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[Matt]

Jim and I switched to Windows 8 pretty much right away at home.  This is called "taking one for the team" when one of us endures some early-adopter pain to help out.

Today I'm helping build my parents a new computer.

It's a good litmus test for how I really feel about Windows 8.  I get on fine with it, but Brooke (my lovely wife) has complained a bit.  In her words she "gets stuck in places."

I'm afraid if I give Windows 8 to my mom and dad, it's going to look like this Locker Gnome video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4boTbv9_nU

It's an honest dilemma.

[nwboater]

Matt - Do your parents value having the latest & greatest? What would 8 do for them that 7 wouldn't? As we all know new OSs typically go through some grief early on and 8 is still quite new. I haven't read of many advantages of 8 over 7 for non touch screen users. (But I could sure be ill informed here!).

Have your parents used computers before? XP? Win7?

Sandra & I finally gave up on our old slow XP boxes for our office work. Got a couple of refurbished HPs with 7 and we are thrilled with the improvement. So you can tell we are a long way from state of the art! Have had Win7 on our HTPC and laptop for quite awhile. For what we do I just don't know what a newer OS would bring us. Some future proofing perhaps.

I like things that 'just work' and are relatively easy to use for the tasks I want to accomplish. How do your parents compare? (BTW at 71 & 72 we may just be similar ages, or a little older.)

I think I've been just babbling here.

Good luck.

Cheers,
Rod

[InflatableMouse]

That's a funny video.

I'd leave it as it is. The least changes for them, the better.

[Mr ChriZ]

The videos amusing.  However in my experience if you spend 10 minutes showing people (non techie users included) around 8 they get it pretty quick.
The main thing that Win8 seems to bring to the party is speed from my perspective.
However it comes at a price.  I've found a few hardware devices - namely printers that do not work with it due to lack of drivers.
It is beyond me why the driver model in Windows needs to change every couple of years other than to keep us buying new hardware.

[jmone]

We are just getting old- here is my fav on the subject --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFAWR6hzZek

[glynor]

I just upgraded the HTPC to Windows 8 today.

I'm trying it out, though I cloned the system disk before doing so in case I want to bail after a week or so.  So far, the upgrade experience was middling.

I actually upgraded the system in-place, which I haven't done since maybe Windows 95 > 98 (which was then later un-done).  However, Paul Thurrott says you can do it, and I've read similar things elsewhere, so I'm trying that too.  That experience has been mixed.  It took forever.  And, I had some issues...  My graphics card drivers came through all hosed in multiple ways (which took some effort to diagnose and fix).  That prevented MC from working right, and made Firefox crash immediately on launch.  I also found some incompatible Shell item was preventing right-clicking in the Desktop mode entirely, which stunk (explorer.exe was crashing).

[glynor]

Otherwise, it is going okay.  Of course, I've used it a lot in VMs so I'm familiar with it.  I want to see how well my wife does with it.  Since we use so few things on the HTPC (and I got a nice Logitech Trackpad for it), I think it is worth trying on that box.

[InflatableMouse]

I actually upgraded the system in-place, which I haven't done since maybe Windows 95 > 98 (which was then later un-done).  However, Paul Thurrott says you can do it, and I've read similar things elsewhere, so I'm trying that too.

I did it too after I considered the split install with Win8 a success I decided to upgrade my 'main' OS (windows 7). My wireless keyboard and touchpad gradually started to fail minutes into the installer after a reboot. It would work on-and-off and periods of working would get shorter and shorter. I hooked up another keyboard/mouse and continued. Then after the upgrade it ran windows update and said there were new drivers. I updated it all, it rebooted twice. I then installed the latest Intel SATA drivers and ... dead. Blue screen, restored system point. Wireless keyboard still suffering from a slow death.

In short, it still sucks . I completely reinstalled Win8, keyboard works fine and Intel drivers install fine too. Wireless keyboard doesn't need vendor drivers btw, its fully supported by Windows.

Offtopic for the thread, sorry.