Windows 8, is it really ready?

There has been much said about the new Windows 8 operating system. With Microsoft offering an early upgrade offer, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Using Windows 7 for two years, I have got everything working just fine, so thought, lets do a compatibility check first to see if there would be any problems. Everything seem ok, so I downloaded and installed. A perfect upgrade.

It took a while to get used to how the system worked, but I found I always went to the desktop module to do all my work. Loved the weather App. All programs are now called Apps, a point to remember.

I had a problem with a program, and found access was locked, then found my Norton 360 could not shut down and my email program Thunderbird was frozen. Thank goodness I had made a full backup first with a system image, which means a full copy of the C drive.

I shut down two or three times the pc, but the programs would not respond. OK then do a refresh, this is where things started to go wrong. The refresh removes all non Microsoft Apps, remember programs = Apps, so doing the re-fresh solved the problem, but removed all of my programs.

Microsoft need to look at this area because programs like Thunderbird store access data in the program, so I lost all of my emails. OK, lets do a back-up re-install.

Unfortunately the back-up would not load. Posting to the Microsoft Community did not produce a single reply. In the end I contact Microsoft support and got onto the Chat line, this is covered by their 90 day support. After 5 hours of remote access by Microsoft they could not come up with a solution. The back-up had the system image but it would not install. Shame that Symantec Norton still did not have a Windows 8 version of Ghost ready yet.

On the third day I decided to re-install Windows 7 and then use a Norton Ghost copy I had from two weeks earlier. Everything is back apart from some missing emails and some passwords added to my memory folder.

A phone call to Microsoft, and the refund was underway. I signed the Letter of Destruction" online. All very professional, pity about my Windows 8 installation.