Jul 112014
Windows 8 System Builder OEM DVD 32-Bit
- Start Up Quickly
- Customize your Metro-Interface Start Screen with personalized Live Tiles
- Stay safe with Windows Defender
- Encrypt your data with Bitlocker
Windows 8 System Builder is for pre-installation on a new personal computer or installation on a computer that is not currently running Windows 7, Vista, or XP. This product is not an upgrade and does not provide solutions to help you keep personal settings or files as the product is installed. Windows 8 System Builder DVD 32-Bit can be installed on personal computers with a 32 bit or 64 bit capable processor. The new Windows 8 start screen is your personalized home for items you use the m
List Price: $ 130.00
Price: $ 90.73
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No valid product key, OS not for a mouse & keyboard setup.,
This is the worst MS OS yet. Even before I could install this OS, it turned out the product key that came packaged with it would not work. When calling MS customer service, I was told I could be given a new product key but for an additional $10. I chose to return and exchange the set back with Amazon instead. Only when I received that second Windows 8 Pro 32-bit package, that product key wouldn’t work either. After two more lengthy calls with MS, they offered me a new product key free of charge so I could finally finish the install. That was just beginning of a whole new misadventure.
This OS makes you work harder just to do simple tasks. The Start Menu is gone. Like changing the time and date for an example. Before you could go to the task bar and simply double click to access the clock and calendar. Now you have to go through several sub-menues before you can access the clock. The task bar is different and you must point the mouse in the corners of the screen in order for a menu to appear (since there is no start menu). Be prepared to have to “search” for whatever you need that isn’t the settings menu, system display options, Apps store or Internet Explorer.
The main problem is that this OS is not at all user intuitive and the GUI was designed around a touch screen input and not a traditional mouse and keyboard setup. The Desktop isn’t even the first thing when it boots. Yes, you have to go to a menu to find the desktop! Even dual/multi booting is a chore with this OS as it wants to be the default OS no matter your system setting. I wanted a second 32-bit OS partition to go nicely with my Windows 7 64-bit but even that proved to be a hassle and I’m an experienced system builder. I’ll stick with Windows 7 for now until MS acknowledges the problems with this build with a later service pack! Not everyone has a tablet or touch screen interface!
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A downgrade from Windows 7,
I’ve been playing with Windows 8 ever since the Developer preview was released, and do not think this is an upgrade from Windows 7 at all.
First for the pros: it’s faster at booting (even though I don’t have an SSD), and on slow PCs (or virtual machines) it feels faster than 7. If you have a tablet, it’s also nice.
Now for the cons: the tablet UI (metro) is completely unsuitable for desktops and laptops, and tends to get in the way. For instance, the tablet apps for music, video, photos, and PDFs appear by default when opening a file (although the viewers for the former 3 from Windows 7 are still there, unchanged – 7 never had a PDF viewer built in). The tablet side has a separate task switcher from the old desktop, with the entire desktop lumped in as one app. There’s no visual indication how to get to the start screen (hint: click the lower-left corner), or see all your apps from there, or to search. There’s also the charms bar, which you need to shutdown the computer, and to access the settings in metro apps (desktop apps are the same as before in that regard). Explorer is also a bit too convoluted for my tastes (compared to 7). Aero transparency has also been removed and replaced by a matte, opaque style, which I don’t like as much. I like the flat style though, and the new automatic color-switching feature helps (it bases the color on your wallpaper).
Tablet/metro apps are also rather useless, being no better than the ones on Android or iOS. IE is worse than Chrome and Safari on those platforms, if anything. Plus, you have to right-click to reveal the URL bar and the back/forward controls EVERY SINGLE TIME. Incredibly irritating, for sure. (Chrome does install a metro app though, which is the same as the desktop version otherwise. The desktop version is still there as before.) Also, whatever browser you set as default will have its’ metro side launched from the start screen, if it has one and it hasn’t been disabled. (Internet Explorer lets you force the desktop version, Chrome supposedly does, and Firefox doesn’t have a metro version yet.)
To put it simply, if you have a desktop or laptop, I STRONGLY recommend that you stay with Windows 7. (and if you still have XP or Vista, upgrade to 7, not 8) Fortunately, 7 will still be available for 2 more years, hopefully enough time for them to figure this out, and support will continue into 2020. (mainly just on business machines though – new consumer ones tend to lack drivers for older OSes, including 7) Metro is a pain to deal with at times, and adds nothing unless you have a tablet. The performance increases are nice, but are far outweighed by the cons.
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Not Yet Ready for Prime Time,
First, it was difficult to determine whether this is an install version of Windows 8 for regular people or OEM’s. I already had Windows Vista, but wanted to start with a clean new copy so I did not always have to have previous disks on hand for installation of the latest version. It took me 2 weeks to install Windows 8. I had 1 terabyte of data on my hard drive, and wanted to make a completely new installation after re-formatting my entire hard drive. Windows 8 does not give you the option of re-formatting before installation like other previous versions of Windows did. I spent many days trying to fully defrag this hard drive after installing Windows 8, but it constantly kept significant portions that could not be defragged. I tried many different installs of Windows 8 to try getting a truly pristine install, but it would not let me. The menu item in Windows 8 that claims to give a clean install does not do this. Finally, I installed Windows Vista over Windows 8, and Vista allowed me to re-format my hard drive. I then installed Windows 8 back over Windows Vista and finally got a clean install.
The good things about Windows 8:
1. The graph that comes up when copying files is interesting
2. I cannot detect anything else good about Windows 8
The bad things about Windows 8
1. Does not allow a truly clean install
2. Appears incompatible with many web sites, probably due to poor implementation of Flash. My wife spent several hours online developing a family photo album to print out for Christmas gifts. After spending all that time designing this photo album, Windows 8 would not allow her to pay for it because the computer would always lock up and give a Flash error notice. Some websites come up black and show nothing on them. Other websites have the windows control disabled, and you cannot scroll down to other parts of it, nor does Windows 8 allow you to close it. I estimate that Windows 8 does not work in about 1/3 of all web sites.
3. It is very difficult to figure out what programs are running and then close them. It took me several weeks to find out how to close Windows 8 software (there are no close buttons). Windows 8 does not provide any obvious introduction to their unusual command structures.
4. The tiles on the desktop are a waste of time, as they are only overly large icons, and limit the number of icons/tiles you can view on the desktop.
5. It is very difficult to view a set of pictures, as using the page down screen does not advance to the next photo, and I do not see any control to do this by using the mouse. You essentially have to go through several steps to close the picture, click to go back to the desktop, and then open the next photo.
6. Windows Explorer does not work many times when clicking from the Taskbar.
7. Windows 8 locks up the computer many times a day, where I then need to reboot. This has begun to damage some of my Excel files when they are open during the computer lockup.
8. The slider bar on the right for Windows 8 software is backwards – usually the light colored potion is the slider bar control, not the dark portion. It’s a very simplistic bar (reminiscent of Windows 3 software from decades ago) and is very difficult to discern and control. This is going backwards, not forwards in user interface development!
9. Windows 8 windows sizes and locations are not memorized as in earlier versions of Windows. Nor are other parameters of web sites, such as file locations, remembered by Windows 8, when they used to be remembered by Vista.
10. The computer screen flashes and jumps around at random times for unknown reasons.
In summary, Windows 8 is a waste of time with no detectable advantages over Windows Vista. I recommend you wait 6 months to a year to allow Microsoft to remove the bugs and incompatibilities before even considering this ultimately meaningless upgrade. Due to Windows 8 instabilities, I may soon install Windows Vista over it to at least get an operating system that works.
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