Craig Anderton's Sound, Studio, and Stage

[techristian]

Into Windows 8 that is. I have been having trouble for the past 5 days with my video software, not accepting the codec from one of my cameras, then choking, not even 1% into rendering, so I was going to put together a CLEAN system JUST for video (with swappable boot drive) but XP won't let me install anymore. So I'm thinking that my video software Corel/Ulead Video Studio Pro 11 is only a few years old now and should run on 8 ?? (yes I still haven't bought the Adobe package yet) 

Now I see that Windows 8 PRO is only $69.95 in Walmart, which is tempting , but then there is a 32/64 bit version and a 64 bit version?  Head first would be directly into the 64 bit version, (already running Ubuntu 64 on this system) Feet first would be a 32 or 32/64 version.

Anyway, I want something that works. I don't want to be another beta tester for Microsoft.

Dan

[blue2blue]

I was horrified by the Metro UI that is what most users apparently see. It limits the machine to one thing at a time. Forget transferring data between windows, forget, even, multiple tabs on browsers. You only see one window at a time. If you figure out how to open multiple websites in separate browser windows you have to back out of one, use the stupid interface to navigate to another, and then open it, where it takes up the whole screen.  They replaced a one-click tab-switch with an involved, context-changing process that involves a series of clicks and transistions.

It is the most idiotic thing I have seen in nearly 3 decades of desktop computing.

Now, I only used it once, I had real work that we were struggling to get done (the computer owner was even more clueless than I), so my first impression is just that.

I'm told that, 'lurking underneath' is something vaguely like the desktop multi-windowing Windows we've come to know over the years But we didn't have time to dig around and nothing was particularly obvious or intuitive in the new Metro interface.

It was a truly awful experience.

With regard to video software, I'm sure you've heard this before but, having used some Corel/Ulead software in the past, I'm thinking you may be missing a bet if you haven't tried Sony's Vegas. I'm running Vegas 10 on XP and it works very well. Real time preview with effects works fine, as long as I keep the window small if the effects are heavy. Video rendering is about the only time my 7 year old, very cheap machine feels behind the times (due to the efficiency of XP). But it's not that bad. I just do something else on the computer or elsewhere (obviously, when video rendering, devoting the whole computer to it speeds it; nonetheless, I'm someone who believes in multitasking. While we've still got it.

[nat whilk II]

I'm still finding myself backing programs out of Win7 and back over to my other XP setup due to Win7 weirdness. Latest one is that Win7 can't seem to find my wireless USB receiver/transmitter while XP has no problem - and it's a NEW receiver/transmitter.

So Win8 is not exactly on my horizon yet.

This quote from the Wall Street Journal review of Win8 - "The industry really wants you to get Windows 8 via an all-new PC, and most people who adopt it will go that route. But, if you don't, or can't, and have even a three-year-old PC, you may want to just stick with the Windows you've got."

Even the government does a better job than Microsoft these days it seems....

nat whilk ii

[techristian]

Thanks Blue and Nat . I may have found a way to avoid it and I'll definitely look into Vegas. How much is Vegas and what version / package of it are you using Blue?

Dan

[bookumdano3]

....."Anyway, I want something that works. I don't want to be another beta tester for Microsoft...."

Last time I felt like that was windows95.  Win 7 was a joyful, painless move for me from xp.  Win8 is the same....grab it now online for $40 since the promo price ends in two days.

I ignore any badmouthing of win8 because....

1. the new layout doesn't bother me and

2. You can change most anything... even have a start menu back if you want... pin tiles to the taskbar.. whatever you want in geektweakdom is there for the Win8 user.

Win7 support is now out to 2020 so that's an option for you.  Win8 support is now out to 2030. So... support on either of those isn't really an issue.

Win8 is cool.  And fun to explore.  I'd jump in all the way with a fresh install while the os price is dirt cheap...and simply move forward on that for the next 15 years.  Or at least until win9 hits.

As an aside... how do I change the "new contributor" thing under the avatar here?  Maybe to "nude contributor" or something more interesting.

[nat whilk II]

I'm glad you like it - but the word is that a whole lot of programs you can run on Win7 cannot be run on Win8.

I can deal with menu navigation and GUI revamps easy enough, but orphaning important programs is a deal-breaker for me.

nat whilk ii

[techristian]

MESSAGE DELETED.......You really don't need to hear my problems with PAYPAL...I may have been premature with my criticism .

Dan

[techristian]

I'm having trouble with the install, but realize that my system is a mixed bag of old and new. I have a huge 2TB sata drive but I boot from IDE and have another IDE drive for data. I saw the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH a few times and now it seems that it trashed my boot sector....but there is more than one way to skin a cat. I paid a little extra for the backup DVD and it should be here within a week or sooner.

Dan

[ggm1960]

I bought the little woman a new laptop for Christmas and it has Windows 8 on it. At first glance it's like a whole different animal! I had to spend a little time messing with it and started to get a feel for it pretty quick though. I wouldn't say I don't like it but I'd have to use it quite a bit more to really make a judgement call on it. The only program I put on it was Quicken 2010 which, along with everything else, must work fine since I haven't heard any complaints and haven't been called upon for any more technical assitance with the machine.

I have been pretty happy with Windows 7 which is on the i5 Dell XPS system I bought back in September but I haven't really used it for anymore than a few rather pedestrian tasks. It's in my studio where it's used to read PDF manuals, watch youtube videos, run music gear editor/librarian programs and catch up on some gaming that my old machine couldn't handle.

I still prefer to use my MacBook Pros for most things, both of them still run 10.6.8.

[blue2blue]

---

bookumdano3 wrote:

....."Anyway, I want something that works. I don't want to be another beta tester for Microsoft...."

Last time I felt like that was windows95.  Win 7 was a joyful, painless move for me from xp.  Win8 is the same....grab it now online for $40 since the promo price ends in two days.

I ignore any badmouthing of win8 because....

1. the new layout doesn't bother me and

2. You can change most anything... even have a start menu back if you want... pin tiles to the taskbar.. whatever you want in geektweakdom is there for the Win8 user.

Win7 support is now out to 2020 so that's an option for you.  Win8 support is now out to 2030. So... support on either of those isn't really an issue.

Win8 is cool.  And fun to explore.  I'd jump in all the way with a fresh install while the os price is dirt cheap...and simply move forward on that for the next 15 years.  Or at least until win9 hits.

As an aside... how do I change the "new contributor" thing under the avatar here?  Maybe to "nude contributor" or something more interesting.

---

My philosophy is. basically: New OS? New box.

New OS's are almost always less efficient/more bloated. 

Just compare RAM usage of XP and Vista or W7.

In fact, the only time I've upgraded my OS without doing my hardware (and even then I doubled RAM) was going from my well-tweaked Win98 to XP on a machine I'd built only months before and that was pretty high performance. And, overall, with the extra RAM, that was pretty painless.

And XP proved to be a great OS, although I hated the way it looked until I found the 'make Windows run more efficiently' lists that suggested reverting to Windows classic look and losing all the irritating UI 'animations' -- my very first impression of XP was that it was molasses-slow because some geniac at MS had decided menus that roll down leisurely look cool (while making a trip across the pull down menus about 5 times longer than need be).

Once I realized you could turn off that 'feature' and the other needless gewgaws, I had a clean, efficient running machine. And I could sit around wondering why MS could deliver a great core technology but hide it in a totally ridiculous looking toy interface and bury it under performance-draining "niceties" that never impressed in the first place -- except in a negative fashion.

[blue2blue]

This article on disappointing sales of MSD's Surface RT tablet is interesting.

It shows low sales and very high rates of return. (Only 55% of units shipped ended up in customer hands so far.)

The article points out that perhaps the biggest problem is that people can't figure out how to use the W8 "Metro" interface. (It's not officially called "Metro" anymore as that trademark was taken and MS, like their new model, Apple, apparently didn't bother to check to see if they had a clear shot. Apple watchers may recall that Apple lost the right to use the name iPhone in Brazil, a huge market, because it had already been trademarked and was being used on an existing phone in that market.)

http://blogs.computerworld.com/tablets/21711/microsoft-surface-sales-most-750000-very-high-return-ra...

Low sales are only one part of the Surface's problem. The potentially bigger issues is what Alexander calls "very high" return rates. As to why the return rates are so high, she had this to say:

"It seems to be linked in a lot of cases to a steep learning curve of the [Windows 8] OS -- which is not necessarily intuitive."

That's very bad news for Microsoft. It spells trouble not just for Surface, but for the entire line of RT devices. And it's even a bigger potential issue for Windows 8. Windows 8 was designed more for tablets than PCs, and features dual (and duelling) interfaces, the tablet-based one and the traditional desktop one. If people can't even figure out how to use it on an RT tablet, which features only the tablet-based interface, how will they figure out how to use it on a traditional PC?

[techristian]

THE NIGHTMARE THICKENS.........

2 issues now PAYPAL and Win8

I tried another hard drive. Everything looked much better in the install and I sat there for almost 2 hours watching it. All of the stages of install seemed fine.......and then...........NO VIDEO. After I rebooted I got the following message.

"Windows installation was not successful.Your previous version of Windows is being restored. Do not restart your computer during this time."   

So we will try again.

The issue with PAYPAL. They have a new thing there. They claim that all of my money was in US funds and that the seller was trying to withdraw Canadian money ?????????????? However the seller is in California.

[techristian]

Did I forget to mention that California charges 14.5% even on mail orders out of state???? So think next time before you complain that I'm a Canadian getting into U.S. politics. HIGH CALIFORNIA TAXES ...CRAZY.   Now this may seem like trivial amounts of money to you all, and when I was working, I would agree with you, but I have the time now and not the money so I will persue these things on principal...but I'm not going to get sick from it.

and... .

"Windows installation was not successful.Your previous version of Windows is being restored. Do not restart your computer during this time."   

No explanation what piece of hardware to replace with the above message.

I know from past experiences that this can change from a software problem, to the point where I'm buying new hardware to support this thing. I do have a few video cards around, but my mobo has the fastest and most up to date video.

Dan

[bookumdano3]

For any of you who have win8, be sure to also grab the free (for now) Windows Media Pack.  There are links to sign up for the freebie download at various microsoft win8 online areas.  I haven't tried it yet, but I think it restores dvd playback (which is no longer standard) and a few other things.  Whatever the case, it's free for a limited time and I get the impression that not a lot of people hear about the pack add-on.

[bookumdano3]

---

techristian wrote:

Did I forget to mention that California charges 14.5% even on mail orders out of state????

and... .

"Windows installation was not successful.Your previous version of Windows is being restored. Do not restart your computer during this time."   

No explanation what piece of hardware to replace with the above message.

Dan

---

Didn't catch where you're buying win8 from.  Is it from Microsoft?  Anyway, here's what I did...

pop an empty formatted drive into your computer.

Do a clean install of either win7 or xp from your original microsoft cd/dvd.. no extra stuff.. just a fast install of the os only.

pay the $40 to microsoft and download win8 to an image file to then burn a dvd

boot the system with the new win8 dvd you made and run the assistant.exe program that tells you all the stuff that will and won't work on hardware/software

Replace or reconsider the use of anything that the setup assistant says is no-go

install win8

Ghost the install (my constant step at this point of a new os)

Download & install any microsoft/system driver updates... be sure to sign up for the freebie media pack which won't be a freebie for long.

Ghost again.

Install all the other stuff you have on this now-new, fresh install

[techristian]

Ok after re-formatting my drives and re-installing 4 times, I am finally up on Win8 now. Every time I got a bit closer!

Now we will see if my video software runs any better here. I hope that they installed 64 bit on this machine.

Dan

[nat whilk II]

Maybe it's that "CA" abbreviation. I have a client who lives in California and does business in Canada and when I email him to ask him where some particular transaction took place, he invariably replies "CA".

nat whilk ii

[nat whilk II]

Yeah, I always install new Windows versions onto clean new drives - installing on top of the old version always seems to create some sort of untangleable tangle at some point.

I have heard from reliable sources that the assistant.exe is a good thing as far as it goes, but there are no guarantees it will identify every program as go or no go correctly.  It's a rough-in sort of thing that might leave you with all the finish work to do yourself.

nat whilk ii

[techristian]

Well I just found out that this is the 32 bit version of PRO that is installed....on my 64 bit machine ! (Of course it would be. I only had the 32 bit version of WinXP) Anyway it SEEMS that I can still do more. I'm typing here on my # monitor while VideoStudio Pro is up on the other monitor.

...and may I add that the video is rendering WHILE I am typing here on monitor #2.

VideoStudio Pro ran fine in the past, on XP but was choking just before this upgrade.

Dan

[techristian]

A weird thing happened with W8 just now. When my system was 30% into rendering IT WENT INTO HIBERNATION ???

Dan