7 replies to this topic

[m.oreilly]

after nearly a year of my repeatedly muttered mantra "windows 8 sucks!", with the RTM on the shelves my curiosity got the best of me, and looking for trial versions to give a spin i stumbled onto a page with a link to download a 'lite' version of win8 enterprise, along with another link to my beloved win7 start menu, specifically for win8.
so after creating a bootable usb flash drive, and copying over the contents of the lean win8 iso, i was again ready to see if my previous impressions of Microsoft's newest operating system were still valid.
a mere 4 minute install later, i arrived at a purple screen with a single metro 'tile' labeled 'desktop':

 win8 lite.png   101.89K   11 downloads



clicking on this took me to that stripped windows 8 desktop i remember from the earlier previews. but before i tried the win7 start menu, i wanted to see if win8 was still as unfriendly to navigate as it had been in the fledgling preview releases. to my surprise, placing the cursor at the top right corner loaded the 'charms' super fast, and once in the familiar territory of control panel and the like, i felt i was good to go.
not so fast.

for one thing, looking for a 'run' link to get a cmd window open to set windows up like i like, had me thinking for a bit until i remembered i had to use 'search' to open the 'run' option, but when it came time to go between 'computer' and 'services' and a 'cmd' window, things ground to a halt. while the 'search' page displays stuff i want to access, you have to close it to get back to your original task, and then cover your tasks with the 'search' page again, or make 50 shortcuts on your desktop, which would again be a no-go, because now your stuff is hidden by your task...
time to fire up the win7 explorer/start menu for win8. seconds later, i had the real McCoy, an actual fully functional win7 start menu in win8.
no tricks, gimmicks, or hacks on my part, and completely reversible to the win8 non start menu explorer. totally cool.

 win8 with start menu.png   642.24K   10 downloads

should someone happy with their win7 install move to win8? i don't know, but for me, win8 had ALL of my drivers, all taken care of, a functioning OS out of the box (i prefer installing fresh). i like it for this fact alone, as it feels as if i have a custom system with all the appropriate drivers and nothing added in, very clean. the OS itself seems 'snappy', like a distro, but without the downside of even the most recent linux releases (win8 is super stable, media friendly, etc.), and is the first OS to really be ssd aware/friendly. even though i am seemingly pleased with win8 after having my start menu and links back, this OS release is a 'tick', and usually a Microsoft tick has a much better 'tock'...

[Nvyseal]

Thanks mo, i might have to give this a try when i need to reformat my W8 pro. you sure this isn't scarawarez?

[m.oreilly]

lol!
i forgot to mention that this version of win8 is not 'hacked', or made to illegally be seen as activated/registered. i'll be purchasing win8 pro, and using vlite to strip it down

[eniparadoxgma]

Soooo...what benefits do you see from going from 7 to 8? I'm still unclear on this.

[scaramonga]

eniparadoxgma, on 28 November 2012 - 01:16 AM, said:

Soooo...what benefits do you see from going from 7 to 8? I'm still unclear on this.

None. But you do get the beauty of an OS that Frankenstein would have been proud of.

[m.oreilly]

lol! back to server 08 r2. didn't see a reason. i guess i wanted something new...bought a monitor instead lol

[scaramonga]

m.oreilly, on 30 November 2012 - 01:48 AM, said:

lol! back to server 08 r2. didn't see a reason. i guess i wanted something new...bought a monitor instead lol

Yeah, like I said, it don't take long for the irritations to start kicking in from this heap of junk. So glad I had a True Image backup of Windows 7 to restore from, painless, and all back to normality within minutes

[m.oreilly]

you are correct sir