Windows 8

To cut a long story short:   I thought my old computer (or, at least, the hard drive) was nearing the end of its useful life, so after some research, I ended up with a new computer.   As it happens, it seems that my old computer may not have been quite as close to its end as I feared, but I have decided to persevere with the new one anyway.

The changeover has involved a little trauma, but perhaps not as much as I feared it would.    The biggest issue has been attempting to get used to Windows 8.   Most of the computers I  considered offered only Windows 8.

To put it bluntly, yuk!   Windows 8 is designed for touch screen tablets.   Although most of the familiar Windows features are still embedded in it, the reconfiguration of the Start arrangements makes Windows 8 less than optimal for a conventional computer.   In particular, Windows 8 doesn't come with an option to allow you to use the previous Start menu.   While it's not too hard to avoid the Start screen and work from a familiar desktop, sometimes you just have to go to the Start menu - for example, to turn your computer off!    There you have to negotiate the strangely-named "Charms" to find (eventually) the "power off" button.

I am still working my way through these issues, and live in hope that a service pack may be issued that reinstates the possibility of opting for the traditional Start screen (rumours of this exist in cyber).  Otherwise, I may be tempted to install one of the non-Microsoft patches that offer to do this, something that so far I have been reluctant to do in view of some negative comments that I have come across about these on the internet.