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Worth upgrading to Windows 8?
Trollheart
Posts: 5,093 Forum Member
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Thought there'd be a thread about this but search turns up nothing so...
I'm getting a new PC soon. I don't game but I do use the web extensively. Is there any dealbreaking reason why I should go for Win 8 or should I be fine remaining with 7? I'm loath to start learning a whole new way of doing things, and the interface seems horrible from what I've seen. Any advice as to how I should go?
Thanks
TH
I'm getting a new PC soon. I don't game but I do use the web extensively. Is there any dealbreaking reason why I should go for Win 8 or should I be fine remaining with 7? I'm loath to start learning a whole new way of doing things, and the interface seems horrible from what I've seen. Any advice as to how I should go?
Thanks
TH
0
Comments
The consensus seems to be:
Buy a PC with Windows 8
Try it and see how you get on
If you really hate it you can put on a utiltlity which makes it look almost exactly the same as Windows 7
Windows 10 is on the way...
I've played with W8.1 at a friend's house. Didn't like it.
I'm currently playing with W10 Preview and I like it too. (bit buggy just now)
W10 is a free upgrade from W7/8.x if done in the next 11 months'ish.
So I'd say buy the computer you want, not the operating system, and upgrade later in the year.
If it's a shop-bought thing not tied to a PC, yes. If it's an OEM-supplied disk, no. It sounds like the former, given the serial is with the disk (OEM has the serial on a sticker on the PC).
Can you buy a PC without an OS? In any case, if it's a UEFI bios PC, you'll need to take note of all the caveats re: putting Win7 on such a machine, and things such as secure boot, and GPT. I posted a sort of summary about that if you look back.
If this is your first virgin installation of Windows (not counting OEMs restore disks, which have all the drivers included), then it is not an ideal place to start. You'll need to be comfortable with the issues I mentioned above, and be familiar with finding, downloading and installing drivers. When you first put Windows on, you may well be confronted with a PC with no network ability, for instance!
I believe the forum search function is borked.
HERE is the thread I started about my experiences with W8 a year ago.
I bought W8 Pro, installed Classic Shell, my PC updated to W8.1 but I'm still using Classic Shell just cos I've never bothered removing it.
Despite thinking I'd give it a try, I've never bothered with the Metro side of W8 at all, aside from having a play around with downloading app's from the MS store.
Beyond that, after a year of use, I'd say that W8 is better than W7 in pretty-much every way that it's different - not that it's noticeably different in many ways at all.
Speaking as somebody who tends to hook up quite a bit of archaic stuff to my PC, and needs to install suitable drivers, the one thing I would say is that the W8 "compatibility mode" is much more useful than it ever was in W7, where it never seemed to make much difference to whether software and drivers would actually work or not.
In W8 it really does seem to work much better.
Course, it's not really something that a lot of people will ever have a lot of use for.
I think its a free upgrade for 12 months after it is officially released - no official date on that yet AFAIK except 'later in the year'.
I agree with the above. Windows 8.1 is far better than Windows7 and getting a PC without a OS could cost more, unless you really want to use another Os like Linux, then best not to go that way.
As for windows 10. YUK
Yes. I went checking to see if I could find any words about XP and Vista users having to pay, last night, and spotted it will be 12 months for W7/8 from official Date of release.
So plenty of time.
There is a difference, in that windows 8.1 have a start screen instead of a start menu, also side menus for accessing settings, mainly.
Modern Apps, which you can get form the store, you may find them useful, I find them dumbed down and naff, never use them.
If you do not want to see the start scree, you can install something like classic shell, that will make your computer act like windows 7, but still keep the advantages of windows which is a faster leaner OS.
So you have used the final finished product before the rest of the world and base your opinion on that?
Based it on the mess it is at the moment and the fact that two of the most important bit of software I use will not run on it.
i doubt that will be fixed. Vista all over again maybe.
I'm back in the UK now and talking to my son he's very happy with it ( w10) and he installed it on my Vaio so I'll get to grips with 10 shortly.
No good if software do not work with it. i thought it was just me, but a couple of other people i know is having problems running some software.
Also the interface to the windows on the desktop has gone ribbon-style (for no reason other than to match Office, presumably). That was irritating.
It's a trial - works until April 15 2015. I have it running in VMware.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/preview-iso
Not yet, out in October/November? I'd go for Windows 8.1 atm, it will run better on the same HW than W7 would. But you get free upgrade to W10 with both W7 and W8.1 if you want it, so it's really up to you how you spend your time till then.
Early days yet, wait and see if Sony update Vegas drivers for W10; all your doing now is speculating without real foundation.
Took a bit of getting used to.
the problem is most software still got menus, so it is the going back and forwards.
I have got it working now, i have no idea why it works now and not before, but it does and paintshop pro.
got some problem with my wi-fi adaptor, now and again it just disconnects and I still got the strange problem with the USBs that I had in 8 until I got rid of the AMD usb filter driver. the USBs just disconnect and I can't do anything for about 2-3 mins and then they reconnect.
How could it cost more? Unless you mean in the long run. Anyone buying a PC and clicking "no OS" will surely have that cost deducted from the price, thus making it cheaper?
Also, I have problems with this ribbon thing. I'm familiar with Windows 7's layout and I really don't think I want to change it. Is it worth it in terms of a payoff? Stability, speed, multi-tasking, memory etc? Am I making a mistake if I stick with 7?
Took no getting used to any of the interface in W10.
Got the hang of the Office ribbon in virtually no time, really don't understand why people complain other than they just don't like change.
I've experienced some minor irritations with W10 - CPU temp is a little higher than it was on 7, and it seems to like spinning up the external drives for no obvious reason, and applications like Chrome and Firefox start a little slower. But then it isn't the production release.
It was also rather pleasant to find that WMP is back to using space as the pause control. Maybe that is in W8.1, but I don't use that for video. The "modern" video player application however is atrocious.
Windows 8 is faster than 7. End of. It also will have better driver support than 7 as time goes on. Windows 7 is also nearer to the end of support, so eventually it will be like XP and not get updates.
What people don't like about 8 is the user interface, and as we have said above, that is easily fixed. However, I would urge you not to get stuck in the past, and at least try the new interface.
Yes, but you've got to factor in whether the "end of support" will start to matter given the lifetime of the PC. Nobody is keeping these things 10 years. He's unlikely to find he's getting himself into problems in going forward with Windows 7. The corporate sector is on it on almost all devices which are 1) Windows and 2) non-touchscreen, so being stuck for drivers etc. and software compatibility is unlikely to happen.