Windows 8 or 7. Which would you choose?

7 and day

monkey44 wrote:
For those that said "no compatibility issues" I can't get any of my older programs (Word, Photoshop) to load and work properly with Wdw8 ... it might work, partly, but not well.

How old are the programs you are trying to load? I have Office 2007 and Photoshop CS2 and both run fine with Windows 8.1. Both of those programs are at least 6 years old.

I had heard all the horror stories about Windows 8 but couldn't find a laptop with the specs that I wanted with Windows 7 so I bit the bullet and went for it.
My only complaint is the lack of the Start Button/Menu and that is fixed with a quick download of a free program called "Start Menu 8".
With that one addition, I've had absolutely no problems with Windows 8.
I also have Ubuntu running on one of my old laptops. It is fantastic nowadays. Unbuntu is easy to install and easy to use. I have 30+ years of professional IT work including Linux/Unix so I have used various flavors of Linux (including Ubuntu) in the past. They have made tremendous strides with the Linux OS in recent years. It no longer takes hours of tedious work to install, use and update. Now it is as easy or easier than Windows.

4aSong wrote:
Why limit your choices to windows 7 or 8, look into UBUNTU which is very stable, faster running, excellent online support and provides equivalent or better security enhancements and above all it FREE. I installed it on my old Dell laptop which was running XP professional and all I can say I should have done it years ago.

X2 My old Toshiba Satellite with Vista got so sluggish I could hardly use it. I wiped the disc and reinstalled Vista from the OEM disc. It never did work right again. I got another laptop with Win7, which is OK, but when I installed Ubuntu (just to play around with it) on the first computer it ran like new.

After a year, it runs just as well as when I installed it. You can even run Windows programs using cross platform software (Wino). My only complaint is that I can't sync my Quicken 2013 with other devices from the Ubuntu machine. Nevertheless, I use the Ubuntu machine 98% of the time. Even if you buy a new machine with Windows OS, try installing Ubuntu on your old machine. You might be amazed!

P.S. There are Ubuntu bookkeeping programs that work just fine. It's just that I have been using Quicken since 1990 and am too lazy to change.

For those that said "no compatibility issues" I can't get any of my older programs (Word, Photoshop) to load and work properly with Wdw8 ... it might work, partly, but not well.

SO, am going back to Wdw7 ... its about working properly, not about screwing around with a new system to 'sorta make it function' - that's just giving it more chances to screw up right in the middle of an operation, and right when you need it to function the most.

So, those Wdw8 users, good luck - but this old camper is going back to the old OS ... and happy to do it.

I buy Windows computers then install Linux on them.
Windows 8 is more difficult to tinker with because of UEFI boot, other than that it doesn't matter which one. I won't need to change system for a while though.

Touchscreen is only useful on a device that doesn't have a physical keyboard and mouse. Touching things on a screen with your finger is much more cumbersome, less accurate and requires far more arm movement than performing the same function with a mouse.

We have a pair of Dell laptops running Windows 8.1. Mine is a non-touch unit and I have it set up to, as discussed above, to boot to the Desktop and I rarely need to use the "tiles" screen, but for those apps that require it, it is not difficult to switch. My DW has a touch-screen computer and she goes back and forth between the two "looks".

I've been watching her and it's apparent that it take time to "remember" you can touch the screen to do something you've been doing with a mouse for years. The Windows 8.1 touch interface does speed things up when she remembers to use it, but with a standard laptop reaching "across" the keyboard to touch the screen is a bit of an awkward motion. A separate keyboard with a screen that could lay flatter would be easier IMO.

Not going to make excuses for 8, but it can be worked with.

After doing the tedious upgrade to 8.1, then you can make the system boot direct to the desktop, place your program icons on that desktop, and then configure the system to not require a password on bootup.

All this without any extraneous "shell" or other software required.

Then you have a machine looking just like 7, with the added function of the touchscreen. And the infamous "Win 8 Startup" screen is just a keypress away.

Everything I used before seems to work okay, including Office 2003, which Microsoft claims is incompatible with 8.

1775 wrote:
7 with XP Mode installed for the best of everything. All software works on this setup.

Why stop there? I have Win 7 and XP VMs setup on my Win 8.1 laptop as well as VMs of DOS, Win 95, Win 98, Ubuntu, Mint, etc...