Windows 8 is a terrible tablet OS

Regular readers of Pieces o' Eight may remember my critique of Windows 8 as a desktop operating system last year. I still stand by those criticisms, however even at the time I had thought that the OS might fare better in a tablet environment.

It turns out I was utterly, staggeringly, badly wrong.

Activating Windows 8 Upgrade After a Clean Install

If you bought an upgrade edition of Windows 8 Pro you might, like most sensible people, prefer to do a clean install rather than doing the upgrade. Sounds straight forwards, right? Wrong!

Although the installation appears to work ok, when you try to activate your copy of Windows 8 it will flat-out refuse to acknowledge your legitimate Windows product key. I have no idea why Microsoft have put this block in, other than to cause headaches for legitimate customers.

Happily, there is a work around - posted by someone going by the handle BinaryInk on the Windows forum  and re-posted here for posterity:

1. Run the registry editor (regedit) 

2. Find the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\OOBE 

3. Change the value for 'MediaBootInstall' from 1 to 0 

4. Open an elevated command prompt (run as admin) 

5. Run the following command: slmgr -rearm 

6. Reboot

If you already entered your key, check the activation: for me it was already activated and I needed to do nothing more. If not, type in activate windows and type in the key; it should work. Also, do yourself a favor and export this key from regedit and save it somewhere if you ever are required to do another clean install. I know I did.

Windows 8 - The enemy of creativity

Microsoft recently released a Preview (or beta) version of its upcoming operating system, Windows 8. I don't normally bother with beta versions of code, but I was intrigued enough by all the talk of the new Metro interface to download the preview and give it a test run. What follows is my experience of the OS in its beta form and why I believe Windows 8 is the enemy of creativity.