Windows 8, what do you think?

Got a new HP laptop last week with Windows 8. It is taking a little getting used to as I had XP before this. I have to try to get my old files transferred and figure out how to get Outlook up since Windows 8 won't accept a PoP 3 server.
Instead of buying another Office license, I opted for the OpenOffice. I do enough Windows Office at work that I don't plan on using it at home to much.

Still with Windows 7 here. After suffering "the blue screen of death" at home and work with Windows ME (Millennium Edition) and countless hours of lost time and work, I'm leery of any new Microsoft OS.

Whoever unleashed Windows ME on an unsuspecting public should have been hung by their cajones.

I bought a new screaming win8 desktop last week but haven't had time to try it out yet. I understand there are ways to make it look like win7. There's a bunch of how to's online. I'll probably make the change.

http://blog.laptopmag.com/make-windows-8-like-windows-7

So far it is somewhat similar to a smart phone. It will take some getting used to but if this is the new wave of the future, I would rather learn the new system.

I was debating which open source office suite to download. I ruled out google related to their need to data mine for profits. I ended up with LibreOffice. So far so good.

I loaded the Apace opensource 4.1. Works great for what I need.

A few downsides to Win8.

I've noticed website advertising is more disruptive with Win8. The top portion of websites have ads that more easily and frequently shift the entire page up/down. I also have more ads covering articles for a few seconds. It's very annoying. Hopefully there's an app to kill those.

It might be IE10 that's the problem. I'm trying a few different browsers and IE10 seems a bit clunkier and slower to respond. Speedtest.net shows download speeds periodically are 1/10 what they should be. I run several browsers in parallel and see/feel the difference.

My wife brought home a couple laptop/tablet convertibles from the office with Win8. So far I hate it.

I hear a Windows 8.1 release is coming in October.

I had a guy make a custom desktop computer with windows 8.1. Windows 8.1 is a bit more refined but has one rough edge when browsing the internet. There were 19 windows 8/IE updates announced yesterday. I'm on auto update but nothing has downloaded so far. I'm hoping they make mine run even better.

http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-patches-21-flaws-including-ie-zero-day-7000023105/

The updated download for 8.1 took forever. I really don't see much improvement.

I heard they had problems with slow downloads. 8.1 improvements are subtle.