Reply 20 of 39, by Standard Def Steve
I guess I'm a bit of a Microsoft enthusiast, having used and even enjoyed, for the most part, everything from DOS 5 to Windows 11. I even remember firing up Vista Beta 2 for the first time and thinking: THIS, this right here, is the freakin' bomb -- a notion I still agree with to this day.
So it almost hurt when I tried Windows 8 and couldn't quite get behind it; didn't quite understand Microsoft's vision for the future. It just seemed to be a step backwards in every way, from appearance to core system functionality. Metro and the redesigned desktop environment were ugly as all get-out. Initially, you couldn't have multiple Store apps onscreen at once. You couldn't even window the bloody things to share valuable screen real estate with your regular Win32 apps! Then there was that Charms bar malarkey... jeez-o-pete! I mean, I never even liked the cereal, yet there it was on my computer, ready to rear its ugly head whenever I moused too close to the edge of the screen. It even gobbled up my shut down & restart buttons, presumably as a final FU.
Speaking of Windows shut down, it took me ages to find out why 8 seemed to progressively get less and less friendly with my Bluetooth headset: fast startup was enabled by default, which basically hibernated the OS every time I clicked shut down. Indeed, the one thing that Windows 8 seemed to do better than Win7 -- its ability to start up, like, hella quick dude -- was basically a lie.
At the time, I worked extensively with music/audio editing software, so I quickly realized that Win8 increased the occurrence of deferred procedure calls on my system. At times, this made working with audio software quite a tightrope walk. If I remember correctly, early builds of Windows 10 from 2015 to 2017 were largely based off of Windows 8 and had the same problem with DPCs, at least on my machine. I eventually decided to downgrade and slum it with Windows 7 for a few more years. By the time I had built up the courage to try Windows 10 again (build 1903 this time), all of the issues I faced earlier had fortunately been eradicated. High DPCs were a thing of the past, and the OS itself had finally become as fast and reliable as the Win7 I knew and loved.
I seem to recall Microsoft (or perhaps someone else) saying that a lot of the Win8 gunk had been removed from Win10's core for a 2018 build. Though at the moment I can't find anything that confirms this, it does explain why 1903 felt so much cleaner, like less of a kludge, than the earlier versions.
I am glad that Windows 8 is finally gone--not only from the computing public but from the guts of Win10 as well (that is, if it was ever there to begin with. Perhaps I subconsciously enjoy blaming Windows 8 for Win10's initial shortcomings). Whatever. I'm just happy that, since 2019, I've been able to appreciate Windows again.
"A little sign-in here, a touch of WiFi there..."