Personal Talk: Windows 8.1, WP8 & Opera 15

I know lots of things regarding housekeeping of personal computers and laptops and my friends often ask me to solve their problems with Windows. I still run Windows XP on my 7-year old desktop and my lappy runs on Windows 7 (I skipped Win Vista completely); sometimes I install Ubuntu on the laptop and often it is removed soon after specially due to its poor multimedia support comes by default.

However for last 1 month I found that a lot of people (mostly of my college friends and medical professionals) are buying laptops with Windows 8 and the real problem starts here. These guys do believe in brands and to them Sony and Dell are the choice of laptops while they never heard of Asus, Acer or Lenovo. Don't call me faggot as I spend time with these tech-retards!


First thing first out of those people who used desktop or have a little computer experience start hating Win8 due to no Start menu. At the same time guys with zero computer exposure don't care about Win8 Start menu. One of my seniors did not like Start Menu when I installed it on his Sony Vaio laptop. WTF !!!!

But the main problem is I can not help them out on Win8. It's a giant leap taken by Microsoft and the asshole soft-giant did not think about its existing Windows users and push touch UI on the OS. Win8 is a hell for desktop or laptop users. You need transformation applications to use Win8 smoothly.

Over the globe people are shouting against the bad changes of Win8 and Microsoft told yep we are listening. But actually they did not, we asked for rabbit and they have brought carrot with Win8.1. I am not sure whether I am gonna buy (or use) Win8+ versions on computers. But on the smartphone options I think Win8 has the opportunity but it's biggest problem is it's not FREE and not many OEMs are endorsing it. Nokia, the fallen king is the sole company behind Windows Phone 8 and I doubt how much it can do with hardwares and camera surprises with Windows Phone 8 platform. In the developing countries in Latin America Mozilla Foundation is pushing Firefox OS as an alternative, affordable smartphone OS which can beat Android and other smartphone OS due to its low price factor.

On the software arena there is another BiG change. Not for everyone, but for me. Opera abandons Presto engine and starts using Google's Chromium engine's forked out version Blink. Though the UI remains almost same, Opera 15 is a biggest turn-down for me. No mail (= no feeds), issues with bookmarking and lots of features are removed from the original Opera. Somehow I foresaw this move as Opera launched Webkit powered Android app - Opera browser for Android.

Opera had serious bugs with 12.10 and some next versions and my Opera@USB still stuck at 12.02; which I use regularly. My plan is to upgrade to stable 12.15 and then no update as Opera will use Blink engine. That migration may cause a disaster to me.