Finally ran across a deal too good to pass up and picked up another laptop. A new HP Envy. Only has an i5 but at least this site isn't aggravating anymore, well hardware wise at least. Wife is going to have a fit. Which is why I picked her one up too. Two fits! It'll take a little getting used to over XP but I think I'll manage. Merry Christmas!
^Brave soul. I've had a chance to try W8 on friends' computers. Hate it, hate it, hate it. But since Microsoft is abandoning us XP users in April, I'm gonna have to upgrade to something soon.
You can still buy Windows 7 from places like Newegg.com and Tigerdirect.com. Failing that, you can always install Classic Shell. It makes Win 8 look like Win 7, which is better than Win 8.
I looked for 7 for the mini I put a new drive in, since I couldn't get the xp disc I have to load completely on it. It would get to the finish of the load then blue screen me. I still have that plan at some point, I wanted the mini for work since it fits perfectly on my console in the van. They had a mini there but it was 8 bills with 2 gigs of ram and this on has 6 at just under that. It's definitely a bold new horizon for me. It's going to take me a couple of weeks to figure out the limitations and assets of this I think but here I boldly go.
Yea, that's where I was, all I had left that was functional was two Deskpro ENs that I put together for backups and they were so slow it was more aggravation than it was worth to be online. Besides, I've been cobbling crap together for years and felt somewhat deserving of a system I didn't have to dink with constantly and these days half the websites out there aren't very friendly to XP/8. Like this one.
Um, okay, coupla things. Was it W7 or Vista that was so buggy they were issuing patches for almost a year after launch? Also, according to the Microsoft site, upgrading from XP to W7 "may take several hours," and they recommend printing the tutorial before you start. W.T.F.? Does it at least come with a set of launch codes?
Vista was a buggy mess. W7 is probably the best Windows they ever made, and a joy to work with. Only XP comes close, but 7 is still better. Which has to be why they abandoned the design immediately after.
Well, you probably can't run Win 7 on a machine that was designed to run XP. And the routine MS is talking about is for a machine where you have XP installed, and you want to do the upgrade without losing anything on that machine, which, even if you follow the directions from MS to the letter, is pretty much impossible. What you'd really want to do, is to completely nuke the drive (after backing up your important files, of course), and then do a fresh install of Win 7. Doing it otherwise is going to cause problems from what I understand. Of course, its not always easy to do, since if you're like most of us, you've got your passwords stored in your browser, and no longer remember them. There's a fairly simple solution to that, however. Before you nuke the drive, install lastpass on your machine. It'll securely store your passwords in the cloud, and then after you've finished installing Win7 on your new machine, you put lastpass on there (once you've gotten your browsers installed, of course) and it'll copy your passwords back to your PC.
Jesus H Tap Dancing Christ, I don't get the 'hate' for Windows 8. Just because now you have big colorful tiles that do the same as the tiny, clumsy start menu? Really? Not to say I'll ever use fullscreen apps on a real computer, but with 8.1 you don't even have to see the tiles any more since it can boot to the desktop directly. The tiles are then really not much more than a better start menu. Really, these constant complaints when somebody changes a few pixel grates on my nerves. Just the same, btw, as the constant complaining when no pixels are changed. Windows XP is more than a decade old. Time to let go, really. Sure you can. My netbook runs Windows 8 without a hitch and that thing is weaker than top of the line smartphones.
Its because they forced the change, and didn't make it easy to keep it looking like Win 7 if you wanted to. I don't see what's so great about the new start screen, of course I hardly used the start button on previous versions of Windows, so I'm probably not the best person to talk about it. Granted MS was in a Catch-22 situation, if they didn't change the appearance of 8 vs 7, then people would have wondered what MS had done to improve it. Why let go of something that works? One of the problems we have as a society is this constant need to replace things that work just fine with something that's shiny and new (and perhaps only marginally better, if at all). It depends upon how old the XP box is. I'm currently using an XP box that there's no way it could run Win 8, it can barely run XP. Had I tossed this machine out when I got a Win 7 PC, I'd be without a PC right now, since my Win 7 machine died (yet another reason to keep things that work around, and not toss them out when you get something shiny and new, you never know when something's going to break).
That's funny IMHO. We replace our perfectly fine cars because the neighbors got a new one, we replace our perfectly fine smartphones because the Apple cult tells us to, we replace perfectly fine digital cameras because there is 'a new one', we replace pretty much anything because the industry will bring out a new and improved version just in time when our bank accounts are over the last shock. We get angry when we don't get the new Android version on our phones right away, we are pissed off if we don't have the newest of everything because there is one tiny, minor 'feature' that suddenly seems sooooo important. But Windows XP seems to be for eternity. Nah, not true. Everything should be new all the time but it shouldn't look different. Of course it should look different, however, but differently.
This same argument happened when Windows switched from 3.11 to 95. They forced the change to be start menu oriented then as well. I would say the style overhaul is quite similar. I think trying to match the same experience across the phone, tablet and PC ecosystem, was definitely a step in the right direction. No matter how much people grump about the change, which if it upsets them enough, can just mod Win 8 to look like 7.
The growth trend in smartphones, tablets, and PCs is slowing down. Why? One reason is because they're a mature technology, and the new models which come out offer only minor improvements over previous ones. Sure, there are some people who always have to have the latest and greatest the moment it comes out, but they're in the minority. More people are keeping their devices for longer and longer periods of time. The same is true of cars, BTW. 30 years or so ago, the average age of a car on the road was about 5 years (in the US, don't know about Europe), now its about 10. (Oh, and digital cameras? Pretty much a dying industry, because everyone just uses the camera on their smartphone or tablet, even though the quality isn't nearly as good as that in a DSLR.) When do most PC users (as opposed to Apple users) get a new version of their OS? When they buy a new PC. Otherwise, there's not really a reason to upgrade your OS, unless you're running an old version that's no longer supported, so that you can't do most of the things with it that you used to be able to do. There's also security concerns. It would be nice if software and hardware makers would open source their products when they decided they were no longer going to support them. But of course, if they did that, folks would probably be less likely to go out and upgrade. People do complain about stupid shit all the time, but really, if you're going to change something that people use all the time, there should be a reason to change it, and a logic behind it other than "just because." Even fans of Win 8 admit that MS made some mistakes with elements of the OS (some of which have been corrected by 8.1), but honestly, I don't see the advantages of the new start screen and its tiles. Some people like it, and that's fine, but if I don't want it, I shouldn't have to jump through hoops to get rid of it. After all, MS' selling point for years has been that you don't have to do like what Apple fans do, and just take what you're being offered.
No. Because the fucking geeks thought it would be kewl to ditch the Start button "just because." Windows 8 is designed for things that swipe, not for the desktop computer that I need in order to see what I'm working on. That's aside from the "Let's change it just because we can and force users to upgrade constantly" Microsoft business model. By the time they get to Windows 13, it'll require a special keyboard where all the letters have been replaced by cute little icons.
You do know the time between Windows 1.0/2.0/3.0/3.1 to Windows 95 was 10 years (1985 to 1995), with which came a radical UI redesign. The time between Windows 95 and Windows 8 (the next radical redesign) is 17 years (1995 to 2012). Maybe they should have moved faster... Yes, 8 is more aimed at swiping and touching for it's main interface. Which is the way technology is heading. It is nicer to use on a touch enabled screen and does make it more enjoyable, IMO. However, It is not hard to make Windows 8 function more like Windows 7 (or XP for those who haven't used 7). Windows 8.1 was partially MS listening to feedback for those who really wanted to boot to the desktop (which I'll agree should have been there from the start to make it easier for users to transition). But I do remember the same type of arguments with the switch from Windows 3.x to 95. And the WTF is that new button on my keyboard hysterics (which at the time was just a ctrl+esc keyboard combination). It wasn't cool to ditch it just because, they are trying to move along innovation with their OS. They at least have some sort of strategy now (which MS had sorely been lacking for a while) and the PC market itself needs some kind of injection to get some life back into it. If that involves making an OS work pretty seamlessly across all platforms, this might be the way to go. Or it could blow up in their face, only time will tell. Microsoft has made some stumbles with Windows 8, but like with 95, I believe it is what is needed to move the operating system forward. If it's really that bad though, as Tuckerfan has pointed out, you can get Windows 7 which is a great operating system and unlike XP will still be supported for some years to come (and supports the 64 bit version of the x86 instruction set).
Reading those upgrade instructions really drove home for me how fortunate I am to have gone through the upgrade from Mountain Lion to Mavericks in 30 minutes from launch to done with not a single hassle.
Eccentric, great information. Didn't know all that about the history. But my concern is with functionality. XP does what I need it to do. If it ain't broke, don't try to sell me a new model with dozens of bells and whistles I'll never use.
I understand, but it is very old and when they stop supporting it, you could run into problems with security. You'd be happy with Windows 7, and it might run on your current machine for many years to come, if you didn't want to upgrade to a new machine that is. Depending on it's age I suppose as well. I know you don't want to leave XP, but 7 really isn't much different and you can still find it via an upgrade, new install or on a new machine. That is if you don't want to suffer getting familiar to 8. Or, you can just keep using XP and roll with the punches. It might not be "supported" anymore, but that doesn't mean it won't work.
What I love is when Apple forces me to do an OS "upgrade" just so I could continue to run the newest version of Flash, even though it had been working perfectly fine before they'd released the $29 OS "upgrade". Weird thing was is that I could run the exact same version of Flash on XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, without having to spend money to update to the latest version of the OS. Just one minor annoyance I find with OSX.
Knowing me, I'll probably wait till the last possible minute and then upgrade to 7. Again, good info - thanks!
My theory on the original Windows 8 leaving out the start button was so Microsoft could throw people into the deep end to teach them to swim. If they had left the start button lots of people who aren't tech smart would have continued try and compute the old way. This made those people try out the new touch friendly/tile version of the OS. As a result lots of them have adapted and do like it. I don't think it was a bad move at all. I think it was a well thought out plan that actually worked. They knew there would be lots of complaining but they also knew if they couldn't get the dinosaurs to adapt to a mobile friendly OS that Apple and Google would keep taking their market share. It was an unpopular but necessary move. Now that a lot of people have learned how to use the Tiles they have put the start button back and I wonder how many people don't even use it anymore.
So far I really have no complaints for speed or abilities. I was on track for an i7 machine as I paced the aisle but ultimately picking up two held me back to an i5 due to cost considerations. Does what I need to do and really and while XP is like an old pair of Chucks, this seems more like putting on a pair of Rockports. So far, so good. It'll take a while to get it down pat but I will soon enough. Come on in garamet, the water is fine. I was dinking with the picture screen and it can take picture folders and display them in a collage alternating between folder name, month, and year. I sat there at the shop semi mesmerized by it as it pulled up random pictures, (and memories), for about twenty minutes watching. Then I cracked up out loud to myself when I thought of the old saying about your life flashing before your eyes and I thought it would be ironic if I dropped dead there and then when it completed the cycle.. Funny thing is, one of them was Storm, Tex and Flow on one of their meetups.
^I'll probably give in eventually, but the current Beast won't accept W8. Will probably treat myself to the W7 upgrade for an end-of-the-year tax write-off, and bite the bullet on W8 the next time I'm buying a whole new rig. You guys have been really helpful - thanks!
You'll like 7, it's almost just like XP, it's got a couple nice new tricks, and it boots and runs way smoother. I'm going to hang onto 7 like grim death.
The one thing I don't like about 7 (and Vista) is the absence of the "Power Toys". Those little changes did so much to help out the OS.
Cool for future information. Too bad I never upgraded way back when and still have to pay to get it. Which is okay, because this is the last Apple product we'll probably ever own. Love the trackpad, one of the best I've ever used. The rest of the machine has been pretty janky, especially for it's original price.
You misunderstood me. It's not a free upgrade from Mountain Lion. It's just... free. If you've got the App Store on your machine, it's on there gratis. Unless you mean you're still using something pre- App Store integration, and then I'm sure there's still a way to get it for free. Since they're not charging for it, you could probably get it on Bit Torrent legitimately.
You're right, it's using 10.5 right before the App Store integration, leopard I believe, which is what I meant. Yes, there is a a way to do it without, but I'm not going to bother with the hassle since all we use this machine for anymore is simple web browsing. It's a Mac, I shouldn't have to jump through hoops though, right? If only they had done away with the annoyance when they integrated their app store.
