) that win7 loads more crap at startup than winXP ...

I like Se7en but it's much more heavier than good ole slim XP. XP can be trimmed down to 80MB or less of RAM footprint after startup, that's just impossible with Se7en. On equal hardware (specially ole hardware) XP is always swifter. Most probably you already know but following Black Viper's guides to clean up services.msc helps in these respects.

Tetrium wrote:

I really don't see the downside of the start button and start menu tbh so why not just give people a choice??

THIS.
I wouldn't have (m)any problems with Windows 8 if they just added the metro stuff and set it as default, but provided an option to disable it. Instead they just forced everyone to use it, and tell people who don't like it to "get used to it". It seems to me that they're just changing things for the sake of change, not because it's an improvement in any way.
And that's what I meant by saying "I wouldn't care if win 7/8 was just an improved windows 2000". Providing more user interfaces is certainly an improvement, but not if you remove the old one entirely.

An even better example of this is Firefox: This was one program that did one thing and did it really well. If development was abandoned somewhere between 1.0 and 3.6, nobody would have cared. There wasn't much left to improve about the user interface, and all development effort could have been directed towards optimization and bugfixes. But instead of that, seemingly in an attempt to justify their version number inflation scheme, all they do is change familiar UI elements at random without providing an option to revert to the previous behaviour. And, somehow manage to make the browser slower with each new version.

VileRancour wrote:

Could you elaborate on that? Last year I installed 7/64 on a PC that previously had XP with a DAW set up... sooner or later I'm […]
Show full quote

jwt27 wrote:

What exactly is the advantage of using Windows 7 over XP-64? It just seems like a downgrade to me in every possible way, except for DX11 support. I don't like how they "fixed" things that didn't need fixing, especially the audio/midi stack.

Could you elaborate on that?
Last year I installed 7/64 on a PC that previously had XP with a DAW set up... sooner or later I'm going to need it again for audio recording, so I'd like to know how badly I'm going to get screwed over by these changes.
(I don't really use midi though, for what it's worth - emphasis is on the digital audio recording part.)

Windows 7 resamples everything to one master sampling rate. Windows XP would use the sampling rate of the first program that starts playing, and resample subsequent audio streams to the first.
Not that XP's audio subsytem was all that fantastic, but I can't call this an improvement either. I'm probably the only one who cares about this stuff, anyway.

jwt27 wrote:

... An even better example of this is Firefox: This was one program that did one thing and did it really well. If development was abandoned somewhere between 1.0 and 3.6, nobody would have cared. There wasn't much left to improve about the user interface, and all development effort could have been directed towards optimization and bugfixes. But instead of that, seemingly in an attempt to justify their version number inflation scheme, all they do is change familiar UI elements at random without providing an option to revert to the previous behaviour. And, somehow manage to make the browser slower with each new version ...

And worse is coming.

I washed my hands off FF years ago and switched to Pale Moon.

TELVM wrote:

And better sooner than later: Microsoft to Kill Windows 7 sales for consumer PCs in October […]
Show full quote

Malik wrote:

... Suggest get 7 and wait (with fingers crossed) for 9. 😁

And better sooner than later: Microsoft to Kill Windows 7 sales for consumer PCs in October

They're not really killing it. Retailers always had the option of bundling 7 with new PC's until then. That's why HP is "bringing 7 back". They're not really, they always had the option to keep selling it but didn't because everyone thought 8 would sell better. Now that they know better, you'll probably see more OEM's jumping on the bandwagon to sell more PC's with 7 installed before the deadline.

Oh and you realize the girl in that picture is naked from the waist down, right? NSFW

Yes, as a full fledged operating system, Microsoft should have provided a choice of versions - one for ordinary desktop users, and another for the teens busy with social apps, photos, etc. in short - the windows phone. There's nothing more to argue when persons like Miller himself admits to the sh*ttiness of the Metro UI.

There have been too many red-face incidents happening with Microsoft, the paramount being going back to woo customers into implementing the false Start menu in 8.1 to boost the sales. It means the Metro UI is a failure - else why did MS decided to go back, if Metro is so good?

Microsoft is currently, desperately trying to force down Windows 8 down every unsuspecting users' throat. With the possibility of stopping the Windows 7 installed machines being sold this year, despite the fact that Windows 7 lifecycle officially ends only in 2020.

There is no reason for a Windows 7 user to upgrade to Windows 8, whatsoever (unless you're thinking to get a new Windows based Tab).

For XP users, I can only share the pity of those who have been complaining that they simply do not have the fund to upgrade (more so if they needed to buy a new machine to accommodate 8 ) despite the fact that XP is doing everything they need already.

I too still have XP in one of my systems, and will always be there, just like my Win95 based system.

EDIT : I don't have any complaints using Windows 8 on Tabs, however. It's designed for that. Not for desktops.

jwt27 wrote:

I see this is quite a controversial topic! 🤣 Don't worry guys, I won't be touching Win8 anytime soon.

But back to my original question, I think I'll see if I can find a copy of XP x64 anyway, and give that a try too. Now let's say I want to triple-boot Win7, XP64 and Debian with this UEFI stuff... What's the best way to install that, in which order, and what should my partition table look like?

It's your choice finally, but glad you're thinking of 7, as you can see from the number of those who prefer 7 in this thread alone.

As for the multiple boot, I recently installed Kubuntu 13.10 into my Windows 7 Professional laptop.

1. I used EASUS partition master home edition (free) to resize my hdd to create unused space at the end.

2. I then used the Kubuntu Install's partitioning utility to create a primary partition for Kubuntu and another logical partition for the swap drive.

3. I made Kubuntu to install the boot loader on the Kubuntu partition itself.

4. Booted into Windows 7. Installed NeoSmart Technology's EasyBCD, and made a boot entry to boot the Kubuntu partition.

5. Selecting is done at bootup by choosing from Windows's menu and if selected Kubuntu, it'll pass it to GRUB and I can boot to Kubuntu.

Just an example.