Niclo's Take on Win8 64 bit PRO

[Niclo Iste]

Well this weekend might be full of me installing games. I'm pondering re-installing all of my old MMOs since it appears they are all free to play now. So I have to dig up my old Vanguard account, reinstall the Star Wars Galaxies emulator, I already have Star Wars The Old Republic installed, Fallen Earth is a prospect, and I have some old Pirate MMO I got an e-mail about being free too. Not sure which one I want to jump into more, I like the Star Wars stuff but Vanguard may be where I go with it for the weekend.

[slgrieb]

That sounds like fun! Elder Child got on a kick recently where she wanted to play some games like Dragon Age: Origins, The Witcher, etc. and I spent a couple of hours per game resetting passwords, downloading installation files, and installing games, which she played for a bit, before she got tired of them just like the first time around.

She's got a birthday coming up, so I'm upgrading her video, and then I plan to give her all those old games like Undying, Starcraft, Oblivion, Doom 3, various iterations of Unreal, etc. and tell her "Have fun! Don't ask me for any games until you've played these."

[Niclo Iste]

That sounds like fun! Elder Child got on a kick recently where she wanted to play some games like Dragon Age: Origins, The Witcher, etc. and I spent a couple of hours per game resetting passwords, downloading installation files, and installing games, which she played for a bit, before she got tired of them just like the first time around.

She's got a birthday coming up, so I'm upgrading her video, and then I plan to give her all those old games like Undying, Starcraft, Oblivion, Doom 3, various iterations of Unreal, etc. and tell her "Have fun! Don't ask me for any games until you've played these."

She should embrace the old games, they tend to have better story lines, more replayability, and in depth game play.

BTW I got Vanguard installed last night then found out I have to rebuild the GF's gaming PC since the chipset on it is fried. For anyone who had a Vanguard account, the consolidated the servers and I guess just deleted random characters from accounts. My main character is MIA but the name is still in use. Go figure, Sony Online Entertainment at their finest...

[slgrieb]

She should embrace the old games, they tend to have better story lines, more replayability, and in depth game play.

Elder Child seems to have a problem with life beyond WOW, even though she complains about how loony and obsessed many of her fellow players are. I did a service call a couple of weeks ago, and got to listen to a dad brag about how his son had maxed out his WOW character, after playing for about 3 years, and he showed me the kid's computer complete with Razer keyboard and billion button Razer mouse.

I was proud that I didn't laugh, because Elder Child has maxed out dozens of characters, and deleted them when she got bored with playing them. She played Rift when it was new, and while you and GF were very good, Elder Child was just plain frightening. But after she played about 2 weeks, she went back to WOW.

She played through Dragon Age: Origins in a weekend, but never ran the game with an alternate character class. And she played about 2 hours after I reinstalled the game.

I think she'd really enjoy Bioshock and The Witcher, if she'd give it a chance, but it ain't happening so far.

[Niclo Iste]

Morrowind for the old XBox and PC without cheating was clocked at 700 hours for story line playthrough when it was released. Fallout 3 and Vegas are very in depth as well, Skyrim also fits the bill for it. The main stories are good, the side missions are interesting, and the story telling in a whole is great in all of them. The only other rpg that I got sucked into as much was Final Fantasy VII.

[slgrieb]

Neither Elder Child or I liked Morrowind much. We both found the combat system clunky, and there was way too much running around to no purpose. She played Neverwinter Nights 2 a bunch, but never finished. She liked Oblivion, but didn't finish it either. She absolutely hated Diablo II, though she likes Diablo III. Go figure.

In my case both The Witcher and The Witcher 2 have been the only games to seriously hook me since Undying.

Wait! This thread is about Windows 8! So, before someone calls me out, Windows 8's backup utility is easy to use, but not as comprehensive as backup in Windows 7.

[Niclo Iste]

Here's a perk!

Installed Win8 32bit for the GF. She has an off the wall no name wireless card I inherited years ago. I found the drivers from the manufacturer, only problem it's XP only. So out of curiosity I told it to use the XP drivers. It took them fine no problem, I also found the motherboards audio drivers, they too were xp only, loaded fine as well, then I needed the chipset, it only went as high as vista, and then once again it took them like a champ. The system is running fine with no issues. Win8 is very much user friendly when it comes to driver compatibility with older driver sets as long as you have the right 32bit or 64bit corresponding OS to the drivers.

[slgrieb]

Interesting, isn't it, that the interface got all the attention, while all the "under the hood" changes from 7 were mostly ignored by the trade press? As usual, Ed Bott got it, but not many other bloggers did.

Another thing I find interesting is how little is said about what MS cut out of 8. The change to the backup utility actually is one of my huge gripes about 8. To be fair, if you are only concerned with document backup, Win8 is about at parity with True Image, but it doesn't match Win7 when it comes to full system backup and recovery. After so many years of lousy backup utilities, MS pretty much got it right in Win7, then changed it for the worse.

Also with Win7, we finally got native support for playing DVDs, only to see that dumped in Win8. Sure, that saved MS quite a bit of money, but none of the savings got passed to the consumer. Actually, as a system builder and MS Channel Partner going on 15 years now, Windows OEM pricing has pissed me off for many years, but I guess that's a separate topic.

Bottom line is that with Windows 8, I think MS has their best OS ever.

[Niclo Iste]

So far I'm still enjoying Win8, the microsoft integration with everything is a bit annoying though. I can't use the "Skype app" because I don't have a MSN account associated with it. So I dig up the one I used in 2000. Oh that's great, now skype floods me with every crap pr0n bot that is messaging my old msn account. I also found it a nice treat that if you go to download skype for Win8 you don't get an option to download and install, just "buy the app" for free. If Win8 is going to be an app happy system I will start compiling a how to on real installations of real programs. Oh and a side note, if you don't actively turn off skype it's configured to always run on Win8, hidden but run, so while you're working/gaming you can enjoy the 24/7 msn pr0n adverts.

[slgrieb]

Personally, I'm not a Skype user, but both my kids treat it like it was air. If they're online, Skype is running and they are connected to somebody. That pretty much applies to their phones as well.

A funny aside here, Younger Child and I were watching an Apple commercial where the wonders of Facetime were extolled, and Younger Child responded with a loud Snort of Derision, and said "Nobody uses Facetime!" So I said, "Well, what do your friends do with their iPhones?"

"Mostly play games." she replied. "Everybody uses Skype." Case in point, I've got a client who wanted to record video and audio of all the transactions in his store, so we set up a webcam to cover the counter, and a PC in the store makes a Skype call to a computer in another building where the call is monitored and recorded.

[slgrieb]

An interesting thing about Win8 is that the native apps normally don't close, but stay resident once launched. MS claims that memory usage for these apps is virtually zero until they are accessed, and if you look at Task Manager, that actually does seem to be the case. Only native 8 app I've been running is Weather, so I can't comment across the entire range of apps.