Should I jump of the cliff and upgrade from Win7 to 8.1 or not? I'll be honest with you. I never even tested windows 8/8.1. I took one look at it and then screamed for hours, and after the shot the doctors gave me wore off decided it was all a bad dream. But here’s the thing, my kids came home from school the other day with a pair of new laptops the school had been kind enough to give them. Problem is there are windows 8 on them. And to make things even worse, they expect me to be able to help them. I got stuck in the start menu the first time and then there were doctors and padded rooms everywhere; I even might have been abducted by aliens since there's time missing... Never the less, my kids demand me to be able to help. So all the great people on the most awesome forum in the world; Help me! Pros, cons (except the madness of it all. I got that down to a science already) tips to make things better and what not. What I really want is a few well thought thru reviews of good and bad experiences.
I just spent a full day downgrading from this crap called Windows 8.1 to Windows 7 Pro so many quircks I don't know where to start. the latest one, if you have saved a WLAN password for your wireless connection, then happen to change the password in your router settings, you cannot simply do it by going to the Network Sharing Center > Manage Wireless Connections in order to change the password, the whole darn thing is not there! another one I hate, the stupid integration of Skye Drive, which you can get rid of with a registry trick having my docs, music, pics, videos icons all above your drive letters in Computer.. really? ohhh, speaking of Computer, it is now called ThisPC Microsoft has thought of every way to make this OS a big fail
@Rab: install classicshell or startisback+ on your kids computers and there's the start menu. You can make it to boot straight to desktop, so no need for doctors & nurses.
@Rab make a backup, image the system, test drive win8.1 and see how it goes, if it isn't what you want, revert back to 7. Or play Ian and continue to make posts such as this below, repeatedly. Up to you. does this mean we will hear less spewage from you now that you are back at win7?
Windows 8.1 isn't that bad; but I find myself disabling or not even using most of the features of it and 8. Plus there's a bunch of annoying issues too (HPET preferred instead of TSC, low DPC UniXonar causing issues, USB 2.0 ports suspending regardless of settings, high DPI mouse movement inaccuracy, pausing tablet taps, etc). Not to mention it sucks having to go setup stuff via 2 different control panels on a fresh install. Overall, I prefer 7 mainly because it.. just works 8.1 can be made to work in my situation (with an hour of work or so + a few 3rd-party programs), but it's really not worth it at all.
exactly! one has to spend an hour or two disabling stuff just to get the OS to work like a REAL desktop OS Stuff I used to disable: SkyDrive Uninstall the useless Metro bloatware apps such as: Music, Videos Need to install a decent start menu app such as StartIsBack Leave the Home Group which gets enabled by default and disable its services Disable "Show new notification message on every new app that is installed which can handle a particular file extension" to adjust the icon spacing size, you no longer can do it through the personalization menu and must do it through registry tweaks stuff you cannot disable without breaking half the OS functionality: Hibernation file Page File (Virtual Memory) UAC, if disabled, you can no longer run any metro app The built in Pictures metro app cannot be uninstalled, strange how Microsoft allows you to uninstall Videos, Music, but not Pics! guess the developers were drunk and just forgot to add the uninstall option for it
so when you install win7 you have absolutely no changes to make, no tweaks to set nothing. run it right out of the box, its perfect and no personalization needed. More lithium please, stat..
well I went back to 7 as well, lol, but for a rather odd reason, my hard drive, just a lowly 500gb caviar blue, I am getting lower read/writes in 8 and also 8.1, in windows 7 it shows a constant 126mb/s which according to wd is norm for this drive. I reinstalled, changed numerous settings, tried the latest amd ahci drivers, but nope, readings are off no matter what I do, back on 7 and yup, they spike to the max.... might be just my mobo, it is an older asus M5A78L-M LX PLUS but I just bought it brand new for my phenom cpu 960t I dunno, I just can't explain it
offcourse there is, but not that far to the extent where you have to dig very deep through the registry, just a few tweaks here and there such as: Disable Windows Defender, disable Program Compatibility Assistant, Disable Home Group Services, Disable Indexing, Disable Hibernation and the OS works
Nigga you just went full retard this time, no surprise you go back and forward with 7 / 8.1 every couple of days, and since you will report me, i'll screenshot this thread before my reply gets deleted.
I agree with what you're saying... But there's a couple of problem with wiping the laptops that were given to the "kids" by the "school". 1: Their *teachers and the "state" are not going to be happy. Neither is MS... I would assume they are wanting to get Win8 into the hands of the kiddies. 2: It requires expending money to do so. (Technically you have to buy a Win7 license, one solution to that is to obtain Win7 from the school?) * If the teacher hates Win8... that aspect may not apply.
Q: ClassicShell etc gives you back the start menu, but what happens when person operating the machine gets off the beaten track, or need to configure something? Once back in Metro you're in la-la land again. As it relates to a school, when teaching you want everyone reading out of the same book and on the same page. I would assume the "school" and the "state" and or Microsoft is wanting all kiddies on pure vanilla Win8.x .
I think you should ask THE CHILDREN what they like more. Windows 8.1 is not as bad as nerdy lynch mob want's you to see it. It just takes getting used to.
Seriously for all the virtues of windows 7, I cannot except for nostalgic reasons go back to it. Am using 8 and 8.1 interchangeably and my personal preference is 8 for strictly personal reasons. As I see it, 7 was largely developed in 2008-09, 8 in 2011-12, and 8.1 in 2012-13. That itself is one big reason. Seriously, I find no issues at all in the lack of a start button. Have never used any third party software and do not need to. I like 8 more because of its flatter and better look. PS: In 8.1, I never use the boot straight to desktop. I pin all the major items on the metro/start screen, and if you consider it, there is a difference of 0 seconds in clicking an app from start menu or pinning it to taskbar. I think 8 is much better than 7 overall. Whether 8.1 is substantially better than 8, I do not know. 8.1 certainly takes 5-6 GB less disk space than 8. All my hardware works as well in 8 as in 8.1 and in fact better than in 7.
I would beg to differ on that. Yes 8 will not be supported after mid-Oct 2015 but that is still a long time away. I use both 8 and 8.1 equally (switch acronis images) and frankly I am indifferent between both. I do not find 8.1 to be significantly superior to 8. Personally I find 8 to be visually superior to 8.1 and with 8.1 not being significantly superior to 8 in performance, 8 is the preferred OS for me for some time. If someone could care, can I be educated on the performance improvements in 8.1 over 8. Start button and install size does not matter. Plus in 8, I can backup and restore 8 and office 2010/13 activations through advanced token manager. That is a huge plus since I usually reinstall every 5-7 weeks. Takes less than 3 hours on a weekend (base is an 8 image updated to latest updates). I found 8 to be much better at its RTM than 8.1. For me, 8.1 had hardware/useability problems even at GA stage but to be fair, those have lessened considerably or even disappeared to an extent (through windows or driver updates) that 8.1 is not a problem for me anymore.
@OP: Best would be to give it a go urself objectively.. most issues arise due to pre-conceptions etc and initially poor driver support for specific hardware - This is a completely new OS - good kernel, crap interface (IMHO) .. I used StartIsBack since day one - seldom if ever need to go into la-la land - but them I'm not a tweak freak either... anyway it may well appeal to your specific needs...diff'rnt strokes and all that...good luck