To 8 or to hate?

[Kanoe]

Guys (in a gender neutral usage before the missus complains!),

There have been so many threads on people asking should they go to Win 8 or go with 7, and I have read a fair few of them, so I'm not sure why I feel overly compelled to create another one. Maybe it was the feeling that having read the others I still did not feel I had reached a conclusion and this is the best way for me to reach an answer.

My Win 7 installation took a massive dive during a failed install of AMD's Cat 12.10 Tuesday night (really annoyed as prolly wouldn't have bothered if the CCC hadn't popped up a box saying new driver available, grrrr) and after many failed recovery efforts am forced to wipe the drive and start again.

However, I popped the Win 7 DVD into the computer and got to the installation screen then suddenly thought, Win 8 is out in just a few days, wouldn't it be the perfect opportunity to go straight in fresh. It doesn't seem too badly priced (although not as good as Win 7 launch prices) and may bring some slight improvements (will actually have a task scheduler that has optimisation for my 8 "core" Bulldozer for one).

The main thing putting me off is the metro UI and the fact that up till this issue things were fine in Win 7. As I mostly use the PC for web browsing and gaming is it going to offer enough to warrant the change or do I spend tonight getting things back up and running on the Win7?

Cheers

Kanoe

[deejayburnout]

I hate the metro UI with a pain.

What concerns me is as Win 8 is new, will all my apps/games/drivers work ok on it?

I would personally wait a few months until the price goes down and all the bugs/issues have been fixed.

Just because its new doesn't mean its better. A bit like any Apple product or a David Guetta tune.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Try Start8 if you want the Start Bar back.

[OilSheikh]

"hate"

[IronWarrior]

Do you really want to stare at a giant mobile phone everytime you use a computer?

Yeah, think not.

[Biscuit]

Try Start8 if you want the Start Bar back.

Its annoying that its come to this

3rd party apps for basic windows functions

[Kanoe]

Wish me luck, I'm going for 8. Arriving tomorrow.

[Biscuit]

Interested to know your opinions

[cocksy_boy]

I'm in a very similar situation with a recently built new rig just waiting to see if 8 is worth installing on my shiny new SSD....!!! So let us know what its like!!

[directhex]

£25 upgrade, for a limited time.

You bet your ass I'm going for it. And if it's as terrible as my brief tinkering in a VM suggests, then I'll have actual basis for comparison to tell everyone not to use it.

[Geoff I]

Will be loading Windows 8 on my laptop going to download for £24.99.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows/buy

Bring it on.

[OilSheikh]

That £25 upgrade, can you make it into a bootable Windows disc, just like people did when the Student Edition of Windows 7 was being sold for £40 sometime back ?

[Kanoe]

Hi Guys

Sitting here in Win 8 desktop as I type. 15 mins from blank drive to online. Not bad, prolly helps that the hardware is older than the software so it had generic drivers for pretty much everything except for my Creative Soundcard.

Another interesting thread has opened up in the forum about upgrade versions and below is my post to that as this is the stage I am currently at:

"Interestingly I went for the retail Win 8 upgrade, Win 7 broke last week, so I wiped the drive and started fresh with Win 8 upgrade this morning. It let me install it fine and accepted my Win 8 key as fine as part of the install. However as I am now in desktop and I try and activate windows it says I cant cause im a naughty boy and didn't install it over Win 7 and it wont activate.

Trying to find a solution without having to reinstall 7 just to install 8 over it everytime."

If another already knows the answer to this please share!

Kanoe

[directhex]

I'm trying to do things the Metro way, honest!

[directhex]

So, some observations so far.

• Wireless sync from Zune doesn't work. Sorry WP7 owners, you thought Microsoft cared about you?
• Everything will explode in a giant ball of flame if you have an SSD/HDD split install, and your ProgramData folder is not on C:\. You can do an install with the usual folders.xml method to move Users, but ProgramData movement means Metro apps won't work.
• Follow-up to the above: features like "refresh" which do a soft reinstall of the OS do NOT work unless Program Files, Users and Windows are all on the same drive
• Volume in the Music app drops down by like 80% if you click Start. Dumb.
• The Start Screen is not the big change in OS behaviour in Windows 8. Charms are. I still only remember that Search is a charm hours after I needed it
• The split between Metro and Desktop sucks. Stuff like adding a media folder to Music is ridiculously contrived (you need to add it to the relevant Library in Explorer in Desktop, you can't do it from Music itself)

[Splash]

Interestingly I went for the retail Win 8 upgrade, Win 7 broke last week, so I wiped the drive and started fresh with Win 8 upgrade this morning. It let me install it fine and accepted my Win 8 key as fine as part of the install. However as I am now in desktop and I try and activate windows it says I cant cause im a naughty boy and didn't install it over Win 7 and it wont activate.

Trying to find a solution without having to reinstall 7 just to install 8 over it everytime."

If another already knows the answer to this please share!

Kanoe

once the installer is downloaded you get an option to burn a bootable DVD or create an ISO. Do that, then boot from it.