Windows 7 or 8?

tomm1077

I'm thinking about upgrading the software on my laptop & was thinking about getting windows 8. Is it any good? I heard that when it was released that there were plenty of bugs & glitches with it. Have they been sorted out? Should I just stay with windows 7?

Overheal

If you have a compelling reason to upgrade, go for it, otherwise no.

In my case I had a tablet to upgrade from 7 to 8 and just got a windows 8 ultrabook so upgrading the desktop alongside each of those just made sense.

tarshakhrupp

windows 8 is good, though we can further appreciate if if we have touchscreen units.

Cerco

tarshakhrupp wrote: »

windows 8 is good, though we can further appreciate if if we have touchscreen units.

It will be better when Microsoft fix it. Free upgrade due out end of June (Release 8.1).
I am using Win 8 at the moment (without touchscreen). I find the "Charms bar" a nuisance. Also find it drops wireless connection frequently.

Apart from that I like it. I thought about downgrading to Win 7 but decided against it for the moment. I will wait for the new release.

Unless you need to upgrade immediately I would wait for the reviews on the latest release and then decide.

Iano_128

If you don't have a high speed internet connection where you'll primarily be using it i'd stay away! Windows 8 reserves 20% of the bandwidth for itself as it's constantly updating. So if you're getting 10mb, you'll only get 8 on this laptop. It can be disabled in Services (I think is where it is) but not on the basic (cheaper editions).

I'd stay away if I was you. The charms bar as the previous poster said is a pain in the arse, the bandwidth hijack is a huge pain (terrible internet in my area) and it's not as easy to find your way around the likes of the Control Panel etc.

kingcobra

There's nothing really that special about Windows 8 I don't think. It's a little faster than previous operating systems but other than that there's nothing really special about it. The start menu seems a little tacky to me, although I'm sure it's a lot better with touch-screens, and as for the charms bar, I rarely use it at all!

excollier

Depends if you want stable use and productivity, or froth.
Win 7 was their best effort.

PropJoe10

Windows 8 is nice and fast, but for familiarity and ease of use I'd stick with Windows 7. There's no real compelling reason to upgrade to 8 to be honest. Not that I can think of anyway.

Overheal

Iano_128 wrote: »

If you don't have a high speed internet connection where you'll primarily be using it i'd stay away! Windows 8 reserves 20% of the bandwidth for itself as it's constantly updating.

So do XP, Vista, and 7 actually. Windows 2000 did an iteration of this as well. But this action only takes place when a Windows network services is operating, such as the check for new updates:

Clarification about the use of QoS in end computers that are running Windows XP
As in Windows 2000, programs can take advantage of QoS through the QoS APIs in Windows XP. One hundred percent of the network bandwidth is available to be shared by all programs unless a program specifically requests priority bandwidth. This "reserved" bandwidth is still available to other programs unless the requesting program is sending data. By default, programs can reserve up to an aggregate bandwidth of 20 percent of the underlying link speed on each interface on an end computer. If the program that reserved the bandwidth is not sending sufficient data to use it, the unused part of the reserved bandwidth is available for other data flows on the same host.

For more information about the QoS Packet Scheduler, see Windows XP Help. Additional information about Windows 2000 QoS is available in the Windows 2000 technical library.

Correction of some incorrect claims about Windows XP QoS support
There have been claims in various published technical articles and newsgroup postings that Windows XP always reserves 20 percent of the available bandwidth for QoS. These claims are incorrect. The information in the "Clarification about QoS in end computers that are Running Windows XP" section correctly describes the behavior of Windows XP systems.

tl;dr - the claim is false. However, if you wish to disable QoS scheduler (sound familiar??) steps exist on the web to do so.