Windows 8 our first impressions - (Now upgrade to Windows 10)

I had little choice as to what OS to have as all my choices of PC had windows 8 ... I gave it a week and spent most of it going around the bend ,so I ended up buying stardocks start menu which brings it back to windows 7 style and haven't looked back since

I've decided now after having seen it run on a few of our machines that I'm firmly in the anti windows 8 camp.

Maybe a change of hardware is also to blame, but reliability has definitely gone down hill. We've replace 2 HP Win 7 laptops with Lenovo Win 8.1 ones, and I'm less than impressed. Blue screens of death which I haven't seen since Win 2000/early Win XP days, and Windows update failures, again something I've not seen for a long time.

This morning Sage crashed on our bookkeepers HP Win 8.1 machine, which led to a Sage support call and apparently known issues with 8.1.

I'm quite happy with my Windows 7 HP DV7. Its technically due for renewal but shall will stick with it for at least another 12 months and try and bypass Win 8.1 completely

We started to move to Lenovo as HP lappies seemed to have gone down in reliability, but Lenovo seem no better and not a patch on the old IBM built machines. Maybe technology has peaked and everything is going backwards  Etch a Sketch's all round?

Please don't suggest a Mac... I'd have an internal revolution 

Well, we are mac lovers but do appreciate what Windows are trying. Windows 10 will be out soon and as already discussed above, those that do not like the layout of Windows 8 can opt for Stardocks. 

You might find this useful. 

Yosemite Vs Windows 10

lol I will stick with windows .. I dunno mac just seems like the betamax (a lot of youngster looking confused at that word lol) to me ,it may be better but taking that step just seem weird

Speaking of the devil. Have just received a notice to book the new windows 10 when it becomes available via download ... So possible all window users should have a new icon in the task-bar

Great article. Am very slowly warming to Macs since Win 8 appeared  

Installing the free Classic Shell turned our win 8 machines back into useful tools again, and it's good to know that scrapping the start menu has been conceded as a mistake and will be brought back.

I'll happily sit on Win 7 for another 12 months, let Win 8 wither and die, and Windows 10 bed in and debug (windows 10.2?) before deciding whether to upgrade or bit the bullet and go Mac.

I guess a lot of it is the fear of the unknown (as well as licences etc).

I'd give it a wide birth. Windows platforms are notoriously buggy at launch. Let the super keen stamp out the bugs and pain first  

Aha, I see what the fuss is about now, the "download for free" icon has just appeared on my Windows 7 machine.

So for a short time, we can all download a fully functional Windows 10 for free. Great marketing or confirmation that Windows 8 was a disaster 

Out of curiosity, chose the option to see if it would run on my 3 year old laptop..

Good old Microsoft, so everything's fine apart from my AntiVirus  No doubt Norton will be quick to release an upgrade, but if one of the largest vendors is flagging as unsupported, then that's the reason I'll revisit this again in 12 months after all the expected teething problems.

Thanks for that info, Steve.  

You'd have thought Microsoft would have contacted Norton over its new "baby" beforehand, there've been so many earlier niggles about incompatibilities.