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Windows 8.1 or try for Windows 7

B

bczoom

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Getting daughter a new laptop for Christmas.

Windows 7 machines are getting harder to find.

I still haven't heard anything good about Win 8.1.

Break down and suffer with 8.1 or try to get Win 7?
 
Matter of personal choice IMHO. I have seven machines, all are on Windows 8.1, except one that runs Linux. I really like 8.1.

OTOH tech media has done a great job of running it down. It is significantly different from Win 7. If that is an issue, then go with 7. I believe Dell, Lenovo and HP will sell you a laptop with Win 7 loaded for an extra charge. I just bought one for a customer.

If you go 8.1 you can set it to start up at a desktop instead of tiles and it is similar to 7.

Although you did not mention it, if you go with 8 make sure you get 8.1 and not 8.

YMMV - I'll probably get fried for this.
 
Adillo303 said:
Matter of personal choice IMHO. I have seven machines, all are on Windows 8.1, except one that runs Linux. I really like 8.1.

OTOH tech media has done a great job of running it down. It is significantly different from Win 7. If that is an issue, then go with 7. I believe Dell, Lenovo and HP will sell you a laptop with Win 7 loaded for an extra charge. I just bought one for a customer.

If you go 8.1 you can set it to start up at a desktop instead of tiles and it is similar to 7.

Although you did not mention it, if you go with 8 make sure you get 8.1 and not 8.

YMMV - I'll probably get fried for this.
Click to expand...

I have had an 8.1 laptop for about a year. IMO the only advantage is the touch screen, which I like but seems useless on a desktop.

Also, it makes no difference whether you get 8 or 8.1. 8 is upgradable for free, and at least in my experience, the upgrades to 8 will convert to 8.1 whether you want to or not. Mine did, twice.

Bottom line for me. Fine on a laptop with touch screen, OK but with no gain on the desktop, but no real harm either.
 
I've been running 8.1 for a couple months now. It's bearable. After all the complaints I was a little concerned but figured I'd have to bite the bullet sooner or later. As will your daughter. Go with 8.1. She'll probably handle it better than any of us old farts. And I'd guess that is what her friends and class mates will be using.
I have procrastinated before on OS's but looking back it has never worked out to be an advantage for me.
 
I've had 8.1 for close to a year now. Once you get used to it it's alright I guess. What I found was with my old laptop with 7 loaded, every time I looked at the thing it was doing 178 or so updates and the thing would usually freeze and crash before the updates were done. I haven't had a single issue with updates on this computer. Touch screen would be a nice feature but I've always just used a mouse anyways.
 
the only advantage I see with 7 is compatibility with software like the cat stuff I have loaded on mine for accessing on board ecm's. for a student or web surfer I would suspect 8.1 would be better it's been around long enough the bugs should be gone. after my last hp experience I won't be buying hp again, the dell's have served me fine.
 
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