Learning to hate Windows 8

Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by the mekanic, Jul 13, 2014.

  1. the mekanic

    the mekanic Major Mekanical Geek

    Where shall I begin?

    The "Metro Interface" is GUI overkill, Secure Boot must be disabled in BIOS should you like to dual boot, flash drives and CD-ROM drives are treated as Legacy devices, and good luck cloning the OS from a larger drive to an SSD and expecting it to boot the machine after the clone is completed. It's a crapshoot whether it will work of not due to BIOS settings (for reference, using Acronis). If you image the original drive, it will not image a new, smaller drive with the recovery software which was created. And if it does, we haven't seen it work yet. So much for SSD laptop upgrades being easy.

    Additionally, when you use an offline installer for Office, and enter the product key to activate it MS will still incessantly ask for your e-mail and badgers a user to set up and account with them even if they don't want it every time you open an office app. Same thing with getting all the old school games from the Microsoft Store like Solitaire and Minesweeper. Badgered for your contact info.

    People already bought your product. What is the need for the ridiculous and aggressive marketing? Major turn off for MANY a customer. People are starting to demand downgrades to Win7.
     
  2. Adrynalyne

    Adrynalyne Guest

    The email address isn't for marketing really. It is for a live account, so that you can store your app preferences between machines.

    I install Office 2013 on machine A. I use it for a while and have it setup just the way I like. I use machine B in another location. I sign in, and viola! my prefs are back. I personally like it. It works the same for visual studio 2012+ too.

    In some cases, you are hounded because the application activates according to live account. I have Microsoft software here that activates not by key, but my account.


    As for the other stuff, yeah it is annoying but easy to work around. In this day and age, optical drives absolutely are legacy devices and they along with USB flash drives are a potential security risk. So it makes sense to disable it by default so that if a password is set in UEFI settings, there is no way to boot to another OS to compromise the current one.

    So it makes sense, but like anything else, additional security will always tick off us power users.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 13, 2014
  3. DOA

    DOA MG's Loki

    Please enlighten me, I have always been able to change the BIOS and boot a USB drive. So I don't see how disabling them is much of a security upgrade unless you are in a corporate environment and actually control what people bring to work.
     
  4. Adrynalyne

    Adrynalyne Guest

    There is this cool little thing called a password ;)

    How do you plan to boot to a usb drive if you can't get into the UEFI to enable legacy devices?

    I suppose you could hack the UEFI password, but wait, you cannot boot to anything to do so. Shall we mind meld with it? I don't think we have evolved to that point of enlightenment yet ;)
    You could take the hard drive out and move it to another machine or reader. But then there is an increasing number of machines allowing for hardware level hard disk passwords.

    I guess you could install a second hard drive and install a second OS to boot to, if it is Windows 8+ (secure boot and all that), and there is an ability to change the boot order.


    There will always be ways around security on anything if someone tries hard enough.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 13, 2014
  5. the mekanic

    the mekanic Major Mekanical Geek

    Valid points pending the style of use.

    However, my biggest beef is still the SSD upgrade. A person buys a new PC, opts for an upgrade and your response has to be:

    Hey, we can do it, but the clone may fail. If so, we will have to obtain media from your PC manufacturer because an OEM key will not work with the retail bootable media generator Microsoft provides. If you want this upgrade, I may need as much as a week or possibly two.

    Great sales pitch.

    The only way to apparently get it right is to pull the new drive, attach it to another Win8 PC while booted under UEFI, clone it with a pair of Drivewire kits or enclosures, and all usually works OK. But, what if your company policy prohibits such actions? Two weeks, that's what.
     
  6. DOA

    DOA MG's Loki

    I cannot help but wonder if tying the OS to the BIOS will enable the ultimate rook kit malware. Very few password their BIOS and BIOS update malware is not an impossible thought.
     
  7. DavidGP

    DavidGP MajorGeeks Forum Administrator - Grand Pooh-Bah Staff Member

    Possible and a good thought, but equally how many general users actually update their BIOS as its not on an auto update schedule, its a per user manual thing.

    Personally is the BIOS not really now redundant or should be? UEFI BIOS which I run now are really user friendly and more options, but do we really need this extra level of info, can the OS not tell or run this?

    I'm on the fence.

    Windows 8, well I've heard the pros and cons of all the OSes so this one is no different, I've had no issues with it on Desktop, Netbook, Laptop and Surface Pro, since it came out, yes its got things I would not have wanted to have but then things I love as Task Manager is awesome for troubleshooting, it is not in <=Win7

    Win7 is a brilliant OS and one to stick with if you do not need to change OS, I use Win7 in work, not migrated to Win8 as no need to, I use Win8 at home as I can and like to try out the new, if I did not like I would change back to Win 7 but its fine, my mom likes Win 8 so that's a plus! my 9 and 12yr old nieces can use Win 8 as easy as they did Win 7 I had previously so don't see a major issue.

    Just comes to taste and what you are used too, if you don't like don't use.
     
  8. DOA

    DOA MG's Loki

    Utility and security are enhanced by having the BIOS and OS separate. If there is no interaction what so ever you have to be local to the machine to change the BIOS. This is a huge security benefit in most cases and a huge support burden if you need to change the BIOS.
    I am sure the support community's voice will win out and their efficiency will outweigh security.

    I keep hoping for an eprom (the eprom is addressed as RAM) with my BIOS and OS that just runs, no loading of the OS. Win7 is mature enough that a locked OS could work.
    We were close to this with the Apple ][ battery backed ram cards that would start where they stopped. There were bugs, too bad that path was not followed.
    http://ae.applearchives.com/all_apple_iis/ramfactor/ramfactor_brochure.pdf
    is the retail brochure, but not all they were doing with the card.
     
  9. Adrynalyne

    Adrynalyne Guest

    The worst thing that could happen is settings could be changed. UEFI isn't actually flashed from within Windows. The payload is set, and upon reboot it flashes in its own environment.

    If UEFI wasn't WORM with very specific ways to access the write ability, I would be more worried.

    Could it be hacked? Sure, but just as easy as BIOS of yesteryear. Which means it will be dang hard. We have seen very few BIOS infections over the years for that same reason.
     

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