11 Days to Windows 8: Are you ready?
Yeah, I know. A question mark in the title. But it’s a real question. Are you looking forward to Windows 8? Do you have plans to replace and/or update your devices? What about work machines? Any chatter going on about Windows 8 around the water cooler yet?
I have been a Windows XP guy for so long I almost can’t remember what 95 and ME looked like (or maybe I am just trying to block it). Got a new desktop on order with Win8 pre-installed, my Fujitsu Notebook will get the update on the 26th or 27th, depending on how hard the Microsoft servers get hit. Will do the same with my Office workstation. And I have just about convinced our CEO to upgrade all 18 of our XP machines (identical HP/Compaq Pentium 4-3Ghz) over the next month. Oh, and I will be in line for a Surface RT at my local Microsoft Store on the 26th. So I will be a Windows 8ter by October 29th. Truth be told, I still have an old MPC Laptop (also a 2004 model) running XP, but I only turn that on about once a month to retrieve a piece of information, so that doesn’t really count, does it?
When I killed my desktop last week I didn’t have a complete backup. That was just dumb, lazy me. I had a batch file linked to the desktop and with a single click everything would have been copied to my LaCie External Drive. Oh well. Most everything was already copied to other machines, thumb drives, Sky Drive and my WP phones. I will have about six weeks of Quicken data to restore (last backup was 8/29/12) but otherwise, not so bad.
What about you. Are you planning to update or replace? If updating, what are you updating from; XP, Vista, 7? Same question if you are replacing. And if you are updating/upgrading/adding on, why? If not, why not? Or, is you plan to just sit back and watch to see how this whole Windows 8 thing goes down before making any decisions. If you are updating/replacing, do you have a backup/restore strategy? Depending on what you use a machine for, rebuilding could be a breeze, or a nightmare. Now would be a good time to start thinking about it. Better than watching that clock go tick, tick, tick for 11 more days.
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I’ve updated from Win 7 Ultimate to Win 8 pro. The real factor for me was I waited until I got an SSD in my lappy. I didn’t want to have to repave just for a new OS I wanted to give my comp a real double punch. I’m not regretting it at all. I am getting use to the “new” start screen. It’s not bothering me like some people around here. Just something new to get use to. All I need is some more RAM so I can try out the Hyper-V. 🙂
I have 3 or 4 laptops i’m upgrading to Windows 8. I’ll be doing my best to get a Surface maybe not at launch but in the following couple weeks. I’ll just be watching how good the switch will be for Adobe products as I use the Adobe Creative Suite for work and that would be a serious issue if Adobe hasn’t properly produced drivers for Windows 8.
Murani I haven’t had any major issues yet with any of my “old” windows apps running on Windows 8.
Had a couple little glitches with Access apps created using Access 2003, but they were easily rectified. Same thing happens each time I move an application to a new version of Access.
My version of Adobe Acrobat 5.0 did fail to load properly though. Yeah, it’s old, but I have a 30 user license for it (gifted to me) so I was still using it. Windows 8 could not create the PDF Writer Print Driver. The application still opens PDF files for editing documents, setting security, etc., but I can’t print to PDF or use Acrobat Distiller (that driver is also glitched).
Good Ask the Readers question: I started poking around and quickly got overwhelmed. Can anyone recommend a good Adobe Acrobat alternative, for creating PDFs and/or editing documents and printing. I only used Distiller a few times so not a big loss. Think I saw one for $39/$69 respectively, based on capability. Is that the best I can expect? Don’t use it that often, but I would like to have it on two machines and don’t want to spend $140 for the privilege.