Quoting Jafo, reply 76The only difference between you and I is...I won't change my opinion of Win8.
Ah, but I'm not stubborn.
Besides, my opinion change was due to recognising and embracing the benefits Win 8 has to offer above and beyond Win 7. Yeah, I changed my mind, so what! Once you peel away Metro, Win 8 is a faster Win 7 and it works... more efficiently. For mine, anyone who wants to complain about that has to have rocks in their head. I mean, really, had Win 8 been released without the Metro interface, there'd be such little difference between them and debates such as this simply wouldn't be raging so unnecessarily.
The fact is, nobody has to deal with Metro if they don't like it, so really, what's all the freaking fuss all about?
The point is, Metro is the point of Windows 8. If you dont love Metro there is no reason to upgrade from an earlier version of Windows.
Not to mention it is downright stupid to
- Buy a new OS
- Buy software that makes the new OS feel like the old one
A lot of money... for NOTHING.
Quoting starkers, reply 78The fact is, nobody has to deal with Metro if they don't like it, so really, what's all the freaking fuss all about?
Having to deliberately side-step the Win 8 "feature" to actually discover a viable OS. Dating a sexy sheila is one thing...but if her ugly sister rides shotgun it's a turn-off.
Have I explained it yet?
You shouldn't HAVE TO jump through hoops to make an OS more comfortable to use....and if it's Grand Design is to get people sliming greasy fingers all over a touch screen then at least throw in the touch screen with the OS to make it viable.
Jury is still out re speed....my Laptop "boots" in Win 7 faster than I can type in the password - less than 2 seconds. [because it's not a true hard boot].
...and the number of times this machine sees a boot? .....count them on the fingers of one hand in a year, so boot speed [all those finding issues with Fences in 8] is pretty much a non-issue....
QFT
XP compared to 7 is like one choosing to watch an old, CRT, black and white TV over a big screen LCD TV in color.
Like choosing a horse and buggy over a limo.
Like choosing the Wright Brother's plane over a Lear jet.
Like..........
What are the major advantages of Windows 7 over Win XP? I dont see any worth an early upgrade.
- Fancy graphics? Can have that with freeware for XP and not relevant for the performance of the OS.
- Better security? Correct, but then 80 % of the security problems are coming from the user anway and you still need a good AV and firewall.
- Higher Direct X? No doubt interesting for gamers, altough it took ages until somebody released a Direct X game that was possible worth the OS upgrade. In any case, for the entire business market 3D performance is irrelevant. Not to mention that those machines rarely have good graphic performance anyway.
- Higher version of internet explorer? Excuse me... no security interested person uses IE. No matter what version.
I cant think of anything more....and I use both Win 7 and XP (work/home).
Is Win 7 better than XP? Yes.... but not good enough to warrant spending money on it.
As for Windows 8.... :
Independent of if the new GUI is good or bad..... it certainly has a considerable learning curve.
Why should I annoy myself with that... when the system offers no worthy features above Win 7? Win 8 would need to have some tremendous huge advantages over 7 to be interesting, to justify both money and time loss.
Personally I had the preview version for a while and I hate the new GUI. I see no advantage in a mobile phone GUI on a desktop system.
It is pathetic.... people have huge flatscreen nowadays.... and now you offer me an OS that would look great on a 13 inch CRT? Seriously?
As for the support end if Windows 7.... I would not take even an official press release from MS very serious currently. Some underpaid tech support person will have neither the information and most certainly not the authority to state such things.... and so I find your source most unrealiable.
If the market demands, that the support is prolonged... you can follow that demand.... or leave the market.
Proof? Win XP is supported until 2014..... and certainly not because MS likes to do that. So why do they do it? Because they have little choice in the matter. When they intended to chancel it earlier, a large portion of their userbase was still running it and had no intentions of upgrading anytime soon. Certainly, you could all piss them off..... but especially business users in that case might reconsider using Windows alltogehter. And that is something that MS cannot allow to happen.
Win 7 will likely be supported until 2020... especially as it becomes more and more clear that Win 8 will not be a success.
On being somewhat offtopic:
MS problem is partially that XP and Win 7 are both quite good OS. Everyone hated Win 98 crashes and everyone hated Vistas slowness. That makes a great incentive for people to upgrade. That incentive is not here anymore. As software does not age in the normal way (wear and tear), it gets more and more difficult to convince the userbase into quick upgrading.
There are many peoples.... who buy something because it is new. And not because it has any advantages over the old stuff.