Windows 7 vs Windows 8

[AdamD]

I went back to Windows 7 today, kept having issues with the explorer process crashing and restarting

So if I had drive windows open, they would close and I'd have to go back to what I was doing, got a bit tedious when you're constantly navigating through folders to edit files.

 

[Lawrence]

I went back to Windows 7 today, kept having issues with the explorer process crashing and restarting

So if I had drive windows open, they would close and I'd have to go back to what I was doing, got a bit tedious when you're constantly navigating through folders to edit files.

Did you upgrade your Windows 7 to Windows 8, or did you do a fresh install of Windows 8? There is a big difference. I had issues with the upgrading, with the new PC, none so far.

 

[AdamD]

Fresh install, I never do upgrades
I tend to wipe my pc completely every 6 months, just to get that super squeeky speedy feeling back hehe.

 

[SneakyDave]

Search for Notepad > Right Click > Pin to Taskbar

Then you can right click, the notepad icon and right click the notepad icon on the jump list to select Run as Administrator

Another tactic I've been using recently...

Where the start button used to be, if you right click:

Select "Command Prompt (Admin)"

Any command executed from there will have admin privs

Oh. And then there's the task manager. That allows you to do a similar thing from the Create New Task menu.

Thanks for those, they are great tips. The ol' Right Click, and Right Click again, very intuitive! They should patent that!

The command prompt option isn't available to me when I click where "start" used to be. I just have taskbar and toolbar options. Do you mean to go to the desktop app, click to the left of the Explorer icon at the bottom?

I got it figured out now, I have the command prompt pinned to the bar, and I can right click that, and right click "Command Prompt" again, to choose "Run as Administrator"

 

[SilverCircle]

Some more useful tips:

* Hit Win + X to get a menu with the most common tasks.

* Create a new shortcut on the desktop (rightclick, choose New -> Shortcut). For the target enter the following:

C:\Windows\explorer.exe shell:::{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Press Next and choose a name for the shortcut. Whenever you open (double click) that shortcut, you get a new explorer window, containing basically everything that is normally buried deeply in various control panel sub-windows, nicely grouped by task. You can also pin this to the taskbar.

 

[AdamD]

I lied, I did do an upgrade, I forgot all about it, heh

So I've installed a fresh copy of 8 from USB, so far so good, no crashes....yet.

 

[TheLaw]

For me, all I had to hear was "Charms Bar" to form a preconceived notion of what to expect.

In short, nothing except my test/development laptop received a copy of Windows 8 (on a spare HD) for good reason - cannot afford the time to upgrade and then reconfigure and hope that my multitude of programs work. Everything I own is on SSD, backed up with images just in case I need to reinstall at a later install point. Considering I have both high end video and MIDI applications on my systems, the risk just wasn't worth the reward. For some though, they seem to be having a good time with the new features. So it goes.

 

[Chris D]

There are no compatibility issues.

Any application that works on Windows 7 will work on Windows 8.

 

[Lawrence]

I lied, I did do an upgrade, I forgot all about it, heh

So I've installed a fresh copy of 8 from USB, so far so good, no crashes....yet.

When I did the upgrade for my Desktop, for some reason I could mostly never restart my PC (it just hanged). With my new laptop that came with Windows 8, I never encountered a restart issue. Actually, I haven't come across any issues (with the exception of Skype, my goodness... they borked that up).

 

[Morgain]

Well I'm Ok with 7 now but only because I stripped out loads of stuff, used Classic theme, and drilled down to hidden controls to configure all kinds of stuff.
It now mostly looks and behaves like my trusty Win2K Pro did for over 10 years (sob) only a lot faster and can cope with modern widgets.

Don't like all the pre-set stuff - hate all that - what on earth are those Libraries that get in the way?

 

[TrevC]

I'm not a big fan of MacOS at the moment, overall stability quickly declined after Snow Leopard (10.6), but I think it's still a better alternative to Windows 8. Web development is so Mac-centric now (I'm mostly focused on front-end/UI) , that I couldn't even run Windows if I wanted to. Windows IS still faster at running Photoshop and most web browsers on the same machine.

It sounds like this is for your mom/parents. MacOS would only be suitable if they're willing to learn something new. Most parents/older relatives are not I'd just go Win8 and make sure they never see the Metro side of things. Windows 8 is definitely faster than previous versions, no point sticking with crusty old Win7.

I installed the regular bootcamp drivers for Windows 7 (on Win8) for a Macbook Pro early 2012 model. No issues. Track pad works with right-click, audio is good, etc. Anyone that's having issues should make sure the drivers from that bootcamp set are properly installed, do it manually if needed and double check everything (go to run, then type: devmgmt.msc , hit enter).

The Metro UI is an absolute joke on something like a 27" monitor, or multiple 27" monitors. It's like Microsoft catered to mobile devices and completely ignored desktop usage. Why would anyone want IE running full-screen at 2560 pixels wide? Metro shows great potential (IMO), but it's a huge liability for them right now.

Microsoft may still have a huge installed user-base, but that doesn't mean they can't become irrelevant regarding the future of computing. I think that's what we're witnessing right now. Our GA stats (for a forum catering to Swiss watch collectors) clearly show that for the middle-class and beyond, Microsoft Windows is already becoming the edge-case minority OS at home.

 

[TheLaw]

There are no compatibility issues.
Any application that works on Windows 7 will work on Windows 8.

1. If this were the case, I'm not sure why Microsoft would offer this.
2. If I had $1 for every time I've heard that the OS would work perfectly with the hardware, the USB hardware, the software and the plugins... (that includes Mac OS)
3. Others have said the software isn't yet compatible. It's possible they are all in error.

@TrevC - Web development might be very Mac-centric where you are although not by me. It's a bit deceiving because using Apple products virtually demands you be in their expensive ecosystem so that everything around you will almost certain be Apple-based.

 

[TrevC]

...

@TrevC - Web development might be very Mac-centric where you are although not by me. It's a bit deceiving because using Apple products virtually demands you be in their expensive ecosystem so that everything around you will almost certain be Apple-based.

What sort of development are you doing?

Out of a decent sized group of designers and front-end devs, I only know one that's running Windows. I'm platform agnostic myself (hope that's obvious), so I keep a close eye on this guy and his workflow It's not always easy for him running things through cygwin, etc. Most of the time things will work fine, but I imagine it's frustrating hitting the windows-only bugs and then requesting support from Mac-centric developers.

Yes, the lock-in is pretty bad. For my personal workflow (and many others), not having the unix-y backbone and many other mac-specific tools in the chain would be a distinct disadvantage. Even when it comes to Photoshop plugins/scripts, they're often Mac-only these days. Windows support comes later, if ever! Whenever a shiny-new tool or framework comes out, you can bet the Mac will see better support.

The situation is particularly bad right now because the Mac "Pro" hasn't been updated since... forever. It's still shipping with 2010 era hardware at a ridiculous premium. It's extremely poor value, probably the worst Xeon workstation from anywhere right now. To be honest, I really don't care how expensive the Apple buy-in is, but I'm not going to fork out big cash for old and outdated hardware.

A few weeks back I did a quick trial to see if I could move things over to Win8. It wasn't successful. Most stuff worked, but I'd fire up a favorite SublimeText2 bundle or something similar only for it to fail with Windows-specific issues. This is no fault of the OS or platform, of course, but simply the developers never testing their python script on Windows.

If someone lives in Photoshop, Windows and BYO hardware is an awesome choice. $4-6k or so would buy you a very fast graphics setup that doesn't even exist in the world of Mac. You could even add a few 27" SRGB monitors to feel like you're tapping in to the Matrix.

10.6 was an epic OS. I really miss it. It was a no-******** OS that just kept taking punishment. I recall having an uptime of over 1 year, and that's running Photoshop, Vmware Fusion, etc, all day long. 10.8 is much more like Windows was in the past. It's the Vista or WinME of MacOS releases.

Sorry, kind of rambling and off topic. I guess I'm just frustrated with the current OS/hardware situation

 

[Dragapult]

I like Windows 8 quite a lot. I didn't even find the learning curve was that steep, I spent maybe an hour or two figuring out all of the changes and from there everything was fine. All software/drivers that worked on Win7 seem to operate just fine on Win8.

 

[TheLaw]

@TrevC, I'm working alongside a relatively large boutique web development shop that does have Macs but only as needed. As to my background, while I've got some Photoshop chops by virtue of having dabbled late night as a website owner/developer, my work on the side has been in music and video for a while. My first computer was a Mac as, back then, more innovation was occurring on Macs (anyone remember nubus slots?) In music/video environments the key was a need for stability and reduction of latencies, more easily attained by having all or most of the hardware under the same manufacturer/system to virtually guarantee compatibility. The challenges are always the same, where the mobo manufacturer is not (and isn't required to) talk to the other component part manufacturers and hence an amount of guesswork comes into play requiring testing, etc. Depends upon priorities, tolerance and budget.

Anyway... I moved away from the Mac long ago, ironically when Jobs returned and then began to reverse the Macs move from being able to use mainstream PCI cards back towards the proprietary Apple ecosystem that frequently offered much higher prices for non-expandable computers that looked cute. Then Cubase came out with a great new version for the PC and I was done (now using Reaper and Presonus Studio One 2, which is the bomb, along with Sony Vegas.) I digress. Very nice pictures - there is the aesthetic that is certainly enjoyed, lol. Thanks for sharing.

 

[TrevC]

@TrevC, I'm working alongside a relatively large boutique web development shop that does have Macs but only as needed. As to my background, while I've got some Photoshop chops by virtue of having dabbled late night as a website owner/developer, my work on the side has been in music and video for a while. My first computer was a Mac as, back then, more innovation was occurring on Macs (anyone remember nubus slots?) In music/video environments the key was a need for stability and reduction of latencies, more easily attained by having all or most of the hardware under the same manufacturer/system to virtually guarantee compatibility. The challenges are always the same, where the mobo manufacturer is not (and isn't required to) talk to the other component part manufacturers and hence an amount of guesswork comes into play requiring testing, etc. Depends upon priorities, tolerance and budget.

Anyway... I moved away from the Mac long ago, ironically when Jobs returned and then began to reverse the Macs move from being able to use mainstream PCI cards back towards the proprietary Apple ecosystem that frequently offered much higher prices for non-expandable computers that looked cute. Then Cubase came out with a great new version for the PC and I was done (now using Reaper and Presonus Studio One 2, which is the bomb, along with Sony Vegas.) I digress. Very nice pictures - there is the aesthetic that is certainly enjoyed, lol. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for providing the insight. I do recall those Nubus slots and the era of "open" Apple hardware, but it was kind of before my time. I didn't purchase any Apple hardware until well after Jobs returned.

The non-expandability of prior models seems a pretty minor issue compared to where we're headed. Just look at the Retina MacPro and iMac. These are for all practical purposes, a solid piece of machinery that can never be opened or modified. This doesn't really bother me, but there's not even a more expandable/tweakable model in their line-up. The Mac Pro would traditionally fill this void ("You want expansion? Here's the price!"), but the hardware is far too old to even consider it.

There's always the Hackintosh route. I've played this game, and I'm even pretty good at it. I just don't have time to be troubleshooting when something doesn't work.

 

[Shelley]

Windows 8 is just terrible and hideous to use (had the unfortunate experience of setting things up on my brothers pre-installed windows 8 machine). There's just some tasks that aren't straight forward and then i got thinking "are desktops tablets? I found myself saying no. Windows 8 i find is a concept and a terrible one at that. Never will i upgrade to it.

 

[TrevC]

Windows 8 is just terrible and hideous to use (had the unfortunate experience of setting things up on my brothers pre-installed windows 8 machine). There's just some tasks that aren't straight forward and then i got thinking "are desktops tablets? I found myself saying no. Windows 8 i find is a concept and a terrible one at that. Never will i upgrade to it.

What's frustrating is that I see a glimpse of awesome potential in the UI. Microsoft has always made excellent use of screen edges and corners as mouse triggers, and these types of fast interactions are further exploited in Win8. It's just the overall execution and interaction between metro/desktop that's awful. Much of the OS simply feels rushed and unfinished (purely IMO).

You're dead right about the disregard shown for desktops (especially those without touch input). Firing up Internet Explorer on a large monitor is the most extreme example. Full-screen as a default? For all Metro apps? Really? WTF were they thinking?

 

[DRE]

I'm not a big fan of MacOS at the moment, overall stability quickly declined after Snow Leopard (10.6), but I think it's still a better alternative to Windows 8. Web development is so Mac-centric now (I'm mostly focused on front-end/UI) , that I couldn't even run Windows if I wanted to. Windows IS still faster at running Photoshop and most web browsers on the same machine.

It sounds like this is for your mom/parents. MacOS would only be suitable if they're willing to learn something new. Most parents/older relatives are not I'd just go Win8 and make sure they never see the Metro side of things. Windows 8 is definitely faster than previous versions, no point sticking with crusty old Win7.

I installed the regular bootcamp drivers for Windows 7 (on Win8) for a Macbook Pro early 2012 model. No issues. Track pad works with right-click, audio is good, etc. Anyone that's having issues should make sure the drivers from that bootcamp set are properly installed, do it manually if needed and double check everything (go to run, then type: devmgmt.msc , hit enter).

The Metro UI is an absolute joke on something like a 27" monitor, or multiple 27" monitors. It's like Microsoft catered to mobile devices and completely ignored desktop usage. Why would anyone want IE running full-screen at 2560 pixels wide? Metro shows great potential (IMO), but it's a huge liability for them right now.

Microsoft may still have a huge installed user-base, but that doesn't mean they can't become irrelevant regarding the future of computing. I think that's what we're witnessing right now. Our GA stats (for a forum catering to Swiss watch collectors) clearly show that for the middle-class and beyond, Microsoft Windows is already becoming the edge-case minority OS at home.

This is really great advice, thanks.

I have rarely seen my mom use her new laptop with Windows 8. These days I just seeing her using the PC with Windows 7 installed. Everyonce in awhile she'll say 'Are you going to put Windows 7 on here? Have you found out how?' I just shake my head sadly. I don't know why I can't install it. I've tried many times. She's stuck with it. I am typing from Windows 7 Bootcamp on my mac right now. I installed CS6 Master Collection today. I was wondering if I should do it on Mac instead but since you said it runs faster on Windows 7 I won't bother.

 

[TrevC]

I'm convinced that Photoshop and Illustrator run somewhat faster in Windows, yes. As the hardware gets faster, the difference becomes extremely negligible. The CS suite projects seem to launch faster too.

Purely speculating, and no real evidence to back this up, but it feels like Windows handles networking better in general. Anything network related, Windows seems to do it faster than MacOS. It doesn't seem like it should be true. It could be the way Windows places priority on various network traffic, perhaps it does a better job here?

If you live in web browsers, they're the most obvious example. Whether it's purely a perceived speed, all the little things adding up, I have no idea. I just know that toggling between each OS on the same MacbookPro + SSD, I always think "wow, this is snappy" (on the Windows side).