Nice timing, Jason. I just dove into Windows 8 this weekend myself. I'm in the process of building out a new desktop gaming system. My old system had an OEM version of Win 7 Pro - which means I'm technically not allowed to move the environment so that it's running on a new motherboard. Technical legalese aside - I'm not sure I could have transplanted that environment into 2+ generations new hardware anyway. I went to Best But to get a new version of Win 7 Pro to install and discovered that M$ has completely swept Win 7 under the rug - all retail outlets have Windows 8 now. Bummer. BUT - it's on sale at a steep discount through the end of January. Honestly - anyone who might update to Win 8 later might want to snag a copy of Windows 8 now while the prices are low and keep it stashed away. Having heard little good about Windows 8 I walked back out to my car without buying it. My thought was to try another PC store that could well have Windows 7 in stock. But then I decided "time moves forward - windows 7 will one day die. Maybe I should read up on Windows 8." So I pulled out my walled-garden iPhone (ha!) and started searching for reviews of Windows 8 (yay for irony!). I read about four reviews. At first my focus was on gaming, and it turns out that Windows 8 will deliver a 1-2% increase in performance for gaming. So that's a wash. BUT - they memory allocation unit in the OS now allocates memory randomly, which apparently thwarts most of the attacks against device drivers and such that previous versions of windows were susceptible too. This apparently is pointing to a brighter future for online gaming in terms of making it harder for people to cheat. I then found a review on Toms Hardware for Windows 8 - it was a 20-page technical review. I read the whole thing on my tiny iPhone screen and then walked into Best Buy and picked up a copy of Win 8 Pro. That review did a great job of conceptually explaining the design of the Windows 8 UI. And while that start-screen is dramatically different, it turns out everything you had in previous versions is really still there. Except often the changes are for the better. Probably the biggest thing to remember is that the "classic desktop" is just an app. However, you can get to it any-time by chording "Windows-D". So - if you're in an app and want to jump back to the desk top - there you go. My biggest hurdle was finding the power management options so I could configure the system to not go to sleep. I actually had to google that one, but the fix was easy. At the start window, just right-click, and then choose "view all". The start window will expand to show all of the things you could possibly care about - including the classic control-panel, which apparently is the only way to get to the power management options. Once I figured that out, I've been able to find my way to every knob I could want to turn. The Tom Hardware reviewer started out his review with a bearish view of Windows 8, and at the end of his thorough examination was left with grudging appreciation and gave it a "Recommended Buy" rating. Having played around with it now for a few days I'm getting comfortable with it, and I'm finding I'm actually enjoying it. Obviously M$ is going in the direction of Apple. There's an App store, Adobe Reader opens as a full-screen app (I actually prefer that), etc... Also, as key individuals at Valve have noted Windows is becoming "less open". But none-the-less, as I get increasingly comfortable with it I'm finding I rather like it. In response to your last paragraph, Jason, I'll note that I saw a lot of people online poo-poohing Windows 8 simply from the standpoint that M$'s pattern for OS releases is "awful-good-awful-good," and that win7 was good, so Win 8 is obviously awful. It's different, but not awful. It's the biggest thing to happen to Windows since... Windows. But it's not quite the paradigm shift I feared it would be. It's obviously still an non-posix OS and for software development is probably not a place I want to live - I much prefer Linux/Mac OS X... but it's not an Oldsmobile Diesel. :) -Rob On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 8:54 PM, Jason Hsu <jhsu802701 at jasonhsu.com> wrote: > I looked at the computers at Office Max yesterday and got to see Windows > 8. It's rubbish! How are you supposed to do anything? > > As a Linux user, I've been so spoiled by the user-friendliness of Linux > Mint, Puppy Linux, and antiX Linux. Windows 8 is even worse than Unity. I > felt completely out to sea. There were some Windows 7 computers there as > well, and Windows 7 (at least in the configuration I saw) didn't look that > different from Windows XP, the last Windows OS I have significant > experience with. I can't imagine how anyone who likes Windows XP or 7 will > like Windows 8. Anyone who objects to Unity will hate Windows 8 even more. > > Microsoft today reminds me of General Motors during the Malaise Era. > Windows Vista was Microsoft's Chevy Vega. I expect Windows 8 to go down > in history as Microsoft's Chevy Citation, Cadillac Cimarron, or Oldsmobile > diesel engine. > > -- > Jason Hsu <jhsu802701 at jasonhsu.com> > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20130127/1e2c3c35/attachment-0001.html>