Pros and Cons of Windows 8 over previous versions

goose90proof said:

Not true. Control panel is totally different. General navigation through Windows is different. It is less optimized for productivity than Windows 7 - IMO.

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Windows 7:


Windows 8:


Totally different? Huh?

I should also mention that windows 8 does differentiate itself from windows 7 in a number of ways. This is all in no particular order off the top of my head. I apologize if windows 7 or prior did have some of these features. To be honest I've been using windows 8 for long enough that previous versions feel awkward.

1. Choice of docking metro apps. As I've said some will find this useful. Others won't and don't have to use it.
2. Internal core cleaned up. I can't remember the last time I saw a bluescreen. (purple I think in windows 8?) Smaller foot print. Installation is very quick. Requires less processing power to run than windows 7.
3. File copy. Enough said.
4. Task Manager. Well done.
5. Microsoft account is worth mentioning. Synchs windows settings, windows theme, allows SSO to many of M$'s services.
6. Built in antivirus/firewall. I have yet to be called by a relative for support on a windows 8 machine.
7. Start screen - if you really don't like it then disable it. I'm now used to it and find that I'm quicker on it by using the windows+typing approach. I've been told the same works under windows 7 though I've never tried it.
8. Privacy - Improving. Metro apps at least now have to ask for your permission to use things like your web cam. All tinfoil hat features can be disabled... including smartscreen.
9. Better built-in support for multiple monitors. The taskbar can be configured a number of ways without installing a third party utility.
10. I should really break the taskbar into its own point... There have been a whole bunch of toys added. Easy to pin, more customization available, etc.
11. Growing ability to share almost anything and ease of use. My 70 year old grandma sent me a game recommendation yesterday from the windows store. I didn't show her how to do that. She is quite the opposite of computer literate yet she feels quite at home.

etcetc.

I read the 'paper' (rant?) that was posted, as well as skimmed most of the posts here. By and large, I think most people who are adamantly against Windows 8 are those who are simply resistant to change or who didn't give it enough of a chance. At the risk of being crass, I'd say some people put on their tinfoil hats when they hop up on their soapboxes to talk whine about Windows 8.

The biggest argument is "it ain't broke, don't fix it." If we were to live by that mantra in the world of technology (and especially in software development), there'd be little to no innovation. It really irks me when people are so overly critical of a good, but subtly different operating system. If you want to complain, complain about Vista or ME, but do not put Windows 8 in the same category as those two failures. Microsoft's strategy is obviously a somewhat unified platform. It's a good strategy.

On small complaint that I do have with Windows 8 and Server 2012 is that the search (Windows key + typing) doesn't lump all results into one category and order by relevance. Instead, it separates them into Apps, Settings, and Files. If I want to launch Server Manager or Control Panel, I have to tab down to 'Settings' and hit enter. If I'm looking for 'budget.xlsx', I have to tab down twice to the 'Files' category. On Windows 7, the most relevant and accurate result is on top... saves me a couple keystrokes.

I personally still use Windows 7 on a daily basis. I have Windows 8 installed on another partition, but I'm waiting until I get my SSD before I make it my primary OS. I prefer Server 2012 to 2008, but unfortunately I can only run it on development boxes and VMs at work since 2012 isn't in the upgrade path just yet.

pcgamer4life said:

On small complaint that I do have with Windows 8 and Server 2012 is that the search (Windows key + typing) doesn't lump all results into one category and order by relevance. Instead, it separates them into Apps, Settings, and Files. If I want to launch Server Manager or Control Panel, I have to tab down to 'Settings' and hit enter. If I'm looking for 'budget.xlsx', I have to tab down twice to the 'Files' category. On Windows 7, the most relevant and accurate result is on top... saves me a couple keystrokes.

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If I remember correctly, that is going to be changed in Windows 8.1. I haven't used it yet but I do remember reading that somewhere.

goose90proof,

100% of things you mentioned as a problem are resolved in seconds through http://sourceforge.net/projects/classicshell/files/ There is no difference - no difference in anything you just posted whatsoever between Windows 7 and Windows 8 after the quick Classic Shell install.

If you don't want a Windows 7 Start Menu, Classic Shell has a Windows XP/2000 Start Menu option too. Here's a Windows 7 button to be used with Classic Shell freeware for complete visual equality of the Start Menu Button with Windows 7.



Not only is the Windows 7 navigation there but even the much older Windows XP buttons can be installed, look at this Windows 8 navigation screen shot:

although most people just stick with the Windows 7-looking Windows 8 which in which Metro Graphical User Interface never appears unless you specifically click to bring it up.

mbentley said:

If I remember correctly, that is going to be changed in Windows 8.1. I haven't used it yet but I do remember reading that somewhere.

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I hadn't heard that, good to know! Maybe I'll download the preview and check it out.

Also, I am really impressed with the task manager, and download manager. Heck, I even get a pretty little graph of write speeds when moving or copying files!

pcgamer4life said:

I think most people who are adamantly against Windows 8 are those who are simply resistant to change...

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There are measurable handicaps to using Windows Metro. Simple Reboot procedure is an excellent example:

Do you hover your mouse *carefully* in the corner, hoping to Fish-In the “Charms” pop-up, only to have to carefully scroll down to Settings thereafter, making sure that Charms doesn’t disappear? Doesn’t it take a bit of time after that for your eye to locate the Power button to only then bring up the menu to be able to perform the Reboot/Shut Down process? Why is that better than having a Start Menu button from which you can accomplish this particular example with two clicks, as Classic Shell freeware once again allows us to do?"


The entire discussion would be moot if a choice, a simple choice, was given to us by Microsoft. Fortunately, that choice is still there through Classic Shell. It takes less time to turn Windows 8 GUI into Windows 7 GUI than it does to make a single post ranting about Windows 8 GUI. That is the way to address Win8 complaints.

We were actually talking about just that at work but with Server 2012. They were trying to figure out the quickest way to reboot. I think they figured that the two quickest ways were via PowerShell and using alt+f4 from the desktop to bring up the old school shutdown menu. That really cracks me up that those were the best solutions that we could come up with in terms of speed.

c627627 said:

There are measurable handicaps to using Windows Metro. Simple Reboot procedure is an excellent example:

Do you hover your mouse *carefully* in the corner, hoping to Fish-In the “Charms” pop-up, only to have to carefully scroll down to Settings thereafter, making sure that Charms doesn’t disappear?

Click to expand...

mbentley said:

We were actually talking about just that at work but with Server 2012. They were trying to figure out the quickest way to reboot. I think they figured that the two quickest ways were via PowerShell and using alt+f4 from the desktop to bring up the old school shutdown menu. That really cracks me up that those were the best solutions that we could come up with in terms of speed.

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Actually, I press the Window key and type 'shutdown /p' and hit enter..



But, c627627, your point is valid, and I completely see where you're coming from.


[edit]
But this probably wouldn't fare well in a production server environment, as it doesn't give you the 'reason' dialog box for your shutdown.

pcgamer4life said:

Actually, I press the Window key and type 'shutdown /p' and hit enter..



But, c627627, your point is valid, and I completely see where you're coming from.


[edit]
But this probably wouldn't fare well in a production server environment, as it doesn't give you the 'reason' dialog box for your shutdown.

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It's funny you mention that... The reason requirement is actually removed via GPO (completely out of our control).

That seems like an odd thing to get rid of. I mean.. most of the time on our servers I just put nonsense as the reason... but at least it's there in the odd case that we need it.

mbentley said:

They were trying to figure out the quickest way to reboot.

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Is there anything faster than Classic Shell Windows 8 One-Click Reboot:

Have a family member who just went to Win 8. Did the switch from Windows Vista. So far they seem to like it pretty well (which really surprised me!) Have informed said family member that Windows 8 upgrade (aka Windows 8.1 or Windows Blue) should be released on Oct. 18 2013 (link)

@Culbrelai - did read your paper. Thought long and hard about what you wrote. Impression is that after 10/18/2013 MOST of what you pointed out either will be fixed or should be fixed. Only time will tell of course. Thank you for your time and for researching Win 8. The wikipedia link is/was most helpful as well. You (like me) have been trained to list your source. Cudo to you!

Unfortunately - we here are in the stone age. Another family member just built a new machine and chose Win 7 as the O/S of choice. IF I had been asked what would have been recommended I would have had a rather difficult time making a recommendation. It seem that Win 7 is rather "tried and true" while Win 8 "is tried and blue". Pun intended.

As c627627 points out that all it takes is the "magic" of classic shell and Voila! One has Win 8 that looks like Win 7. (Haven't it tried it myself - would think that it would be rather fun.)

One last thing I would point out is that one should tend to try to "donate" to Microsoft as little as possible. For that reason (and Direct X updates) it would seem that going in the Win 8 direction is usually a more "reasonable" decision.

Thanks to everyone who posted! This certainly is one of the better, more intelligent, well thought out treads!

mbentley said:

Windows 7:


Windows 8:


Totally different? Huh?

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Not CP. Meant the PC Settings stuff. My mistake.

How exactly do you get to the place where you claim things are different in Windows 8, what PC Settings?

...because things can be set up to be identical. But if I may re-post the answer to the original poster's original question:


1. Classic Shell makes Metro available with a single click - not forced on you by default - there goes the only reason I know of for most people NOT TO GO with Windows 8.

2. Whoever inherits your system gets extra three years of Windows updates. Win8 end of life will be longer than Win7.

3. Mostly small stuff such as ability to pause/continue copy-paste operations. Somewhat snappier performance. If we can demonstrate that Windows 8 does boot faster (even if it is only a couple of seconds faster than Windows 7), and we can demonstrate that on a completely equal dual-boot system, people then say "well what's a few seconds, I don't care."


Well then install Windows 7 from scratch and wait an extra second or two for your system to load and be happy like that. The rational question should be "what do I loose by installing Windows 8?" That gets us into what RAM and CPU usage advantages are, multi-monitor advantages, future touch screen application advantages, lost of other stuff people say they "don't really need' but why would I go and install Windows 7 from scratch when maybe in the future I may want to check out a Metro App? Classic Shell makes Windows 8 look like Windows 7 and with a simple SHIFT+CLICK on the Start Menu, I get the OPTION (just the option) of Metro. Why give that up, why not have the option if there is no downside?

The downside would be if you abandoned a perfectly-working Windows 7 to UPGRADE, do not do that, but from scratch? Go with Windows 8 and if not, then why not?

c627627 said:

Is there anything faster than Classic Shell Windows 8 One-Click Reboot:

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We can't install that on our server 2012 boxes

goose90proof said:

Not CP. Meant the PC Settings stuff. My mistake.

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The task manager is different too.

But it's for the better.

I came to post after reading about the cloud being "a bunch of servers in India." What an ignorant comment. Do some homework about the subject. And I don't personally use skydrive, but I know several companies that absolutely love Office 365. Anywhere at anytime you have full access to the Microsoft Office suite online to edit your files be it on your mobile device or another computer.

Personally I'm with mbentley. After a minimal amount of time Win8 is not hard to use at all. In fact I actually like the charm bar. Start menu, just like he posted, just type away and search. In fact they even made it even better by allowing you to choose what category of file (application, system settings, etc).

mbentley said:

We can't install that on our server 2012 boxes

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Can you create these shortcuts:
%windir%\System32\SHUTDOWN.exe -r -t 00

%windir%\System32\shutdown.exe /s /f /t 0

Then use these icons for those shortcuts?

Well the idea is to be able to do it on hundreds of servers natively. That's totally doable but they were just talking about the quickest native way to restart a server 2012 box as they are installing SharePoint on these servers and they were comparing the number of steps from 2008 to 2012 and curious what shortcuts they could quickly do.