Windows 8 - My experience

I wrote the other day saying I was going to give Windows 8 a try - Windows 8 is out!

So on Saturday, I decided to upgrade my laptop and give Windows 8 a run. I had played around with the early betas and release candidates by running them in a VM but this time I went all out. As I had only purchased my laptop in June this year, Microsoft gave me a cheap upgrade to Windows 8 - $14.99 to be exact. So I paid my money and started the download.

To install an upgrade, you download a small installer and let it take care of the rest. The process is pretty painless and took a little while to complete, mostly because of the download time. Once complete, the laptop rebooted a couple of times, then gave me my logon page. I logged on (with my existing domain credentials) and was prompted with the now familiar and divisive "Metro" interface (which Microsoft now calls the Windows 8 UI for legal reasons).

So far so good. I started setting up the tiles on my home screen and generally going about my business but just found it ... a little difficult to navigate. And then it started crashing, frequently. The whole computer would just freeze up solid and have to be power cycled. Not a good start. I wonder if a Windows Update installed in the background broke something? I'll never know because at that point I decided I needed a working computer, and therefore had to format it and start again. Lucky for me, I had taken a backup before I started. Never do any kind up upgrade like this without a backup!

So I went back to my download and realised that all I had downloaded was the magical installer. I followed the links to my account from the receipt and quickly realised that this installer was the only file Microsoft was going to give me. Hmm. Lucky for me I have access to other legitimate sources and downloaded a complete DVD ISO, so I could start again.

After formatting the laptop and starting again, everything seemed pretty smooth. I set up my home screen, started downloading my most important applications, configured power management, wifi and all manner of things. I used it like this for several hours, doing some work and play. I must admit, I was really getting into the new interface at this point. My one major gripe of the interface is that it is not really keyboard friendly, despite there being some shortcuts. I would take keyboard over mouse every time and love Windows 7 for the ability to hit the start key (on the keyboard) and just start typing to find an application or file. In 8, this isn't possible (or I just never found the right shortcut key combination).

Sunday morning I fired up the laptop again but now it started crashing again, just like the upgraded version did. After a few power-cycles I was getting pretty frustrated. I tried unplugging everything and trying different things but it kept locking up. Worse, there were no clues left in the event logs. At this point I was due to go out to a friend's place to help with her website (which was all stored on the laptop). So I took it with some trepidation. However, at her place and then later at my wife's work, it worked sweetly again - not a single hiccup. Then I brought it home and .... yep, you guessed it. Maybe it doesn't like my wifi?

I need my laptop for work (day job and sideline business) and play, so this wasn't acceptable. Sadly, I spent  Sunday afternoon formatting it again and reloading Windows 7, which I'll stick with for now thanks.

IT guys normally say wait until the first service pack before jumping into a new operating system - I normally say this myself! So that's what I'm going to do now. Something isn't quite right. It might be in the product, or Updates from the web, it might be in the drivers for my laptop (even though it is a current spec machine and there are official Windows 8 drivers available), or it might be a negative vibe coming from all my swearing. I don't know and I don't care. I will be steering clear of Windows 8 for the foreseeable future and I would probably suggest you do too, unless there is a really good reason not to. Let somebody else work out the kinks, then install it when Microsoft release the first big set of patches, or service pack 1.