It has some advantages: - native Microsoft Basic Display Driver (so UEFI Class 3 works out of the box), - native Microsoft NVMe driver, - native Microsoft USB3 driver. However above drivers (except BasicDisplay) have been backported to Win7, so these differences have diminished. Considering that, Windows 8.1 is not so much different from Windows 7 in real life.
An OS is not just the GUI, Win 8.1 is immensely improved over Win7 under the hood. Just to mention a few things. Hyper-V support. (but unlike W10 it can still run VirtualPC) Way faster boot time VHDX support (way more robust and practical than VHDs). Boot from native VHD AND VHDX on all SKUs, not just Enterprise and Ultimate Vastly improved DHCP client (almost instantaneous connection to WIFI networks over 30/40 seconds needed by Win7 A way cleaner GUI (that lacks a decent start menu, a problem that needs just few mouse click needed to install Classic Shell, (which is way better than Win7 start menu). A fully updated Win7 takes something like 20GB of HDD space. A fully updated Win8.1 takes 4/5 GB less thanks to the resetbase feature that cleans the ever growing component store. Win8.1 has the deduplication support, which is likely the best thing MS did in 30 years. Win8.1 can boot not just from real partitions but also from WIMs, and can be LZX compressed which means that a full installation can take less than 4GB In 32bit and less than 7GB in AMD64 flavors. I can continue for two pages if you want.
But many independent software vendors EOLed Windows 7 and 8.1 in the same time. No matter how these OSes differ under the hood. Same situation like with XP and Vista. Chrome for example, EOLed support for these OSes in the same day.
That's called capitalism. Well there is still people who use XP, for fun or for need a decade after it was orphaned by MS. There are still modern browsers working on it, there are kernel extensions that allows modern programs to run and so on. Speaking of Win7 and Win8.1, they have still years of ESU support from MS, not to mention the efforts of open source community. And not forget that today virtualization is a thing. You may need to use a single program that's Win10/11/Linux only and you can run it inside Hyper-V VMmware/VBox Obviously Living With Win7 or Win8.1 will become harder in the future, but that's a distant future
I am such guy. I have still Window XP SP3 updated up to may 2019, however heavily modded with most services disabled. I can still browse the internet on it with Palemoon for XP (aka Newmoon). It works with no issues in 2023 as long as I use older version of software. There are still people who modded Windows 98 and were able to run it on AHCI/SSD with 4 GB of RAM (serach for Vogons or for the late Rudolph R. Loew work, for example). Recently someone even updated SSH for DOS, so it now support modern ciphering protocols (hmac-sha2-256, aes128-ctr). I have even been able to copy files from one NTFS/GPT partition to another NTFS/GPT partition under DOS with OmniFS. Not to mention, that there are still a lot servicing tools under DOS (for eg. reset admin password, ghost imaging, killdisk) So yes, old OSes aren't truly dead nor unusable. But sometimes, new software is imply necessary. Like accounting software in a company. You cannot use old versions, as it is no longer compatible with current law. You have to upgrade, and new version supports Win10/11 only That is what I have meant.
Sure. Thanks god that's a bigger problem for mobile OSes than Windows, but after Steve Jobs ruined the IT world with his ideas (aped by almost everyone else) the road was laid out. Still the resistance is not always futile
For now, I'll keep sticking with Firefox 110.0 (gets the most use) and Internet Explorer 11.0.290 (gets limited use) in Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit.
I use Firefox too. Again, modded and slimmed down (via prefs.js settings). It is fast as hell and respects privacy. For rare poorly designed chrome-only sites I use Ungoogled Chromium. I need Internet Explorer only to configure my cheap webcams that cannot be configured with other browsers.
You shocked me with this statement, so I had to check. For me, Windows 7 connects to my Android WiFi hotspot almost instantly. If there are any delays, I think disabling internet connection checking (via Command Prompt) could solve them: Code: reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NlaSvc\Parameters\Internet" /v "EnableActiveProbing" /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\NetworkConnectivityStatusIndicator" /v "NoActiveProbe" /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Network Connections" /v "NC_DoNotShowLocalOnlyIcon" /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
There are a lot of variables, WIFI drivers, security level and so on. But also the mileage varies depending if we are talking of the first ever connection to a definite hotspot or if that's is a re-connection with an already established DHCP lease and already saved passphrase and so on. Also is possible that some of the Win8 improvements were back ported to Win7 during it's update history
@zar91 Better UI (With Custom Windows 10 theme) New Task Manager More resilient kernal (8 years no BSOD) WASAPI Absolutely gorgeous start menu Default libraries in Explorer FastBoot (My system boots on 5400 RPM HDD in 22 seconds)
I thought it was Google that completely ruined the IT world with their evil ideas. Microsoft was one of the better corporations that made excellent products and respected privacy but that ceased to exist with the invention of the abomination known as Windows 10. Forced updates ? Major updates every 6 months ? Two control panels ? Forced telemetry ? OS supported only for 18 months ? If you disregard or get around the hardware/secureboot/52Gb space requirements of Windows 11, it's even better then Windows 10. Apparently, they thought people had no real lives like them and would sit on their computers all day long 7 days a week, updating Windows, setting up Windows, formatting Windows, Downloading Windows and then back to updating Windows. And now Microsoft has announced that they will move to 3 years release cycle for major OS after 6 months on Windows 10 and 1 years on Windows 11. Their Superman stupidity errr..... I mean complex is drawing down.
I had plenty of XPs with no BSOD. One of them has been working for 12 years continuously and it was retired only because of software upgrade (new versions of our engineering software didn't support XP). When I think about BSOD, I think about Windows 98 or even about Windows 95. That was that era. Starting from Windows 2000 I have very good experiences, and XP and 7 were 100% rock solid. If I had BSOD, it was always issue with hardware or poor quality third-party drivers. Microsoft has somewhere published a report, which stated that (based on data their collected) vast majority of kernel errors were due to third party code, not due to native Microsoft code. I cannot believe that people still experiences BSODs in 2023. It is a mess. If I experience just single BSOD on my PC, I will send it to trash without hesitation or at least will replace faulty hardware (RAM, extension card, etc). Task manager can be replaced with two clicks. There are plenty of them, better than those original from Microsoft (eg. Process Explorer, Resource Hacker).
Too young to remember or just short in memory? Google, in the first decade of this millennium was an almost perfect company. They made money because a great product (their search engine) and not because a virtual monopoly obtained in the dirtiest way, like MS did with windows, and Apple did with the mp3 monopoly, then with their dystopian iPhones. That "don't be evil" scenario started to change exactly after Jobs proved to competitors how lazy and dumb the "normal users" can be. In few years every apple competitor started to say, Apple has a large zombie fanbase, we want them as well. MS trowed the nice Windows mobile in the toilet trying to sell Windows phone, Window RT, and Windows 8, Google started to be invasive just like Apple, turning the marvel that was Android 3.x in the s**t we have today. Doing that Jobs did another unfoegivable thing, he removed a lot of "fresh meat" from the open source community. I mean once the paid store became common, If you were the average brilliant kid with IT skills what you would prefer? Doing a kernel job for free, or coding a stupid game that could make him rich (and Jobs richer) ? Seriously Jobs did more damage (directly or indirectly) to this planet than Hitler and Bin Laden put together.
My first PC that I bought in 2013 had Windows 7 on it. Soon enough, the CPU usage use to spike up to 100% with PC being idle and nothing running on it. I didn't know what the issue was let alone how to resolve it so I took it to a friend who diagnosed it told me it's related to kernal, like I had any idea WTF kernal is. He Then installed Windows 8.0 on it and problem instantly went away. I liked the new libraries, Start Menu and Task manager so I decided to keep using it. 10 years later vast amount of knowledge accumulated in this time, I'm in total love with this OS. It's a shame I can't keep using it forever. As for task manager, yeah there are plenty of alternatives but I prefer default 8.1 Task manager. Just the right amount of information, not more not less, proper functions and a nice GUI something lacking in those alternatives.