Windows 8

At my work we have to record alterations markings for clothing and match that up against the individuals that own the clothing.  We have large numbers to track and we used to do it serious old school with matrix style paper that had three carbon copies (yes I actually said carbon copies). If you are under 30 you probably have no idea what I am talking about. While they were actually carbon-less paper the concept is still there. One copy went here, one copy went there, and one more copy usually got lost or was very hard to find. And God forbid if you actually wrote on another piece of paper that was on top of these forms, EVERYTHING transferred.

So we finally moved into the 21st century and converted everything into a SQL database that used the tablets as the interface.  We used these for about six months but with the large amount of data the tablets were not powerful enough to use them. So now we are using laptops that convert into tablets and I was able to purchase one of these tablets at a reasonable price.  The tablet has a docking keyboard that enables it to be used like a laptop. 

It originally came with Win 7, and when using the keyboard and mouse it's just fine, but trying to use it as a tablet is difficult. Not to mention there are no apps for the Win 7 OS.  So I decided to upgrade to Win 8 and at only $40 it was a no brainer. However actually doing it was quite the adventure.

Downloading Win 8 and burning a bac- up DVD was easy but the actual install...not so much.  First off the HDD on the tablet is only 32GB so that only left me with about 14GB available.  I start the install and after about 5 min it tells me that Win 8 needs 16GB available, ARE YOU KIDDING ME? OK fine, I will go in and remove some programs.  I only got it up to 15.2GB and that was it.  OK fine, since I have nothing important installed I will just format or erase the HDD and then install Win 8.  Guess what? I  couldn't boot to DOS to format the drive. OK fine, I will just run a program to wipe the drive. I tried Boot and Nuke and KillDisk and damned it the wouldn't work, I kept getting errors. OK fine, it has been almost 4 hours now since I began the download of Win 8 and now I am getting really frustrated.  Then I decide to try the install from the backup disk hoping that I can format the drive. I am finally able to boot from the external disk drive (getting to the BIOS is not easy either) and then I click on the typical ((recommended) as they say) and after 10 min I get the error "another operating system is detected, if you continue with the install you will lose all your information. Install some other freaking way" (That last sentence I added). ARE YOU KIDDING ME? OK fine, I will now use the custom install (for advanced users), which I think I am one. And guess what I find? The format button, and all was good in Brett's world.

So finally I was able to get Win 8 installed!!! I really like it and it works great on the tablet. It runs lighter than Win 7 and the boot time is incredible.

• With Win 7 it took 1 minute and 10 seconds to boot
• With win 8 it takes 16 seconds

Here are the pics: