The service for W7 is set for 2018 afaik. If someone likes to do a clean install at that time, I would like to know how long it will take to be able to use the system after hundreds of more updates within the next 5 years ... lol edit: product cycle is until 2020 so another hundred updates ...
Totally off topic, but win 7 is highly likely to remain the dominant OS, even though MS may stop selling retail/OEM/corporate licences after some time. XP is now 4.5 years since the last SP3, but I think XP has smaller update sizes. So if even if we think that corporates finally migrate beyond win 7, it could be 2014-15. Frankly, 2018 seems to be long for win 7 to be expected to be widely used (but no one knows). That could bulge up post SP1 updates to 1 GB (is it 300 MB roundabouts now???). So corps will batch update. But most corporation/individuals do not have the resources/capabilities to do updating quickly/easily/automatically/offline. Most will rely on windows update system and the internet.
True. We'll even stay with XP for at least another year or so. There will be no sudden switch to W7, but slow, department after department. As to W8: alone the idea of W8 and its metro toy apps on our company PC workstations is ridiculous.
@acyuta My finding on this is just to indicate, where the way will go in the future and I don't consider it to be off topic. Certainly, a discussion might come up because of this but shows if someone will choose W8 as main OS in the future or will stick with 7 and has to deal with all that update stuff during the next 7 years if ever. Out of my point of decision, I'm with W8 since I "felt" it on my machines and have not a single reason to switch back to older systems. I remember times like 95,98, XP, Vista and 7, where always the warnings came out to better stay with the old system. I took them all, when they came out and was happy with and now it is 8. No way back ...
I never meant that you were off-topic. As for me, I like win 8, but am sticking to win 7 for this year (upto Dec 2012) at the max. That is my personal preference and a permanent switch to win 8 could be earlier too. With GA soon, drivers and software should become more stable. As it is, win 8 does a lot of things natively which required drivers in win 7. But some of my used software is sometimes buggy in win 8.
Totally with you and I only can recommend, to wait a few more weeks or months and the fogs disappears and everything will be clearly visible
Equally important to the benefits that I see in win 8 in terms of hardware support, is the fact that I bought a technet subscription in Aug 2012 to get win 8 and office 2013. I would a (1) complete fool or a (2) zillionaire to let that go to waste. I am definitely many zeros away from (2).
After using Win8 RTM for a week and now reinstalling back to Windows 7 for testing purposes, I'm absolutely sure I'm moving back to Windows 8. Many games, which I play work better. The OS is much more responsive and things like: - copying files with more info - better task manager - ribbon in explorer makes the OS much more useful. If someone hates Metro just install Start8 or some other software.
After paying for windows 7, i will stay with that for main os as it does everything i want in a home pc. One day we will be forced by these companies to use touch screen os like win8, but at mo most of us prefer win 7 or xp still as it just works, and most of us have no money to upgrade from a working os. That is just a luxury, for which most of us have other priorities.
I will use it for youtube & facebook after they get all the bugs out of it but for serious work this operating system is totally impractical better to stick with Win 7.
Yes. Primary OS with Windows 7 as a spare. My main machine still has the Windows 7 install I loaded a week before retail availability (thanks to this site!) After 3 years I was thinking of cleaning house and doing a wipe anyways, especially because I have yet to be resolved Adobe Flash memory leak problems. If I'm going to reinstall, might as well go for the latest. At first dual boot to see if I could live with it. With classic shell it's a really good desktop OS. I ended up needing my Windows 7 partition anyways to steal drivers from. So far it shows promise so I'm clearing cruft out of my Windows 7 partition, and shrinking it down so it can serve as a "Spare" OS if I need it. So far I've upgraded two of my machines from Win7 to Win8. I'm looking to start upgrading the families as well. Parents still have a couple Windows XP machines that are def Windows 7 compatible, and should be Windows 8. To make room I deleted my Windows XP partition (which I ran before 7), because I realized I only used it once in the past 3 years (to confirm flaky wireless was hardware and not driver problems).
I can tell you that it will not be used by me in the future. Near or otherwise. Today I have officially said goodbye to Windows 8. Permanently. I didn´t like it to begin with. But I decided to give it a fair chance and at least work with it. Started with the Developer Preview, moved on to the Consumer Preview... the Release Preview, and finally the RTM. From DP to CP was a step forward, but after that Microsoft stripped Windows more and more. Using it with the classic shell Start Menu made Windows 8 usable. In my virtual machine that was. And yes, in some ways Windows 8 is better than Windows 7, and in some ways it looks better too. No, not those tiles. So I decided to take the next step and install Windows 8 on my 6 year old Desktop PC, making that machine a triple-boot. It's already running Windows 7 twice (on two separate drives). Getting it to work properly wasn't easy. Especially not with regard to screen drivers. That took a lot of effort. Supposedly Windows 8 boots faster, but not for me. Windows 7 boots in 23 seconds, and Windows 8 takes longer. Not if you count from the boot menu, but Windows 8 already starts 'downloading' a part of itself before that, and then offers you the boot menu. Windows 8 does however shut down very fast. That was a pleasant surprise. Less pleasant was when I found out that when you shutdown from 8, the next time your PC starts, Windows starts with the 8-style boot menu. Even if you have set another OS as standard. If you reboot, or shutdown from another OS, then you get the old boot menu. I finally got everything working, and on day 2 Windows Firewall went down. Couldn't get it back up. It kept reporting 'error code 5'. First thing you think of is malware, although that was unlikely. Still, I wiped everything and reinstalled. This time offline. Installed all the software that runs fine on 7 and is definitely malware-free, rebooted, and it happened again. Firewall down. Couldn't get it started. No matter what I tried, and I tried everything. It must be caused by some kind of conflict I guess, but I'm not going to try and figure this out. In fact, I've removed every trace of Windows 8 I could find. Even recreated the BCD, added the entries for the already existing versions of Windows 7, and used Daz Loader to reactivate them. Windows 8 is still in virtual machine on my laptop, but as soon as I get the chance, it gets removed. Along with everything else that is connected to 8, including the .iso file. I want it gone. Forever. I started working with computers when people were still using CP/M. Moved on to DOS, and from there to Windows. If Microsoft however continues down the path they've chosen, then Windows 7 will be the last version I use. Right until the day support for 7 ends that is. And after that? Maybe Apple, maybe Ubuntu. Windows 8 is not working for me. Don't like the tablet interface on a Desktop PC or a laptop, and simply working with it caused me more problems than it's worth. In short, for me the advantages do not outweigh the disadvantages. Not even close. But that's only my personal experience. For what it's worth. So Microsoft, if your reading this. I'm skipping 8. Completely. The tablet I'm going to buy will NOT have Windows 8 on it. Neither will we, at the small business I work for, use Windows 8. So good luck with it.
strange as I love windows 8 and is far faster than 7 on my machine and the new start menu is a breeze to use
Gunna use it on the Surface Pro once released and I already have it as a Virtual for development purposes... Considering upgrading my mainOS to 8 in the future once it's had a few months road testing and inevitable fixes from MS...
I'll keep in inside Virtual Box on my Debian Linux machine... That way it'll have it's own little corner in the basement, where it can't hurt anybody....