My old Toshiba laptop has been dying a slow death
So, for my birthday 
the family "blessed" me with a new laptop thingo, an 15" screen Acer, running on Windows 8.
Its only been 2 days and already I hate it more than the old Toshiba/Vista.
I know I can be a pain in the neck, but what did I do to deserve this...
I shouldn't be looking a gift horse in the mouth, but jeez, this thing needs its teeth rearranged badly.
stephen
I haven't used windows 8, but there are programs to give you back your start menu if that's what's annoying you.
My parents have a machine with windows 8, and I installed the start menu program, just so I could use the thing.
edit: Classic shell is what it is called. It also sounds like Microsoft have realised they made a mistake.
Windows operates in a cycle. A good and bad cycle. XP good. Vista bad. 7 good. 8 bad.
Select to expand quotepweedas said..
Is it the computer you don't like or the windows 8 ?
the computer itself I will get used to, I just don't like W8,
Formula Nova's "classic shell" thingummy sounds like it might make it tolerable.
Anyone have any pro/cons or better ideas that a techno-peasant can understand
I'm almost tempted to rip out W8, and stuff W7 into its innards, but will wait for a bit of advice before getting the crowbar out.
stephen
Select to expand quotesn said...pweedas said..
Is it the computer you don't like or the windows 8 ?
the computer itself I will get used to, I just don't like W8,
Formula Nova's "classic shell" thingummy sounds like it might make it tolerable.
Anyone have any pro/cons or better ideas that a techno-peasant can understand
I'm almost tempted to rip out W8, and stuff W7 into its innards, but will wait for a bit of advice before getting the crowbar out.
stephen
I tried the same a while ago on a cheap vista laptop for my oldies, rolling back to xp. It was a major headache because there were no xp drivers for a lot of the components. It really sucked.
Select to expand quotemyusernam said..
I tried the same a while ago on a cheap vista laptop for my oldies, rolling back to xp. It was a major headache because there were no xp drivers for a lot of the components. It really sucked.
Is XP a bit long in the tooth for new hardware to use?
With W7 being a bit more recent, would it be better to run than going back to XP?
I don't mind admitting tech.stuff is 95% over my head.
All I want to be able to do is type out, print, and email the occasional document, run Hotmail, and waste time keep in touch on Seabreeze, a 4wd site, and a shooting forum, etc.
All the high tech whizzbang stuff is wasted on me. no downloading of pirated movies or hacking for this bloke.
stephen
Select to expand quotesn said..
My old Toshiba laptop has been dying a slow death
So, for my birthday the family "blessed" me with a new laptop thingo, an 15" screen Acer, running on Windows 8.
Its only been 2 days and already I hate it more than the old Toshiba/Vista.
I know I can be a pain in the neck, but what did I do to deserve this...
I shouldn't be looking a gift horse in the mouth, but jeez, this thing needs its teeth rearranged badly.
stephen
My toshiba /vista combo is still hanging in there only just freezes constantly downloading(bigpond/telstra doesn't help either) but i cant afford an upgrade.
I stuck with XP for ages. I even downgraded my laptop to XP from Win7 as it came with a license that allowed that.... but it felt that after you loaded all these service packs and so on, that it ran slower than it had any right to.
So, I went to windows 7, and its close enough to XP that its okay. Windows 8? That's just crazy, but eventually you will find that the support for earlier OSs will dry up, so you may as well use it, and try classic shell. From what I just read, it sounds like Microsoft are reintroducing the start menu.
I'm even running older versions of Microsoft Office, because I think they lost the plot after 2003 with their weird interface that no one needed.
If you get really desperate, install Ubuntu as well, but I guess if you know nothing about computers...
Select to expand quoteBuster fin said..
ahem... MAC!
Vista was sh1tting me to tears so I made the switch to Macbook Pro 2 years ago, only took a couple of arvos to catch on with the OS differences, but I aint looking back...easy to use like all apple stuff, which was good for me because I am not a techy. Am so impressed that I have just bought another one (MacBook air) for my business.
Stephen - do not attempt putting W7 on a W8 system (or vice versa - trust me , you will crash it certainly ..... I lost two lappies , got lucky at a Hardly Normal PC store and snapped a Toshi with W7 installed - been the only win I've had since W8 came out ... it's a rubbish system designed for kids and their bloody phone apps lifestyles
Select to expand quotesn said..pweedas said..the computer itself I will get used to, I just don't like W8,
Is it the computer you don't like or the windows 8 ?
Formula Nova's "classic shell" thingummy sounds like it might make it tolerable.
Anyone have any pro/cons or better ideas that a techno-peasant can understand
I'm almost tempted to rip out W8, and stuff W7 into its innards, but will wait for a bit of advice before getting the crowbar out.
stephen
I've been putting off buying any new computers because I wasn't impressed with W8.
I was hoping if I put it off long enough they would realise lots of people dont like it and go back to something like xp, or W7.
It bugs me that everything I need to do works fine on xp, but they want to sell me new software so they progressively put out new operating systems which support less and less of the older programs.
Prucks!
XP: is dead and now it even nags you to upgrade. associationsnow.com/2014/03/come-microsoft-nags-windows-xp-holdouts-upgrade/ Use W7 instead.
Win 7: is honestly fantastic. Stable, fast, looks pretty, very usable, easy to set up, just works.
Vista & W8 to be avoided at all costs. (translation: you can make them work / get used to them, but much better off with W7 if you have the choice)
Mac: easy to use if you like being dictated to, doing everything their way. Works great... until it doesn't. Then you have to queue outside an apple store to book an appointment to see a 'genius' who will iCharge you an arm & a leg to fix your problem. No thanks.
Ubuntu/other Linux: Not *quite* worth the effort unless it's your hobby.
Winner: Win 7 by a country mile.
*** And there's absolutely no reason not to 'downgrade' win8 to 7. General rule is that you can't hurt hardware with software ***
Select to expand quoteMobydisc said..
Windows operates in a cycle. A good and bad cycle. XP good. Vista bad. 7 good. 8 bad.
If W7 is good then we should be all sweet at work for a while. we only got W7 installed on the work computers last month. There is no chance of seeing 8 within a decade.
I found Win 8 challenging after upgrading my home vista machine. - couldn't even find how to turn the bloody thing off.....
I installed the "startisback" app, which installed the Win7 startbar - makes it a lot more "normal" to use.
I don't mind it now, but I still prefer 7 - my work laptop runs on it.
ran both vista & 7 without problem, guess it depended on what you ran it on, noticeable bloat over xp though. Xp i ran fine for many years but it can have instability issues, more you've plugged in what & you want to do where now... o...k i'll just think about that for a while... nope too hard.
Support on most software i deal with is dropped now for xp so dont recommend the step back, it can be some stupid handy thing you want to add to your comp & xp will cause issues. We have laptops at work that still use xp & i dont like using them as a result.
hate with a passion windows 8, i get the whole idea behind it but why drastically alter the menu structure from something which made it so popular 
I love XP. Still works. Only thing is anything owned by Google they deliberately claim incompatibility so you are forced to use Chrome sometimes.
That's what really sh1ts me - changing things for no reason to make it look like your browser is too old.
But XP is still great
Make sure you have the 8.1 upgrade, allows you to boot straight to the desktop and everything is pretty normal from there.
Take 5 minutes to get your head around the start screen instead of butting heads with it and you wont look back.
Win 8/8.1 runs faster than 7 and is much less resource hungry.
Never had a single virus, trojan or malware issue and very quick updates, usually no more than a couple of minutes. TimeMachine has saved me several times when inadvertently overwriting files. 
Select to expand quotesn said..myusernam said..
I tried the same a while ago on a cheap vista laptop for my oldies, rolling back to xp. It was a major headache because there were no xp drivers for a lot of the components. It really sucked.
Is XP a bit long in the tooth for new hardware to use?
With W7 being a bit more recent, would it be better to run than going back to XP?
I don't mind admitting tech.stuff is 95% over my head.
All I want to be able to do is type out, print, and email the occasional document, run Hotmail, and waste time keep in touch on Seabreeze, a 4wd site, and a shooting forum, etc.
All the high tech whizzbang stuff is wasted on me. no downloading of pirated movies or hacking for this bloke.
stephen
yeah no 7 fine. my point was, that beacuse it was a cheapie and they thought vista was going to be awesome, the components in this thing didn't have drivers for xp at the time. Just thinking you may have the same problem with an 8 machine going back to 7. just make sure all the components have W7 drivers also
Select to expand quotethePup said..
Stephen - do not attempt putting W7 on a W8 system (or vice versa - trust me , you will crash it certainly ..... I lost two lappies , got lucky at a Hardly Normal PC store and snapped a Toshi with W7 installed - been the only win I've had since W8 came out ... it's a rubbish system designed for kids and their bloody phone apps lifestyles
Or buy commercial spec pcs... they even come with win 7 pre-installed (and win 8 disks if your brave) due to downgrade rights.
Crappy thing is the sale of the pc will count as a win 8 sale - even though it was never installed.
Select to expand quoteBonominator said..
I've been using Mac in a professional workstation environment. It's never let me down once in 7 years.
Of course not. It won't either. It is BSD after all, an entirely free OS which Apple bolt down to leave you no freedom what-so-ever, then charge you through the nose for it. BSD is much akin to Linux.
Select to expand quoteBonominator said..
If you're just surfing the net or reading emails, probably doesn't matter what you use.
All the more reason NOT to use Windoze. For as long as Windoze isn't allowed to connect to the outside world it's safe. As soon as it connects to the outside world it's vulnerable. The above-mentioned situation is precisely where you should be using Linux.
nothing wrong with w8 . I have been using it since rc and love it . Customise the metro interface to only have the tiles you need . Mine is clean and simple . runs smooth as and i never look at going back to 7 .
It was not worth finding the vulnerabilities in apple as it is used by 10% or less of the market. All those dickheads that wanted to insert viruses and compromise your machine wanted maximum impact so they attacked Microsoft which was the more prevalent.
Apple is not better it is just that no one could be stuffed bothering with it as it is so insignificant
