Windows 8.1 - The marmite o/s?

[MartyMcFly]

Ive installed it on my old manky laptop just to see what its like.. I cant figure out what Microsoft were thinking changing years of familiarity to making it difficult to find the simplest things.

Your thoughts?

[Obraxis]

I've got 8.1 now on my main desktop/workstation.

Once I removed all the 'Tiles' stuff, it's actually a really powerful OS, slimmed down & faster than even Windows 7.

I like it a lot*

*(Only once you remove the tiles shit).

[N1KE]

I went from windows Vista in English to windows 8 locked in Spanish.

The simplest, simplest of things takes hours and if I get to far to the left or right of my trackpad it goes crazy.

I'd rather be on a mac GASP!

[princess]

I haven't used it yet. Looks odd though

[NiteFox]

I use the stockish 8.0 and only download particular updates. 8.1 seems to have too many issues for me to jump towards it just yet.

The OS is great.. i love some of the additions. It's just when you first use it out of the box its a HUGE pain in the ass!
The key trick I'v learned over the use of the OS.. make shortcuts on the desktop to things like notepad.. paint.. it makes it easier to launch than trying to search for them.
Plus everything in windows 8 is possible to disable, and edit to a degree.
My only major complaint is not being able to modify group policies, because apparently that feature only exists in the Pro version of Win 8... GG MS GG.
Why would I want to mess with group policies you might ask? Well there's a huge flaw with how windows 8 does it's cache for folders... Not sure how many of you have noticed this yourselves when moving multiple folders or newly created folders, and got a bizzare error stating the folder is in use. Well W8 loves to keep "thumbnail" data for that folder in the cache for ages... so sometimes.. or all the time when you move folders it gives you that NAGGING folder error. Only two ways to fix it. Either modify the group policies, or manually disable it in regedit. Since I don't have the PRO edition.. thanks MS.. I had to manually mess with registry to create that policy on boot.

That's about the worst of the issues I'v had with Win 8. Other than that its rather nice. I love how it does the file transfers, and the ability to pause those transfers if need be.
I don't even have the start menu, nor do I really want it after all this time using the OS. There's 3rd party software which creates the Win 7 startmenu, but I'v really no use for it.
Windows key+r i get my launch window. right click the bottem left corner of the desktop I get all my core shortcuts to control panel etc.

[Trancer]

I use the stockish 8.0 and only download particular updates. 8.1 seems to have too many issues for me to jump towards it just yet.

The OS is great.. i love some of the additions. It's just when you first use it out of the box its a HUGE pain in the ass!
The key trick I'v learned over the use of the OS.. make shortcuts on the desktop to things like notepad.. paint.. it makes it easier to launch than trying to search for them.
Plus everything in windows 8 is possible to disable, and edit to a degree.
My only major complaint is not being able to modify group policies, because apparently that feature only exists in the Pro version of Win 8... GG MS GG.
Why would I want to mess with group policies you might ask? Well there's a huge flaw with how windows 8 does it's cache for folders... Not sure how many of you have noticed this yourselves when moving multiple folders or newly created folders, and got a bizzare error stating the folder is in use. Well W8 loves to keep "thumbnail" data for that folder in the cache for ages... so sometimes.. or all the time when you move folders it gives you that NAGGING folder error. Only two ways to fix it. Either modify the group policies, or manually disable it in regedit. Since I don't have the PRO edition.. thanks MS.. I had to manually mess with registry to create that policy on boot.

That's about the worst of the issues I'v had with Win 8. Other than that its rather nice. I love how it does the file transfers, and the ability to pause those transfers if need be.
I don't even have the start menu, nor do I really want it after all this time using the OS. There's 3rd party software which creates the Win 7 startmenu, but I'v really no use for it.
Windows key+r i get my launch window. right click the bottem left corner of the desktop I get all my core shortcuts to control panel etc.

Replace desktop shortcuts with Windows R, mspaint, Windows R, notepad etc.

Also to the first poster. I remember how when Windows XP came out we all whinged that it was dumming down the functionality of NT / 98 and it was hard to find everything etc etc.

This is what a MAC user / Windows user feels like when switching OS.

[MartyMcFly]

I adored XP when it came out such a great OS after re-installing 98 for the 10,000,000th time

Windows 7 feels same, a kind of crispness to it.

I hear the next update to 8 will bring back start in its windows 7 form.... whoop.