emuler wrote:Its not too bad. All your Windows 7 drivers seem to work. Unsigned drivers are a little bit more tricky to deal with, and the boot menu has been completely revamped, so the boot options are tucked away in unfamiliar places.
The UI is aimed at touch screens, so for us non-touch screen users the old desktop style is preferred. Note that Microsoft Security Essentials doesn't work well - Windows 8 has Windows Defender built in and preinstalled, and that tends to interfere. Typically, M$ hasn't bothered to tell us this upfront.
Unsigned drivers are THE major suspect when Win7 screws up. I can live with that until I MUST make 10-year-old legacy equipment that HAS no Win7 drivers - and never will - work
somehow. Neither MS Security Essentials nor Windows Defender provides security, is essential, or defends against anything but the most basic threats. If they won't work with each other, you can bet some non-MS apps won't work too. Preinstalling such is exactly like Internet Exploder - an attempt to corner the market and prevent competition.
Tucking things away in unfamiliar places is MS' forte. I don't know a single person who thinks Office's ribbons were a good idea, and Win7 setups take 7 times as many clicks and opened windows to get to the same place. Wizards? Pffft! Even MS engineers say their troubleshooter wizards probably won't solve a problem "but they may jog your memory about something you forgot to do or set up" (that's a direct quote to me from one of them).
IMO Win7 was dumbed down for the masses, and Win8's interface is just dumb. MS is going for the pad/tablet market because the iPad is killing them. It's geared to simple email, web browsing, and entertainment, not business use - it's too lightweight. Maybe if the price dropped to $100 I'd waste money for such a toy, but not otherwise. Corporations need more than a toy. Executives love iPads because they're cute/sexy/chic/etc. IT guys hate them because they can't be managed. At least MS didn't let Win8 fall into that hole - security and manageability are OK.
I always bitch about a new OS until I've found all the workarounds but I still don't like Win7 from the support side, even after using it for almost 2 years. Getting hardware and software to work together, especially when you support several thousand custom apps, can sometimes be a nightmare. Using Citrix or making apps web-based solves some problems, but you might as well use a dumb terminal if you have to do that. If Win7 ain't working out so good, you can bet Win8 will be a "challenge" too. Ah, well, I guess it's job security for me.
