Was Windows 8 THAT bad?

[James]

Microsoft has officially ended support for Windows 8 and nobody cares. Probably because no one used it, amirite? Was there anything worth remembering in this wildly unpopular version of Windows?

 

Features new to Win 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_8

 

 

 

[Kid.Lazer]

Quote

Was Windows 8 THAT bad?

Yes

4 minutes ago, James said:

Was there anything worth remembering in this wildly unpopular version of Windows?

No

[Radium_Angel]

8.1 was just fine with a proper start menu attached. See "Windows 9"

https://www.eastcoast.hosting/Windows9/

 

[Gokul_P]

23 minutes ago, James said:

Was Windows 8 THAT bad?

On a desktop it was, but on a touch screen it is not and 8.1 fixed most of the issues  

 

23 minutes ago, James said:

Microsoft has officially ended support for Windows 8 and nobody cares. Probably because no one used it, amirite? Was there anything worth remembering in this wildly unpopular version of Windows?

Yeah i really liked the full screen start menu(in windows 10) with a touch screen device they removed it in windows 11 :(, widgets , Biometric login. 

[Vishera]

3 minutes ago, Gokul_P said:

On a desktop it was, but on a touch screen it is not and 8.1 fixed most of the issues  

 

Yeah i really liked the full screen start menu with a touch screen device they removed it in windows 11 :(. And widgets 

For both touch screen and desktop experiences seems like a separate menu for each is better:

For touch:

 

For desktop:

[Gokul_P]

7 minutes ago, Vishera said:

For both touch screen and desktop experiences seems like a separate menu for each is better:

For touch:

 

For desktop:

It absolutly is and windows 10 had a toggle. And most of the times for touch pad also the full screen like one  works better in my experiance if it has proper jester navigation . 

[An0maly_76]

Win8 was nowhere near as bad as Vista.

[DrMacintosh]

I had very limited with Windows 8 and 8.1 when it was around, I was using a 2011 iMac during that time (running macOS and Windows 7), and my school had xp and win 7 machines. My main experience with it was through some of my friends. I remember being absolutely furious with the "charms bar" when attempting to do just about anything. It is kinda nostalgic to see that 8.1 desktop though and get flashbacks from all the Minecraft modding tutorials I would watch.

[Vishera]

15 minutes ago, An0maly_76 said:

Win8 was nowhere near as bad as Vista.

I daily drove Vista back in the day and had no issues, in fact i loved it.

Vista flopped due to compatibility issues with most hardware that was available at the time:

Single core CPUs

Less than 2GB of RAM

Using Windows XP drivers on Vista due to lack of drivers for Vista

 

All of those were very common among Vista users.

Imagine Windows 11 needing 16 cores + 32GB of RAM + lacking drivers for hardware that is as recent as 1 year old - That's the equivaliant to the Windows Vista situation.

[Nystemy]

To be fair, the start menu in windows 8 is actually rather nice. Honestly one of the better features.

One can trivially organize all the programs one usually uses in a very intuitive fashion. Ie, all common apps/programs one uses are there, neatly organized.

 

I have been using windows 8.1 as my daily driver since it came out. And it isn't all that bad. Sad to see it go so quickly after windows 7, but at the same time. It isn't an unreasonable amount of time either.

 

Using windows 10 at work feels like cave man era to be fair. And its frankly scatterbrained behavior of not having migrated everything from the old control panel to the settings menu yet is honestly annoying. Though, likewise is it annoying when it does move and add in a few more hurdles for one to jump to do more complex tasks.

 

At home I have started migrating to Ubuntu instead of sticking with windows. _{(Since I have realized that I almost exclusively use GNU software already...)}

[Radium_Angel]

36 minutes ago, An0maly_76 said:

Win8 was nowhere near as bad as Vista.

Vista was bad on initial launch. Once patched (and vendors got on board with drivers, etc) it was fine.

[An0maly_76]

27 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Vista was bad on initial launch. Once patched (and vendors got on board with drivers, etc) it was fine.

Anything bad on initial launch is not market ready. Microsoft needs to focus on getting it right the first time.

51 minutes ago, Vishera said:

Vista flopped due to compatibility issues with most hardware that was available at the time:

Single core CPUs

Less than 2GB of RAM

Using Windows XP drivers on Vista due to lack of drivers for Vista

I bought a Sony Vaio laptop brand-new with Vista pre-installed. It was a disaster.

[Senzelian]

Best Windows ever.

Windows 7 sucked.

 

Fite me.

[Radium_Angel]

37 minutes ago, An0maly_76 said:

Anything bad on initial launch is not market ready. Microsoft needs to focus on getting it right the first time.

They blew WIn95

WIn98

NT 4.0

WinME

Vista

XP

WIn2k

Win7

Win8

WIn10

.....need I go on?

[BobVonBob]

1 hour ago, Nystemy said:

And its frankly scatterbrained behavior of not having migrated everything from the old control panel to the settings menu yet is honestly annoying.

I find there's something strangely reassuring about the control panel compared to the new settings menu. The less polished design and operation makes it feel like it's definitely doing something. Like a circuit breaker compared to a light switch (ignore that they don't actually do quite the same thing).

[GodAtum]

2023 ... still never used a touchscreen

 

And Windows Server 2012 had metro tiles, like WTF???

[emosun]

Nothing windows 8 added or changed was anything I cared about.

I mean i still hate windows 10 tbh. and im gettin real sick of people thinking security updates justify a crappier os.

[Shimejii]

2 hours ago, Senzelian said:

Best Windows ever.

Windows 7 sucked.

 

Fite me.

You are entitled to your wrong opinion. Not even close 7 was by far the best, cleanest windows without all the bloat, and telemetry theyve since added. I would much prefer a windows 7 style OS with streamlined features, no telemetry, and it just works. 

 

Windows 8 was so bad i had to wipe 40 college desktops that got the forced updates and the school was debating whether or not suing microsoft for the forced update. It caused so many issues, corrupted hard drives and such. I really wish they got sued and had to pay, because forced updates like this are dumb. 

[Senzelian]

6 minutes ago, Shimejii said:

You are entitled to your wrong opinion. Not even close 7 was by far the best, cleanest windows without all the bloat, and telemetry theyve since added. I would much prefer a windows 7 style OS with streamlined features, no telemetry, and it just works. 

 

Windows 8 was so bad i had to wipe 40 college desktops that got the forced updates and the school was debating whether or not suing microsoft for the forced update. It caused so many issues, corrupted hard drives and such. I really wish they got sued and had to pay, because forced updates like this are dumb. 

32-bit software on 64-bit Win7

Nuff said.

[Shimejii]

14 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

32-bit software on 64-bit Win7

Nuff said.

Sounds like its a fixable thing, but again microsoft is a awful company when it comes to fixing stuff like that. I really wished there was an alternative that didnt have so much stuff, but microsoft would 100% sue them for "infringements" to make it as hard as possible. 

 

And no Linux is still not a viable alternative yet. 

[Needfuldoer]

4 hours ago, James said:

Was Windows 8 THAT bad?

The underlying tech was fine. 

 

The bass-ackwards interface that made desktops pretend to be tablets was annoying as hell.

 

24 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

32-bit software on 64-bit Win7

Nuff said.

I wonder how old that software was, and whether it relied on deprecated APIs or even 16-bit code. Those were the only times I remember having issues running legacy software on Windows 7. (The less said about the critical 32-bit application that looked like it was from 1994 and drew its interface with millions upon millions of GDI calls, and its 32-bit server that used a directory tree of text files as its "database" and searched them using Windows desktop search, the better...)

[CaptainDarkstar42]

4 hours ago, An0maly_76 said:

Win8 was nowhere near as bad as Vista.

I loved Vista.  I had a new computer when Vista came out and it was in every way better than XP that ran on my school's computers. Yes I will die on this hill.

[CaptainDarkstar42]

4 hours ago, Vishera said:

For both touch screen and desktop experiences seems like a separate menu for each is better:

For touch:

 

For desktop:

I don't know, my girlfriend has a win 10 tablet and I love the regular layout a hell of a lot better than the Windows 8 layout. I would much rather have that layout on just about every device I own.

[dogwitch]

have a win 8 touch lap top. moment(it way over spec)

moment i could install win 10 on it.

i did.

desk top win 8 was bad.

yeah  they did 8.1 but that was a band aid oon the problem.

now win vista laptop. yeah that was crap nothing more.

[Rusheliny]

I mean, my friend had a windows 8 phone back in the day and I remember that phone as the coolest thing I had ever seen at that time, I guess it was 'Iconic' at least, but yeah then a relative let me use her laptop for a couple of weeks which was also windows 8 and it just didnt work for a pc at all, it was the opposite like it deserved to be forgot about because I didnt even remember  the PC W8  existed until recent weeks that Linus has mentioned it a little here and there