Windows 8.1 finally takes off -- shows staggering market share growth

Yeah, that's what it is.. a coincidence.....

 

It's bizarre lol.

 

I think you were unlucky, or were running Vista without service packs 1 and 2 installed. As an example, I purchased an old Sony Vaio laptop off eBay last year. It was a few years old, but was a top of the range model when it was released, and came with Vista. When restored to the factory install of Vista it ran quite fast initially, but within about a week or so, during which time I'd only installed a minimal amount of 3rd party software, and one of the lightest antiviruses there is (Roboscan) it started to get slow. Boot times became long and it had a tendency to freeze if I was to launch a program (e.g. Internet Explorer) before giving Vista a few minutes to settle down after loading. Once I installed SP1 and SP2, it ran nice and fast again.

A couple of issues with Vista which come to mind are the following. Sometimes Windows Update takes a very long to search for new updates. Native hardware support is much better in Windows 7 than Vista. As an example, a few years back I plugged two different model Canon printers into a laptop running Vista, and then a laptop running Windows 7. Neither laptop has the printer drivers installed. Windows 7 quickly automatically downloaded and installed the drivers for both printers. Vista took much longer to find and installed the drivers, and actually only found the driver for one of the two printers.

But, in general use, I don't see much in the way performance gains when using Windows 7 vs Vista.

 

I'm pretty sure that you are genuinely reporting an unfortunate experience with Vista determined by several factors which have concomitantly created an adverse impression of it, however it is rather unfortunate that your brother didn't advise you about adding more RAM to your notebook, arguably one of the most common causes associated with Vista's sluggishness...

 

Without going into detail, I purchased a desktop pc which came with Vista sometime around 2008 I guess. I ran it thru sp2 for a few years and thought it was ok. But in late 2009, I purchased Win 7 the day it came out, installed it, and it was like night and day as far as how long it took the OS to do things (installs, drivers, everything). 7 was just so much better overall. IMO, 7 is the best OS they've ever put out (aside from Win2k which was my favorite for years). My experience with Vista was not too good, when compared with the 7 that I installed later on the same machine.

As usual, everyone's mileage may vary...

 

For me, Windows 8 was a bust. And when i tried to upgrade to 8.1, it would bsod constantly. This happend to me twice. So i downgraded all of my laptops to Windows 7. Not sure what to think of Windows 10 yet..

 

Yes I still have problems when I try to upgrade to Win 8.1 from Win 8 due to drivers associated with my display adapters and other things, but certainly no blue screens ever. As a matter of fact Win 8 is the very best OS in my experience, in terms of speed, stability, conflicts, I'm sure Win 10 will probably be very popular, and hopefully put to rest the ongoing saga about the metro UI.

 

Osaban,

Have you tried uninstalling your video card drivers and just using the native Win8 drivers. Then upgrade to Win811. Then try installing video card drivers again.

I have one Win811 test partition with no nVidia drivers as they conflict with DVDFab. DVDFab runs fine after the video drivers are uninstalled.

I think Win8 is the best OS I've used too. Win10 looks like being even better and I prefer Metro to the Start menu. In Win10 you have a choice of Metro, Start menu or a combination.

 

Thanks Brian,
My problem is that I have switchable graphics on my notebook and it doesn’t work even when updating the drivers once in a Win 8.1 environment, battery operating time is significantly reduced, display brightness control doesn’t work, a real mess which hasn’t been addressed by Samsung or MS. This was my experience last time (4-5 months ago) when I tried to upgrade. I’ll probably give it another try soon or take it to Samsung directly and ask them to do it. This machine is very sophisticated and was tuned to work with Win 8.

I have no problems staying with Win 8, not a single issue in 18 months, I have never had such a long run without problems with any other MS OS.

What is in your opinion the main differences between Win 8 and 8.1? Is it worth upgrading? I also prefer metro to the start menu…

 

I'm pretty sure I am not imagining or fabricating either my experience with Vista or any siblings I may have. I'm also pretty sure Vista was a troublesome and flawed operating system that was undeveloped and released too early. I'm also pretty sure that my experience with it was not unique. I'm also pretty sure this is a major factor in it still only being used by a small percentage of users. It is unfortunate that I didn't take my brother's advice and try to find a notebook running XP or UNIX. Something I have since remedied.

 

There is no need to raise the tone to this level of sarcasm. My conversation ends here with you, have a good day Sir.

 

I prefer 811 to 81 to 8. Mainly GUI changes and icons. But if you are stuck on 8 you aren't missing much.

 

Even if I promised that I won't comment your posts in this thread anymore, I can't help but reading your recent posts, I must make an exception.
You're either too young or extremely self centered person. The first one is justifiable, the second is worrying and if the both together, it's disaster and you will surely have problems in your life. Good luck!

My apologies to moderators for OT.

 

Now back to the actual topic, Windows 8. Comparisons with Vista is fine and all, but griping about non-Windows 8 issues is not the focus of this topic.

Personally, I don't see why Windows 8.1 growth wouldn't increase unless people stop buying new computers altogether. I'd stay with whatever OS that came with the device.

 

I would hesitate to describe my language as sarcasm as it was not intended to convey offence, scorn or insult. My intention was predominantly to reinforce the fact that the phenomenological experience I had with Vista was not imagined. There is genuine irony here though, as I continued to run two Vista laptops for years. Admittedly Vista was sluggish on my Belnea o book, and Maxdata did try to remedy this in later models by adding RAM modules. My Toshiba laptop, however, was not that slow running Vista, but it suffered the same plethora of irritating bugs that just did not infest Win 7. I have no reason to disbelieve my brother's asseveration that Vista's kernel had an experimental component to it that was later abandoned on subsequent MS operating systems. This aspect being a major contribution to its spectacular failing as a viable OS in direct comparison to Win 7. I'm pretty sure I will have a good day, thank you.

 

I think that you are overly judgmental. I do have problems in life thank you, recently I was left paralysed on my right side after a stroke. I think you should keep your puerile observations to yourself. You have done nothing but make ad hominem comments on my posts on this thread. Virtually all of them are irrelevant. I have not attacked you personally and you have not contributed anything of any worth in this thread.

 

It's really odd I didn't even know there was a Win 811...
@ Daveski I'm truly sorry to learn about your condition. I wish you all the best for a quick recovery...

 

Thanks, I'm making progress. It has been a disconcerting experience, if I may make a litotical statement. Luckily, I'm often an optimist.