In reply to a post by AEP:

A very similar machine, but with a low-powerd single-core AMD processor. I had previously tried the Beta on it and it was nothing special, but the release version is something else. It boots in about 10 seconds and everything runs much more smoothly than on Vista.

No, it's not sleeping. It's a cold boot from fully powered off in about 10 sec.

But sleep is what windows 8 default is. I tried the enterprise edition as well which you can try for a few days and that is the realise version, still not that much better.


i did think about it for a while, but i think I will stay with windows 7. i gave more than enough money to Microsoft in the past, I don't really want to give them any more.

But sleep is what windows 8 default is.

Adrian, I can assure you that after more than 30 years working with computers I know how to turn one off.

Edit: Just to be absolutely sure, I did what the lady in the Microsoft demo video does. I took the battery out of the laptop. So, no sleep mode possible. Still boots just as quickly.

I know how it's done - it's all explained by Microsoft - but it's still mighty impressive. This is the fastest I have had any computer boot since the days of OS in ROM, and it's a cruddy old low-powered laptop!

Edited by deleted (Tue 30-Oct-12 20:44:41)

Had it for around 2 days now, i paid 14.99 with a little white lie of when i bought my laptop but they accepted it

Not keen on the tiles which are really for touch screens anyway, but i like the rest of it. I did miss the start button so installed Stardock start8 and boot to the desktop now so never really see the tiles.

Hyper V is what i really wanted from windows 8 and i find this it's best feature.

In reply to a post by AEP:

But sleep is what windows 8 default is.

Adrian, I can assure you that after more than 30 years working with computers I know how to turn one off.

Edit: Just to be absolutely sure, I did what the lady in the Microsoft demo video does. I took the battery out of the laptop. So, no sleep mode possible. Still boots just as quickly.

I know how it's done - it's all explained by Microsoft - but it's still mighty impressive. This is the fastest I have had any computer boot since the days of OS in ROM, and it's a cruddy old low-powered laptop!

It must be like a hibernate thing then, i never got that speed even on this machine which is a AMd 3.5 quad core with a SSD unit. I normally keep windows 7 in sleep mode so it is super quick to boot up, so windows 8 would offer me no advantage.

i was thinking of getting the update and keeping it because it is a good price and maybe, just maybe MS may come out with their own version of something like classic start, but I can't see it myself. anyway spending £24 and not using it, is a waste of money.

Chatting to a mate at work today and i told him that windows 8 was a a good price if he wanted to update. His words was hell no, even if it was £10 he would not update. I suppose his computer is working fine and he don't want to upset it, but also he saw a few videos of the metro screen, including one I did and decided it is not for him.

The problem is what do we do in a few years time when support for windows 7 runs out? By that time i know my mate would have updated his computer again as he play games. I might have updated, but as long as my computer can still do HD video editing I am not too bothered about updating the hardware.

windows 8 is a pretty decent price and after January will go up to it normal price I think, so do we update now and hope MS fixes the silly problems or do we wait until the next windows update and hope that they offer that at a decent price?

Or in my case do I just drop windows and go and splash out on new hardware with a Os built in like the Apple Mac? i know my mate won't go for a MAC because he is into games.

if windows 8 was more like windows 7 and did not have the metro screen then I would not hesitate to update at that price, but windows 8 seems to be to different Os just snapped together and they just don't talk to each other.

In reply to a post by Kimi:

Had it for around 2 days now, i paid 14.99 with a little white lie of when i bought my laptop but they accepted it

Not keen on the tiles which are really for touch screens anyway, but i like the rest of it. I did miss the start button so installed Stardock start8 and boot to the desktop now so never really see the tiles.

Hyper V is what i really wanted from windows 8 and i find this it's best feature.

Hyper V is one of these features that most people will have no idea about or need.

I stuck Linux on a virtual machine, but found it was not that useful, so installed it onto another hard drive instead.

My sister in law is running windows XP as a VM on her windows 7 machine so she can run a old bit of software, but she would never have known it could be done if i did not tell her about it.

you may find Classic start is better than Stardock attempt.

If I was running Vista, I would certainly upgrade for the price.
As under 5 years of support left.
And vista isn't as good as Win7

But running Win7 it's almost certain that at least Win10 will be out during the life cycle.

Edited by deleted (Wed 31-Oct-12 00:12:20)

In reply to a post by AEP:

£24.99 to upgrade my Windows Vista Home to Windows 8 Pro. Now that's what I call a bargain!

is it an upgrade?

http://xpwasmyidea.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/features-r...



Windows 8 has quite a lot of features removed as well as useability, its a higher version but I am not sure I would call it an upgrade.

Pricewise remember you paying for an upgrade not full version. But considering its pro not the non pro the price is not bad.

also limited time free media centre key here.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/feature...

But knowing microsoft they may have region locked it so I am not sure will work on uk copy or not.

Vista - it's a no brainer. Windows 7 - possibly; the juriy's still out on that one.

I am amused that Adrian constantly refers to OS X as his saviour. I run it, and it's fine for my requirements, but it won't run the software that he uses, requires expensive new hardware, is heading the same way as Windows and is run by a control-freak organization that makes Microsoft look like the OSF.

It effectively hibernates - you can see a good report on the two systems here (there are many available of course):-

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/1...

To compare W7and W8 boot times, the simplest way is to use 'restart' in W8, that will provide a comparible boot time, although such comparisons seem pretty pointless to me.

Having tried both, there is no doubt that W8 is faster, even when restarting, although by how much seems to differ wildly betrween machines. Frankly I don't give a darn whether a system starts a few seconds faster, as whilst the machine is starting up I'm usually making a cuppa!

My choice has been to stick with W8 on a tablet that I have, but revert to W7 on both laptop and desktop, where I found that all I was doing was 'sevenising' W8 and I really missed the gadgets (sad - but my choice!). I also found that a number of the apps (esp weather. wiki etc) kept losing connectivity or reporting no network availability, even though the network was sound and connected........ No doubt things will improve with time (and Service Pack 1) and W8 will become more atractive, but I'll wait to see what W9 brings.