Will Windows 8 be the death of PC gaming?

[ZeroAX]

I think Microsoft got hit by a curse (probably by Nintendo who's console business will forever be cursed to push 3rd parties away), and every other OS they release will be a dud.

[Fragems]

I think Microsoft got hit by a curse (probably by Nintendo who's console business will forever be cursed to push 3rd parties away), and every other OS they release will be a dud.

They can't compete with Steam and they would rather you play games on the Xbox where there is more profit to be had and less piracy. Simply put they don't care about PC gamers .

[ZeroAX]

I think Microsoft got hit by a curse (probably by Nintendo who's console business will forever be cursed to push 3rd parties away), and every other OS they release will be a dud.

They can't compete with Steam and they would rather you play games on the Xbox where there is more profit to be had and less piracy. Simply put they don't care about PC gamers .

[J T]

My wife has Windows 8 on her laptop and HATES it. Any time you put your mouse to the side of the screen, you get some pop up that you don't want half the time, plus there is some shortcut with using the mouse that makes her inadvertantly flashed over to the Metro style.

Does anyone know how to turn these things off?

Failing that, is there any risk in installing Windows 7 on her machine instead? She's read something about someone not having the right hardware drivers for their laptop components, so changing the OS messed things up. I thought most everything that worked on 8 would work on 7.

[Stark]

My wife has Windows 8 on her laptop and HATES it. Any time you put your mouse to the side of the screen, you get some pop up that you don't want half the time, plus there is some shortcut with using the mouse that makes her inadvertantly flashed over to the Metro style.

Does anyone know how to turn these things off?

It sounds like there is a shortcut or something, may be assigned to mouse wheel or buttons. Go to the Properties page for Mouse and see if you can see something that might be pulling up the Metro UI.

Failing that, is there any risk in installing Windows 7 on her machine instead? She's read something about someone not having the right hardware drivers for their laptop components, so changing the OS messed things up. I thought most everything that worked on 8 would work on 7.

This should be fine, but to be doubly-triply sure you could go to the manufacturer's website for your computer and see if there are Win7 drivers.

[MrPopo]

My wife has Windows 8 on her laptop and HATES it. Any time you put your mouse to the side of the screen, you get some pop up that you don't want half the time, plus there is some shortcut with using the mouse that makes her inadvertantly flashed over to the Metro style.

If you go into the corners it pops up the edge UI. The charms bar is invoked by going to the top right or left corner (get the button overlays), then dragging down the side to get the full bar out. Upper left corner is the backstack, which won't have anything if she hasn't launched any modern apps. She's probably getting the Start Screen up by clicking in the bottom left corner.

Does anyone know how to turn these things off?

You can't; it's integral to how Explorer works.

Failing that, is there any risk in installing Windows 7 on her machine instead? She's read something about someone not having the right hardware drivers for their laptop components, so changing the OS messed things up. I thought most everything that worked on 8 would work on 7.

Drivers are a trickier beast. Is her laptop screen touch-capable, or is it just a standard laptop? If it's a standard laptop there shouldn't be much risk in putting Windows 7 on it.

[Hobie-wan]

Does anyone know how to turn these things off?

That's how windows 8 works. Secret hovers and garbage. Doing swipe like motions does stuff too, so that might be the accidental jumps back to Metro candyland. Switching to 7, it will depend if there are W7 versions of the drivers. With a desktop you'd be pretty sure there would be unless a piece of hardware just came out yesterday. With a laptop, will need to look first.

---damn distractions slowing me adding my reply.

[MrPopo]

Interesting statistic from Steam's hardware survey

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Top 10 OS's and their percentage

• Windows 7 64 bit - 54.18%
• Windows 7 - 13.39%
• Windows 8 64 bit - 10.86%
• Windows XP 32 bit - 8.25%
• Windows Vista 64 bit - 4.45%
• Windows Vista 32 bit - 2.61%
• MacOS 10.8.3 64 bit - 1.56%
• Windows 8 - 0.79%
• MacOS 10.7.5 64 bit - 0.74%
• MacOS 10.6.8 64 bit - 0.61%

[J T]

Drivers are a trickier beast. Is her laptop screen touch-capable, or is it just a standard laptop? If it's a standard laptop there shouldn't be much risk in putting Windows 7 on it.

It's a standard laptop, no touch-screen.

I really don't understand what MS was trying to do with this new UI. I'm sure it's fine if you have a touch screen/mobile device, but it sucks if you want to use mouse and keyboard because it's popping out of the desktop all of the time, and trying to do things like close a window from the upper right corner brings up a pop-up panel on the sidebar, and then interferes with what you were trying to do. It seems like there has to be a better way to design that. Windows 7 is fine though, so I think I'll research a little bit more and revert upgrade her computer.

[Cronozilla]

I imagine it's the same thing they did with Xbox. It was their attempt to get people to play games on their device away from the computer ... I imagine they want people to stop using the desktop entirely.

They have much more control over a closed device (like Surface). It's probably one of their end goals when going down this path.