Late hate for 8

I posted a while back about my purchase of a laptop with Windows 8 and my issues trying to get 8.1. Well, as near as I can tell, the issue blocking acquisition of 8.1 was a free trial of McAfee anti-virus; after the trial had expired I removed it and suddenly no issues with getting 8.1. However, it wasn't exactly a step up. I needed 8.1 because plain 8 wouldn't support Microsoft Security Essentials (which doesn't really exist anymore, it's just lumped into Windows Defender, which now has anti-virus capabilities) and I don't want to have to pay extra for protection from the dangers of the internet when it's in MS' best interest to keep it free from corruption. Either that, or go back to AVG free which has been annoying me for a while.

Anyway, this resulted with me now actually having 8.1 and I've got to say, 8 was better. There are so many little things wrong with 8.1 that it's not funny, and there's nothing that I would call an improvement since not making full Defender protection available in plain 8 is just really mercenary. But while the desktop now has a "Start" button, all it does it take you to the Start page, which you could already do in 8, you could always get back there and now we have something that quite specifically doesn't let us access system tools and applications with any ease.

Most strange is the fact that my laptop cannot now be put into sleep mode. Do that, and you'll never wake it without a hard shutdown and restart. Same goes for any situation requiring "wake up", such as the display being switched off to save energy. And I've just today discovered that some silly little update I did yesterday that mentioned nothing to do with display or graphics reverted my settings from "never switch off the display", because that's what it just did.

I'd say steal it, but it isn't even worth the effort. Either stick with 7 or 8, but give 8.1 a pass, Microsoft needs to learn that they aren't the slightest bit in touch with the consumer. All this crap just because some upper management idiot realised that they were losing to Apple in the tablet market; screwing over the PC market hardly seems like a sound business decision.

Here I am

And not much else. I don't take my lack of an enthusiastic audience personally, I've learned that having people's attention has generally ended up being unpleasant. But since I'm certain my mother is reading this - yes, I am still breathing.

And not much else.