Why the hate for W8? Besides the metro UI (which can be disabled SUPER easily), it is a MUCH better OS...
I agree in principle, and ran it for several months. I liked how much faster it was under the hood, and
really like the new file explorer with the ribbon interface. I like the new backup system. I like being able build my own custom recovery image so I don't have to totally start from scratch if things break. And Windows Update in 8 seems to work a
lot better.
I really wanted to keep using it, but last week I ended up wiping it out and reinstalling Windows 7 on it. There are a number of issues I could never resolve that greatly interfered with my flow. In no particular order:
- Sleep issues. No matter what I tweaked, Windows 8 simply would not go to sleep on its own on my machine. That's a feature I use a lot. I like to be able to walk away, forget to put it to sleep, and have it take care of itself. It would sleep the display, but not the system. I've researched and experimented with it since I installed it, and never got it resolved. With Windows 7, all I had to do was wake-disable the mouse, and everything works perfectly.
- Several older games that I like to play wouldn't work with Windows 8.
- Though my general browsing is through Firefox, I have a few sites including Netflix pinned to my taskbar through IE for convenience. I watch on a second monitor. If I go full screen in Netflix and then try to work on my main display, it immediately drops out of full-screen. (Yes, Silverlight is set to allow it.) Works fine with Windows 7.
- Tried using the Netflix app on the second monitor instead, thinking that might be a good workaround. As soon as I hit the corner to launch a program, the start menu pops up on my secondary screen and stops the video. Useless.
And a few other odds and ends. There's a lot I really like about the OS, but there are enough problems
for me with it that I went back. Visually, I also think 7 just looks better, but that wouldn't be enough to keep me from upgrading.
I didn't care for the Start Screen, so I shelled out the $5 for Start8. Before I did, I gave it two full months of trying to live with the Metro stuff, but it's just a disaster with a mouse, IMO. I can absolutely see the value with a touchscreen, but I own a tower, not a tablet. The worse is when you're rolling the scroll wheel in one of the full-screen apps, and it scrolls sideways... until you hit a column of text. Then it starts going vertically. You have to keep your pointer carefully positioned between the edge of the monitor and the text field if you want to keep going horizontally. It's just a mess, and aside from the "Big Picture" app that I like, I don't use any of the Metro/Modern/Whatever-they're-calling-it programs.
I'll probably give the next update a try when it comes out later this year. Hopefully some of this stuff will be resolved.
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