Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
Windows 8.1 runs great on our computer. We've had a low-end Dell Inspiron 660s on our desktop for close to a year now and 8.1 has been fantastic. I spent $5 on Start8 and won't go back to 7 if you made me. 8.1 has been very enjoyable.
Zee0six, my suggestion for Start8 was on the second page of the thread.
If you install Start8, your dealings with the Modern (Metro) interface are pretty much over. You get a real start menu (with a customizable look) and you boot straight to the desktop. I never see the Modern tiled screen. Ever. Windows 8 can be tweaked to look and feel just like Windows 7. It's just a much better-performing version of Windows 7.
8 also has some great features that usually don't get mentioned, especially by those who don't like it:
- File History is a fantastic new fully integrated incremental backup system, and works very similar to Time Machine in Mac OS if you are familiar with that. All of your files are kept backed up, and you can step back and pull an earlier version of that file if you need it. If you have it set up to be backed up to a separate hard drive (as you should), it's simple to restore your data if you have a primary hard drive failure or if you move to a new machine. This is an excellent new tool that comes with Windows 8.
- Startup time is lightning-quick. My little Dell Inspiron 660s is at the login screen in about 15 seconds from the time I press the power button. It also shuts down much quicker.
- New Task Manager. One of the things I love about Windows 8 is its new Task Manager. Rather than try to explain it, I'll link to a
nice article about it.
- Windows 8 supports broadband tethering. This may or may not be of use to you. You can use a Windows 8 computer as a router to which you can tether anything else. If you have your Windows 8 computer plugged directly into your broadband device (cable modem, etc), and your computer has Wi-Fi hardware, you can share that connection and tether your smart phone or any other Wi-Fi device to your computer. If you connect your computer to a router already via Wi-Fi, your computer can act as a Wi-Fi "repeater" if you will, so you can be further away from the actual router and still get good signal (because you're connecting to the computer instead). Pretty slick.
I'll be the first to say that I don't use a lot of other Microsoft software. We have Office 2013 at home, but I prefer LibreOffice. IE 11 obviously comes with Windows, but I use both Chrome and FireFox instead. Windows 8 includes tight SkyDrive (OneDrive now) integration, which is good if you use that service. I don't, and use Google Drive and Dropbox instead. I don't use a lot of Microsoft stuff, and my initial exposure to 8 (the original 8.0) on a laptop was pretty poor. So it was with great hesitation that I bought a new 8.1 desktop, but my opinion of it has turned around 180 degrees from my first experience. 8.1 (and now 8.1.1) has proven to me to be an excellent operating system that CAN BE set up to look and feel a lot like Windows 7, for a more traditional Windows user like myself.
