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Just FYI - the "Go Pro" link is dead. Clicking on the "Free Download" link gets you winamp566_full_en-us.exe...

+1 to Carol's points and to Superboyac's note, too. I'm in exactly the same boat. I purchased lifetime licenses years ago in good faith and was not given any warning that they were revoking them back in 2008 or so. In fact, I purchased a license for another of their products right around the time of the changeover under the assumption (yes, I know ass-u-me, etc.) that I was buying a lifetime license when in fact they had already changed to the then new model (what enraged users, myself included, was that for months after they changed licensing models there was no banner or indication on their website that this was so. Anyway, after a lot of going back and forth, they honoured my lifetime licenses but every time there was an upgrade it was up to me to write to them and remind them that I needed a new license. Anyway... the only really useful products in their catalogue (for me) are Photo Collector and mp3/music Collector (I also own a license for Book Collector), titles that have been dormant for years and I've long since given up using them. Flash forward to my reading the first post this thread and if feels like deja vu all over again...

Yup - that's more or less the route that I'm going to take as well - I'm giving it/M$ a couple of weeks to sort this out and if it's still borked I'm formatting and doing a clean install. Haven't decided whether to install 7 or 8 at this point... I'm really hoping that things clear up, though as I simply don't have any desire to start all over... Incidentally, after making my previous post, I went and gave the kids breakfast. When I returned, the computer was patiently waiting for a password - Windows had crashed and shutdown while I was away. AFAICR, no programs were running and it was idle...

How did you get hold of 8.1 to begin with? I thought one had to have a Microsoft account to obtain the upgrade.

It's on page 1 of Metro Shopping in Windows 8

is it only visitable via Win 8, or can I have a link, please?

I have a licensed Win 8 installer, but am still running Win 7.

or should I stay away?

Windows 8.1...

YMMV, Curt, but I say "run away"! Windows 7 is a peach. Windows 8.0 is stable but not really worth the bother of upgrading from 7. Windows 8.1 is an electronic manifestation of hell on your desktop... I'm a bit fecked off at the moment - I just posted a lengthy note about this on the thread you linked to above, followed up by a note about having suffered ANOTHER BSOD. Not happy.

Just to update the above posting - about five minutes after hit hit "submit", I experienced a BSOD and reboot. I had IE11 32bit and Outlook 2013 32 bit open and was viewing a different forum. I hope M$ gets this sorted out - at this point I alone must have sent in at least 10 automated error reports generated after a BSOD... I tried to use this as a rationalization yesterday to buy a new, stable, computer but I can't bring myself to do it. Just have to be hyper careful about backing up my data and saving open files frequently so that I don't lose anything important.

We are most seriously displeased.

Hi Tomos - I'm keeping a list by my computer and it's a work in progress, but I'll share. Background - my 5 year old Gateway notebook came with Vista Home 32 bit preinstalled and I loved it. I upgraded to Vista Professional 64bit so that I could access 4GB of DDR2 RAM (I upgraded from 3). Vista was great as I had it configured and I was ostracized in my community for saying good things about it. Upgraded the HDD to 320GB 7200 rpm and the CPU to a T9300 Core 2 Duo running at 2.5Ghz. Life was good. Upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit for free because I hosted a party pre-launch. Liked it (given how smooth Vista was for me, 7 wasn't much of a change) but grew to love it. Upgraded to Windows 8 Professional when it was released. Loved it - never missed the start menu/windows button. Upgraded to a 240GB SSD and achieved computing nirvana. Incredible boot times, instantaneous Office 2013 program launches, instantaneous searches - if I wanted to launch a program, I just hit the windows key and started typing the name. A list of matches appeared as I typed. I clicked on the title I wanted a "Bam!" it opened. My only gripe was that for some reason it wouldn't sleep (it always rebooted when I tried to wake it). Windows 8.1 looked poised to fix that issue. On Black Friday, I went to the Windows Store and there it was, a free update to 8.1. Throwing caution and good sense to the wind, I upgraded without performing a backup...

The update downloaded and installed very quickly and for the first 24 hours or so all was well. Then, disaster...

Here's my list of issues:

1 My wifi connection randomly drops to "limited connectivity". I try to disconnect/reconnect and then am entirely unable to connect to my network without rebooting the computer
2 The system takes a good 2 minutes to boot (up from about 30 seconds). The bulk of the extra time occurs after typing in my Password. I just watch the circle going round and round and wait for the desktop to load. Before 8.1 as soon as I hit ENTER the Metro start page appeared.
3 When I use the search feature now, my CPU usage spikes to 99% and explorer.exe freezes for minutes. For example, if I hit the windows key and type "Word" 66% of the time no drop down list of choices appears and everything freezes. After a minute or more the Word popup appears letting me know that it's loading. This takes another 20 to 30 seconds. bizarrely, if I hit the windows key and then use the mouse to find and select the Word tile, it loads instantly, as under 8.
4 Until I used Perfect Updater to update all the drivers on my system yesterday afternoon, my computer was throwing up BSOD pages and shutting down in the middle of innocuous operations like typing a posting to a forum. I averaged about 3 BSOD a day until then. Fingers crossed, but this doesn't seem to be an issue anymore.
5 as mentioned above, explorer.exe freezes or crashes altogether. The crashing seems to have sorted itself out, but it still freezes for periods of time. I just hit the windows key to check this and it only froze for about 10 seconds. However, I've been looking at Excel's loading windows for about a minute. There, it just loaded (my son came in to talk to me as it loaded, so I didn't get to time it exactly).

That's it for now. Some of these issues have evened out for one reason or another - explorer.exe is more stable and the freeze that occurs when I use windows key/search/launch is about 50% shorter than before. Still very present and annoying, though. My internet connectivity seems to be more stable. However, this computer is FAR from the machine it was a little over a week ago. I was pretty smug - had a five year old notebook running the latest OS and Office Suite and it was quicker than far newer machines with HDDs and the most stable computer I've ever had.

What have I tried over the past four days? Well, disabling services, uninstalling redundant software, updating drivers, trawling the internet reading lots of stories about other people's issues and hoping for solutions. There aren't many... This Microsoft forum is pretty informative: http://answers.microsoft....forum/performance?tab=QnA I'll keep working at it... Given the choice, I'd go back to Windows 8 but I can't stomach having to reinstall everything from scratch. This is the first time I've ever had a Windows update almost cripple a system, and I've been using Windows for over 20 years (and DOS before that).

Heed the cautionary notes to backup your system before updating (what kills me that is that usually I do!)

Windows 8.1...

From that blog post, things sounds quite reasonable.

If there aren't other "privacy issues" than that, and there aren't going to be, then imho there's nothing to fuzz about. And since it's opensores, people can keep watch... but oh yeah, <tinfoilhat>google could do different builds than from the publicly available source</tinfoilhat>

Very true. The tinfoil hat wearing side of me is adopting a wait and see approach - just being prudent. I just want to give Google time to clean up the EULA and smarter people than me time to determine what is, or what is not, being done with the data that Google may or may not be mining...

Were you able to decide on what to do with Google? Now that the time of the benefit of doubt is over regarding the latest guardian releases.

Chrome hasn't been anywhere near my computers since 2008. I've been happy with IE8,9,10, and now 11 long ago lost interest in keeping up with developments in other browsers. Now, the wisdom of doing this is probably open for debate, but I don't do much more than read forums about software and wristwatches and have an up to date AV, so figure that I'm as safe as I can be.

Totally agree about how fast dtSearch updates its index - this is one of the things that I love about the software  The other thing that I like about it is that I haven't had to pay for an upgrade since I started using it, back in 2008. My first indexing love was X1, btw, and I still love the interface and the previews (courtesy of Stellent previewers) but on my computer, which I've also had since 2008 simply doesn't have the horsepower to run it, it seems.

dtSearch is awesome! I've been using it for years - I like it because the previews and overall interface are nicer than Archivarius (own a license for that, too) and because it is less resource intenstive and produces a small index file. What I like about both dtSearch and Archivarius is that you can opt to run index updates manually, in fact, with dtSearch, that is the default setting. Finally, dtSearch is great because as noted the resource hit is negligible. I recently revisited X1 and wish that I could say the same thing... As xtabber noted, dtSearch is way too expensive for home use, though...

^I suspect that's answered already here:
=

it is richer in tools for color adjustment, back light correction, red eye removal etc rather than 'micro' tools like paint brushes etc.

I'm not really familiar with many editors.
Paid:
Sagelight - is currently good and has great potential. Mouse orientated (so far). Some interface aspects confusing - initially at least (but I see I'm running 4.2g beta and it's now at 4.4)
Helicon Filter - relatively sophisticated yet easy to use. (Disclaimer: haven't tried it in a couple of years.) License is unclear - looks like it wont work if you dont pay each year )

I have licenses for both - don't really use either much. FWIW, Helicon Filter is working just fine (latest version/latest build) and I bought my license two or three years ago... But then, I think I got a deal on a lifetime license. Really can't remember...

Hmm.... Just to update my earlier post, I downloaded a trial of DiffDoc and tested it against BeyondCompare. It has been a long time since I've used BC, because it processed pdf files just as effectively as - and more quickly than - DiffDoc. The only thing that I can see that limits BC are MS Office file comparisons - but it will do Word and Excel files and that's all I need it for so BC gets my vote here. Should probably revisit CompareIt, too... but work calls!

Wow! What a rich and full life  ! Thank you for sharing your story with us and WELCOME to DC. I have not been very active here for a few years now, but do monitor the fora; you will find this to be a very welcoming and tolerant place  My condolences (late though they may be) on your wife's passing.

Best I ever used was DiffDoc but the price is so prohibitive and the activation so picky (at least it was five years ago) that I can't recommend it (something like an initial buyin of @$400 and then an annual $130 subscription - though I am offered 20% off this every year. I have yet to take him up on it...).

I've got licenses for both Beyond Compare 3 and CompareIt. Both are good, though neither has been used (by me) in ages. Also have a lifetime license for UltraCompare which works well on text - don't know offhand if it works with pdf. Suspect not.

I have Windows 8 64-bit running on a five year old Core 2 Duo notebook with 4GB RAM and it is noticeably quicker than Windows 7 on the same hardware. Love it. However, it's not something I would run out and buy to upgrade your Windows 7 machine.

what constitutes a "Proper Start"

In my state it means: NO rubber/NO squeal.

No glove, no love?

Interesting, Curt - I have RealDraw but haven't used it in ages (and it hasn't been updated in years). Good software nonetheless...

Hey Curt - have you downloaded and installed the trial? Whaddya think?

My problem with LibreOffice is how resource intensive it is (and OpenOffice before it). A computer tech installled it on an old notebook my employer has provided for employee use - it's running an anaemic Intel duo-core chip, Vista 32-bit, and "rocking" 2GB RAM. LibreOffice was a pig to open and significantly slowed the machine when running. I had an unused Office 2013 license and installed it and it's much more manageable - though still not a dream to use... That said, I have a license for SoftMaker Office 2012 that I'm not using - maybe I should install that and uninstall MS Office. SM Office should be even lighter on resources on that seutup and I don't care too much about the license whereas an Office 2013 license is hard to walk away from

I'm not seeing these problems with Win 8/Office 2013 - everything looks great onscreen!? Am I correct in assuming that by

can't use a product that reads worse than any other window on the desktop.

you mean that text looks pixelated and "bleeds" into the white of the screen? That's how I read what you're describing (I'm not seeing it here, though). Can you describe it/provide a screenshot?

I might as well update this as well - I'm now on Windows 8 Pro 64-bit and using Office 2013 with Adobe Acrobat X1 Professional. Heaven...

PS I bought an Academic license for Acrobat X Pro and have upgraded it to X1. Still not cheap but manageable. FWIW PDF Converter Professional 8 is VERY solid (I purchased and used it for a day before deciding to upgrade Acrobat instead. Took advantage of Nuance's 30 day return) for the price - I paid $79.99. Staples now has the boxed version for $49.95 where I am.

What mwb1100 said - I've RMA'd hardware without a receipt; just a serial number. Go on, give it a try!

The third book is very interesting but I'm finding it takes a lot

Perhaps you need a second brain to get through the third book? 

The first time I drank soju (which tasted to me a bit like Pinesol at the time), I pounded back 7 or 8 shots within about 90 seconds at the urging/order of my boss. I sat there for a while, proud of my Canadian ability to drink hard liquor and "not feel it". Then I stood up... and immediately fell down again... Like Renegade, I avoid drinking more than one or two glasses of the stuff (which, 17 years on, tastes quite good!).

I've given up on this category of software, for the reason that CWuestefeld notes above

it makes me feel like it's just the least bad one out there.

I get by now using Dopus 10 to organize my photos into folders and have a menagerie of different photo editors for which I have licenses and installers and can call up on if I need to edit anything. I have only Helicon Filter 5 installed at the moment but find that I use PaperPort 14 SET tools for just about everything. Helicon Filter will likely be uninstalled soon as I can't think of a compelling reason to keep it on my system... With that thought fixed in my head, I'm off to uninstall it now! I realize that this is highly individual, so take the foregoing with a grain of salt!