Well my grocery list of problems is quickly shortened after a full day of research in Windows 8.
At the moment my concerns are:
- transferring iTunes library and iphone/ipad backups
- transferring photo catalog and Lightroom databases
- review of missing plug ins for Lightroom and Mozilla
- last sweep of old XP installation for programs to reaquire
The good news is; I would say I’ve already met about 80% of my computing needs as is. I could always start over with my Lightroom catalog [although I’d rather not!], and the photos are backed up and can be sucked backwards from the NAS unit as well… but iTunes is my biggest hurdle.
From what I’ve read, iTunes is a pain in the ass to move if you have manually edited your music library and save data. That means me. Its also a royal pain in the ass because it’s a closed vault system, with everything encrypted in one large cluster-fuck file format [save data]. So if there are any expert migrators with iTunes success, I’m all ears.
So far though; I'm pleased with the progress. The power consumption of the new hardware is incredibly low for the features I have. It reboots from the suspend state in seconds… which is jaw dropping compared to XP or even Vista. And the cold boot process is probably around 30 seconds—of which about 8 seconds sits and waits for the bios to load and pass before rolling into Windows.
My core I5 at 3.4ghz is humming along, 16gb of ram doesn’t seem taxed in the least [although I am going to double it shortly!] and I have a second 2tb disk waiting to get dropped in the bays. Once I decide what the fate of the old beige box will be, there are two more 2tb drives to migrate into blackie black box. At this point, I’m considering keeping the XP install as it is, and adding a Linux install on the beige box. If I go that route, I will be adding in a kvm to the mix to alternate. At this stage the worst piece of hardware in there is the on-board graphics. I hadn’t planned on doing a lot of gaming anymore, and I know nothing about the changes in GPUs' and slots for that… Plus, it seems to render all the environment without issue, and crunches photo data without complaint. Cross my fingers; this is working out well.
A lot of my initial frustration with the OS has to do with the complete redesign. But the widgets are really growing on me. If the availability was a bit wider; or if I learned how to code what I wanted; it would be great! The biggest disappointment has been Google of all people… they still deny the existence of Windows 8 widgets so it seems. Actually per a short interview, http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57558839-93/google-no-immediate-plans-for-google-apps-on-windows-8/ The G unit feels there isn’t demand for any of their services that aren’t satisfied by cloud computing needs. I disagree. I really feel this would benefit from a quick, light weight Chrome window to run at the start screen, as well as a Google Drive process start screen. Lets be honest, both of their major competitors in the cloud drive market are here with apps of their own [Dropbox and Microsoft's SkyDrive], and with Microsoft populating the experience in email and calendar, two more key area’s I prefer Google services, I really feel this is an oversight on Google’s part. From the horse’s mouth:
"Our goal is to be able to offer our users a seamless app experience across all platforms and want to make our products available to as many people as possible," the representative said. "We're always evaluating different platforms, but have no detailed plans to share at this time."
Google Apps include Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides, as well as Gmail and Calendar. [-- From Cnet article by Casey Newton.]
Not knowing what the licensing has to be for using the apps/widget process in Win8, I would still expect that the cloud sourced options of Google Docs would buy up a shitload of market share… as Microsoft still charges for Office 365 product line, and even it doesn’t have a descent app/widget. Google could be king, steamrolling Microsoft at their own game, on their own platform.
