>>>>Mel and Rick,
>>>>
>>>>I guess so but what surprised me is that when I initially installed Win8 it just worked,
>>>>picked everything up. Then back to Win7 nothing worked. And then back to Win8
>>>>it once again picked it all up. I must assume then that Win8 has the drivers (or native
>>>>compatibable) drivers built in?
>>>
>>>
>>>The manufacturers have to tell Windows about their new driver requirements. Often times on newer hardware the old drivers work just fine, but there is some proprietary circuitry added up front which prevents it from working until it receives the proper proprietary "wakeup call" which can be as simple as a particular value written to a particular data port. Once it receives that wakeup call, then the old driver, re-branded as the new driver (the one which sends the wakeup call and then works like the old one did) will function.
>>>
>>>It's sad.
>>>
>>>It's pathetic actually what the hardware manufacturers are doing to all of us consumers in the search of monetary profits. We should have completely universal drivers by now, standard APIs across the board, with some extensions which make a particular brand more desirable thereby competing on merits alone. There should be well developed, well tested protocols, resulting in multiple brands of powerful custom-built operating system alternatives made possible by this generic hardware specification that's out in the open.
>>>
>>>There are some VERY clever people out there. They are thwarted by this kind of closed, proprietary mindset.
>>>
>>>It's why I keep teaching it: proprietary models only harm people. Sharing, on the other hand, always grows everybody up together, allowing the contributions given to the various men and women by God (through their special and unique talents, abilities, history, education, experience, etc.), to then be received and used as a new baseline by the people in general.
>>>
>>>Any new Microsoft products are to be completely avoided in my opinion.
>>
>>OK, understood re the drivers. A bit of a pain now iro moving back to Win7. Guess I shall need to download all drivers before trying to revert back again.
>>
>>iro Win8 - I dont mind Win8 iro the interface anymore - I think it's OK. The way it works is OK. I dont like typing to find a program so I just create desktop shortcuts or tiles for what I need often. What I really dont like is that 3 popular 3rd party firewall systems that I have tried seem to not work well with Win8 - I lose connectivity after a while. Plus, Win8 tries to connect to about 20+ IP addresses (some are in the same root however) for reasons simply unknown to me. For example, I notice that (more often than not) if I switch from desktop to the metro tile interface and then back to the desktop Win8 wants to make an outbound connection to some IP address. Why (rhetorical)?
>
>I'm just guessing here, but I can imagine that the reason for this problem you're having is that Windows 8 tries to link your Microsoft account with all different social networks and services. Windows 8 does a lot behind the scenes to create a flawless connected experience for the "normal" home user. I was amazed that once I connected to the Windows 8 machine using the Microsoft account, I got all my settings that are stored with my Microsoft id. Facebook and Twitter was instantly connected, and the images on skydrive were synchronized and even the Documents from my work laptop were connected (which also works through skydrive somehow). To make all these things happen the OS has to do a lot of traffic, but it does so without telling you anything about the ports and IP's its using. I wonder if you can prevent this if you only create a "Local" account on the Windows 8 machine and not use the Microsoft account to log in.

That makes sense. This time I reinstalled and did not provide my hotmail account and instead choose the local account option. I will now see what difference this makes.

I must say, I am wary of the type of intergration you mention above. I dont want all these things being intergrated and recorded without my explicit request. In any case, I dont have all those social media accounts anyway so they are wasted on me. I dont use skydrive or all those other features either. Guess I'm a luddite :)