Do You Love the Windows 8 Consumer Preview or Hate it?

Whatever Microsoft may be saying about how great the Windows 8 Consumer Preview is, there can be little doubt that it's provoking some very strong reactions. People are either loving or hating the new OS with very few people sitting somewhere in-between. I thought then I'd share my own thoughts with you and ask the question to you directly. Do you love or hate Windows 8, how do you feel about it?
Personally those people who know me will know that until now I've been far from the biggest fan but slowly the operating system is winning me over. It is doing this firstly because I'm looking past the new Metro user interface at the other new and sometimes very cool features in the OS, and also because I'm figuring out how to get that Metro UI to work for me, the way I want it to.
So what are these new features that are winning me over? To start with the new ways that Windows handles file management. The new copy and move feature finally handles these operations in a sensible and common-sense way, even offering a pause control so that long jobs can be continued the next day or after you have been out for a while. This small feature is very minor however, especially given that third-party utilities such as TeraCopy have offered this functionality for years.
Additionally the inclusion of Microsoft's type-0 Hyper-V hypervisor and other technologies such as Windows To Go I can personally see being very helpful. As the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out and someone who regularly received much help and support email from readers, the inclusion of anti-virus after so many years is a welcome relief. It's not all so good however as the storage aggregate, Storage Spaces would have been much more helpful six years ago in Windows Vista when hard disks were still relatively small and tower PCs were still the order of the day. This feature is much less useful now that we commonly see 3Tb hard disks in all-in-one machines that can only accommodate a single hard disk anyway.
Other ways that the operating system falls down are that while I whole-heartedly welcome the removal of the Start Menu, which was completely unnecessary after the Windows 7 Taskbar was introduced. There is no auto "pin to Taskbar" option for new software and no otpion for "software buckets" to hold program options in the same way Start Menu folders do. This seems very short sighted and was something I was calling for three years ago when Windows 7 was first unveiled.
Regards the new Start Screen itself I mentioned that I have found a way to use it that suits me. I am pretty much using the new Start Screen as a sub-desktop of live widgets along the lines of the OS X Dashboard. I still don't like the shut down and restart options being moved, and really quite hidden, in the Settings for the computer and other things are fiddly or annoying too.
Windows 7 was never a perfect operating system though either, neither was Vista, nor XP (no matter what some people might tell you). In fact no operating system is ever perfect and we have to find was to use it that best suit us. With this in mind all you can really do is find a way to get an OS to work for you, which is what I did with Windows 8. After doing this I was able to think more about what lay under the surface, and now I'm really warming to it.
That's just my opinion though and I'm not going to make excuses for where Windows 8 is failing to impress people, or where mistakes are genuinely being made. So what do you think, do you love Windows 8 or do you hate it?
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What mental age of reader are you targeting with the first sentence? 10?
Why not write an article on how to *avoid* upgrading from W10 to W11. Analogous to those like me who avoided upgrading from 7 to 10 for as long as possible.
If your paymaster Microsoft permits it, of course.
5. Rufus
6. Ventoy
PS. I hate reading these “SEO optimized” articles.
I used Rufus to create an installer for a 6th gen intel i5 that had MBR. It upgraded using Setup. No issues except for Win 11 always prompting me to replace my local account. Still using Win 10 Pro on all my other PCs to avoid the bullying.
bit pointless to upgrade for the sake of upgrading as you never know when you’ll get locked out because ms might suddenly not provide updates to unsupported systems.
ps…. time travelling?
written. Jan 15, 2023
Updated • Jan 13, 2023
This happens when you schedule a post in WordPress and update it before setting the publication date.
Anyone willing to downgrade to this awful OS must like inflicting themselves with harm.
I have become convinced now that anybody who has no qualms with using Windows 11/10 must fit into one of the following brackets:
1) Too young to remember a time before W10 and W11 (doesn’t know better)
2) Wants to play the latest games on their PC above anything else (or deeply needs some software which already dropped W7 support)
3) Doesn’t know too much about how computers work, worried that they’d be absolutely lost and in trouble without the “”latest security””
4) Microsoft apologist that tries to justify that the latest “features” and “changes” are actually a good thing, that improve Windows
5) Uses their computer to do a bare minimum of like 3 different things, browse web, check emails, etc, so really doesn’t fuss
Obviously that doesn’t cover everyone, there’s also the category that:
6) Actually liked W7 more than 10, and held out as long as possible before switching, begrudgingly uses 10 now
Have I missed any group off this list?
You have missed in this group just about any professional user that uses business software like CAD programs or ERP Programs which are 99% of all professional users from this list.
Linux doesn’t help anyone who is not a linux kid and apple is just a fancy facebook machine.
Microsoft has removed KB5029351 update
only from windows update though
KB5029351 is still available from the ms update catalog site
1. This update is labaled as PREVIEW if it causes issues to unintelligent people, then they shouldn’t have allowed Preview updates ot install.
2. I have installed it in a 11 years old computer, and no problems at all.
3. Making a big drama over a bluescreen for an updated labeled as preview is ridiculous.
This is probably another BS internet drama where people ran programs and scripts that modified the registry until they broke Windows, just for removing stuff that they weren’t even using just for the sake of it.
Maybe people should stop playing geeks and actually either use Windows 10 or Windows 11, but don’t try to modify things just for the sake of it.
Sometimes removing or stopping things (like defender is a perfect example) only need intelligence, not scripts or 3rd party programs that might mess with windows.
Windows 11 was a pointless release, it was just created because some of the Windows team wanted to boost sales with some sort of new and improved Windows 10. Instead, Microsoft cannot support one version well let alone two.
Windows 11 is the worst ugly shame by Microsoft ever. They should release with every new W11 version a complete free version of Starallback inside just to make this sh** OS functionally again.
motherboard maker MSI has recently released a statement regarding the “unsupported processor” blue screen error for their boards using Intel 600/700 series chipsets & to avoid the KB5029351 Win11 update:
https://www.msi.com/news/detail/MSI-On–UNSUPPORTED-PROCESSOR–Error-Message-of-Windows-11-Update-KB5029351-Preview-142215
check out the following recent articles:
Neowin – Microsoft puts little blame on its Windows update after UNSUPPORTED PROCESSOR BSOD bug:
https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-puts-little-blame-on-its-windows-update-after-unsupported-processor-bsod-bug/
BleepingComputer – Microsoft blames ‘unsupported processor’ blue screens on OEM vendors:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-blames-unsupported-processor-blue-screens-on-oem-vendors/
While there may be changes or updates to the Windows 10 Store for Business and Education in the future, it is premature to conclude that it will be discontinued based solely on rumors.
My advice, I left win 15 years ago. Now I’m a happy linux user (linuxmint) but there is Centos, Fedora, Ubuntu depending on your needs.
motherboard maker MSI has recently released new BIOS/firmware updates for their Intel 600 & 700 series motherboards to fix the “UNSUPPORTED_PROCESSOR” problem (Sept. 6):
https://www.msi.com/news/detail/Updated-BIOS-fixes-Error-Message–UNSUPPORTED-PROCESSOR–caused-BSOD-on-MSI-s-Intel-700-and-600-Series-Motherboards-142277
I try to disable the Diagnostics Tracking Service (Connected Devices Platform User Services) but it wont let me disable it, any help will be greatly appreciated.
Tank you for your help