MArcomage

I just wanted to create a thread in wich we can talk about technology stuff.
Let's begin with windows 8.
I'm quite interested in it, have you already tested it? I'd like to hear your opinions, I'm still not sure about leaving windows 7

Funny thing: I've migrated to Win7 only recently, when my six years old PC finally became The Programmable Calculator and I bought a new one. So, I guess, I won't go for upgrade for now. I must explore my OS. :)

take your time, W7 is a really good OS in my opinion

Fithz wrote:
take your time, W7 is a really good OS in my opinion

Agreed. Plus I don't care at all about the touch-screen nature of Win8 because I don't like tablets...

That being said, I also game on a laptop, which is a big no-no. :)

Now I can say that I like Win7, it seems really stable, interesting comfortable, like my old dear WinXP. But maybe I'll try Win8 on virtual PC.
Although my friends told me that they aren't the big fans of Win8, and Win7 is much better and simplier.

I've migrated to Win7 only recently and only because new games (but also other application such as Tortoise SVN) would be unplayable on Win XP. Even though I have 'classic shell' installed, Win7 feels very poorly designed. Basic functionality like sharing folder on a network, creating desktop/menu shortcuts or managing things with control panel feel like a chore. It took many days to configure it to resemble the XP as much as it was possible. The migration was painful and I won't move on to another OS unless I will be forced to, like I was forced recently.

To be completely fair, after heavy configuration, Win 7 works well, has no stability issues and supports the games I require, so I shouldn't complain much :)

Btw, now that you've mentioned desktop shortcuts... you can use Launchy, a very handy tool, and you can overall forget desktop or other shortcuts :)

As of Windows 7, yes it has some differences with WinXP (not very much, mostly visual things), and it might take some time to get to know it, but once you do, you understand why it's the best OS that Microsoft ever brought out.

Does anyone know the dimensions of Win8 upgrade file?
If it's less than 2GB I might download it.

About Win7 I have to say that there are some little thing that could be better, but, come on! it's small stuff.

I peeked a bit at the Win8 Consumer Preview, and ugh. I don't like their Metro/"ModernUI". It seems to be a rule that with each incremental Windows release, you need to configure more and more to get a workable system... So no, even on my tablet I'm not going to upgrade. (Part of the reason also being that my tablet is stylus-oriented, and ModernUI is touch-oriented.) And other than that, I really don't see any advantages over Win7.

What I find really odd is how Microsoft no longer sells Windows 7. It's all Windows 8 now. So if I want to upgrade an old rig with WinXP to something that is supported, I have a single option... In that case, I'd rather look at the alternatives (Linux, perhaps even ReactOS) first.

That said, on my main PC I have been running GNU/Linux as the main OS for quite a while now. Still have Windows 7 as a dual boot option from the times I used it as the main OS, but I customised it to be very bare-bones. Only using it for games and tools that don't (yet) run well on Linux.

I have installed Win8 on my netbook, the Metro interface looks interesting but it's quite touch-oriented. So, after a bit of personalisation, I?ve made Win8 looks like Win7. But faster and with some better feature. Now I like it very much.

I've downloaded a trial, going to install it onto different drive, and try dual boot.

Interesting thing about win8 - that you could rearm activation timer 1000 times compared to 5 times in win7. (although you can reset rearm count in win7).

As much as I understand from youtube - it's actually not that different from previous win versions.

Today I had to carry important 4.3 Gb ISO from home to work on my 8Gb usb stick. I've formatted the stick in exFat filesystem, cause fat32 does not support files >2Gb and NTFS works poorly on my win2000 machine at work. As it turned out - neither 2000 or Xp support exFat made under win7. Luckily I found some update for xp, at microsoft site, hardly making it in time.

TLDR - avoid exFat if you plan on using winXp.

last Ipad vs Nexus 10?

I've always hated apple products because of the hipster/fashion/brand/hype/price/product-placement-in-media/bad-software-compatibility/lack-of-freedom

but i have to admit their devices build quality feels much more premium, and if you believe numerous reviews, has better hardware.

any thoughts?

From what I've heard apple products are overpriced and if you don't mind configuration, there are better alternatives (combination of open source software and hand picked hardware).

I've never had a tablet nor a smartphone, so I can't help there. I'm targeting on Nexus 4 once it will (hopefully) be available in Greece, mainly for development/experimenting purposes.

I guess the strongest point of iPad was its screen (best resolution and pixel density), but from what I read Nexus 10 is better in that field now, too.

Writing under windows 8, and I must say - it looks very nice, and polished.

You can use it with your usual desktop + taskbar setup or with apps on the metro screen.
Internet Explorer 10 actually feels nice to use, either in metro mode, or in usual desktop one.

Only things I've made so far:
added 1 language, and changed hotkeys from ctrl+shift to grave accent
disabled UAC and smartscreen along with notifications
set automatic updates to "let me choose what to download and install"
set google as default search engine and homepage in IE10
downloaded 7-8 updates (crazy 600MB, although it feels much cleaner than W7, where you need to download a whole ton)

At this point it is taking me 17.0 GB of space, with only a antivirus installed and those updates hanging in temp folders waiting for a restart.

Talking about antivirus, wich one should I use?
I'm looking for a free one for my win8.

I use Eset Smart Security 6

It's in beta stage - you can download a release candidate and use it for 90 days, after which you can reinstall and do 90 again. I've used it from version 3, when it was the fastest antivirus around for me. I visit a lot of nasty sites, and download a lot of crap , and it has never let me down. It even detects things like intrusive toolbars bundled with different software. On the negative side - it's firewall is pretty anal, and hard to configure if you're new to it. Also it makes false positive on some occasions, but it's repairable in 2 clicks.

Can anyone suggest an alternative to windows lan file sharing? Without setting up workgroups/accounts/permissions/etc

I need to transfer a LOT of data between two PCs over lan.

Best result I've got so far was running TeamViewer in file transfer mode connecting over lan

other ideas?

Configure a FTP server and use filezilla