I had it running on my laptop for about 3 weeks but have just gone back to Windows 7. Is Windows 8 terrible? Not really. Does it offer any compelling reasons to upgrade right now? Not as far as I could tell.
Once you get out of the (pretty pointless on a non-touch device) Metro mode and back to the 'normal' desktop it basically functions much the same as Windows 7. In the 3 weeks I was using it, there was only two benefits I could see (and "benefit" is a pretty loose term here):
1) Boot from a cold start was a couple of seconds quicker (to the login prompt) than Win 7, and that's with an i7 quad-core with SSD.
2) When you copy files you get a nice snazzy graph showing you the transfer rate.
(Yes I said benefit was tenuous.)
Why did I switch back? Truthfully I was having problems getting my shiny new 27" IPS monitor running at native 2560x1440 over HDMI and whether by luck or something else, I managed to fix it on Windows 7 whereas I couldn't on Windows 8 (probably just a driver issue).
My advice would be to wait a while and see if anything does come out which actually is better on Windows 8, otherwise just stick with 7 until the next version...
Once you get out of the (pretty pointless on a non-touch device) Metro mode and back to the 'normal' desktop it basically functions much the same as Windows 7. In the 3 weeks I was using it, there was only two benefits I could see (and "benefit" is a pretty loose term here):
1) Boot from a cold start was a couple of seconds quicker (to the login prompt) than Win 7, and that's with an i7 quad-core with SSD.
2) When you copy files you get a nice snazzy graph showing you the transfer rate.
(Yes I said benefit was tenuous.)
Why did I switch back? Truthfully I was having problems getting my shiny new 27" IPS monitor running at native 2560x1440 over HDMI and whether by luck or something else, I managed to fix it on Windows 7 whereas I couldn't on Windows 8 (probably just a driver issue).
My advice would be to wait a while and see if anything does come out which actually is better on Windows 8, otherwise just stick with 7 until the next version...
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