Looking into upgrading to Windows 8. Why should I not yet?

[Wildside]

Sup all. My friend just bought Windows 8 Pro upgrade for his PC. He says it's great and he loves it overall. Now, I have been selling PCs at Best Buy over the season and know about it. I personally like it but would like to wait for it to mature faster overtime because as of right now not too many enthusiasts want to give in. I have up until Jan 31st to get it for $15 and install it whenever I want but I need opinions from both sides about Windows 8. Meaning, why should I buy or not buy Windows 8 right now? Also, I can work around to getting Windows 8 to that price with help from my friend of course.

From what I was told from a personal source, Windows 8 boosted his gaming performance, boots up faster, and is quite quick. However, what won't work, according to Win8 Upgrade Assistant, is THQ's Dawn of War 1 game and expansion DoW - Winter Assault, Fraps, iTunes, Star Wars - BF2 (Steam), and Torchlight (Steam), MFST Security Essentials, BF 1942 (Origin), Daemon Tools Lite, and a few other things.

Anyone here have Windows 8 that can give me more insight?

 

[Sean W.]

how does this have anything to do with building or buying a new computer?


ugh! man i wish i was a mod, id be moving threads all over the place!!!

 

[PP Mguire]

I wont be using Windows 8 personally. I decided to use it on my SSD with an OEM copy of Pro x64 and my experience was worse than when I tried the preview on my Raptor.
I ran into a few bugs with 2 programs I use everyday and those were Skype and Xfire. I also had some troubles with BF3 and the three together would cause freezes. Idk why, but that's how it is. When any of this would happen Task Manager would never end the task and I was always forced to reboot. That got annoying after like the 10th time. Didn't matter what combination of programs, always had problems with any of them freezing at random intervals.

My next issue was stricter admin privileges were causing me writing issues on my drives I integrated to my PC from my server. For instance, extraction on some RAR files would not work without even asking me for admin permission first. I did everything I could like take ownership, ect ect and none of it helped.

I also had general instability with my audio, but I don't blame that on the OS itself but rather poor driver support from being forced to use WIndows 7 drivers. Another issue some people might come across is driver incompatibilities or just a lot of instability. Every time a program freeze caused a reboot I wouldn't have sound. The freezes were not caused by the sound though, because it still happened even with both uninstalled.

I could not test boot times due to being on 2 different boards. My test on the 3960x was 25.6 seconds with no extra nonsense from the bios but this board adds 2 extra AHCI bios screens. Not fair in the side of Windows 8 so I didn't test that. I will say, that from getting the Windows loading screen to getting to the desktop seemed no shorter or longer than 7.

Gaming performance did not change. There are no gaming performance advantages in any of the games I play which are a ton of popular ones in general. The only disadvantage I could guess would be more legacy games not working due to it being a new OS. The overall feel of the OS was not any faster either. Animations are more fluid so I guess that could cause placebo but in reality with an SSD overall OS use is not "faster".

Now I can say that Daemon Tools Lite worked fine, FRAPS works fine, and BF1942 from Origin works fine as I used all of those in 8 myself.

Problems aside, I wont be going back to using 8 and will simply stay on 7 as there is literally NO advantages to 8. 7 support will last for many many years and I presume just like XP there will be after EOL support as well. There is nothing new to the table so I just don't see the point in getting 8 only to install Start8 making it look like 7 again. Just my opinion though.

 

[iFargle]

how does this have anything to do with building or buying a new computer?


ugh! man i wish i was a mod, id be moving threads all over the place!!!

Moved

 

[MillField]

I've been using Windows 8 for about 3 months now and overall I am happy with it. I don't think that the new "tile" start menu really adds a whole lot other than a better visual effect. The best thing about Windows 8 for me without doubt is the boot up/shut down speed. They are dramatically faster than the speeds I got on Windows 7.

The only problem I've had so far are when installing Windows Updates. Sometimes I get problems that force me to restart my system. These were quite bad at the start but now they've all but stopped. Overall I would definitely recommend the install!

 

[Sean W.]

Moved

thhaaankk youuuu!

 

[XGC Forsakend]

I don't know any specifics... but I do like the menu set up. Would be nice with a touchscreen just for fun, but can also see why it wouldn't sit well with everyone else. Guess I kind of got used to it since thats how the Xbox dashboard looks like too =/

 

[Joe C]

I have up until Jan 31st to get it for $15 and install it

Good price, but why does it have to be installed before the 31st? I know the M$ offer is supposed to end on the 31st but I don't think you have to install it by then

 

[Veraster]

I personally don't like Windows 8 because it's impossible to bypass the driver signature enforcement thing. If I wanted an os that doesn't work with my hardware I'd use Linux and even then Linux has better driver compatibility than Windows does without unsigned drivers.
Most people aren't bothered by this but it's a game changer for me. The interface doesn't make a difference as I can easily adapt to almost any type of interface.
That's just why I don't want Windows 8. Most people don't need unsigned drivers but I use several devices that don't have them available.

 

[Wildside]

how does this have anything to do with building or buying a new computer?

ugh! man i wish i was a mod, id be moving threads all over the place!!!

Well excuse me, Sean. I couldn't find it. A lot has changed since I have been to these threads thus seeing more specific forum sections.

Good price, but why does it have to be installed before the 31st? I know the M$ offer is supposed to end on the 31st but I don't think you have to install it by then

That is an error there. I dont have to install it before the 31st. However check this out:

PSA: Windows 8 and Pro upgrades will jump to $120 and $200 on February 1st

Prices will jump up 400%! If I ever wanted to upgrade to it for whatever reason, I can save myself a ton of money just doing this. Also, the Start button may be gone, but if you buy the third-party app Start 8 off the Windows Store, then you will get the regular functions of the Start button back for those of you that don't know.