So today my uncle came over, and he is far from a power user. His ancient 7 year old XP laptop was giving him too much grief and he wanted a new laptop. I gave him a couple of suggestions after looking at the Microcenter website, and he bought one. It was a $350 (his max budget, really) Dell with a Pentium dual core, 4gb of ram, and Windows 8. I told him up front my experiences with Win 8 have not been great but I would try to help him get settled into his new laptop, transfer his data etc etc etc.
First off, this was a brand new laptop and it had regular Win 8 on it. Not 8.1. So we went through the new system process which I like to call the Time of 1000 reboots. This is not unusual and is to be expected for anyone who buys a new computer off the shelf.
So we go through the Dell wizard and finally... Win 8 comes up. I have had a little experience with 8 in VM test systems but never as a full on OS. I knew about the charms bar and how to get to desktop, I figured I could wing it. First step was to let Windows Update have it's way with the system for a while and do the 1000 reboots. Except.... where was Windows Update? I half assumed it would prompt me automatically to update... it didn't. I figured give it a few minutes while I do some other things (back up his old computer to a USB drive, etc). 30 minutes later... Win 8 has made ZERO prompts or anything to update. After 10 minutes of Googling, I FINALLY figured out how to get to Control Panel and manually run Windows Update. 1000 reboots begin, hours go by.
A ton of Win 8 updates, reboot. Windows 8.1 update, reboot. Windows 8.1 SP1 (or whatever you want to call it), reboot. Detected a whole load of more updates, reboot. Keep in mind I am running Windows Update MANUALLY each time, there are zero prompts to update anything, like would happen in 7.
FINALLY I think the updates are done. Now it's time to uninstall Dell bloatware. Where is add/remove programs? It's not in the freaking control panel. Launched charms and searched for appwiz.cpl, which it found. Uninstalled a ton of useless crap (McAfee trial, a ton of Dell crap, amazon apps, ebay apps, etc etc etc). Many reboots ensue. Finally I'm somewhat OK (I had to google half the things to see what they were, mostly Dell stuff). OK, time for legit Antivirus. Download Chrome, then NOD32. NOD32 installs and updates (takes a while). Reboot, reboot. Now, NOD32 is saying "Windows is not up to date", ran Windows Update manually AGAIN. ANOTHER truckload of updates. Time passes, reboots occur. It's been like 3 hours now and my uncle is visably upset and starts mumbling about "screw it, maybe I can return it and still use my old laptop".
3 hours later and now we have an updated Win 8 with Chrome and Antivirus. Time for Office 2013/365. I had already bought a legit key, so I launched the Office tile hoping it would take the key so I wouldn't have to install from scratch from my USB drive. Seemed to work, it took the key and then..... and then.... is it doing anything? No progress bar or something that would indicate it was loading. 30 minutes later it appeared to have installed. OK. Looking for Word and Excel (all he cared about, doesn't use Outlook THANK YOU BABY JESUS).... where is Office? No icons on desktop. Go back to Metro, no Office tiles (even the one I clicked on earlier to start the install was gone). No tiles for Word, Excel NOTHING. Start panic googling.... no good results. Finally ran search manually (like I did for appwiz) and it found and launched Word and Excel (respectively) which I pinned to his taskbar as independent icons.
By this point, I am BEGGING him to consider using Start8 or Classic Shell. Hey look it's free for this one, $5 for that one. I offered to GIVE him $5 for Start8. Nope, he says he just has to get used to it. Good luck, buddy.
We're at the 4 hour mark now, time to make system restore discs or some kind of rescue/repair disc. Finally find and launch the Dell recovery program... remember when those recovery programs used to pop up FIRST, making the first step to make your backups? Yeah, good luck with that. Dell recovery program scans the system for who knows what for 10 minutes, then I see the option (it was greyed out earlier) to create the restore media. Grab my DVD spindle... and OH LOOK THIS FKING LAPTOP DOESN'T HAVE AN OPTICAL DRIVE, BECAUSE WHO USES DVD MEDIA IN 2014, RIGHT? Dig through my closet for 15 minutes to find a DVDRW drive and a sata to usb adapter. Right after I found them I see an option to use a USB drive. Cool. Except it wants to format it first, not cool. Have to copy 10gb of data off a 16gb thumb drive to the desktop then let it format it and create a bootable USB recovery drive. I put the DVDRW drive away... 30 freaking minutes later to copy 1 DVD's worth of data it's done. Then I have to copy the backup data BACK to the USB thumb drive, so he has a valid backup. Time passes....
6 hours on this BRAND NEW laptop, I was ready to throw it out the window. He had to leave so I told him to play with it but I told him where to find Start8 and download it (if he can figure out how to get to Chrome anyway).
What a nightmare. And I can't blame Dell too much (except for saving $20 and not putting a DVD drive in... it even had a slot for it but it was empty!)
I found Windows 8 to be frustrating unusable just doing these things... and this is for a guy who only cared about 3 things... Chrome, Word, Excel. What if he had other apps to install? More data to copy? God forbid anything else. As he was clearly frustrated packing the stuff up I showed him how to connect to Wifi... he said he no longer cared he would use the Cat5 cord.
What in the name of the angry gods was MS thinking with this bullsh!t? Who was their target market for this crap? I mean I would take Vista 100x over this crap.
I expect him to call me crying tomorrow, and I will tell him to deal with it or return it. Or let me wipe it and put Win 7 on it. Not cool, MS, not cool.
Rant ends. And by the way, I am an IT professional for 15+ years, been building my own systems since 1992, and I have installed just about every OS known to man, going back to the DOS days. This whole experience just baffled me and why would a new user tolerate it?
First off, this was a brand new laptop and it had regular Win 8 on it. Not 8.1. So we went through the new system process which I like to call the Time of 1000 reboots. This is not unusual and is to be expected for anyone who buys a new computer off the shelf.
So we go through the Dell wizard and finally... Win 8 comes up. I have had a little experience with 8 in VM test systems but never as a full on OS. I knew about the charms bar and how to get to desktop, I figured I could wing it. First step was to let Windows Update have it's way with the system for a while and do the 1000 reboots. Except.... where was Windows Update? I half assumed it would prompt me automatically to update... it didn't. I figured give it a few minutes while I do some other things (back up his old computer to a USB drive, etc). 30 minutes later... Win 8 has made ZERO prompts or anything to update. After 10 minutes of Googling, I FINALLY figured out how to get to Control Panel and manually run Windows Update. 1000 reboots begin, hours go by.
A ton of Win 8 updates, reboot. Windows 8.1 update, reboot. Windows 8.1 SP1 (or whatever you want to call it), reboot. Detected a whole load of more updates, reboot. Keep in mind I am running Windows Update MANUALLY each time, there are zero prompts to update anything, like would happen in 7.
FINALLY I think the updates are done. Now it's time to uninstall Dell bloatware. Where is add/remove programs? It's not in the freaking control panel. Launched charms and searched for appwiz.cpl, which it found. Uninstalled a ton of useless crap (McAfee trial, a ton of Dell crap, amazon apps, ebay apps, etc etc etc). Many reboots ensue. Finally I'm somewhat OK (I had to google half the things to see what they were, mostly Dell stuff). OK, time for legit Antivirus. Download Chrome, then NOD32. NOD32 installs and updates (takes a while). Reboot, reboot. Now, NOD32 is saying "Windows is not up to date", ran Windows Update manually AGAIN. ANOTHER truckload of updates. Time passes, reboots occur. It's been like 3 hours now and my uncle is visably upset and starts mumbling about "screw it, maybe I can return it and still use my old laptop".
3 hours later and now we have an updated Win 8 with Chrome and Antivirus. Time for Office 2013/365. I had already bought a legit key, so I launched the Office tile hoping it would take the key so I wouldn't have to install from scratch from my USB drive. Seemed to work, it took the key and then..... and then.... is it doing anything? No progress bar or something that would indicate it was loading. 30 minutes later it appeared to have installed. OK. Looking for Word and Excel (all he cared about, doesn't use Outlook THANK YOU BABY JESUS).... where is Office? No icons on desktop. Go back to Metro, no Office tiles (even the one I clicked on earlier to start the install was gone). No tiles for Word, Excel NOTHING. Start panic googling.... no good results. Finally ran search manually (like I did for appwiz) and it found and launched Word and Excel (respectively) which I pinned to his taskbar as independent icons.
By this point, I am BEGGING him to consider using Start8 or Classic Shell. Hey look it's free for this one, $5 for that one. I offered to GIVE him $5 for Start8. Nope, he says he just has to get used to it. Good luck, buddy.
We're at the 4 hour mark now, time to make system restore discs or some kind of rescue/repair disc. Finally find and launch the Dell recovery program... remember when those recovery programs used to pop up FIRST, making the first step to make your backups? Yeah, good luck with that. Dell recovery program scans the system for who knows what for 10 minutes, then I see the option (it was greyed out earlier) to create the restore media. Grab my DVD spindle... and OH LOOK THIS FKING LAPTOP DOESN'T HAVE AN OPTICAL DRIVE, BECAUSE WHO USES DVD MEDIA IN 2014, RIGHT? Dig through my closet for 15 minutes to find a DVDRW drive and a sata to usb adapter. Right after I found them I see an option to use a USB drive. Cool. Except it wants to format it first, not cool. Have to copy 10gb of data off a 16gb thumb drive to the desktop then let it format it and create a bootable USB recovery drive. I put the DVDRW drive away... 30 freaking minutes later to copy 1 DVD's worth of data it's done. Then I have to copy the backup data BACK to the USB thumb drive, so he has a valid backup. Time passes....
6 hours on this BRAND NEW laptop, I was ready to throw it out the window. He had to leave so I told him to play with it but I told him where to find Start8 and download it (if he can figure out how to get to Chrome anyway).
What a nightmare. And I can't blame Dell too much (except for saving $20 and not putting a DVD drive in... it even had a slot for it but it was empty!)
I found Windows 8 to be frustrating unusable just doing these things... and this is for a guy who only cared about 3 things... Chrome, Word, Excel. What if he had other apps to install? More data to copy? God forbid anything else. As he was clearly frustrated packing the stuff up I showed him how to connect to Wifi... he said he no longer cared he would use the Cat5 cord.
What in the name of the angry gods was MS thinking with this bullsh!t? Who was their target market for this crap? I mean I would take Vista 100x over this crap.
I expect him to call me crying tomorrow, and I will tell him to deal with it or return it. Or let me wipe it and put Win 7 on it. Not cool, MS, not cool.
Rant ends. And by the way, I am an IT professional for 15+ years, been building my own systems since 1992, and I have installed just about every OS known to man, going back to the DOS days. This whole experience just baffled me and why would a new user tolerate it?
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