Both are well designed OSs. But for someone who has used windows all their lives, going to OS X can be a deal breaker.
I intend to install Windows 8 on one of laptops this week, and quite probably will buy it. $40 to upgrade from XP SP3, Vista or Windows 7 is a deal too good to miss in my opinion. I've been keeping an eye on the driver download pages for my ThinkPads at the Lenovo website. Lenovo has just started releasing Win 8 drivers and their own utilities as well for older model ThinkPads - e.g. my T61 which was released 5 1/2 years ago. I wish other manufacturers would do the same instead of stopping providing updates about 6 months after a computer is released.
That's why I buy Lenovo. They provide great support for the products and are usually very well built.
Yes! Err, sort of. Actually I'm running the 180-day trial version of Server 2012 in a VM. Do I like it? Yes I do. The launcher works much like those in Gnome 3 or Unity, but there is a big difference, namely that it is responsive enough to actually be usable. Hit Win key and start typing -> stuff pops right up. Do the same in Ubuntu -> lag lag lag. It also gets points from me for keeping stuff flat and 2D. Utilitarianism is really, really nice after the eyecandyfests that most Linux distros have turned into. OTOH I think it goes a little far in the opposite direction - in terms of appearance, Windows Server 2012 is probably the flat-out ugliest OS I have ever used. I mean it, it looks absolutely hideous, and the very stylized icons don't really help. (Actually what it reminds me of is the garish fictional computer interface from Star Trek: TNG. It's obviously more functional than that, but it is a bit hard on the eyes; and somehow I can't help but feel that MS was aiming for "futuristic," and overshot the mark a bit.) Anyway whether I actually buy it as opposed to disposing of the trial after 6 months depends on a few things, like - Cost of the full (non-upgrade) version - Flexibility of licensing - Availability of halfway decent security software - Whether switching from Linux is even worth it Still, not bad, not bad at all!
Running it now and for the most part happy with it. It still takes some getting used to. I do not recommend it as an upgrade over the top of 7. Every time I have done that it has ended up corrupt and I had to reinstall. The clean installations are holding up fine.
I have been running Windows 8 preview for months in Parallels VM on OS X. When the preview time runs out I don't plan on installing or upgrading to an official version of Windows 8. There are some things I like about the Metro style interface but more things that I don't like about it. I like the idea of live tiles but they take up way too much space on the desktop compared to icons. Why not just use icons that are customizable as live tiles which is similar to what the Android OS customizations use? I don't like the privacy issues with MS's Cloud integration. Why have a desktop PC and personal secure network at all if most of your data is going to be stored on someone else's hardware somewhere else on the internet? A "personal computer" desktop is not a phone or tablet that you carry around. PC's were viewed thirty years ago as a better computer technology for personal privacy to maintain a personally accessible secure environment. For whatever reason some people think going back to the pre-PC computing days of using a workstation to access data on a centrally networked storage system that you don't have personal control over is new idea or a step forward in the advancement of computer technology and data security. I will predict right now that this trend will reverse within ten years back to more people using their own personal data storage system on personally owned and controlled hardware when the disadvantages and privacy issues with these large scale centralized cloud systems become more apparent. I really don't like how MS forces Windows 8 to boot into the Metro style interface. Accessing traditional settings and features is unintuitive. Once I learned some of the tricks to using the mouse it became easier but the more I worked with it the more I disliked it. It feels clunky and inefficient for the desktop. After months of trying it I still found myself frustrated to find features that used to be one or two clicks away in previous Windows OS's. It just isn't user friendly for desktop users who mostly want to use a mouse and keyboard. When the trial is over I will remove Windows 8 preview from my Parallels VM. I recently purchased a few copies of Windows 7 Pro OEM. I still use mostly Windows XP Pro SP3 on my main machine and in Parallels VM. One copy of Windows 7 Pro will go on my Mac Mini on a boot camp partition accessible by Parallels VM in OS X Mountain Lion. The other copy of Windows 7 is saved for future use on my next PC build. The Mac Mini is a way of hedging my bets to still maintain a traditionally supported mainstream OS. I am taking a very serious look at Linux as my future main desktop PC OS and will most likely run Windows 7 in a VM or with Linux in dual boot mode. In summary I am skipping Windows 8 and I will be waiting to see what Windows 9 has to offer which will probably be released sooner than later as was XP after ME and 7 after Vista. OS X, Linux, Windows XP and Windows 7 Pro should hold me over until 2020 when MS officially ends support for Windows 7. At that time I will have a better idea of what MS decides to do with future desktop releases of Windows.
bought a license for windows 8 pro, but i havent installed yet. i just decided to buy during the offer period and look around a little to see if anybody has had any issues or conflicts and wait for updates or fixes to my existing software or they solved them before taking the plunge and installing.
So I decided to try out the alleged USB3 native compatibility in windows 8 and discovered that apparently this does not cover installing from a USB3 flash drive. I got this working on windows 7 so I assume it should work on 8 as well. The next thing to piss me off was the key. Why is it so damn small and why is it not on a white/light colored background? I do not need glasses and I had trouble with it, I cant even imagine trying to enter the key if I had vision problems.
I'm going to have to change my mind about Windows 8, I think. After trying the Server 2012 trial, I discovered that there's a Windows 8 Enterprise trial as well. I installed that on my netbook, and was rather disappointed. Why? Mostly the Metro desktop. It is bright, ugly, astonishingly unintuitive, and extremely intrusive. I hate its silly phone-style layout. I hate how everything is flatter than Kansas and brighter than the Sun. And I hate the way that the designers are clearly targeting stupid fanboys who love shiny things, while at the same time making Metro an obnoxious challenge to use - even for people who know their way around the Windows desktop. Also: - Thank you so much Microsoft for clogging the Start page with useless links to websites, in the form of giant gaudy squares that take up half the screen. Yay cloud integration stupidity! - It's much slower than Windows 7. Application launch times are longer, menus lag, window resizing lags, smooth scrolling lags. Even with all the eyecandy turned off, it's not a smooth experience at all. I don't understand what MS is playing at. Edit: more problems! - How do I power off, reboot, or suspend without logging off? Sure I could look it up, but that's not the point; stuff like this should be obvious within the first minute or so of use. - I can't start IE from the Start page (Metro-ized IE?) because my 1024x600 screen resolution is "too small." Right. - Boot takes twice as long as on Win7. Likewise for login, and I haven't even installed any security stuff yet. - I thought the interface was slow before, but it *really* bogs down when installing updates; CPU usage goes way up, and typing starts to lag. This OS is, to my mind, less reminiscent of Windows 7 than of MeeGo. It is really not ready for market yet IMO.
For shutdown I mostly use the ALT+F4 key combination. I have programmed it to my mouse buttons so that a mouse click (9 button mouse) shuts it off. Boots are slower, regardless of the claims I have seen otherwise. The bogging down you are seeing is likely the built in Windows Defender (or whatever they are calling it now). I found it was chewing away at my hard drive for over and hour while keeping the CPU at 20%. It actually runs faster with a security suite installed instead.
i found Windows 8 to be generally a little faster and feels a little snappier than W7. on my 5 years old machine anyway. i did not think i would ever say this but i think i'm starting to enjoy Metro. one thing to watch out for, if your video card is about 5 years old you might need to replace it to get the same gaming performance one had under W7. my old NVIDIA 7300 GT got a score of 3.8 under W7 (Experience Index) but 3.3 in W8 for the gaming performance.. so that's something to keep in mind.
Been running it for about 2 weeks now and I did a clean install. I installed startisback to get my start button back and made it more easier to use. Unlike some posted, my boot time are a tad faster than w7 and have experienced no freezes or slow downs. I don't play games so cannot comment on that. All in all I like it!
I will be upgrading with a clean install next week once i have ironed out a few incompatible softwares.
You will get lower scores under Windows 8 by design: http://garvis.ca/2012/08/21/windows-8-experience-index-what-it-means-and-how-to-check-it/ Also, the video performance may improve with driver updates, as the video drivers become better optimized for Windows 8.
I can understand you repacing the video card because of its age. However, there should be no need to replace a video card to get the same to get the same video performance. As better video drivers are relased, my understanding is that video performance should be better under Windows 8 compared to Windows 7 when using the same video card.
i tried a few different drivers while trying out Win 8 during the last year. none of them improved the situation and i was not willing to wait. like i said, the same video card got an inferior score on the Windows Experience Index in W8 compared to W7. according to the WEI, my video card was the weakest link in the whole chain. so well due for an upgrade anyway. maybe next year, i'll upgrade this whole computosaur to a 64 bits.
Everything gets a lower score in Windows 8 - it's how WEI works in Windows 8 - just have a look at the link I posted earlier. The fact that it got a lower WEI score under Windows 8 is completely meaningless. If you want to compare video performance under both versions of Windows you will need to run benchmarking software. The following benchmark tests show minor improvements in video performance under Windows 8: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-8-benchmark-performance,3317-4.html
I'm still loving my WIN7. If I decided to upgrade to WIN8, I would wait at least 6 months for them to work the bugs out and all the apps to catch up and make 8 compatible, and work all their bugs out.
Tested on high-endish laptop about two weeks. Didn't feel any speed increase compared to windows 7, except hybrid hibernate thing which i don't care. They categorized the windows search as win+w, win+f ... win+f doesn't give you results instantly, need to hit enter and shows little part of file name. You can't do right click jobs on these results, and there is no way to drag them to somewhere else etc... Maybe Only advantage it has for file and folder search is that you may hit enter twice and open what you search for without touching mouse. But these conditions are rare because you most probably will use mouse after launching whatever you search for. So it is not actually much practical, something like illusion. Win 8 is in something like limbo. For example, if you are not used to use win 7 as hit win key and search, win 8 will be more productive to you if you won't use classic shell etc... If you are already using win 7 like this way, always hitting win key for everything etc..., win 8 will not be productive to you. I went back to windows 7.
XP here with no intention to change as I have 11 partitions running XP and they all work great. I also have two external backup drives that work seamlessly with XP. No present reason to risk my set up.
