W8 downgradable. Sound familiar?

Windows XP was released eleven years ago tomorrow

They stopped selling it in June of 2008

They will continue to upgrade it and support it until April of 2014

Last month, September, was the first time in ages it was not the operating system in use on the majority of windows based computers (just passed by windows 7 by one half of one percentage point)

So there's no huge rush for anybody with any current system to upgrade, however those purchasing something new may not have as many choices.

I have been skeptical too. But I am willing to give it a try. They are being smart about rolling it out at a pretty low price (for the upgrade version anyway). I have an old-ish laptop running Vista that has been nothing but pain. So it is a good test bed for Windows 8 I think. It's a Lenovo X301 with an SSD.

I agree completely....for a touchscreen device, it's creative and could possibly fly. But for a desktop computer, I just found the UI annoying. I also found it strange that behind the new metro start menu, it's really just the same old desktop and UI. Now they're expecting users to get used to 2 different interfaces (adding/deleting desktop icons is completely different from adding/deleting metro start menu items). :td: from me.

If you go to the Lenovo support site for drivers for the X301

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/rese...cID=MIGR-70496

and select windows 7 as the operating system you will find five or six dozen different drivers. Granted no machine will probably need all of them.

If you select Windows 8, they are currently listing four drivers.

They are saying, for that machine

In the interim, certain Windows 7 BIOS, drivers and software may work; however, the same functionality as under Windows 7 is not guaranteed.

Anybody who is upgrading a current machine to Windows 8 needs to be very careful that all the drivers they need for their basic things is available, or Windows 8 includes universal drivers that will work. I for one would not want to be the first person to be upgrading.

Well, it's a computer I am really not using anymore, so I am willing to take some risks with it. I ran the MS Windows 8 upgrade tool thing on it and the only thing that came up as a potential issue was the DVD drive. Which granted could be a pretty big issue since I'll be installing from the DVD. But we shall see.

Change for no good reason is my main issue. Windows 7 works fine for a desktop/laptop and I use a tablet for completely different tasks. The windows desktop paradigm has been around for a long time and has worked well across multiple OS's in addition to Windows. Why change? IMHO the Windows 8 UI looks like it was developed by my 8 year old.

I have also been using Windows 8 since preview 1 and I hate it. Yes there's change, but nothing I saw was change for the better, it was clunky, difficult to use and non-intuitive. Windows 7 represents the pinnacle of the Windows OS line IN MY OPINION, stable, fast, intuitive. This reminds me of the office 2007 to 2010 transition. No new features of any particular worth and a whole new IU to learn your way around. I am happy with W7 and have no plans to make the change. Likewise most corporations I have talked to also plan on skipping W8, so yes, it's Vista and Windows ME all over again.

In some sense, I have a vested interest in you being wrong. Alas, it's difficult to argue with anything you have said. I've been playing w/Win 8 in a VM for awhile and am horrified.

Here is an interesting article that I read today. Some non-technical folks may not be interested, but stick with it; the bottom third of the article is pretty to the point...

http://www.drdobbs.com/windows/windo...h-ev/240009572

Regards

Even though I was thinking of getting a new laptop (lighter, more memory) you all have convinced me to hang in there w/ my Vista laptop for a while vs. getting a new one w/ W8. Vista at this point doesn't bother me (heck, I went from W95 to Vista!); I just wanted lighter & more memory. I don't need some a new operating system that even the techs have problems w/.

Cheers.

Reviews seem to say W8 is pretty good if you have a touch screen and a step backwards if you are using mouse and keyboard. Some describe it as two OS's which compete with each other.

It is a platform which breaks ground unifying smartphones, tablets, ultrabooks, laptops and desktops.

ATEOTD, I'm glad I got one of the last upgrades for 3 PC's to W7.

You could upgrade that laptop to Windows 7. I upgraded two older laptops and they work great. One had Vista and the other had XP. 7 is an improved version of Vista. Just a thought.

Windows has quietly had downgrade rights for quite some time. The biggest issue can be having the proper media to install and license the older version of the software without a problem.

FWIW, Office also has downgrade rights. These days we have to buy office 2010 licenses, but I'd say the vast majority of my users are still preferring to use office 2007, largely to help prevent compatibility issues with people they work with. My guess is we'll still be having a large number of people using 2007 when 2013 rolls out.

Win 8 on a non-touchscreen device is an exercise in futility. I'd be curious to see if I'd be any happier with it if I could test it on a touch-screen computer, but I suspect I'd still be annoyed. (Among other things, I don't particularly want to constantly be having to reach up to my monitor to touch it to do things. Oh, and I get annoyed when people leave fingerprints on my monitor. On a brighter note, if I had to reach up to touch the screen all the time, that's a couple extra calories I'd have to burn to get work done.)

Microsoft's 'official' Windows 8 Survival Guide leaks - The Register

Or there are plenty of laptops on the market with Windows 7. And they will continue to be available for a while.

I just got an Asus Ultrabook that I really like. Except for one major issue...it shuts itself off at random times. I returned the first one that did it. The second one has shutdown randomly 3x in a the week I have been using it. I really don't want to have to send it back too so I am waiting to see how things progress. But it is fast, weight less than 3 pounds, 13.3" screen, 4GB RAM, 128 GB SSD. Very travel friendly. 2 USB 3.0 ports, SD card reader...even comes with a USB-RJ45 network dongle. For $900 at the Microsoft web store. It comes with MS "Signature" service which means they clean off all the crap ware before you get it which is a big time saver. And you get 90 days of free tech support. Returning the first laptop was a painless process.

I wouldn't switch to Win8 if it was free. Win7 is fast, stable and does every thing I need. Win8 is new, untested, and, no doubt, buggy as hell, has a stupid, clunky interface that might make sense on a phone but makes no sense for someone who actually uses his computer to run programs that perform real work, and provides absolutely no advantage over Windows 7, a critical point that, apparently, Microsoft has forgotten about.

Windows 8 is the Windows Millennium of the new millennium. Or maybe it's just the new Windows Bob. Quick -- where's Clippy?