The time had come that I had to buy a laptop for the first time. Work needed to be done during office hours away from home, so I couldn't postpone it anymore.

I chose a DELL Inspiron 15z 5523. It featured a hybrid SSD/HDD, a 5hr autonomy and... Windows 8 OS!

I must say it upfront: my limited previous contact with Win 8 wasn't a very pleasant one. I felt that it was an ugly, patched up OS, designed to please everyone from cellphones to desktops and no one at the same time.

But I 'm not at an age where I can dismiss new technological trends so I decided I should give it a serious shot, instead of formatting to Win 7.

The first step: I got my hands onto a copy of "Windows 8 for Dummies" - seriously. And indeed it covered the initial gap of logic pretty well, as well as the new features.
It took me several hours to understand the logic of the new OS. It's not designed with continuity in mind. Surely older people who don't have the time or need to re-learn windows will be frustrated.

The new OS does indeed come in an ugly package and pushes and Orwellian agenda, but after some hours of searching, I must admit it has some very good features, which I 'm still discovering.

The most significant one is the File History utility, that in short holds older versions of your Library files, essentially a back up. What's interesting is that you can store the files on a network drive. Right now I 'm trying to setup the Skydrive to act as a network drive so I can have a permanent safe place for the backup files.

The most notable drawback is that the default mail client doesn't support POP accounts.

 

Most of what I have heard form people is that they hate Windows 8. Pretty much the only ones that like it are those with a touch screen.

I certainly hope PCs aren't going to touch screens, My Nexus 7 has one. I mainly bought it for mapping during bicycle tours. I hate the touch screen, it gets full of fingerprints and I have not yet mastered all of the gestures with a stylus.

I would not worry about the mail client. I have not used the MS mail client in years. I have been using Thunderbird and it supports pop.

 

Spinnaker your right about it being for touch screen. I hated Win8 at first, but now kind of getting used to it. But then I'm no where near the computer level you guys are at.

 

I've heard good things about it but not from anyone I would trust. How is its backwards compatabiliy? Does it run XP and Win7 apps ok? Games of? Or goes it emulate them?

 

From what I have gathered, Win 7 is fully compatible, but it doesn't support Win XP compatibility mode. If your XP application isn't generic enough, it won't run.

Homework group with a Win 7 computer is natural.

I didn't manage to setup a network drive to store my backup files. Googling didn't help either; the tutorials didn't apply. I 'll try to tackle it another day.

 

Hmmm good info. I guess I could use it on my non gaming PC.

 

Actually, it's not half bad for a work laptop.

The basic notion to keep in mind is that the Metro UI Apps aren't software; they operate withing the Metro UI only.
Regular software operates only within the Desktop UI, but can have shortcuts on the Metro.
Even more confusingly, Skype and Skydrive (to name a few), have both App and Desktop software incarnations.

 

Win8 has run all the programs I've got from internet so far. Don't know about games though.

 

APP is almost a synonym for useless.

 

I think that's quite biased.

 

I feel that win 8 has its potential uses, but personally I don't care for it. used 8 beta on a friend desktop for a few minutes and I don't care for the design and a lot of other people that looked at it didn't rally like parts of it or whole thing (and this was a network admin class). I can see for a tablet or phone a touchscreen desktop or laptop possibly, but without the touchscreen seemed real difficult to work with the mouse. supposedly it can be altered to desktop mode then its basically windows 7.
and server 2012 is fairly similar to 8, but seems a bit more mouse friendly which makes since because iv never heard of touchscreens used for servers. also server 12 instead of the roles, features being like they were they are now apps that run on top the OS. this sounds somewhat similar to apples servers. I understand there may be advantages i.e. separation, but seems like bad idea to me. guess time will tell what happens with win 8 and server 2012, but for the server part I think they should go back to old way, and that seemed fairly modular so if one thing crashes other services won't.

 

I have only dabbled with Windows 8 for a short time and went straight back to Windows 7. The OP mentioned that they had to get a book on how to use it and even after a few hours were still finding out about things. This too me isn't something I want to have to do. I want an OS to be intuitive. I loved XP and moving to Windows 7 require no effort at all. I certainly didn't have to buy a book to work out how to use it!

 

After having it for about two months now, it's growing on me. After you get over the part that its built for a touch screen, which I don't have, I use a 32 inch flat screen TV, its pretty much the same as all recent windows.

But if had my choice, XP would still be it.

 

when asking about windows8, the correct answer is Ubuntu!