2014-04-11, 04:33 | Link #582 |
a.k.a. Flammenkrieg
IT Support
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Down under...
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In this month's Patch Tuesday (the final one for Windows XP and Office 2003), a major update was released for Windows 8.1 (and Windows RT 8.1) which brings about improvements targeted at mouse and keyboard navigation, as well as performance improvements. You can find more info about the update here and here. It's important to note that you won't get future updates (that is, May 2014 onwards) until you install this one.
Perhaps one of the lesser known new features of this update is a new installation option called WIMBoot, where the compressed install.wim is stored on a separate partition with pointer files on the main C: partition to load Windows. This results in an overall smaller footprint for Windows and appears to be most beneficial on devices with smaller solid state storage. Unfortunately, taking advantage of this requires manual processes and technical knowledge with using Windows PE, DISM, and Diskpart (essentially, it's definitely more complicated than a traditional install, and perhaps more complicated than creating your own push-button reset/recovery partition). More info here: Neowin and TechNet.
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2014-04-13, 19:54 | Link #583 |
Cross Game - I need more
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: I've moved around the American West. I've lived in Oregon, Washington, Utah, and Oklahoma
Age: 44
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I think I'm just going to stick with XP and Linux on my old machines. If I get a new machine and I need Windows I'll get Windows 7.
Maybe by Windows 9 they'll have gotten the bugs out of this new thing and then I'll switch.
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2014-04-14, 09:25 | Link #584 |
Kurumada's lost child
Join Date: Nov 2003
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I see no need to stick to 7 now. Windows 8.1 is better coded and runs in older machines better. It performs better all around. I get a nice fps boost in games as well. Download start menu 8 and if you really miss the windows' 7 interface.
The OS is also more secure if thats something you care about. Of course linux blows 8 out of the water when it comes to security, but if people are still debating between xp and 8.1 and their machine supports the upgrade please do yourself a big favor and upgrade asap. XP is awful when it comes to performance and security, specially now that MS no longer supports it.
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2014-04-14, 18:08 | Link #585 |
Obey the Darkly Cute ...
Author
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: On the whole, I'd rather be in Kyoto ...
Age: 66
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I ended up using 8.1 on my laptop but with a classic desktop and start button add-on. As Sugetsu notes, there are some advantages, particularly with lower power machines.
XP is DOA at this point, at least run win7 especially if you have 64bit whatnots. Linux, of course, remains a good deal depending on your needs. (I use it for my house servers and older machines).
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2014-04-14, 18:22 | Link #586 |
sleepyhead
Author
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: event horizon
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On my main machine: At the moment there's no game that drops bellow optimal, so why should I care about it and it's improvements? I would just be supporting idiotic design principles, have less optimal support (ie. chance of failure is higher on misc programs due to them not being made for 8), and as I've stated before the operating system is just all round harder to use. The fact I have to go out of my way to make it usable is another black mark on it. At least the apple fanboys have some legitimacy to their excuse for supporting apples rotten principles.
On low end systems: In the end what I want is just an operating system. The quicker it gets out of the way the better; take a guess which operating system to date is the worst in the "get out of the way" department. If I actually want performance windows XP uses less resources and runs better still while everything from vista onwards might as well have been written in java given how much ram they require; ram lower end systems typically dont have or dont have in large amount. "Omg but if you dont actually have any programs opened at all it's so smooth on low end systems!" There has never been a single instance where I would have not have favored having a shittier operating system but just a larger pool of free ram. And quite frankly, the best choice at the moment is to just use linux, all relatively new games run on it and the ones that dont require a beefy machine that couldn't care less for the operating system "improvements." I've found indies that aren't linux friendly to be quite the stupidly demanding ones (you'd be surprised how demanding even basic platformers can be). Productivity programs only suffer from "interface annoyances." When they turn it into a linux then I'll care for "performance enhancements," and other "under the hood improvements." Tweaking as far as I'm concerned is just vaporware: it doesn't exist, or exists but is actually very specific and irrelevant 99% of real world cases. And ya that's fairly unfair/unreasonable to say normally, but it's microsoft we're talking about, the kings of vaporware.
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