Windows 7 or 8??

[Golddiggie]

Unix for OS, Lotus Notes for email and Lotus Symphony for office type apps. No Microsoft required.

For me, that's a recipe for FoF...

I left Unix/Linux off the choices for a reason you know... I also left off the Lotus/IBM software for a reason. Neither is a viable option for me.

Peter_h; I actually want the same functionality I get from the Start menu. Not just pulling up applications via key commands. There are apps that I don't use very often, so they're not in the taskbar, or have an alias on the desktop. Currently, I just dig them up via the Start menu. They're easy to locate there, so it's no issue. Besides, I do use keyboard commands while in some applications, like Photoshop, that I don't want to worry about being detected by something else.

Since this is a desktop/tower system, and not a tablet, I'm leaning towards going with Windows 7. I do hope that Microsoft releases an update, patch, etc. that will at least allow us to get back the GUI functionality present with Windows 7. I think that lack of functionality is seriously hurting the adoption of Windows 8 for businesses/corporations. To have to train users for a completely new interface isn't all that viable for a lot of companies.

 

[carguy13]

At work, our workstations are xp, I run 7 on my work laptop, and am testing 8 for the migration of the work stations. I like 8, I can really appreciate what they are trying to do with it. For a desktop, it's ok but for a tablet I can see where it has the potential especially if you are out in the field.

I say move to 8. If the Windows tablets catch on like I hope they will, it will be the standard OS. I'm not an MS fan by any stretch but I do want to see it succeed so that there is more competition in the tablet market.

If you are worried about not having the start button or how they moved all the programs around and need programs at your fingertips, try out launchy.

to me needing an after market addition to the OS means that it's not complete. it should be convenient and comfortable right off the shelf. if it's not i see it as a crappy product. no matter who makes it.

 

[passedpawn]

I had some issues with Vista (inherent to the OS), which is why I couldn't stay with it. Could have been solved with later updates, but since this is my main system at home, I needed it stable. Windows 7 has the stability I need and enough stuff runs on it (that I also need) to keep me going.

I can only fit a pair of 24" LCD's on my desk. Not really looking to go to wall mount just to wedge another display in there. Besides, my video card only has the two digital (DVI) outputs on it.

Yea, you need another card. Needs to be same manuf. I don't think I could cope with less than 3 with what I do. I'm going to 4 soon.

 

[Golddiggie]

I should be able to fit a pair of 27-30" screens on my desk, if I wanted to. Issue I have is that they cost big bucks if I want to have the same, or a higher, resolution of what I have now (1920x1200 per display). As for adding another video card, I don't even think I have a slot open/available to use. The current video card takes up two slots. IF I trim that down, I could squeeze another card in there.

 

[Peter_h]

to me needing an after market addition to the OS means that it's not complete. it should be convenient and comfortable right off the shelf. if it's not i see it as a crappy product. no matter who makes it.

Actually I would recommend launchy with any OS. It's just a great program, period.

 

[Golddiggie]

Actually I would recommend launchy with any OS. It's just a great program, period.

Don't see a valid need for it, for me at least. I'm not so pressed for time that I can't go to the Start menu for those things. When in programs, I already know the key commands for things I use often enough.

 

[Homercidal]

There is no, "Use win7, because there doesn't seem to be a reason to "upgrade" to 8 unless you have a tablet".

On the other hand, 8 is very cheap right now...

 

[carguy13]

i wonder why? ...you get what you pay for.

 

[Golddiggie]

Cost isn't the issue right now since I get it through TechNet.

 

[carguy13]

for several technologically advanced people cost isn't an issue. i'm just saying that's a good way to gauge a product... especially a Windows OS. When was the last time you saw a Windows OS for that cheap, w/o some kind of discount or promotion?

 

[passedpawn]

for several technologically advanced people cost isn't an issue. i'm just saying that's a good way to gauge a product... especially a Windows OS. When was the last time you saw a Windows OS for that cheap, w/o some kind of discount or promotion?

Google is the biggest threat to the desktop OS right now. They and Apple own the cell phone OS.

Now that cell phones have the horse power to run most productivity apps, it's only a matter of time before they completely replace laptops. They are just missing the keyboard, large screen, and non-volatile memory. The keyboard and screen will eventually be in every airport and hotel room, so you'll just plug your phone in and get busy. Memory will be mostly cloud-based. That structure is maturing right now.

The desktop of the near future will probably be one of these screen/keyboard accessories and a docking station for your phone acting as the CPU. Microsoft is sucking hind tit right now in that picture. So, Win8 looks like a phone/tablet OS, and is priced cheap. Desperation move IMO. We'll see.

 

[Golddiggie]

A quick look on Amazon shows nothing too far out of the ordinary for pricing (IMO)... The retail price listed (from Microsoft) isn't that much less than it was under Windows 7.

Even if I didn't have a TechNet subscription, I'd probably not pay retail. It's not difficult to get the OEM version, if you know where (and how) to buy it.

Could be that they actually listened to people complaining about the cost and decided to lower it for this version. Did you even think of/consider that possibility?? I seriously think people are just not happy unless they can biotch about something Microsoft is doing. First it was 'the OS costs too much' now it's "why is it priced so low?" Unreal. :fro:

 

[carguy13]

i don't think anyone is bitching. i was just saying it could be an indicator. i really don't care anyway as i don't pay for any software unless it's awesome and the developer deserves supporting. if it's crap i won't buy it. just like windows 8, it might not be bad for everyone but for my individual needs of a computer, it doesn't fit the bill.

if MS products keep going in this very Mac-ish, tablet like, touch screen direction I see the bigger corporations/large enterprises going to Linux based systems... which i would be very happy about.

 

[carguy13]

i don't think anyone is bitching. i was just saying it could be an indicator. i really don't care anyway as i don't pay for any software unless it's awesome and the developer deserves supporting. if it's crap i won't buy it. just like windows 8, it might not be bad for everyone but for my individual needs of a computer, it doesn't fit the bill.

if MS products keep going in this very Mac-ish, tablet like, touch screen direction I see the bigger corporations/large enterprises going to Linux based systems... which i would be very happy about.

 

[Golddiggie]

i don't think anyone is bitching. i was just saying it could be an indicator. i really don't care anyway as i don't pay for any software unless it's awesome and the developer deserves supporting. if it's crap i won't buy it. just like windows 8, it might not be bad for everyone but for my individual needs of a computer, it doesn't fit the bill.

if MS products keep going in this very Mac-ish, tablet like, touch screen direction I see the bigger corporations/large enterprises going to Linux based systems... which i would be very happy about.

I think it's a nice pipe dream for you to think that large enterprises/corporations will simply dump all of Microsoft products and go to Linux. Not only would it cost them money (such as for RedHat licenses and support) it would cost gobs of money in training their user communities on the new OS. IME, that just doesn't happen. Even if a CIO/CFO doesn't like Microsoft, they realize that's what the business world runs on.

Before you start going off on "Linux is FREE man" rant, it is if you want no actual company support. Distro's with actual support from the places releasing it costs money (annual contracts). That's one of the reasons why Linux isn't so wide-spread. It can be ok for a small company, who's not running anything critical. But as soon as you need 4 or 5 "9's" of uptime, you need an actual support number you can call when it hits the fan. I don't care what OS you're running, eventually you NEED support. You also need the option of 24x7 support for those business critical items.

 

[phoenixs4r]

I switched windows 7 for windows 8 when my old 2TB hardrive crashed on me a few weeks back. Its really not that bad. I do not like the metro interface, but in a few minutes you can have all of your files open to the traditional desktop versions and you won't have to deal with metro for the most part. I've been meaning to try a start menu replacement but while I was out of town my girlfriend who generally has issues with new technology picked it up fine, so I don't really see a need.

It seems to perform better in my day to day tasks, no has data to back this up, just stuff I noticed, and this is all running off a standard hard disk drive. Was hoping to find a decent deal on an SSD but got too busy on Friday and Monday to shop.

 

[carguy13]

I think it's a nice pipe dream for you to think that large enterprises/corporations will simply dump all of Microsoft products and go to Linux. Not only would it cost them money (such as for RedHat licenses and support) it would cost gobs of money in training their user communities on the new OS. IME, that just doesn't happen. Even if a CIO/CFO doesn't like Microsoft, they realize that's what the business world runs on.

Before you start going off on "Linux is FREE man" rant, it is if you want no actual company support. Distro's with actual support from the places releasing it costs money (annual contracts). That's one of the reasons why Linux isn't so wide-spread. It can be ok for a small company, who's not running anything critical. But as soon as you need 4 or 5 "9's" of uptime, you need an actual support number you can call when it hits the fan. I don't care what OS you're running, eventually you NEED support. You also need the option of 24x7 support for those business critical items.

several government organizations already run on Unix. every base i've been at has had Unix systems at the highest level. even down range in Afghanistan most of the data processing / imagery software servers and radio management stuff is all Unix based. it could be done. and no Unix isn't free as a corp. solution because you generally run something like Sun Solaris to implement mass server farms. they do have adequate support and well. in fact they sent someone from Sun Microsystems (Oracle... whatever) out to service one our our servers. Plus they have contractors from Raytheon who also are certified to support most devices. So it was never a problem.

 

[Golddiggie]

several government organizations already run on Unix. every base i've been at has had Unix systems at the highest level. even down range in Afghanistan most of the data processing / imagery software servers and radio management stuff is all Unix based. it could be done. and no Unix isn't free as a corp. solution because you generally run something like Sun Solaris to implement mass server farms. they do have adequate support and well. in fact they sent someone from Sun Microsystems (Oracle... whatever) out to service one our our servers. Plus they have contractors from Raytheon who also are certified to support most devices. So it was never a problem.

What the government organizations does really doesn't have much bearing on what corporations/businesses will do. With the government, they can dictate that the people learn the interface without exception. With companies, if enough people bitch about it, they'll end up reversing their decision. That's also why companies will typically test out the whazoo something before going company wide with it. I had to test, with users, a solution to an issue for a solid year before it got approved. Didn't matter that it was the right technology/solution for the issue, it had to be tested and actually backed/blessed by department heads before it was approved and purchased.

IMO, enough on Linux/Unix, since that's NOT what this thread is all about.

 

[carguy13]

agreed. good debate though.

 

[Epimetheus]

Go with Win8. it does not matterif it is better. W7 will be unsupported.

MS has the difficult task of making one OS for business and consumers. Business does not want distractions of music and touchscreens. Consumers want touch screens and Face-give-your-life-away-book and family pics.

Brief Linux [soapbox]I dualboot with Ubuntu and Win7. I like Ubuntu because there are no viruses. Sadly, I would not consider Ubuntu/Linux a consumer product for the average user. Ubuntu/linux is extremely frustrating because you have to go through complex processes to get the simplest things working, like the HDMI port. In contrast, Win7 has native support for these things, that is, the computer works out of the box [/soapbox]

 

[Golddiggie]

Go with Win8. it does not matterif it is better. W7 will be unsupported.

MS has the difficult task of making one OS for business and consumers. Business does not want distractions of music and touchscreens. Consumers want touch screens and Face-give-your-life-away-book and family pics.

Brief Linux [soapbox]I dualboot with Ubuntu and Win7. I like Ubuntu because there are no viruses. Sadly, I would not consider Ubuntu/Linux a consumer product for the average user. Ubuntu/linux is extremely frustrating because you have to go through complex processes to get the simplest things working, like the HDMI port. In contrast, Win7 has native support for these things, that is, the computer works out of the box [/soapbox]

For Linux flavor, I prefer CentOS since it's [basically] RHEL de/re-badged. I don't like umbuntu due to how 'bubblegum' it is... I want my linux distro to be more server orientated, not dumbed-down for end abusers.

 

[carguy13]

...i thought we were moving on gents.

 

[Golddiggie]

I've pretty much backed everything up now, and am about to burn the OS install disc. Looks like almost 70% would (or did) go with Windows 7 over Windows 8 here (out of 16 votes, 11 were for Windows 7). Checking to see if my cd/dvd burning software will work under Windows 8 or if it's locked into Windows 7 only (got Roxio 2012). I'm not looking to spend the money on the new release, just yet. I don't burn a ton, but it would be good to at least have it functional on the system.

update: Looks like only the latest release of the Roxio software is listed as compatible with Windows 8. So, it's looking like I'll be sticking with Windows 7 for now.

 

[Golddiggie]

Mid-process update here.

Went through the drive change over, had to remove the ones I was going to use for storage (higher performance SAS drives) and go with laptop drives (5400rpm) for now (will be ordering some better ones early in the week).

But, I forgot to export all my stuff out of BeerSmith. I DID use the Windows 7 'backup' function to get my profile backed up to my NAS/SAN. After digging through all those zip files, I was able to locate the BeerSmith directory and pull it back over. After installing BeerSmith 2.x fresh, I then copied the files I had backed up into the directory it created. BooYA!!! All my recipes are back and organized as I had changed them last night (last time I made a change). :rockin: Also included are the grains I've custom added.

If anyone wants to make periodic backups, simply copy the entire directory from c:\users\*your profile*\Documents\BeerSmith2. I'm thinking about setting up an automatic, periodic, backup of that directory. Or I'll just do it manually when I've made enough changes (so I don't go through this again). I'd go at least once a month if you're making updates/changes.

I was starting to get pissed off at myself over NOT making a specific backup of this. Since my old drives were part of a RAID array, putting them back in wouldn't have done me any good at all.

 

[Golddiggie]

Got Office 2013 installed, and configured Outlook to do it's job. Man, didn't realize how many email accounts I still had with things going to them. I've decided to make a second send/receive group, putting the lower importance addresses in there. Those will send/receive twice a day (set it to 720 minutes between with doing another at app close). Still, that's only four of the accounts there. Still have six more that will send/receive every few minutes (playing around with that setting to hit the sweet spot). At least Roxio 2012 is 100% functional (for a change).

Also, since one of the 5400 rpm drives I installed was in a mac laptop in a previous life, it's not playing so well with the system. I couldn't have it in a RAID configuration with an identical drive. So, I only have one of them showing up for usable storage (after the C drive). As such, I've ordered a pair of 500GB Seagate Momentus XT drives (hybrid SSD/spindle drives with 4GB cache). I hope to have those by the end of the week (shipping from CA via ground, not available via Amazon Prime ).

Only troubling thing is I'm getting issues with the send/receive of emails. Need to figure out if it's on the ISP or my AV software (or native Windows settings) that's the source and eliminate it.

 

[passedpawn]

Are you running a RAID 1 mirror inside the PC? Do you do this just for docs or the OS also?

Regarding your backup sitch, you might want to check out Crashplan. It's a free backup that I use for backing up to an external USB drive. So far, flawless, and yes I have restored from it.

I also put a hotswap drive bay into my PC that lets me slide a standard SATA drive into the PC. I have a stack of cheap SATA drives for offline backup. Works great, but you must unmount the drive before pulling it out. I use a nifty little utility called HotSwap for that.

 

[Golddiggie]

No RAID for the drives yet. I'm trying to decide if I'll use RAID 0 or 1 for the new drives.

I have a NAS that also has some B&R software with it (if I recall correctly), just never used it. I typically backup important files on a regular basis. With the manual backup, to the NAS, I don't need to worry about the software company going belly-up, not supporting an OS, or otherwise leaving me stranded.

I send some things to my DropBox share, which has gotten to a decent space level (total available). Probably going to backup some critical things there too. Never hurts to have things in more than one location.

I also have external hard drives that I can use. Just a matter of connecting them up and doing it. I have some from LaCie that have a pair of drives inside. I might back up what's on them, if I can set them to RAID 1 instead of 0. At least that way I'd be more comfortable backing up files to them.

With this being a Dell Precision Workstation 490 tower, I don't have a lot of expansion left. I'm using the slot that was previously occupied by the media reader, for the OS/boot SSD. The other two drives are where the original 3.5" drives were (in adapters). I have just one SATA connection available now (the blu-ray drive is using one). While I could try installing a sled into the system, I'd rather not. Besides having yet another thing to manage, I don't want to spend the extra funds on a sled I might not 100% like. At least with the drives, I'm pretty sure I'll be good.

I'm probably going to have to contact my ISP tomorrow, and/or Kaspersky to see what's going on for my email receiving issue. I can send, but am getting receiving errors (at random times it seems). I've dropped the frequency of the send/receive to every 10 minutes, but that's not a 100% fix. I did install the latest version of the Kaspersky software, since I could. Figured it would have improved compatibility with Windows 7...

 

[passedpawn]

I have a huge Lian Li server case. It's a freaking monster. Even has metal wheels. I'l never get another. I think it holds 20 drives I think you need one of these.

I have 2 RAID5 NAS's. One is yet another backup for my business. The other is the family media storage (pics/music/video). The media NAS is DNLA compliant, so I can stream movies etc. throughout my house. NAS's are like brewing gear. Once you start filling them, you never have enough space.

 

[Golddiggie]

Yeah, I have under 1TB free/left on my 4TB (3.8TB actual) NAS... Getting a bit nervous on that one. I used to have a case like that, back when I built systems for fun (and occasionally profit). A while back I found that I could get a pretty sick system from a company like Dell, stripped where I didn't need things, and then upgrade parts to get me what I wanted at a better rate. Got my current system that way, with other Xeon's in it initially, then upgraded to the pair of quad cores I have now. Upgraded the video card and did a drive change over too. Got my ESXi host pretty much the same way. That thing is a tank (PWS T7400) with 24GB of RAM inside (and slots open still)...

Now, I just wish my ISP was a bit better for us techno-geeks... Looks like those bastards are blocking my email domain.

 

[a_hard]

The only thing wrong with the options is that none of them are linux.

This. So many times. I dual boot xp on my desktop for a handful of programs . But aside from that I'm Linux and open source for everything