Want a new laptop but do I want Windows 8?

[Soundguy]

. Danger Danger Will Robinson!

This ain't my first rodeo, I have been using computers from the micro computer days of the PET 2001 and Apple II plus. Windows 8.1 is POS. Never seen anything this unstable before.....

Later,
Dan

my wife's church just 'upgraded' to win 8/8.1 computers.. same deal. they had been running their presentations and power poits off of them.. and some music.

none of the stuff is working right. my wife brings in her xp netbook and the music driector is using a mackbook pro right now.

the pastor likes his 8.x laptop.. but he just uses it for pictures and lieks to see the desktop that looks like his telephone.. he doens't have to work on the darn thing..

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Well, you guys got me to thinking that I need a light weight laptop for travel next summer. My coincidence, the Dell Outlet Store mailed me a 30% off coupon, and they were offering free shipping, so I ordered an Ultrabook 14z, fairly well loaded, for $531. It includes a 32 gb SSDR, which should compensate for the slow 500 gig 5400 rpm SATA drive. Windows 7. Battery life is so-so, but I don't plan to be on the computer that much. Mostly I just plan to skype, download photos off of my camera, add captions and email them home. I'm a little early, but it normally takes me up to 3 months to get a new computer configured like I want it.

 

[Soundguy]

add an inverter for when int he car.. and you are set.. and no big telephone screen desktop!

and it's probably 'guaranteed' upgradeable to win 8 anyway...

 

[aczlan]

Well, you guys got me to thinking that I need a light weight laptop for travel next summer. My coincidence, the Dell Outlet Store mailed me a 30% off coupon, and they were offering free shipping, so I ordered an Ultrabook 14z, fairly well loaded, for $531. It includes a 32 gb SSDR, which should compensate for the slow 500 gig 5400 rpm SATA drive. Windows 7. Battery life is so-so, but I don't plan to be on the computer that much. Mostly I just plan to skype, download photos off of my camera, add captions and email them home. I'm a little early, but it normally takes me up to 3 months to get a new computer configured like I want it.

Nice. We have some 13" Ultrabooks (XPS13) at work for a road lab which have ~128GB SSDs and they are great.

Aaron Z

 

[Bird]

I have a new Hewlett-Packard laptop ordered and the website shows it was shipped via FedEx today; picked up in Chongqing, CN. I didn't know they were made in China, but can't say I'm surprised.

 

[madmax12]

My 8.1 system is randomly doing what I call mini reboots. The system is not doing a full reboot but all applications are closed and the desktop cleaned up. It has done this 3-4 times in the last two days. After I left work last night, it did a mini reboot and this morning I was working on the image, turned away to look at some email and a mini reboot had occurred again. I did not see this with Win 8.0.

I have seen some other strange behaviors as well. I am running a program that allows a "window" in the program to maximize itself in the program. This was working a few hours ago and now does not work. Tiles in Windows 8 Start page have moved around. I thought the icons had disappeared during one of the mini reboots but I found them in a different spot on the Tile Screen. I have do click on the little down arrow on the Tile Screen and scroll to find my missing application icons.

Windows 8.1 is very unstable for me. Windows 8.0 was a PITA to use but it was stable. Windows 8.1 is a bit easier to use but unstable.

While I was typing this post, Windows 8.1 did another mini reboot. My application is gone along with what I was doing. Poof! Thankfully, I was able to recover my corrupted data. Danger Danger Will Robinson!

This ain't my first rodeo, I have been using computers from the micro computer days of the PET 2001 and Apple II plus. Windows 8.1 is POS. Never seen anything this unstable before.....

Later,
Dan

Nothing to be concerned about.

Just the NSA fine tuning adjustments, so they can see, hear, and record you better.



PS - I sincerely hope everything starts working better for you, just trying to make you laugh.

 

[westcliffe01]

I have been running Linux now for several years. I have never got too technically involved in it, but enough to find my way around. I have used different versions of Ubuntu, but at some point after V10 it seems they lost direction and came up with some buggy versions. It got to a point where I could no longer get a late version of Firefox beccause of the OS. So this weekend I loaded Mint. Have to say it was very easy, the only new thing I had to do was download an ISO file and burn it onto a DVD to make the installation disk. Even that went OK with no hassle.

The only advice I would give to anyone who wishes to try out Linux is ot have an alternate way to get to the internet and download any drivers you may find you need. In my case that was the network/wireless chipset of my Dell 1545. Basically when I booted up for the first time after the install I had no wireless or even wired network connection. It took 10 minutes worth of googling to find someone describing the exact same issue and how it got resolved.

Anyway, long story short, Mint is working great on this Dell. Fast bootup and shutdown, just a pipe dream with windows of any flavor. Probably 30 seconds the machine is booted up and wireless is already running and connected.... Performance wise this is the fastest this laptop has been of any operating system that has ever been loaded. If you go to the software manager, there are several versions of 2D cad available now including alibre cad. Open office runs fine unless you need something that uses VB scripting (I have written a lot of those applications for Excel). I actually need to investigate whether Open Office uses any sort of scripting code of their own. If they do, that would be very interesting indeed.

So if you are fed up and frustrated with windows, and not using a bunch of proprietary software, give Linux Mint a try. I have not had a virus, popup or other issue not (nor any AV software) for several years.

 

[pacerron]

Does anyone using W8/8.1 know how to make a system image backup directly from Windows?

When I first set up the new Windows 8 tower last week Dell has a "My Dell" System backup App installed that made a backup image from my computer and is stored at their recovery site.
Now today I get a box on the screen saying since I have updated to W 8.1 that if they make a recovery for me it will go back to W-8.
There solution is to offer a Pro version of their recovery system at additional cost.

I would think it should be possible to do it myself and create manual system restore points, as well, but I am not familiar with the navigation to these areas yet, if they exist.

 

[aczlan]

Try File History. It looks like they removed the ability to run a real backup from 8.1 (or at least from the preview version that I am running).

Aaron Z

 

[pacerron]

Try File History. It looks like they removed the ability to run a real backup from 8.1 (or at least from the preview version that I am running).

Aaron Z

Thanks,

I see a System Image Back UP down in the lower corner. That must be it.