Windows 7 or 8?

[techboy]

I borrowed a friend's extra hardware and put 8 on it for a month. Never managed to get used to the UI; if anything, I kept getting annoyed. It just felt awkward and useless on a PC. The only thing that tops the uselessness of Metro on a PC is Metro in Server 2012 (a tablet UI on a server? Really MS?).

Also, in place of Classic Shell, I'd recommend Ex7ForW8 instead, which actually installs the REAL Win7 Explorer. You get the official start menu and other stuff from 7 except Aero. You can keep the ribbon UI in explorer as well if you like it.

Speed-wise, I noticed little difference beyond boot time on an AMD triple-core with 8GB RAM, and that was moot since I never turn my PCs off.

Also, skip UEFI if you decide to use 8. I found several backup and system utilities that didn't work right due to UEFI, but were happy on 8 without it. My test PC didn't power itself off when shut down either.

I can't speak for game compatibility (I don't game on PC except for minecraft), but in terms of non-game software, Win8 leaves something to be desired. I have 6 programs that won't run on 8, mind you all of them are development software. Also couldn't find drivers for a Belkin WiFi adapter I had which worked in 7, and my printer's built-in scanner didn't work.

My opinion: I've never had any of the problems I had with 8 on 7, even when 7 was brand new. Stick with 7 for now, upgrade later if you want.

Yes there's improvements in 8, but a lot of stuff doesn't work right. I'd wait it out for SP1 and for everything you need to be updated before jumping ship. On the other hand, if you can find drivers, are willing to tolerate the pathetic UI (or install a replacement) and your software runs, use 8.

 

[YayMii]

/snip

I can't speak for game compatibility (I don't game on PC except for minecraft), but in terms of non-game software, Win8 leaves something to be desired. I have 6 programs that won't run on 8, mind you all of them are development software. Also couldn't find drivers for a Belkin WiFi adapter I had which worked in 7, and my printer's built-in scanner didn't work.

My opinion: I've never had any of the problems I had with 8 on 7, even when 7 was brand new. Stick with 7 for now, upgrade later if you want.

Yes there's improvements in 8, but a lot of stuff doesn't work right. I'd wait it out for SP1 and for everything you need to be updated before jumping ship. On the other hand, if you can find drivers, are willing to tolerate the pathetic UI (or install a replacement) and your software runs, use 8.

Windows 7 drivers should work completely fine on Windows 8, if you haven't tried already.

 

[techboy]

Windows 7 drivers should work completely fine on Windows 8, if you haven't tried already.

Supposed to, but the wireless driver didn't...I was using the 7 package since there aren't 8 drivers for it. The adapter is unsupported now too, so I ended up using another adapter for the testing.

The scanner worked but would then stop doing so after 1 or 2 uses until I rebooted. Latest driver for win7.

Can't test anymore now, I borrowed the hardware i had it installed on to test with. Even if i had managed to get everything to work, I wouldn't keep 8. The few benefits I liked such as boot time, ribbon explorer, and new task manager didn't make up for the new UI (which I hate with a passion) and the need to run extra software to remove it.

 

[Lacius]

Supposed to, but the wireless driver didn't...I was using the 7 package since there aren't 8 drivers for it. The adapter is unsupported now too, so I ended up using another adapter for the testing.

The scanner worked but would then stop doing so after 1 or 2 uses until I rebooted. Latest driver for win7.

Windows 7 drivers will almost definitely work on Windows 8. Some driver installers don't work right with Windows 8, even if you try to run them in compatibility mode, so you might have to extract the drivers and use the Have Disk method of installation.

 

[WiiUBricker]

If you can get Win 8 for 15€ like myself, get it!
The metro ui isn't that bad, but you can disable it. As others said, Win 8 + Classic Shell = win!

 

[techboy]

Windows 7 drivers will almost definitely work on Windows 8. Some driver installers don't work right with Windows 8, even if you try to run them in compatibility mode, so you might have to extract the drivers and use the Have Disk method of installation.

That's how I installed them.

For the wireless, I unpacked the setup with universal extractor (was an Installshield setup). The driver was inside as one would expect, and was installed using Have Disk. It found the device but would fail while installing it ("The parameter is incorrect"). I copied the exact same extracted driver files to a Win7 box and installed the adapter fine through Have Disk...either 8 didn't like the driver, or the driver didn't like 8.

As for the scanner, the drivers were actually included in the download unpacked. They did install through Have Disk correctly and the scanner worked as it did on 7, but just wouldn't stay working. It would just quit, and any attempt by any program to scan would sit there saying "Scanning" indefinitely; the scanner didn't do anything. When I restarted the PC, it'd work again for a few scans before it quit.

 

[Yepi69]

I'd get Windows 7 Ultimate in Dual Boot with Windows XP.

Windows 8 is still in ''beta'', it took a while for Microsoft to fix compatibility with Windows 7.

 

[Rydian]

I'd get Windows 7 Ultimate in Dual Boot with Windows XP.

Windows 8 is still in ''beta'', it took a while for Microsoft to fix compatibility with Windows 7.

Why ultimate?

And 8's not in beta, it's NT 6.2 and a full release. In the vast majority of cases microsoft doesn't fix compatibility with third-party programs. The programs themselves need to update.

 

[jumpman1229]

To be honest, I don't think I will be upgrading to Windows 8 at all. I currently have Windows 7, Ubuntu 12.10 installed on my laptop as well as my MacBook Pro with Mountain Lion. As far as gaming goes, Windows 7 would be the better option for now if you are thinking of using any game controllers or other peripherals. The drivers for Windows 7 have worked flawlessly for me and I think since Windows 8 just came out, that there might me be a few peripherals that might be unusable due to unavailable drivers. There's also known hardware issues, depending on your machine. Plus, Windows 8 is just hideous. Just my two cents...

 

[Centrix]

Windows 8 is a great OS and is a much more solid OS. It beats 7 in just every benchmark test. I'm running it on my Dell XPS 730x gaming PC and I can tell you games like Tomb Raider and Sim City Run far smoother and better on 8 than 7

 

[Ubuntuの刀]

Because I skipped over what everyone just said to say this.... Use Windows 7 until the things with Windows 8 are fixed(i.e. Graphics issues, fullscreen on certain games don't work on win8, etc).

 

[nukeboy95]

i did not like win8 gui
id use win7

 

[smf]

However if you do decided to go with Windows 8 you WILL need a touchscreen monitor as Metro is not very usable without multitouch.

You don't need a touchscreen monitor. I'm running Windows 8 on a laptop that came with Vista. It's very usable.

Also, keep in mind that keyboards and mice are depreciated in Windows 8 so you will want to get used to playing all your games with either touch or a controller as well as get used to doing large documents with either a touchscreen keyboard or your voice.

On screen keyboards produce key presses like real keyboards, it wouldn't make sense to deliberately change how they work. As long as you can plug a keyboard in then Windows will support it.

In desktop applications a touchscreen and mice behave pretty much the same, because most desktop applications don't support multi-touch. Even Windows-RT supports desktop applications, mainly for Office. So even in Windows 8 timeframe it's not going to go away.

Or you can use ugly hacks like Start8/Classic Start Menu which will be deliberately broken in the next major update (as they rely on bugs to work according to MS).

I'm not sure how that is related to your previous point, but fortunately I haven't missed the start menu so haven't bothered with any replacement. I don't use metro part from clicking on the desktop icon and I guess I must be more tolerant than most as that doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Windows 8 has many improvements for old hardware, for example task manager is better. The majority of problems you get with software/driver compatibility are caused by switching from a 32 bit to a 64 bit operating system. You can get 32 bit windows 8 and it still supports running msdos & 16 bit windows applications.

I ran the betas and previews, by the time RTM came along there were drivers for everything in my laptop. Sometimes I've had to get pre-release drivers from places like http://www.station-drivers.com/, google can be useful too.