The quick reply is that you can certainly change it to a local A/C & only using the on-line version as & when necessary (i.e. using it to log-in to the on-line facility ONLY for the duration needed) - because that is what I've done.

Off the top of my head, I can't remember how I did it, but I just googled for the details at the time!

Haven't tried the local A/C without a password, so can't answer that (although I think that you can).

To me, it would make sense if Windows 9, or whatever it gets called, offers a crucial choice at the point of installation, either a tablet / touchscreen installation or a mouse driven set up. This seems so obvious to me. Until a superior intuitive control method is developed then the current methods should continue to run alongside each other.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

What I find odd is that most people on this forum who are windows users appeared to have updated to windows 8. So either they buying new pc/laptops every 1-2 years and hence got windows 8 via OEM or brought it retail (or pirated).
Yet on worldwide adoption windows 7 towers over windows 8.

This forum like all forums is totally unrepresentative of the general public or in the case of product forums users of the product.

So for example you get ISP X being slated as being dire on a forum by 25 outraged individuals while the other 10 million satisfied customers have frankly better things to to with their lives than write about their satisfaction on a forum.

Forums by their nature are made up of self selecting individuals interested in the product - and even more so for individual threads within forums. Sadly people posting on forums tend to loose sight of this and think that 99% of the population shares their opinions.

So here we have a in world terms a truly microscopic number of people discussing Win8 who may indeed have upgraded to it. The rest of the world that actually uses an OS to DO something like 'work' rather than the OS be an end in itself for their amusement are still using Win7 - or in my case XP.

Edited by deleted (Fri 17-Jan-14 08:50:55)

like many things, there is room for improvements at the start and then they hit a peak. Windows 95 wasnt the peak of desktop UI, it was before the peak.

Most business's I know off are either using XP or NT4. Not many are using vista or newer, and I have yet to visit one that is using windows 8.

I wont disagree there will be reasons to use windows 8, but I dont think its UI is a selling point.

question? are you planning to update your business to windows 9 on its release?

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

NO IMPORTANT PROGRAMS HAVE BEEN REMOVED IN WINDOWS 8 - therefore you must be deliberately opening these Metro versions of whatever apps. Open the desktop versions of those apps, and you don't ever need to go into Metro (which as it happens is called Modern UI or Immersive UI) again.

making local image backups isnt important?

true.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

NO IMPORTANT PROGRAMS HAVE BEEN REMOVED IN WINDOWS 8 - therefore you must be deliberately opening these Metro versions of whatever apps. Open the desktop versions of those apps, and you don't ever need to go into Metro (which as it happens is called Modern UI or Immersive UI) again.

making local image backups isnt important?

For me they are a vital and that's why I bought win 7 pro so I could backup over the network.

Although recently I have found a new backup program call ReDo backup which runs from a linux live disc and does image backups of almost any format of drive, even mixed formats which I need as I now dual boot linux and win 7.

Also you can do local backups as well as network and FTP ones and it's completely free.

But I have noticed on other forums that win8 users are being overly aggressive in their defence of the OS as if they need to prove something.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

making local image backups isnt important?

In Windows 8.1:-
Control Panel> All Control Panel Items> File History> System Image Backup

In Windows 8:-
Control Panel> All Control Panel Items> Windows 7 File Recovery> Create System Image

Thanks zaggie I was looking all over for that system image backup in 8.1

Speaking of backups, it's very disappointing that Windows 8 cannot restore backups made from Windows XP.