Need new Laptop should I stay with with Windows 7? (avoid Win 8)

9/10/13 | Me

[Don@VB]

I have seen several laptop models I like but they have Windows 8 installed. I need to stay with a Windows OS, but having read poor reviews, it appears Win 8 may become the next Vista. Is it that bad? I like Win 7 but it limits my selection. As always, any suggestions/input appreciated.

[motor_racer]

I use Windows 7 on 2 of my machines, 8 on one (Dell laptop) and XP on another (old laptop). No problems with Windows 8. It’s fast and stable. Just get a $5 utility from Stardock called Start8 to get rid of the crap interface. Haven’t used 8.1 yet, but maybe that eliminates the need for Start8.

[redangus]

Win 8 is a solid, easy to use OS, if you have an easily usable touch screen, i.e. a tablet. If you are going to use the laptop with the keyboard and touchpad/mouse arrangement it is somewhat unwielding.

[redangus]

You went from a laptop to a tablet. Apples and oranges. If you had gone from a laptop to a Win 8 tablet you would have never have been sucked over to dark side of overpriced underperforming Apple products. Someday the iPad may offer the same state of the art OS and hardware of the best of the Win 8 tablets. Until then it is an email reading, game playing toy, not a real work oriented computer.

[ibheath]

Windows 7. I will use a Linux distro before I use Windows 8.

[redangus]

The Win 8.1 upgrade for Win 8 computers will be free, so there is no additional cost to those who already have a Win 8 or RT computer. Get your facts straight. Microsoft is not Apple, the company that brings out a ‘’new’’ model every five month that forces the acolytes to buy a new device just to stay cool.

[Roses0508]

Windows 8 is Windows 7 with a graphical user interface. It is intended to be a single OS for computers, tablets and other mobile devices. When I bought my Surface I used it as is for about 3 months (since I do computer support for a living I needed to know it). I then installed an add-on menu that cost something like $3. Supposedly Microsoft is going to add some start up functionality like Windows 7 in an update (as I understand it, the machine can be configured to start at the desktop). I have yet to see anything from Microsoft that indicates they are going to add the complete menu functionality.

Windows 8 obviously works best with a touch screen. It can be a trick for some users to manage the “charms” with a mouse. There are shortcut keys that pop “charms”, etc. up without mousing around in the corners of your display.

That said, I like Windows 8 on a touch screen with the menu installed. There are some things for which touch is a real bonus. Please note, that I have installed all the latest touch-enabled software, i.e., Office 365, etc. I am quite addicted to having a third method of manipulating software.

I DID find it frustrating at first. It IS a completely new interface and you will have to learn it. I found the “search” function in the “charms” most helpful for when I couldn't find a particular function or application. The caveat to that is I think a user would be very frustrated if they don't know where to start a search for an object. My experience is that most users really don't know what the things they use are called, only the icon.

What I see among non-technical users is that they configure their “desktop” (which is one of the tiles on the START screen” to look as much as possible like Windows 7 and they install a menu.

Otherwise, I've no complaints. I've had no application hangs, no blue screens, no locked up operating system issues.

[OneWingedShark]

The one bad thing about Firefox is the memory leaks.
Other than that, it's pretty good.

[Sparticus]

As a general rule, Microsoft’s operating systems always push the edge of the newest machines’ memory and processing power, but manufacturers always put the latest version of Windows on their machines. The result is that the operating system takes far too many resources for many of the machines it initially runs on.

Windows 7 was largely Windows Vista made more scalable, and sold on machines which had become more powerful.

So my advice: If you’re buying a top-of-the-line computer with the absolutely newest motherboard/CPU and stacked to the gills with memory, buy Windows 8. If your computer did not cost more than an electric car, stick with Windows 7.

This hasn't been true since Vista. Windows 8 does not require any stronger hardware than Windows Vista with the exception of needing more RAM (2 gigs is enough, but 4 is optimal for normal users). In fact, Windows 8 is marginally quicker on the same hardware than Windows 7 and Vista for most all operations.

[OneWingedShark]

You're kidding, right?
MIDI is a pretty good piece of Tech, especially if you're considering SoundFonts. (You can get MP3+ quality in less than the megabyte MIDI-file + whatever SoundFonts you're using, which while they can be expensive [size-wise] can be "shared" across many MIDI-files.) IOW, MIDI+SF is ideal for games.

[ziravan]

The main reason my IPad is overpriced is because getting there includes the cost of the worthless Win8 machine I bought first. It’s not apples/oranges because if MS had made a useable product, I never would have bought the IPad in the first place.

Win8 had more problems than can be fixed with Classic Shell.

[Wurlitzer]

Less than a meg????????????? No you have to be kidding.

I’m not even close to kidding! FACT! Right now I need 32 GIG JUST for the soundfonts required for one of the organs used in Hauptwerk.

64 gig would be better. Some users of Hauptwerk use 8,16,32 or more audio channels/amps/speakers and nobody would waste their money if the source was MP3.

MP3 quality is an oxymoron! That’s a fact! It is a data compression algorithm which has unrecoverable data loss. MP3 is NOT a loss less compression. It works for many things which do NOT require true audio fidelity.

There is no quality VTPO (virtual theater pipe organ) using MP3 soundfonts.

The quality needed for games is nowhere near what is needed for real high quality Pipe organ soundfonts. They are not even in the same league.

A few MIDI drivers were broken in Win 8 and MS answer was YAWN therefore my caution to anyone using MIDI might find themselves without an MS OS to support it. The reality is it is just a very small market for MS so they can ignore it without seeing more than a blip on their bottom line.

[Pearls Before Swine]

I got burned with Vista and hope to avoid a similar situation.

Vista was a dog. The reason they were able to get Win 7 out when they realized how badly they'd damaged their reputation with Vista is that it was heavily based on Windows Server 2008, which was industrial strength.

[Terry L Smith]

Stick with Win7. The bald-headed guy on Sunday Morning QVC, that hawks computers, stated that:
“We have had Windows 7 for a very long time now.”
HUH?????????
Windows 7 came out in Oct. of 2009!

For those complaining about Internet Explorer ... Great Caesar’s Ghost! Why would you still be running that particular software? Unless you are having to access your local school board’s archaic website, I would, and do use Waterfox.

[varmintman]

Thanks, that’s better than anything I’d ever seen so far.

[MtBaldy]

You’re welcome. If you go on ICC I’m “WScott” and will be glad to give you a game. Currently rated 1503 but one night with Lagavulin 16 yo can easily bring that down to 1300 or so.

[isthisnickcool]

Recommending a Linux box to a Windows user without a CS degree is ridiculous.

Linux is easy. Through the latest Fedora dist on an old machine and enjoy.

[AppyPappy]

Spoken like someone who hasn’t seen Linux in 5 years.

[AppyPappy]

You replaced a PC to get rid of IE?

[WomBom]

No it was old and locking up/ slow

[dangus]

No-one codes for Linux without presuming that the end user has no problem downloading and implementing endless dependencies, and dependencies of dependencies and dependencies of dependencies of dependencies of dependencies of dependencies of dependencies.