A quick question for the gurus

[zanthal]

I have not at all looked at Windows 8, and I'm curious to here the analysis of somebody who has.

Are there any good reasons why I would want to upgrade from Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 8?

I'm sure an upgrade is going to cost close to $100, so ... what's the story, is it a decent release?

[zanthal]

aaand my system specs should be in my signature now.

[Murf]

You have a great system now, the only thing I would invest in would possible be a SSD Hard drive, which will speed the system up.

For gaming I read:

Of the 10 games we benchmarked, only one demonstrated a significant difference in moving from Windows 7 to Windows 8, and only on Nvidia's GeForce GTX 660. That game was Borderlands 2, where our average measured frame rate dropped from 86.6 to 81 FPS. But at that speed, the five-frame drop is hardly worth fretting over.
Performance under Windows 8 is indistinguishable from Windows 7.

The Aero Glass theme, the graphical centerpiece of Windows Vista and Windows 7, has been completely removed from Windows 8 in favor of a Metro-style theme.

Together with Aero theme, Microsoft abandons Flip 3D windows switching (WinKey+Tab). This wasn’t actually the popular feature among Windows users, still it looked cool and stylish. In Windows 8, Flip 3D is replaced with a Modern UI app switcher, accessible by moving mouse up from the bottom-left corner or down from the upper-left corner. This cannot be used for desktop apps, only to switch to the desktop.

Performance: From what I have read, and working on a new Laptop this week with Windows 8, their is really no performance boost. The hew GUI mirrors Apple's and if you have a touch screen computer probably will function well. Most Windows 7 drivers work with Windows 8, but you could run into problems, depending on the hardware installed.

In my opinion, at this time, it isn't worth the investment to upgrade from Windows 7 64 bit to Windows 8, I run Win7 64bit and do not plan on upgrading.

[jazz836062]

Also, Right now the upgrade version (not retail) is very cheap. Only $39.99 for the Pro version. This offer isn't forever, but it is worth the look imo. I upgraded to windows 8 and have had no issues at all. It took about 4 hours of solid using the new start menu to get used to it. Now, I have it down pat.

[zanthal]

Good advice both of you, thank you.

[renegade600]

Originally Posted by zanthal

I have not at all looked at Windows 8, and I'm curious to here the analysis of somebody who has.

Are there any good reasons why I would want to upgrade from Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 8?

I'm sure an upgrade is going to cost close to $100, so ... what's the story, is it a decent release?

upgrade is only 40 bucks if you download it from microsoft. Another 15 if you want them to send you a disk. Or you can go to your local discount store and get it for about 70.

IMO, there is no real reason to upgrade from win7 to win8. In general anything that runs win 7 will run win8. There is an upgrade advisor at microsofts website that you can run before ordering to check out your system,

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

[Jintan]

Taking the thread off track but I wanted to add.

40 bucks if you download it from microsoft. Another 15 if you want them to send you a disk.

The download will provide the means of creating the disk, or an .iso, of 8, so no need to pay extra for the disk. However, you wouldn't know that until you ran the download, after the disk offer payment was complete (Doggone wasted $15 to know that).