Sex, Lies, and Windows 8
The Number of Half-Truths and Plain Wrong Information about Windows 8-Put to Rest
The misinformation about Windows 8 is about as scandalous as the 1989 film: Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Because of the new interface that is optimized for touch, everyone thinks it is some completely new version of Windows.
Beyond the visual change, there are changes. Let’s get the lack of a start button out of the way, first. http://www.joshcellsoftwares.com/2012/01/StartOnDesktop.html is the one of many offerings that bring back the start button. This one is a clean (no frills) 40 KB program that makes a one line change to the registry. As it is donation ware, you can’t get busted for installing and not paying.
There. Number one gripe about Windows 8, solved.
Next. Windows 8 is in fact NT Version 6.2. Windows 7 is NT Verson 6.1, Windows Vista is NT Version 6.0, XP is NT Version 5.1 while Windows 2000 is NT Version 5.0. In other words, it still follows the architecture that David laid out in 1985, after Bill Gates hired him away from DEC. Certainly it has grown, morphed and gotten a lot more secure since it now has to deal with the relatively lawless nature of the Inner webs.
And HAL(Hardware Abstraction Layer) did not ride off into the sunset after marrying LASS (Local Access Sub System)… Forget the marketing, it’s still NT.
And some things have changed. Perhaps not for the better. Microsoft knew darn well many folks don’t back up their data and lose it in a hardware failure. So in Windows 8 they now can restore data that you have stuck up in the Microsoft Cloud along with any programs you have purchased from the Microsoft Store. Further, they reserve a portion of your hard drive and make snapshots of your local data as often as every 10 minutes. Not unlike Apple’s Time Machine.
I you go rooting around, you will find that the backup strategy that has been around up through Windows 7 is still there, hiding. Just type: Windows 7 File Recovery – in the search bar and you’ll get it.
The rub is that you can use the legacy system or you can use the new snapshot feature. You cannot however use both at the same time. I have been digging around and found a fantastic and free solution. In a sense it is Crippleware because it comes from a pay for program designed for businesses and enterprise.
I have been testing it and it is fantastic. I will march you you through it in an upcoming article.
Meanwhile let’s get back to what is really different in NT Version 6.2 (Windows 8).
While it is still NT, Microsoft thoroughly went through every subsystem inside and really cleaned up the code. Some modules did get a pretty serious rework that enhanced the security to where it is more or less on a par with Apple’s OS X or a modern Linux. Certainly the latter two run in less Dynamic RAM. And they have superior (for the moment) file journaling. Microsoft will be catching up there with the ReNTFS filesystem that is in Windows 8 Server.
The bottom line is, and less you want to break out the minutia microscope, it is a three horse race where all the contenders are ‘good enough’. You have to pick your particular horse for your particular needs.
If the software you are using runs on Windows 7, it will run on Windows 8, full-stop. You may need the Compatibility Wizard to make a older XP program run. And I have not found one program that I cannot force-feed into Windows 8.
While on the topic of XP. As I have said in technical forms elsewhere. If you are still on XP, get off it ASAP. And I am not saying that because is about to literally become a teenager. Without getting into details, it is simply not secure against the bad guys. Certainly I loved XP, and it is not ready for today’s bigger and meaner world.
You have until the end of January to buy Windows 8 Professional for 40 bucks. Windows 8 will run on as little as one gig of RAM (32-bit version). And I have tested it on Dell laptops running a Pentium 800 M CPU. That is performance measured in megahertz not gigahertz. If you cannot afford 40 bucks, it is time to go to say: Ubuntu Linux.
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Category: Software
About the Author (Author Profile)
Tcat began his digital journey in the mid 1960's with his father on a GE-225 mainframe with a 'whopping' 8 KB of RAM using the '80 card' and a 4-bit paper tape programs written with a Flexowriter. After the SE Asia 'conflict' the US Army no longer required his service as a in the 9th Signal Corps as a photographer and assigned him to 9th Finance, 9th Inf. because he could spell the word 'computer' and actually knew what it meant. Being transferred to Ft. Lewis, WA and building an Altair computer brought him to the U of WA and a few folks from Lakeside Hight School which formed a company called Micro Soft (then 2 words). Fast forward 20 years and the industry came across the idea of certification since a collage degree could not measure the speed at which things changed. Playing the game, Tim CATura-Houser earned 50+ certification titles in a few short years. Of all of them, he sees Certified Technical Trainer (1997) as his best moment of life. As a full-time author and teacher he became frustrated with being confused with Tim O'Reilly and in the year 2000 had his name legally changed to Tcat Houser. Today he is still a 'digital globe trotting warrior' writing and teaching on all things digital (and sometimes analog) electronic. When not working 'electronics', he enjoys attempting to replicate the local cuisines he has sampled around the world.Subscribe
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