Opinions wanted: is there any point to Windows 8?

[gslick]

Yes, it had a very specific redeeming quality.

Free upgrade to Windows 8.1 and then 10.

At a fraction of the cost.

Years ago I bought a legitimate retail copy of Windows 8 at a legitimate steep discount when that was the latest version of Windows released, to install it on a current generation at the time i7 CPU system I built from new parts. I eventually did the free upgrades to Windows 8.1 and then Windows 10 on that system. That was the last copy of Windows that I bought on its own.

After that, I have just bought used Dell systems that are a couple of years old which are being replaced because they are just out of warranty. They include the Windows 10 Professional license key in the BIOS, so you could look at it as either buying a computer and getting a Windows 10 Professional license for free, or buying a Windows 10 Professional license and getting the computer for almost free.


Back to USB 2 vs. USB 3, a USB mass storage device operating at USB 2 high-speed is limited to a theoretical maximum transfer rate of 53,248,000 bytes/second if it could fully saturate the bus. That is before the overhead of the USB mass storage device protocol.

Doing a very basic transfer test using winsat on a USB mass storage device that I have handy at the moment on a Windows 10 system I see a huge difference in sequential read speed between plugging the device into a USB 3 host port vs plugging the same device into a USB 2 host port on the same system, 230MB/s vs 37MB/s. Of course that is a very limited test scenario, and actual real world usage could vary a lot.

StarTech USB3S2SAT3CB SATA to USB Cable attached to an Intel S3520 SSD
and plugged into a USB 3 port:

C:\tmp>winsat disk -read -seq -drive d
Windows System Assessment Tool
> Running: Feature Enumeration ''
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> Running: Storage Assessment '-read -seq -drive d'
> Run Time 00:00:03.02
> Disk  Sequential 64.0 Read                   230.09 MB/s          7.4
> Total Run Time 00:00:03.44

C:\tmp>winsat disk -read -ran -drive d
Windows System Assessment Tool
> Running: Feature Enumeration ''
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> Running: Storage Assessment '-read -ran -drive d'
> Run Time 00:00:00.92
> Disk  Random 16.0 Read                       148.70 MB/s          7.4
> Total Run Time 00:00:01.36

StarTech USB3S2SAT3CB SATA to USB Cable attached to an Intel S3520 SSD
and plugged into a USB 2 port:

C:\tmp>winsat disk -read -seq -drive d
Windows System Assessment Tool
> Running: Feature Enumeration ''
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> Running: Storage Assessment '-read -seq -drive d'
> Run Time 00:00:07.09
> Disk  Sequential 64.0 Read                   36.79 MB/s          4.8
> Total Run Time 00:00:07.52

C:\tmp>winsat disk -read -ran -drive d
Windows System Assessment Tool
> Running: Feature Enumeration ''
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> Running: Storage Assessment '-read -ran -drive d'
> Run Time 00:00:01.22
> Disk  Random 16.0 Read                       36.67 MB/s          6.3
> Total Run Time 00:00:01.64
StarTech.com SATA to USB Cable

 

[h2ospa]

Hm. I might fail to detect hidden meaning in your post, but UI dogma wise 95, NT4, 98, Me, 2000, XP, Vista and 7 are all the same. Vista may look radically different to 95 but that's just new WM with compositor - something available to Linux desktops a year or more before Vista. Whatever difference is between them is technology advancing and concept of OS doing more and more as far as user devices are concerned.

8 not only breaks the UI dogma by removing Start it also introduces an Orwellian version of mid-90s failed Active Desktop experiment spilled over entire OS. 10 got the Start back, but UI dogma wasn't reverted.

Exactly.

Call me old school but I still want my Windows 98 Classic Theme back (an enhanced version of Windows 95's, with dual-color title bars), where i can control almost everything - font, text size, title bar, color, etc.

I am no fans of "flat" UI and all kinds of arbitrary (and unchangeable) text styling.
And the "semi-transparent window is a new windows 11 feature" bs. Whoever says this must be too young to have seen Aero in vista and 7. I didn't use it back then, but still, don't call it a new feature.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

Call me old school but I still want my Windows 98 Classic Theme (an enhanced version of Windows 95's, with dual-color title bars), where i can control almost everything - font, text size, title bar, color, etc.

If ALL I could have was the Windows 98 file browser back, I would be happy. Hell even the XP one would be better than what we had from vista till now. I hate it so much.

My wishlist is similar to yours, if I could get the desktop to look and behave exactly like 98(complete with start menu, file browser, My computer that says My Computer, etc... while still having proper UI scaling and support for modern hardware...

Yeah, if Microsoft offered me that I would actually start to pay for windows.

 

[NeXT]

The supreme irony is that previous windows versions actually worked great as tablet OSs with zero modification, provided the tablet offered a few external buttons to assist with basic tasks. I have a Windows 2000 tablet around here somewhere that is an absolute treat to use. I've also done XP and 7 on tablets and liked it quite a lot more than any android OS.

The failing point comes when you build a tablet that is a cheese ipad clone, with zero ports or buttons. So really, its Apple's fault that Windows 8 was so bad.

Windows XP Tablet PC Edition is still my preferred tablet OS. You could tell that the branch development team was given resources to make something more than an additional functionality module to XP. Likewise they were able to do more than just shoehorn into the OEM market support for requiring a standard set of physical buttons that performed hard-coded tasks, regardless of who manufactured the tablet. Microsoft Office also had enhanced support (albeit some would still say it was crude) for tablets and pen input but opted not for a UI refresh to accommodate for the new role (like excessively large buttons or new UI development rules) which meant if you didn't want to use tablet mode everything was just as usable as it would be if you used a pen and vice-versa because the Windows spec recommended high-precision Wacom digitizers with pens rather than capacitive touch.

By the time 8 rolled around, Microsoft was in a different gear and a different mindset. Bill was gone and Ballmer was winding things down himself and getting ready to shift things over to.......................................Satya.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

Remember the Samsung Q1 with the split keyboard and thumb-mouse? I'm hard pressed to think of a better tablet.

 

[NeXT]

Fujitsu's Stylistic tablets in the PIIIm thru Core 2 Duo years were amazing.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

Those were also nice.