You guys are not making it easy for me. Some time ago I purchased a copy of Win 8 Pro, but because of you people I have not tried it yet. I was also telling myself that it would be smart to wait until I also have a new and more powerful machine to match the Pro's 64GB RAM option - but I seem to never quite have the cash!!

Darwin: "I really don't see a difference between 7 and 8 other than the start menu."
tomos: "I'm only using the desktop in Win8"

My first question to tomos is: "the desktop", as opposed to the start menu?

The subject makes me uncertain because the desktop is one thing I never use. But you may of course not be the right person to ask for advice because of your anti-Explorer attitude... hehe...  

Anyway, the more important question:
a few weeks ago an advert from Microsoft said that version 8.1 is more "old-style desktop user friendly". Isn't it?  

@Curt - I've loaded and run Win8 (before the latest update) on an older Core2 laptop w/4Gb RAM from Dell and it installed without any issues. Ran ok too although I nuked it off the drive without giving it too extensive a workout since it started to annoy me so much.

FWIW I felt a similar annoyance (mostly with myself) when Win95 and Win7 first came out. But I acclimated very quickly to them since they were (IMHO) definite improvements over what came before. Can't say the same for the Win8 experience. I went in with an open mind - and even read some documentation so I wasn't just thrashing around at first like I was with Win 95 and Win7. But even with that I still couldn't get myself to like Win8 or see where it was better than what I was already using.

YMMV.

I have been trying out Windows Server 2012 for several days now. The changes in workflow and the limitations these changes impose...they are definitely irritating to say the least.

However, there are some changes that do make sense (to me and how I like to do things). Until now, this Server edition of Windows tips the scale into a positive experience. Not by much, but still positive.

We just spun up a new rack system a few months back which is based on 2 physical servers running Server 2012 datacenter edition. The physical servers run is a separate domain from the 20+ virtual servers that provide company services.

Having spent a good deal of time jumping back and forth between server 03, 08, and 12 .. I gotta say I'm really liking 12. The new server manager finally makes sense by showing a quick at-a-glance view of what is going on. SM in 08 was to me really just a poorly designed uninformative nuisance that got in the way. The 08 SM's incessant whining about there being an error from 6 freaking months ago made its output utterly useless to me. I could either completely clear the logs (Bad...) or deal with the fact that any new information would have to come from somewhere else.

However... Finally... FINALLY in the 12 SM there is a newly beloved option to kindly piss-off about any freaking antiquated errors regarding already resolved (or non) issues that have happened prior to (well...) now. Brilliant...absolutely freaking brilliant option that actually allows the thing to inform me of what is happening now...

The new integrated NIC teaming feature is so idiotically quick & easy to use that it almost makes me giggle.

Natively partition resize/move anything on the fly ... Is so fast and easy its just got to be wrong.


All the old 03 servers are now gone, and the new VM are a 50/50 mixture of 08 R2 and 12. Most of the 08's are only (for upgrade practice) transitional, and will soon be updated to 12.

Personally, I'm totally loving the new 12 servers.

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.

And to think, all this fuss and frustration is why I moved to Linux seven years ago. It's fun to read it, but I don't have to live it.

This needs its own thread (split the posts into a thread later?) but since the previous posts talk about the comfort of using Linux...I need some help in fixing laptop wifi.
Previously had Windows 7 but I installed Mint 13 over it earlier in the year. wifi is iffy some of the time and it takes a long to time to connect especially coming out of sleep.
What steps (may be start with iwconfig?) do I need to perform to diagnose and fix?