Microsoft 8 & why not

[Bailey]

OK , I appreciate MS is not everyone's cup of tea. But, I've grown up with them since DOS days.

Took the £25 upgrade offer tonight to Windows 8 pro from windows 7 home version (including disk at £8 and free multimedia package) And I'm impressed.

Couple of hours letting MS do the upgrade business. (I accept next windows is for free) but now suddenly my spell checker/grammar automatically works in every window. Acorn, Facebook you name it. (that's a big and great time saver)

And I only took the upgrade for the 'Enhanced' multi-monitor support - I don't have touchscreen.

So far £25 well spent

 

[Bailey]

The upgrade is supposedly available to anyone using anything from Vista onwards. But, the chipset/processor/bios checker will scare anyone off below a half decent current hardware system

 

[AssetDomains]

Were did you see this offer mate I wouldn't mind having a look

 

[The Ferryman]

Ray
If you had said you would be getting a new spelling/grammar checker, we would gladly have had a whip round to get you the money! I wonder if we will be able to make any sense of your posts now?
I have W8 on a couple of machines, I like bits of it, but it is clearly built for touch screens. Office 2013 installed nicely on it, but I can't get that to install on a W7 machine, keeps failing.
Regards
Bruce

 

[tifosi]

The laptop I'm using is on Vista (shame on you MicroSoft!) with the drive equivalent to a modern semi with the garage full of junk, the attic full of old clothes and every room full of tat. For the time to do a house clearance It'd be easier just to move house... metaphorically.

I'll probably get a new one with W8 & migrate this one to a linux os like Ubuntu. I've heard decent things from it so long as you use the top end intel chip version.

 

[chrisduggan]

windowsupgradeoffer.com

 

[monaghan]

I've run some form of Windows since version 1 and I'm actually thinking it is time to give up on Windows as my main desktop after seeing Win 8! Linux desktops seem to have matured a lot over the last few years, so I'm thinking Linux on the desktop and a VM for the few Windows apps I need. I guess the kids computers will stay on Windows, but they are all W7, so no need for update at the moment.

Apple really ought to look at releasing MacOS X on the PC platform given that a Mac these days is using PC hardware and there's a thriving Hackintosh community already running MacOS on non Apple hardware.

 

[retired_member33]

Try Ubuntu, works well and it's free - http://www.ubuntu.com/

Great interface, never crashes, loads of apps.

You can install it and run it alongside Windows so you can try it before you switch.

I've run some form of Windows since version 1 and I'm actually thinking it is time to give up on Windows as my main desktop after seeing Win 8! Linux desktops seem to have matured a lot over the last few years, so I'm thinking Linux on the desktop and a VM for the few Windows apps I need. I guess the kids computers will stay on Windows, but they are all W7, so no need for update at the moment.

Apple really ought to look at releasing MacOS X on the PC platform given that a Mac these days is using PC hardware and there's a thriving Hackintosh community already running MacOS on non Apple hardware.

 

[monaghan]

Try Ubuntu, works well and it's free - http://www.ubuntu.com/

Great interface, never crashes, loads of apps.

You can install it and run it alongside Windows so you can try it before you switch.

I've been using Linux since the kernel was 0.9.something, so I'm well aware of the stability. I put a Linux system in a local office about 5 years ago, I went back in the summer for another job and the Linux box was still running strong (sadly I migrated the app to a Windows box as part of the consolidation job so the box is no more)

Not sure which version I'll go with, Ubuntu is Debian based which I used for some time, I have a few Ubuntu systems running and also some CentOS. KVM works nicely in CentOS, may have to give it a try on Ubuntu - loads of decisions ahead

 

[tifosi]

Have a browse through my distros.co.uk site for some snazzy ubuntu/debian offshoots. LinuxMint, peppermint, os4, kubuntu spring to mind.

Windows is something I'll probably not be giving up in the near future, just for legacy needs & certain programs I'm familiar with. But for general & cloud use linux now has iCrap & Windows beat.

And for server stuff the openStack integration with Ubuntu is opening a few doors for cloud hosting.