More bad news surfaces

[Duce]

You actually tried Win 8 yet, John?

[Duce]

Then every word you shout from the mountaintops about it carries no weight at all.  You're that guy every city in RL has, underneath the bridge on the freeway, wearing a tinfoil hat shouting doom and gloom about something you admittedly *haven't even tried*.

People that have used it will be happy to tell you what is wrong with it.  I'm one of them.  Many will also tell you that it's absolutely rock stable, faster than Windows 7, and how the Metro interface you spew vehemence about can be entirely disabled with a few simple clicks.  

I'm no apologist for MS, or Windows 8.  I'm a MCSE/MSCA that only got into Windows 8 because I was forced to support it and be familiar with it if I want to pay my bills and put food on my table.  I will be the first guy to tell you what an unmitigated train wreck Windows RT is/was.  I'll be the first guy to tell you that the whole "2 OS's in one" idea was a bad one in regards to W8 x86 having a full touch (Metro) interface in addition to a full (and improved compared to W7) traditional desktop interface.  It confused the common man something terrible, and MS are now back pedaling with 8.1, which is due out (for free, upgrade wise) in October.  I still use Windows 7 as my main OS, for the record.  But I imagine 8.1 will change that some.  I have no doubts 10 years from now, Windows 8 initial version will be viewed as more of an unmitigated, confusing mess than Vista ever was.  But I've also used 8.1, and it is leaps and bounds better.  Your opinions are in no way wrong, infact you are spot on when you point out what is wrong with it, but the point to make is anything you say about it wasn't gained by the slightest bit of personal trial of W8 at all.

For a very intelligent, well spoken fellow John - the fact you go off the rails at any given opportunity about something you have not even laid hands on is, well - a bit embarrassing at worst, and hysterical at best.  Nothing personal, man.  Hell, half the reason I stick around A.org is to read posts from guys like you, but surely you can see the gross irony in all of it, no?

The least you owe yourself is to be educated in why you vehemently hate something so fiercely, and not ever trying it while hard lining against in on some holy war basis without even trying it is just weird.  I'd love for you to try it even for 10 minutes and write up a 4 page "why I hate Windows 8" post, but it's hard to take when you haven't even tried it, you know?  I'd relish every bad (or good) word you have to say about it - if you had even tried it.  Otherwise, you're just that weird dude that every city has that shouts at moving traffic about invisible aliens.

[Duce]

If you are comparing serious social and political issues that effect us all, regardless of our respective races, color, creed or similar -  to ones opinion on the latest operating system to hit the market, we're really on two different planets here, lol.  

What I am saying is armchair quarterbacking on something you've never even used is just about the most self defeating thing one can do.  There's errors absolutely EVERYWHERE in the posts.  Information culled off various halfwit news services that simply isn't true, lol.  Someone that spent 10 minutes with it would know better.  People with such vehemence to actually call things outright awful or refer to things as "failures" should at least take the time to experience it and dislike something based on their own experiences.

8.1 is a free download.  Gonna hate something, at least be able to say "yeah, I tried it, and here's 100 reasons why I dislike it!".

You're right - we do agree on many of the bad things about Windows 8.  Difference is, I know why I don't care for them due to hands on experience rather than via whatever.

You wouldn't pay much mind nor have much use for a movie critic in the local newspaper if every review he writes starts out with:

"I didn't bother seeing the film, but I think I got a good idea what it's like from watching trailers on TV for it.  My brother says it sucks, my paperboy says it sucks, so it obviously sucks - 2 thumbs down!!!!"

would you?  No, you wouldn't.  

Re: Phil.  I've found 8.1 offers far better gaming performance over 8.0, so that's leaps and bounds to me, as I'm a pretty big gamer.

[Duce]

Me not correcting people for posting blatantly false information dredged off various websites is being smug, lol?  Come on, man.  You can do better than that.  If people are going to post "facts", it isn't my job to ensure what you say is the truth.  I assume people wouldn't post FUD without actual experience to back it up, that's all.

As for hardware, I'm running W8 on an old AMD X2 machine with an nVidia 7800 in it.  Runs it just fine by my standards.

[Duce]

XP simply isn't an option for most people in such usage cases, not for much longer anyways.  I go through a fair number of PC's.  Often end up working on some older machine a friend, customer or family had, they decide they would rather just buy a whole new machine than throw even $50 into an old one if it needs a new HD.  I get stuck with the old hardware.

Often, they will come with a copy of XP in some form.  I usually get the machines working and pass them onto someone who can use them, even if they are a bit older, they still make for decent enough email machines and good for word processing and such.  I'd rather see it in the room of an elderly lady at a nursing home, her playing Solitaire on it, rather than put it in a landfill, you know?

Problem we are facing now is XP lifecycle is coming to an end.  In April, it won't be supported in the least.  Even the most critical of security problems in XP, after April 8, 2014 - they aren't getting fixed.  Presents a real problem for me if I install XP on such systems now, cause sure as hell come April, someone will be shouting at me that their machine is broken and wouldn't you know, I can't even patch XP if that's the issue.  I've taken to installing Ubuntu on such machines and it works just fine for re-purposing older machines.

Annoys me a heck of a lot, because XP is such a tried and true OS - but I can't expect them to support it forever.  Considering XP launched in late 2001, and all.  If a guy gets 13 years out of an OS, consider it a good investment I suppose, eh.