The Windows 8 experiment - continued

Except this time around it's not an experiment anymore.

Not long ago I decided to upgrade my laptop hardware to make it future proof. So I went ahead and upped the RAM from 4 GB to 8 GB, and - more importantly - purchased an SSD. The Samsung 840 Pro with 256 GB to be precise. So far so good.

Installing the SSD meant installing everything from scratch as transferring the old installation to a new drive is (imho) more hassle than it's worth. Also I figured it's an opportunity for a spring cleaning. When it came to installing the OS I was faced with the same question as back in December: Which Windows version to use? I have licenses for Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows 8 Pro. I have the .iso files for both.

In the end I decided to give Windows 8 another chance. What can possibly go wrong, right? So many members of the Neowin community sing the praises of Windows 8; then there is Windows 8.1 (codenamed 'Windows Blue') coming out later this year and supposedly fixing some of the issues plaguing Windows 8. I figured I might as well go ahead and install 8; if all fails I can still downgrade to 7 later.

The installation part was quick. One wouldn't imagine how much of a difference an SSD as boot drive makes. It's so much faster than a conventional hard drive it isn't even funny. If you don't have an SSD yet, consider purchasing one - your PC/laptop will be significantly faster with one. But I digress.

Next up was the customizing part. My main annoyance with the Windows 8 defaults are the fat titlebars for desktop apps. As a workaround I exported HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics from my Windows 7 setup to a .reg file and imported it in Windows 8. Worked like a charm; now I have sensibly sized titlebars and window borders.

Compared to the previous attempt at running Windows 8 there is one difference: I went ahead and spent $4.99 on Start8. 'I knew it, this Becker guy hates change!' I hear some of you cry. No. I could get used to the Modern UI and the Start screen, sure. I chose not to and configure the OS the way I want to use it though - with a start menu and boot to desktop enabled. Improvements/changes in Windows 8.1 might make Start8 unnecessary for my workflow; until then it works nicely. 

The end result is Windows 8 set up to work pretty much like Windows 7. It's been one week since I set everything up and I haven't run into any reasons to downgrade again yet. Is it going to stay this way? Time will tell.

My Windows 8 setup

For those of you wondering: The total time I've spent in Modern UI apps over the past week amounts to maybe five minutes, most of them spent playing Minesweeper. I have yet to find any Modern UI app which offers any benefits over traditional desktop applications. 

There you have it: Old dogs can use new OSs once they beat them into submission.