So I got a new laptop with W 8.1 on it. I was expecting it to be bad, and was ready for it with some solutions. But still, for a few minutes I was considering selling the laptop and getting another one, when I found out how complicated or outright impossible to downgrade, without spending more money on it. I quickly installed Classic Shell, and that helped a lot, specially after I disabled the Hot corner function. Still, I could only use Skype if I signed up with MS and I still don't know how to turn it off or how to access the set up (of Skype). Maybe I should mention this is a normal laptop not a touch screen. Right now everything is cozy, although while typing somehow that Hot corner kind of shit just came up, I guess I used some kind of short cut combination. Anyhow, I bought this machine just for browsing, (I almost bought a Chromebook) so I plan to use it limited, and not to install too many programs, but boy, I hope Balmer dies a long but painful death.... Oh yeah, and the look, everything is square. I like curvy things...
I will be interested to see what the next MS version after 8 is going to look like, I am hoping they get another decent one by the time I get a new machine which won't be for another couple years I'm sure. I'm still using Vista. I have 7 on my work machine and I refuse to go to 8.
One reason I haven't got a newer machine for so long is because all our older laptops still working, and there was no good reason to get newer ones. We have 2 laptops both 5 years old with XP and Vista and they are still fine, chugging along. The Vista one had a mobo change, but other than that, not even scratches. By the way I never disliked Vista... So in our household, I have the 1st world problem of having enough laptops with all the existing Windows OSs, thus I have to know them all... Well, a question: Looks like my upload speeds are 2-3 Mbps faster than the download speeds. I wonder if this is because of W 8.1, since all the other laptops are faster downloading than uploading...
not sure but it sounds like it, I'm sure you already heard too that MS is not going to support XP pretty soon and from what MS is saying you probably don't want an XP machine connected to the net after that.
I don't see why not. It isn't like they are issuing an update every other days. Also, as long as you don't download new programs on it, I don't think it matters. Third, I don't have secrets on it, I just browse the net. Anyway, since I am finding the download speed of the new laptop slow, I tested the 5 years old XP notebook. Well, I booted into Linux and it gave me 13 Mbps, compared to the core i3 brand new W 8.1's 7 Mbps... That is serious difference, since the W7 or Vista machines also do at least 12 Mbps.... So there is a bottleneck or something and I want to figure it out why the download is relatively so slow... Edit: After running the test on the MSI using XP, the upload speed is faster on that one too. The download is about 2-3 Mbps faster than W 8.1's, around 9 Mbps and upload is 10-11 Mbps.... Maybe it is the ISP, throttling download... But anyhow, a 5 years old cheap machine shouldn't be faster than a brand new relative high performance machine...
Syzygys, not sure of brand of laptop and whether or not wired/wifi but 8.1 has proven to have some driver issues with some hardware. Would probably be a good idea to visit manufacturers web-site to check updated drivers or FAQ's for your particular model. Also, how old is your wireless ruoter, and what standard does it use - b, g, n ? - there may be a discrepancy in wi-fi settings. Anyway, good luck working it all out and Happy Holidays!
OK, I got the problem solved!!! One reason I share my tech troubles here is because I usually find a solution and it stays on the net for eternity for others to learn from it. So here is the process: I googled the problem of W8 tweaking performance and being slow. One of the hits were this from Yahoo Answers: "Some drivers have compatibility issues with Windows 8. For one, the Quallcomm Atheros wireless adapter's most recent driver has a compatibility issue that kills the speed bigtime, and the solution to it is to roll the driver back to a previous version. There are plenty of other drivers with compatibility issues that you need to roll back to a previous version to make them work correctly." I checked and sure enough, this was my wireless adapter. I googled drivers and was in the process of getting an older one, but than I clicked on the laptop driver update and it showed 2 older drivers being there, so I picked one, installed it and bingo!!! The speed went up to 16 Mbps, so all well at this point. Just for the record, the existing driver was 10.0.263 from 8/15/13 and I rolled it back to the 10.0.209 from 9/19/12 -------------------------------- I am also entertaining the idea of making it a dual booting, and installing 7 as the other choice. All my laptops are dual booted with Linux but I don't think in this case Linux would make it faster. My experience has been that it only speeded up the XP OS, but Vista and 7 were already fast enough so there was no noticable improvement in download speed.
Syzygys, cool beans on the driver issue! As far as 8/7 dual boot - I would recommend using Acronis or similar to do full clone/backup of win8 to external storage - then wipe HDD/SSD - do full install of win7 ultimate. You seem not to be in need of "the Cloud" and with no touchscreen - win8, in all sincerity, offers no vast improvements for your seemingly intended needs/uses. At any time in the future you can easily restore win8 from your archived image. Syzygys, as an aside, do some "googling" on dual booting win 7/8, there are some "gremlins" that seem to enjoy frequenting that playground. Syzygys, again, good luck working it all out and Happy Holidays!
Since XP can't utilize any version beyond IE8, I guess MS actually believes remaining XP users have been clinging to their [that specific] outdated browser rather than having long since moved on to Firefox, Chrome, etc. FF will continue to support XP for at least a few releases beyond XP's April 8, 2014 death knell. I expected longer than that, since Win98 seemed supported by rival browsers for awhile well after the former's termination date by MS. It would be when the antivirus companies cease support for XP that things would get critical, but even then a Linux OS could be installed on the old computers as an alternative to buying Win8. Ubuntu can apparently get by on 1 GB RAM, which anything but the oldest home relics with XP should at least have.
OK, it took less than a week when I got a blue screen of death. I couldn't bring back Metro or the desktop, had to restart the laptop. While logging in, it is impossible to turn off the wifi, so I assume MS knows all the time when I log in and use the computer. Nice... Also, I had to unzip a file, and since there was no program for it (what I could find) I wanted to install an app. I tried 2 different ones and I got an error message that my internet is too slow, when it was about 16 Mbps. I was able to download an actual program and use it to unzip the file. So much about apps....
Did you try right clicking on the left bottom corner (Touchscreens a little different), in any event it will bring up a mouse menu dialogue with "Network Connections" in it. You can use that to disable the whole device if you have to, I'm not using a wifi connection however I'm pretty sure you can disable it from in there) You might want to check if you've set it as "Use Metered Connection"(make sure you haven't set that.), if you've done that then the OS will assume you are on a mobile device and bandwidth is a concern and it will cause it to throw out warnings when dealing with large downloads etc.
1. I have the Hot corner feature disabled. 2. I might check it if this issue keeps coming up. I personally like programs better than apps.Thanks for the ideas. I am still not sure if I should go into the trouble of dual booting the laptop with W 7, but if shit like this happens, I will. I don't want to spend money on it though, so I guess I won't be able to update it, if I use a "used" copy....
If anybody is interested, here is how the desktop looks like in Windows 8.1, after installing Classic Shell and using the preinstalled wallpapers: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Looks like the dual boot would take probably 3 hours to prepair and download and install everything, so right now I am too lazy to do so, but it is a solution for the future. I found a very good step by step guide at tomshardware website, including links to the needed drivers... http://www.pagestart.com/win8dbwin701181301.html
I sort of like it by now on a touch screen, but my touch pad is too sensitive. I remember seeing some screen with several option blocks, but can't find it again. Top center block had button all the way right where it said "touch pad on" and all the way left said "touch pad off" - I thought those were only two possible position, but now think, perhaps it was the "sensitivity control" I want. - I.e. button could be moved to a more central position as there was a channel between the two extremes. This control option may be a feature of ASUS the computer maker, not windows. Does any one know what I'm referring to? and how to open that screen again?
I hate it's tile-based icons and it's need to always be connected and have it's applications updated. I am perfectly fine working with outdated applications and being offline. I also dislike how the taskbar disappears when I open certain apps. I prefer Windows XP still. I wonder how Linux is like, though...
I never swore as much in my life when I was dealing with Linux. If you just want to browse the net, it is fine, but managing files or having programs and such I was too lazy to learn all the bullshit, and they keep updating it in every 6 months. At one version I couldn't even install a new browser. If you have an older computer and lots of freetime, you can give it a try, but it is still far away from a usable OS for average joe...
