Windows 8 or 8.1 on a laptop or PC?

the only thing i agree with apple on is their dislike of flash - its annoying that sites still use it and it would be better if it had just "gone away" as apple had hoped
 
Pookeyhead said:
Thanks to third party apps, I now have Win8 doing what I want it to, instead of IT telling ME how it's going to be.
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Agree completely.



Having to add something to get my PC or laptop work they way I want seems a backwards step. Think I may be negative about Windows 8 because of a programme I saw before it was released. The view from Microsoft was that they wanted everyone who saw Windows 8 to say, "Wow!" I just had a feeling the OS was becoming the event. I want an OS to be as unobtrusive as possible and not get in the way of what I want to do.

I think Microsoft tried to cover both bases - the tablet/mobile and the destop/laptop market with a single OS and without the modifications in 8.1 and third party ones, it did not quite work.

Dave
 
Pookeyhead said:
When they released the new iMac I had to laugh when on the website it said, "If you still want a DVD drive, Grandad... then you can use our slimline thunderbold blah blah". I'm paraphrasing a bit there, but they really did say "Grandad" in the blurb. Basically... reading between the lines... "We've designed this to look cool and slim, but in order to do that, we've had to remove the optical drive. Sorry about that, but as we're Apple, you'll merely believe us when we tell you that no one uses re-writable DVDs any more... even though they're still massively, and widely used because you can get 4.2GB on a disk for 20p each.. however, you're only concerned with being cool so you'll do as we command, and you'll still buy this anyway, so who cares".

I hate the proprietary, closed, dictatorship that is Apple. I'd rather shove bees up my arse than to be told what to do by a company, particularly when I would have to pay a premium to to be told what to do, and still get an inferior product at the end of it... no matter how cool it looks. About looking cool though: I fail to see why having an iMac, that looks exactly like every other iMac is cool. I thought individuality was a pre-requisite of cool. Silly me.

Sorry.... just hate Apple and everything they stand for. Cheap Foxconn sourced hardware, disguised as a premium product. Nothing more.
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Very, very seldom I agree with you David but your comments are spot-on.

When I first started building computers, many decades ago, I soon found out where Foxconn resided in the mobo pecking order!
 
Mikesphotaes said:
Subterranean in fact, though that does sound like a Seattle spelling!
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Some decidedly unpleasant human rights issues with Foxconn as well that I feel Apple users should consider next time their flaunting their Macbook in Starbucks.
 
Pookeyhead said:
Some decidedly unpleasant human rights issues with Foxconn as well that I feel Apple users should consider next time their flaunting their Macbook in Starbucks.
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And dell users, sony users, hp users, blackberry users, acer users, Nintendo users........
 
Rapscallion said:
And dell users, sony users, hp users, blackberry users, acer users, Nintendo users........
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Absolutely. Tons of Dell laptops use Foxconn stuff. This is why I prefer to build machines. You can decide what goes in it, and where it was made.
 
I Use windows 8.1 on my laptop and 7 on my desktop. There's just no difference day to day. I still press the windows key and start typing to find most things, and I still have my commonly used stuff pinned to the taskbar. windows+R is still there, and all of the key windows stuff is still there. XP to Vista/7 was a much bigger step IMO.

I just think it's a complete waste of effort trying to make 8.1 look like 7, as, well, it works like it is.

Also 8.1 is faster and more stable (not that I have any real stability issues on 7) and my laptop boots at an unfathomable speed.
 
I had a nasty shock this morning. Fired up my Surface tablet and had to choose when to "upgrade" to RT 8.1. Not IF, WHEN. I didn't want to, really - if I had wanted to, I'm pretty sure the pop-up that appeared on an all-too regular basis asking me if I wanted to would have seen me click yes! Nothing against 8.1 (other than that it seems to have slowed my netbook down considerably and has made using it clumsier than it was with 8) just being forced into it rather than being able to decide for myself.
 
If you don't want to be forced into updates then you need to be constantly vigilant for the 'automatically download and install updates' setting to be re-selected by, you guessed it, updates. With this off you will be able to choose which updates are installed.

But at least with Windows you get a choice (that you have to maintain). My Macbook sometimes does just install updates without asking, and there's no option not to have them if it does so.
 
Hi
ancient_mariner said:
If you don't want to be forced into updates then you need to be constantly vigilant for the 'automatically download and install updates' setting to be re-selected by, you guessed it, updates. With this off you will be able to choose which updates are installed.

But at least with Windows you get a choice (that you have to maintain). My Macbook sometimes does just install updates without asking, and there's no option not to have them if it does so.
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Hi Toni - i understand why a user may want to have the option about not choosing a major upgrade (missing functionality, incompatibility with applicationa..), but why wouldnt you want to automatically download updates to your current OS?
 
Rapscallion said:
Hi

Hi Toni - i understand why a user may want to have the option about not choosing a major upgrade (missing functionality, incompatibility with applicationa..), but why wouldnt you want to automatically download updates to your current OS?
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Sometimes updates will break the OS and sometimes they'll be things that you con't want (Bing search bar? etc) exactly like this situation that you now have. I would rather supervise updates on a daily basis than not know what's happening, at least a little. If there's a big update normally I'll wait a few days to see if other people's computers have been broken before downloading & installing.
 
Rapscallion said:
Hi

Hi Toni - i understand why a user may want to have the option about not choosing a major upgrade (missing functionality, incompatibility with applicationa..), but why wouldnt you want to automatically download updates to your current OS?
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Because sometimes they can be a total pain in the rectum!
 
Bashing Apple for manufacturing in China, funny stuff :) You think the gleaming high-tech, high profile, inspected Foxconn factory towns that produce Apple and many other's kit is bad?

You should head over there sometime and see the kind of factory where 90% of the manufactured goods on the shelves comes from.
 
99.9% updates are fine unless you have outdated dodge war (dodge war? DYAC that should say software) that is prone to being broken by os updates.

Can't remember the last time updates broke any of our client machines at work. Nearly killed the network when someone released office 2010 sp1 to the whole business but that's different :D
 
mid_gen said:
Bashing Apple for manufacturing in China, funny stuff :) You think the gleaming high-tech, high profile, inspected Foxconn factory towns that produce Apple and many other's kit is bad?

You should head over there sometime and see the kind of factory where 90% of the manufactured goods on the shelves comes from.
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Och aye, will head over there an see how they manufacture toilet bowls, that seems applicable!

Dearie, dearie me!
 
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As Neil said updates are usually fine, but some can cause problems so from a network administration perspective its good to have control and be able to whitelist/blacklist updates prior to deployment, by WSUS or other mechanisms.

Dare I mention the update which caused mass problems with IPSec block mode for Server 2003?
 
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