Win 8, one click to a pretty much normal win7 desktop. No start button but a click or a right click in the right spots = start button. All the normal programs and control panel and explorer.

Think you will learn to ignore the tiles unless you actually use the touch screen.

mikie,

Thanks, I stopped by Walmart and a sales associate asked if he could help. I asked about W8 and for those of us happy with W7, even with XP. He did a click (think it was one of the tiles in the lower left) and up came what looked like W7 desktop, including the lower tool bar where I asked: "can I put icons down there for my Firefox, IE and Thrunderbird? " Yes, he said. So if I can still get control panel functions I should be right at home with W8.

Do I also understand too that W8 seems to be faster loading and bringing up aps? My W7 has 4 GB of RAM, but only a single core processor. The Gateway I am now looking at has a dual core AMD, but no greater clock speed, "only" 4 GB of RAM (I see some with 6 GB). Happily it has a 500 GB HDD and I it will take additional RAM if I wish to add it.

My formally win7 lenovo laptop, I maxed to 16gb ram and win8 never uses it. Its apparently good at cleaning and using ram. Always just a ton of ram available.
So one day I backed it down to 8gb and now i see it will use and cache a max of 5.6gb for me and my ways. So 6gb may be a good spot to be for most that are not running Work programs or programming all day.

So basically what I guess i am saying is once you open a program at the normal win7 type speed, win8 will cache it partially to ram so the second time you open it ,, faster.

Win8 by default does not shut down as we think of it. It Caches the popular kernal commands to a type of hibernate file now called a swapfile.sys, mine is 264mb, so when you turn it on.. its gonna start really fast. I see people saying their ssd drive starts in 10 or 15 seconds. My win8 spinning drive starts the display fully painted in maybe 2 seconds. But actually takes 2 minutes for the hard drive to spin that last chunk. Fetcher feature runs at two minutes after start up.. thats when things work snappy. Before that theyre laggy slow.

Faster than you can blink your eye when waking from sleep mode to paint the screen. Amazing. I often change pages with the web browser and its so fast I sit and wait, not realizing its already on the new page.

This post was edited by mikie on Tue, Mar 19, 13 at 17:42

Here is an interesting article on what Mikie is saying. Seems to explain it quite well.

Thanks, I'm now comfortable I can go ahead and purchase a new computer with W8. I will not "upgrade" my W7 machines.

I still have three XP machines as well, only one is used regularly, by my wife.

Windows 8, may be the end of the Microsoft dominance in operating systems, they don't dominate the tablet market, as I understand it. It is almost sad that another great technology company has about run its course.

It may be premature to wave bye-bye to Microsoft.

Tablets/ipads are a convenient PC substitute for things like ebooks, personal entertainment and other light uses. But many have found they're not (broadly) a substitute for PCs.

PCs are still the work standard outside of visually creative applications, and the flavor most used for PC platforms in the workplace is Microsoft, by a very large margin.

I agree with Snidely.

One must wonder why the shove it down your throat effort with the touch screen start page. They believe that's the future of things. Touch everything, including floor tiles in your home.

But if this stab to control 'Tiles' loses consumers.. how long will it be before something like the ibm/Lenovo happens to Microsoft. Maybe the china or north Korean gov will sneak in there and try to control the world.

What is "ibm/Lenovo" that you mention? Are you referring to IBM's sale of its PC division? There was nothing even remotely sinister in that.

Not sinister, but like TI is an example of a "big boy" given up on a market. Almost as bad as AT&T and consumer communications... all that's left is the rather successful iPOD (think that is what is called in wireless communications - and with a touch screen I believe). AT&T is a shadow of itself, he-l it was once a bigger employer than Walmart : (

My comment that may have started this was my shopping for a new Laptop (not a notebook this time, considering a 17.3" screen - non touch) and checking on Dell and HP to see if they were still in that business. Seems both have recognized, perhaps soon enough to survive, that personal computers with a mouse and keypad are going into history. I connected this with some lament that I can't now quantify, that Microsoft sales of Windows 8, indeed computer OS, is way down. This lead me to comment that we may all live (even an old guy like me) to see the end of MS, if not that then a much smaller and less profitable company. Given Gates and others at the top of MS are working hard to give their money away before the $#&% government gobbles it up with inheritance tax. Those folks know that will result in all their hard work and creativity being wasted by people who specialize in that game.

Would I sell my MS stock if I had some? Yes, but as all that I hold is in mutual funds I don't have any control, I just hope the fund managers have a brain.

As you've redirected your own thread, I'll assume that's ok.

ATT isn't a shadow of its former self - what's called ATT today is a different company, its "former self" doesn't exist anymore.

No company can continue doing the same old thing over and over again and ignore what happens in their markets. Some are able to adapt to new trends and succeed, others can't and fail. That won't ever change. Change happens faster in the tech world than anywhere else.