My Windows 8.1 adventure:Hour 1: Jesus backflipping Christ this is the worst thing I have ever used. Why is there no shut down button? Why is there no X to close windows? WHY ARE THERE NO WINDOWS IN A WINDOWS OS?
Hour 2: Fucking hell, I had to spend £5 just to get a proper Start Menu (off the great guys who made
Objectdock which I've used for years, incidentally).
Hour 3: OK, most of my programs are re-installed or repaired... Seems to be vaguely working. But wtf is this metro shit? Right, disabling that altogether. Third party software required to do so.
Hour 4: Ok, so it took me 4 hours just to disable the password login at startup. I am the only person who uses this PC. I do not need a password screen preventing me from leaving it booting up. Why is this shit hidden behind a command prompt, 6 menus and a properties button?
Hour 5: OK, in fairness it does boot up incredibly quickly. The reason I know this, however, is because I'm having to restart every five fucking minutes as I make major changes to the UI. Also some things are crashing worryingly often and 'End Task' is as reliable as it was in Win7 (i.e. not at all) WHERE IS 'END PROCESS'??!?!
Hour 6: I very much enjoyed the simplicity of gadgets in Win7. They weren't pretty, but having a big clock and temperature readouts of my hardware on my second monitor was very useful. This is literally impossible in Win8 because Desktop mode is basically not supported. More third party software required. Went with the often-praised RainMeter and despite its terrible UI (For a UI changing program, go figure) it has actually done a pretty great job.
Hour 7: Win8 has a good App Store. Seriously, there're some really useful things like a dedicated Netflix app. OH THEY CAN'T BE USED IN DESKTOP MODE? WONDERFUL. Well, OK, I'll just make a shortcut to them that'll launch Metro. OH YOU CAN'T. Oh someone on Google has figured it out with an idiotically complicated shortcut available for download? Oh nice, it works. Let me just add the shortcut to StarDock because I enjoy an icon-free desktop. NOPE. DOESN'T WORK.
Hour 8: Watched Netflix on Chrome like usual.
SO much style over substance, that was horrible. It's pretty much in a workable state now, but that took a LOT of Rainmeter tinkering and disabling the Metro UI altogether. Managed to get Ultramon and Objectdock working again as well, so it's starting to feel more like my beautiful Win7 setup. I guess it's not as bad as a Mac because I was eventually able to set it up properly, but the fact that it TRIED to be as bad as a Mac and then hid all the advanced options to change it back is forecasting Windows going in a scary direction. Stick to your strengths, lads.