Dagnammit, I have to upgrade to Win8.1!

[dave_the_nerd]

I bought a rather nice set of bluetooth headphones, and after pairing them successfully with everything in the house BUT the Win7 boxes (and putting a lot of effort into it, at that) I installed Win8 in a VM and passed my (very infuriating Bluetooth adapter that wouldn't install the right drivers, blast it!) to the VM.

Win8.1 recognized the BT dongle immediately, paired with the headset, and - WHAM - started working perfectly. It was a couple more clicks than the iPhone, but it was just as fast.

Stupid drivers... making things... work... like they're supposed to.

Jeez, I hate the new Start Menu. :'(

 

[Mem]

I bought a rather nice set of bluetooth headphones, and after pairing them successfully with everything in the house BUT the Win7 boxes (and putting a lot of effort into it, at that) I installed Win8 in a VM and passed my (very infuriating Bluetooth adapter that wouldn't install the right drivers, blast it!) to the VM.

Win8.1 recognized the BT dongle immediately, paired with the headset, and - WHAM - started working perfectly. It was a couple more clicks than the iPhone, but it was just as fast.

Stupid drivers... making things... work... like they're supposed to.

Jeez, I hate the new Start Menu. :'(

Some people will never be happy and always find something to moan about,why not just install a third party Start menu like here http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2283053 .

You can also have Win8.1 boot to the old desktop so avoiding Metro Start for the most part,also down the road Microsoft are bringing back the Start menu in desktop so should keep even you happy but then you have plenty of choices in that link above .

 

[Duraz0rz]

Jeez, I hate the new Start Menu. :'(

I've just pinned everything I frequently access to the Taskbar, and then organized the Start Screen to have the other apps I use. I recognize the icon faster, anyways. Or I just hit the Windows key, start typing, and then hit Enter when it finds what I'm looking for.

 

[Anteaus]

The funny part is that with 8.1 you don't even have to boot into Metro. There is a setting to go straight to the desktop at bootup. Add a cheap third party start menu app and once you're in it's like a better version of Windows 7, albeit with some caveats. Admittedly it's still more cumbersome than it should be, but for the most part it works fine.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I fear change.

I used Win2k until 2007.

Anyway, Win8 clearly has some advantages I can't ignore.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

Well, they are bringing a start menu back later this year so you can probably get by tweaking things until then...

I've found it pretty easy to get used to... just relearning some things and the start screen with small icons isn't too horrible. Right click on the start button is nice too...

 

[Bateluer]

Jeez, I hate the new Start Menu. :'(

Start Screen, not Menu. Windows 8.x does not yet have official Start Menu, only 3rd party UI mods and applications. Out of the box, Windows 8.x's Start Screen is pretty much unusable.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Turns out the Atom D2550 in the NetTop that runs the TV in the workout room doesn't have Win8 drivers.

Jeez.

 

[code65536]

Turns out the Atom D2550 in the NetTop that runs the TV in the workout room doesn't have Win8 drivers.

Jeez.

Blame Intel. They never even released 64-bit drivers for the GPUs on those things, IIRC (my guess is that is a far greater concern than them never bothering to certify the drivers for Win8, since most Win7 drivers should work in 8).

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Blame Intel. They never even released 64-bit drivers for the GPUs on those things, IIRC (my guess is that is a far greater concern than them never bothering to certify the drivers for Win8, since most Win7 drivers should work in 8).

The Win7 drivers were 32-bit only and buggy as heck. Google can't find an instance of anybody getting them to work on Win8.

https://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-19647

This spells a sad story, for sure. There are a lot of perfectly adequate machines out there with no GPU drivers now (except what Microsoft is willing to write.)

The thing about the GMA3600 in particular is closed-source drivers from PowerVR.

What a lemon that nettop turned out to be.

 

[VirtualLarry]

What a lemon that nettop turned out to be.

I guess I should be thankful for my C-70 and C-50 Nettop. They are slow as (well, use your imagination), but at least they have drivers for Win7 64-bit. I haven't attempted to install 8 or 8.1 (don't particularly care for them).

I'm actually running Linux Mint 15 with ATI's proprietary drivers on the C-50 (Asus EeeBox - see the thread in Hot Deals about it).

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Aw, sold out. I would have considered that.

Oh well - I really only use it for PLEX and Netflix. I probably should replace it with one of those ARM-based HDMI stick doodads.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I fear change.

I used Win2k until 2007.

Anyway, Win8 clearly has some advantages I can't ignore.

That's easy to understand as I pass through my sunset years. But it's also more than that.

I have three users and five systems. "Sunset years" means I'm retired, and it had taken me too long to learn budgeting in a life focused on increasing income. Well -- we don' do dat no moh!!

I look at the outlays I have to make for this . . . techno-fetish I have. I make lists; plan saving and borrowing; and schedule purchases for savings and convenience through bulk orders.

If you want to see frustration over old hardware, drivers and un-dead OS preferences, look at my recent thread about Home Server and an old 680i system I use. Would've done better to use the P45 system with all Intel drivers.

I hadn't bought into "touch-screen" as a matter of need (and outlays), or wireless as a matter of the same. Planning right now -- not spending in panic. And Father Time here thinks that the E-Trade baby is too big for his diapers . . .

But -- Geez! Man! -- Win 2K? In 2007?! I dropped it in '03 . . . Hope I can get that kind of mileage out of Win 7, even if I don't "plan" on it. . . .

 

[VirtualLarry]

But -- Geez! Man! -- Win 2K? In 2007?! I dropped it in '03 . . . Hope I can get that kind of mileage out of Win 7, even if I don't "plan" on it. . . .

Win2K SP4, I think it was, added support for 48-bit LBA (as did XP SP1). That removed most of the HDD limitations of the day, freeing people from purchasing 120GB and smaller HDDs.

I'm hoping that MS does the same for Win7, as it currently does NOT support HDDs that are "4Kn" - having a native physical sector size of 4K. These HDDs are slowly being introduced to the market, first in the enterprise sector, but I'm sure if they are cheaper to make, that we'll be seeing them on the consumer side soon enough.

Win8, of course, does support them.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Win2K SP4, I think it was, added support for 48-bit LBA (as did XP SP1). That removed most of the HDD limitations of the day, freeing people from purchasing 120GB and smaller HDDs.

I'm hoping that MS does the same for Win7, as it currently does NOT support HDDs that are "4Kn" - having a native physical sector size of 4K. These HDDs are slowly being introduced to the market, first in the enterprise sector, but I'm sure if they are cheaper to make, that we'll be seeing them on the consumer side soon enough.

Win8, of course, does support them.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting what you're saying, or maybe you missed finding out about it. Old brain with fuzzy memory, but I think I jumped on that "AF" or Advanced Format problem with the WHS-2011 box first. There was either a Windows Update or a "Fix-It" for those drives, and then I found it for the Win 7 workstation as well.

Or maybe I missed something -- maybe the "fix" was an "emulation" approach. You tell me -- Larry . . . :\

 

[VirtualLarry]

Maybe I'm misinterpreting what you're saying, or maybe you missed finding out about it. Old brain with fuzzy memory, but I think I jumped on that "AF" or Advanced Format problem with the WHS-2011 box first. There was either a Windows Update or a "Fix-It" for those drives, and then I found it for the Win 7 workstation as well.

Or maybe I missed something -- maybe the "fix" was an "emulation" approach. You tell me -- Larry . . . :\

I'm speaking of 4Kn, what comes after 512e. Drives on the market that are "4K sectors", still emulate 512 byte sectors over the interface, hence the AF 512e drives.

Those will eventually go away, and be replaced by 4Kn, 4K-native, without the 512 byte sector emulation.

Windows 7, according to MS's documentation, does not support those drives.

 

[ViRGE]

Larry, before you cause a freakout, may I remind you that we've already had this discussion about 4Kn?

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2376913

No one is in any rush to introduce 4Kn consumer drives. There's no benefit in doing so.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Larry, before you cause a freakout, may I remind you that we've already had this discussion about 4Kn?

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2376913

No one is in any rush to introduce 4Kn consumer drives. There's no benefit in doing so.

Yes, that thread. Anyways, "AF" drives started at the higher capacities (2TB and larger), but the cancer grew, and now has spread to 1TB Blues, as well as even 500GB Blacks. Pretty soon the only non-AF drive on the market (that still works with XP), will be leftover stocks of < 500GB HDDs.

I figure 4Kn, once it is introduced (Edit: introduced into the consumer space, I mean. It's already in the enterprise space), will spread likewise, and in a few years, there will only be "legacy" drives (new old stock) available for use with existing Windows 7 PCs.

 

[code65536]

I figure 4Kn, once it is introduced (Edit: introduced into the consumer space, I mean. It's already in the enterprise space), will spread likewise, and in a few years, there will only be "legacy" drives (new old stock) available for use with existing Windows 7 PCs.

The problem here is comparing 4Kn with 512e. They're not comparable.


1a) Moving from 512n to 512e brings major benefits and efficiencies to the drive and the data structures on the drive. Most importantly, it helps a little with areal density.

1b) Moving from 512e to 4Kn means that the the drive manufacturers can dispense with a (very thin and fairly trivial) emulation layer in the firmware. The benefits of switching from 512e to 4Kn are very small relative to the benefits of going from 512n to 512e. (And yes, I do consider 512e Advanced Format to be a good thing.) One is about improved efficiency of how data is stored and organized, and the other is about axing a few subroutines in a drive's firmware.


2a) Moving from 512n to 512e is a relatively easy and smooth transition. The only hitch is that XP's partition manager aligned partitions on track boundaries, which corresponds to 63 sectors and causes misalignments. It's not a big deal, since you can easily work around it by realigning the partitions or using different software to create the partitions. NTFS uses 4K clusters by default (because that matches with the RAM page size), so XP's disk access patterns were already a naturally good fit for 4K physical sectors (assuming the partition wasn't track-aligned).

2b) In contrast, the costs of going from 512e to 4Kn is much higher, since there aren't workarounds like with the partition problem, and the consequences are much worse (drive not working at all with OS vs. a mere performance hit from poor alignment). Going 4Kn would entail losing a significant chunk of the market. No hard drive manufacturer in their right mind would do that, especially since, as pointed out earlier, the benefits of going 4Kn are so very small and insignificant.


I expect to see 512e for another decade, if not more. There is simply no good reason to go 4Kn, and lots of reasons to not go 4Kn. The enterprise storage market has always been very different (hey, why isn't SAS bleeding from enterprise to consumer? ), and there's very little reason to believe that the (limited) deployment of 4Kn there means anything about 4Kn in the consumer space.

 

[accguy9009]

Some people will never be happy and always find something to moan about,why not just install a third party Start menu like here http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2283053 .

You can also have Win8.1 boot to the old desktop so avoiding Metro Start for the most part,also down the road Microsoft are bringing back the Start menu in desktop so should keep even you happy but then you have plenty of choices in that link above .

I boot to the desktop in 8.1 and barely ever see the tiles that many refer to as metro. I greatly prefer not having the old start menu since the new one is so much more functional. Right clicking it gives many shortcut options and left clicking gives me all my apps sorted either by name, date installed, category or most used. I don't use the default metro apps but the same apps I always used. Just don't understand the hatred of the new 8.1 but I know you know what I mean. I love 8.1! Love the new search feature!

 

[RampantAndroid]

I boot to the desktop in 8.1 and barely ever see the tiles that many refer to as metro. I greatly prefer not having the old start menu since the new one is so much more functional. Right clicking it gives many shortcut options and left clicking gives me all my apps sorted either by name, date installed, category or most used. I don't use the default metro apps but the same apps I always used. Just don't understand the hatred of the new 8.1 but I know you know what I mean. I love 8.1! Love the new search feature!

Win key + X is better than right clicking it.

 

[accguy9009]

Win key + X is better than right clicking it.

With the new updates it is now the same but you right its the bomb. the start button is for wimps

 

[VirtualLarry]

The problem here is comparing 4Kn with 512e. They're not comparable.

1a) Moving from 512n to 512e brings major benefits and efficiencies to the drive and the data structures on the drive. Most importantly, it helps a little with areal density.

Which I could see, on the larger, most-dense drives. But the fact that it has trickled down to 500GB HDDs, proves my point - if it saves the mfg money, they will do it.

Hence why I believe that 4Kn will move to the consumer space sooner, rather than later.

1b) Moving from 512e to 4Kn means that the the drive manufacturers can dispense with a (very thin and fairly trivial) emulation layer in the firmware. The benefits of switching from 512e to 4Kn are very small relative to the benefits of going from 512n to 512e. (And yes, I do consider 512e Advanced Format to be a good thing.) One is about improved efficiency of how data is stored and organized, and the other is about axing a few subroutines in a drive's firmware.

And those subroutines, in each new drive model, require development, testing, etc.

Moving to 4Kn would save money on those validation processes. Why wouldn't a mfg that makes millions of these things, want to save a few pennies per drive on validation?

Plus, moving to 4Kn, would remove read-modify-write problems for the OS. Problems that the MSDN documentation alludes to, in terms of incompleted read-modify-write operations, and inconsistent filesystems.

2a) Moving from 512n to 512e is a relatively easy and smooth transition. The only hitch is that XP's partition manager aligned partitions on track boundaries, which corresponds to 63 sectors and causes misalignments. It's not a big deal, since you can easily work around it by realigning the partitions or using different software to create the partitions. NTFS uses 4K clusters by default (because that matches with the RAM page size), so XP's disk access patterns were already a naturally good fit for 4K physical sectors (assuming the partition wasn't track-aligned).

Alignment issues with the on-disk structure are only part of the issue. It's not just a performance issue, it's an issue with disk structure consistency, in the face of a power-outage, etc. (4Kn drives would be more robust than 512e drives, for example.)

2b) In contrast, the costs of going from 512e to 4Kn is much higher, since there aren't workarounds like with the partition problem, and the consequences are much worse (drive not working at all with OS vs. a mere performance hit from poor alignment). Going 4Kn would entail losing a significant chunk of the market. No hard drive manufacturer in their right mind would do that, especially since, as pointed out earlier, the benefits of going 4Kn are so very small and insignificant.


I expect to see 512e for another decade, if not more. There is simply no good reason to go 4Kn, and lots of reasons to not go 4Kn. The enterprise storage market has always been very different (hey, why isn't SAS bleeding from enterprise to consumer? ), and there's very little reason to believe that the (limited) deployment of 4Kn there means anything about 4Kn in the consumer space.

There's plenty of good reasons to move to 4Kn, but the OS obviously has to support that, and Windows 7, according to MS, does not yet.

 

[code65536]

Which I could see, on the larger, most-dense drives. But the fact that it has trickled down to 500GB HDDs, proves my point - if it saves the mfg money, they will do it.

That's because the smaller drives are just stripped-down versions of the larger drives. It costs them more to maintain two separate lines. And this is why they're not going to make the change, because unless they want to switch cold-turkey, they'll need to maintain two separate lines, and that's costly.

Moving to 4Kn would save money on those validation processes. Why wouldn't a mfg that makes millions of these things, want to save a few pennies per drive on validation?

Because the validation of the firmware happens just once, and all drives of that model family get the same firmware. Yes, the cost is non-zero, but it's tiny. Especially compared to the huge cost of switching and all the extra validation that would take (just the cost of fielding support calls about the change would surely far exceed any pittance that they save).

And again, I want to emphasize that enterprise storage market is and has always been very different, and things trickling down to consumer is the exception, not the rule.

I simply don't see any reason or evidence to suggest that a 4Kn switch will happen any time within the next decade or more. Yes, we're both just speculating, and yes, there's a non-zero chance that they would switch. I just think that chance is exceedingly small.

 

[ashetos]

Wanted to post that I agree with needing 4K block size devices due to the atomicity of 4K sector writes.

File-system and data-base engineers cannot trust a 4K drive the emulates a 512-byte sector size.

Best practices for 512e:
1) align partitions to multiple of 4K (1MiB alignment is common)
2) make file-system and data-base block size a multiple of 4K (4K is common)

Added benefits:
SSDs have huge page and block sizes, the coarser the alignment the better for performance and reliability