About 2 weeks ago, I got to thinking that my free trial of Windows 8 was going to be up, and I would have to think about digging out my original disc image and put 7 back on there, or plunk down the $40 to get the final release of 8. I shrug my shoulders and figure that MS will let me know when I've got to worry about ponying up money. Boy, did they. I came home from work and found that my PC had rebooted. I assumed that something had updated and autorebooted the machine. Logging in I found a message box that said something like Thanks for the heads up there, guys. Would it have killed you to give me a couple of days notice? If this had happened on the weekend, I actually would have gone to the trouble of digging out my old Windows 7 discs and reinstalling that. However, knowing that it would take me an hour or so to dig out the discs, followed by another couple of hours of reinstalling and downloading updates and all the programs on my machine, I elected to pay the $40. This wasn't easy. First, when I clicked the button to do the update, it launched the default browser (Opera), and as anyone who's ever used a non-IE browser to access MS' site can tell you, this doesn't work very well. I do a C&P of the URL, launch IE (which helpfully asks me if I would like to disable my add-ons in IE, to speed up IE, ignoring the fact that I don't have any IE add-ons installed, since I never use IE), paste the URL, get to the page, only to have a message box pop up and tell me that my machine was now restarting because I don't have a fully licensed copy of Windows. Windows restarts, I log in, am greeted with the same message box as I was before (leaving me to wonder when, exactly, I was going to have 2 hours between restarts instead of just 1), I go through everything again with clicking the "Buy" button and C&Ping the URL, etc. Get to the page where I have to cough up the money, and the download begins. Its not not an update that unlocks the machine, but the full install of Win 8. I knew this, but was worried that I'd run out of time between reboots before it finished downloading the file, since the transfer was taking so long. Thankfully, it makes it, but just barely. The machine reboots a few minutes after it completes. I go immediately to the installer after the machine restarts, let it scan my system to verify that it will run on the machine (Really? You guys couldn't be bothered to do a simple check to see if it was already running, but had to check everything anew?), select how I want to do the install (Now, Later, Burn a DVD and do the install from that), and then wait. When I downloaded 8 and done the install, I had asked to do an install off the file on the drive. This didn't work, so I had gone to another machine (since the DVD drive on this PC is a bit flaky at times), burned a DVD, and done it off a disc. I skipped that this time, since I didn't know if I'd be able to do the same thing again, and I didn't want to bother with trying to burn a DVD, as I didn't know how it'd work out. The install went fine, this time. My settings were all still there, but none of my non-MS programs were. Now, one of the features of the Win8 App Store is that any app you download from there will be automatically reinstalled from the app store, if you have to do a total reformat and reinstall of Win8. Great idea, and the first thing I did after logging in, was to go to the app store and begin searching for the programs I use so I could install them that way. This will come in handy if I ever get a nasty piece of malware on the machine and need to completely nuke the drive and start fresh. Out of all the apps I use, only two of them are in the app store (and the app store needs to update 15 of MS' apps): LastPass and Evernote. Sigh. I download both of those, go to IE and begin downloading all the other programs I use: Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc., etc. One thing I notice after I've done all this, is that there's no icon for either Evernote or LastPass on the desktop. A bit odd, I thinks. I go to the Metro screen find both of them, launch LastPass, get it set up, and go back to the desktop. Still no icon. Go back to Metro, launch Evernote, get it set up, return to the desktop and find it doesn't have an icon, either. Weird. So, as I'm getting the final tweaks in, I realize I need some info in Evernote to key into one of the programs. I go to Metro, launch Evernote, and then begin looking for a way to use the desktop version of Evernote, rather than the Metro version, as the Metro version is a "full screen" app (i.e. the only thing you see on your screen is the particular Metro app you're running at the moment). Apparently, there isn't one. Which means that I don't have the ability to have two windows open at once and be able to easily look at them both at the same time. This is rather annoying to me. This is one of the things that I have a computer for. You know, to have two or more apps open at the same time and be able to stare at them both. This would also explain why there's no icon for Evernote on the desktop, because its a Metro app, it can't be used on the desktop, and only in the Metro UI. I will say that Windows did save all my settings for things like wallpapers, etc. (though not default apps), when it did its install, so I didn't have to go back and redo all of those.
Your first mistake was continuing to use Windows 8 this close to the trial end date. I use Microsoft, I love Windows 7, but I don't trust Microsoft farther than I can throw Bill Gates, which isn't far. That said, never be surprised when Microsoft makes it harder for you to use Microsoft products, because Microsoft doesn't give a shit. They know they've got your money. Still, you'd think after all these years they would take the intuitive route rather than the around-the-bend-through-the-back-alley route when upgrading or buying a product, but no. They have not learned, and likely will not learn, and now you're stuck with Windows 8. I wish you the best of luck, and they can "upgrade" my Windows 7 when they pry it from my cold, dead, hands.
Waiting until the last minute was your fault. If you had actually made a decision before the deadline you knew would inevitably fuck you over, you wouldn't have had any problems. Still, it makes me weary for the next major update...
"Wary." Although I guess "weary" is accurate too. I remember, back in the day before broadband was inexpensive and widespread. Your OS wasn't tethered to the Mothership. You had to go out on your own and look for updates and patches--because it often took hours to download them so it would've been bad juju if your computer just went and did that kind of stuff of its own volition. The when XP came out, the computer wags and pundits went on about the "Registry Worm." That was the bit that tattled back to Redmond if it thought you had a pirated copy. The hue and cry from that got it killed. For a time. Eventually it was brought back as "Windows Genuine Advantage," but happily you could still kill that "upgrade" and tell it to never ever install. A couple years ago I had a non-computer friend, whose aging XP desktop was giving her problems so I dutifully came over and spent a few hours cleaning it up. Unfortunately I'd forgotten that she'd mentioned that it had a suspect OS and I let the computer install Windows Genuine Advantage. It was annoying in XP. But it didn't cripple the computer nearly as badly as it apparently does with 8 now. And recovery was fairly easy. I was able to find a way to clean it up, uninstall WGA and prevent it from ever reinstalling. What is it that, given enough time, software companies inevitably turn their product into malware?
Most of the apps I use don't work in metro, so its useless for me. And yet, adding about 5 lines of code so that there would be a countdown timer in one of the corners of the screen was just too much for them. Except I didn't know that waiting until I did would fuck me over. I figured that if I missed the expiration date, I would get one of those pop up notices, like MS did with WGA, or perhaps it would disable most applications. I would have been fine with that. I'd have just shrugged my shoulders and said, "Eh, I'll pay." (And had I ignored those warnings and it then gone to rebooting, I wouldn't have been irritated.) What pissed me off was the rebooting of the machine, that's actually quite hard on PCs IME. Every machine I've had that's gone tits up on me, has done it on a reboot. The particular machine I have 8 installed on isn't in the best shape to begin with, which is one of the reasons I put 8 on it to begin with (since 8 has better memory management than 7 does).
I actually had a glitchy update on the one PC I had at the time that was running a legit copy of XP and got to endure the WGA crap for a few days a few years ago. (And before anyone claims "karma," the reason I was running pirated copies of XP on my other machines was because they had gotten corrupted, and since PC makers were loathe to put a full install CD of XP in with PCs when they sold them, I had to use pirated copies to get the machines going again. Had they done that, all my machines would have been running legit copies.)
