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So far, I'm liking the upgrade to Win7 pro 64

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Kerry Pierce

Kerry Pierce

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I've been running Win7 pro 64 on a new system for about 2 weeks or so. Other than the fact that I initially had some compatibility issues with new hardware, it seems to be a nice upgrade to Vista Home 32.

I still have much to learn/experience with the new OS. I ran Vista Home Premium for many years, so there are a number of things that are "different".

I am wondering about Windows 8.1, the Full version. Apparently, the "Pro" version isn't as much different from the base version. I have no need for Bitlocker or remote desktop or domain join nor with the Pro Pack for watching TV. Unless I'm missing something, it seems that the cheapest version of version 8.1 is all that I'd want/need, which is pretty cool, given that it's about $40 cheaper than what I paid for the Win 7 pro version.

So, I'd be interested in hearing your opinions and thoughts about version 8.1. I have a vague impression that a lot of folks didn't like the new UI of 8.1, but has that changed now? Are you guys mostly happy with 8.1 or would you prefer to roll back to version 7?

Seems like a lot of the reviewers, even the latest ones, on Amazon aren't happy with version 8.1, so I'm wondering if that's the consensus of the folks here.

thanks

Kerry
 
To me, Win8.1 is not much different than Win8. 8.1 has a "Start" button in the lower left corner, like previous versions of Windows have had. However, if you click it, you don't get the familiar Start menu with a list of Programs, Settings, etc. When you click the "Start" button, it takes you to the "Metro" screen with all of the app icons. If you right-click it, you get a series of tools (computer management, disk management, command prompt, etc.

To make Win8.1 have the look & feel of Win7, you need to install a utility such as Classic Start Menu. It's free and it gives you quite a bit of flexibility in the look of the Start menu. You can make it look similar to Win2K, XP, or Win7. I have a Win7Pro desktop and a Win8.1Pro laptop. The first thing I did when I got the laptop was to install Classic Start Menu. With that installed, it's hard to tell Win7 & Win8.1 apart (from a UI perspective).
 
Don't waste your money upgrading.

I've got computers running both Win 7 and Win 8.1, and I would not spend any money to upgrade from Win 7 to Win 8.1 for sure.

As mentioned in the previous post by Bob Collette, you can install a utility like the free Classic Shell for Windows so that you can have a traditional style menu system with Win 8.x, to avoid going to the new style start screens. More about Classic Shell here:

http://www.classicshell.net/

I've done that with 3 different computers with Win 8.1 on them so far (installed Classic Shell so that they behave more like Windows 7).

IOW, many users install those types of utilities to avoid using the new style user interface in Windows 8.x and make Windows 8.x look and feel more like Windows 7.

So, why upgrade to Win 8.x, just to find and install utilities to make it work more like Win 7 again? :-)

IMO, the new User Interface design in Windows 8.x is horrible for use on a desktop with a traditional display and keyboard, and I'm not the only one that feels that way (hence why utilities like the free Classic Shell for Windows are so popular).

Heck, I've got two laptops with Win 8.1 on them now that have touchscreens, and I still installed Classic Shell to make them work more like Windows 7, as it's nuts to reach and swipe and poke at a screen versus just using a mouse or touchpad, and keyboard instead (a lot more efficient compared to using a touch style UI in my view).

Perhaps the User Interface in Win 8.1 would be better with a tablet. But, for anything else, I'd want to make it work more like Windows 7 using third party utilities like Classic Shell for that purpose, so that I avoid the new style start screens, menu system with tiles, etc.

You can still use a keyboard and mouse with the new style menu system in Win 8.x. But, it's just not very efficient in my opinion, hence why many users (including me) install utilities like Classic Shell so that Win 8.1 works more like Windows 7.

Boot time is a little faster with Win 8 versus Win 7. But, that's mostly "smoke and mirrors", where they use a type of hibernation (storing some of the memory contents from what you were working on to disk for faster startup on the next boot).

But, I've disabled the new "fast boot" feature in Windows 8 to prevent flle system corruption, since I use multi-boot setups with both Windows and Linux and let Linux installations access the Windows partitions. That way, I avoid potential file system corruption issues where Windows may still have some incomplete transactions it wrote from memory to the files used for fast boot.

You'd also lose the ability to use "XP Mode" if you moved to Windows 8.1. For example, you can download Microsoft XP Mode for use with Win 7 Pro. More info here:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/install-and-use-windows-xp-mode-in-windows-7

Basically, that gives you a copy of XP running in a Virtual Machine (what Microsoft refers to a Virtual PC), so you can run older applications that don't work properly in newer Operating Systems (64 bit Win 7, 8, etc.).

But, Microsoft discontinued that feature with Win 8.x. So, if you have any applications that won't run in newer versions of Windows (like 16 bit applications or applications using 16 bit installers, that won't work with the compatibility modes in 64 Bit Windows), you can still run them using XP Mode in Windows 7 Pro.

You'll also find lots of complaints about driver issues with Win 8.x. For example, you can use Intel USB 3.0 drivers with Intel chipsets in Windows 7. But, Intel doesn't offer USB 3.0 drivers for Win 8.x; as they've been replaced by Microsoft drivers instead (and you'll find lots of reported issues with the Microsoft drivers).

You'll find many long threads here debating Windows 7 versus Windows 8.x, with users that are passionate about both Operating Systems.

But, my advise is not to waste your money upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 8.x.

I'd wait to see how well Windows 10 works instead if you have an "itch" to upgrade. But, chances are, there will be no good reason to update from Win 7 to Win 10 either, even though Win 10 will probably have a better user interface compared to Win 8.1.

Save your money, as Win 7 Pro is a good OS.

--
JimC
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Win 7 Pro 64 is a good, solid OS. I would stick with it. I had a couple of upgrade issues when I first started using it years ago, mainly for my FTP software and scanner software, but I found some updates.

Win 7 Pro also lets you run XP as a virtual machine. I have some ancient financial software from the Win 95 era that I still use because it has all my historical business data, which can be handy. And my favorite old game: Civilization.

Finally, Microsoft is coming out with a new OS in a few months. I'd wait to see what the heck they come up with this time and if it is a steaming turkey.
 
Jim Cockfield said:
Don't waste your money upgrading.

I've got computers running both Win 7 and Win 8.1, and I would not spend any money to upgrade from Win 7 to Win 8.1 for sure.

As mentioned in the previous post by Bob Collette, you can install a utility like the free Classic Shell for Windows so that you can have a traditional style menu system with Win 8.x, to avoid going to the new style start screens. More about Classic Shell here:

http://www.classicshell.net/

I've done that with 3 different computers with Win 8.1 on them so far (installed Classic Shell so that they behave more like Windows 7).

IOW, many users install those types of utilities to avoid using the new style user interface in Windows 8.x and make Windows 8.x look and feel more like Windows 7.

So, why upgrade to Win 8.x, just to find and install utilities to make it work more like Win 7 again? :-)

IMO, the new User Interface design in Windows 8.x is horrible for use on a desktop with a traditional display and keyboard, and I'm not the only one that feels that way (hence why utilities like the free Classic Shell for Windows are so popular).
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Totally agree with everything Jim C. said.

Sky
 
Windows 7 has a working user interface that has proven very stable.

Win 8 changed that but huge numbers of folks didn't like it. So they changed the user interface again and released Win 8.1. That isn't working out too well so now they're messing around with various other user interface changes for Win 10.

I'm sticking with the one I know because I know it works. It's that simple really.

However, as a techie I like to play with new stuff and hence I have VirtualBox guest running 8.1 and the 10 preview but they're just for play and not real work.
 
Not considering the cost of upgrading, my experience is that Win 8.1 Pro is a more robust OS than Win 7 and especially XpPro. I recently upgraded two Win 7 Ultimate 64 PCs to Win 8.1 Pro 64 and an older PC to Win 8 32. All were immediately installed with Classic Shell.

With my new Surface Pro with 8.1 I find it just as easy to navigate using the touch screen rather than the mouse, trackball or pen. For photo and audio editing I find the pen or trackball the better user interface. For this device it all depends upon whether you are using it as a desktop or a tablet.

I have found it fun to work with the "Metro" interface and am teaching my GF how to use the "metro" IF on her Windows 8.1 laptop with Classic Shell installed. She is going Wow that is neat. She now knows how to quickly switch between the desktop and the Metro display depending what she wants to do. I believe that eventually she will find that she will be using the Metro UI more for general navigation and program selection.

My opinion is that if cost is not the driving factor it is a mistake to ignore Win 8.1 until we know more about Win 10.

--
"There is a little of not done yet in all of us."
John Madden, football coach
 
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Win 7 Home is fine and very stable. For most people the Pro version offers nothing - the virtual XP mode is of little benefit. VirtualBox and other VMs are better and more flexible VMs, with the proviso that you need an XP licence in order to run XP in a VM (Win 7 Pro includes that).

I don't find Win 8 more stable - but Win 7 and 8 are both pretty good. Win 8 however has the obnoxious Metro interface, which you can't entirely eradicate (although Start8, ClassicShell and similar largely hide it).

Really no point in going to Win 8 at the moment - wait for Win 10 next year (unless, of course, the Microsoft wretches make that rental-only, in which case Win 7 licences will become very valuable).
 
I use 8.1 + Classic Shell, and it works fine. But unless you enjoy playing with different operating systems (I do) the benefits of 8.1 over 7 are minor IMO.

Wait and see if Windows 10 has significant improvements that you'd find helpful; if it doesn't, I'd just stay with Windows 7 for as long as it does what you want.
 
meh, with the issues I've had with USB 3 crashes on this MB, using the Intel drivers, the last thing I want is an increase in instability... :-(

As always, your detailed, insightful comments are appreciated.

thanks

Kerry
 
I really appreciate your comments, guys. I need to buy another OS license, which prompted my question. Given that I'm relatively happy with Win7 Pro, I'll just get another copy and forget 8.1.

Although there are lot of negative comments about 8.1 on Amazon, I asked here because the users here are probably more sophisticated than the average Amazon reviewer. If folks here don't like it, it must be a real doozy.

thanks again.

Kerry
 
Kerry Pierce said:
I really appreciate your comments, guys. I need to buy another OS license, which prompted my question. Given that I'm relatively happy with Win7 Pro, I'll just get another copy and forget 8.1.
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Unless you have a specific need for any the added features of "Pro", you could purchase "Home Premium" for considerably less. I believe you were using the "Home Premium" version of Vista, rather than one of the more full-featured editions?

The "Home Premium" version will support up to 16GB memory, vs. 192GB for the "Pro" version, among other differences listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions
 
Win 7 stays on my desktop and Vista on my old backup laptop. My wife just got a new Dell 2-1 notebook and 8.1 is 100% a-ok. I use a mouse with it as I don't really like the one piece pad or the supplied pen. 8.1 is very well suited to these small touch screen devices. So, each is good in there own niche.
 
Patco said:
Unless you have a specific need for any the added features of "Pro", you could purchase "Home Premium" for considerably less. I believe you were using the "Home Premium" version of Vista, rather than one of the more full-featured editions?
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I was using Home Premium because I was running 32bit on it. Perhaps stupidly, I never considered trying to upgrade the machine to x64. Other than being somewhat of a pig with PS CS, the machine did all that I needed at 32bit.
Member said:
The "Home Premium" version will support up to 16GB memory, vs. 192GB for the "Pro" version, among other differences listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions
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That's a good point and a $40 savings. The problem is that I have 32gigs in this machine, to run CS6. The other machine that I'm building has 16gigs and could probably run fine with Home Premium, assuming that Home Premium would run a few PC games in addition to being a file server.

Thanks for the idea. I'll order the Home Premium to install on the 16gig machine and save the Pro copy for later.

Kerry
 
Kerry Pierce said:
Patco said:
Unless you have a specific need for any the added features of "Pro", you could purchase "Home Premium" for considerably less. I believe you were using the "Home Premium" version of Vista, rather than one of the more full-featured editions?
Click to expand...
I was using Home Premium because I was running 32bit on it. Perhaps stupidly, I never considered trying to upgrade the machine to x64. Other than being somewhat of a pig with PS CS, the machine did all that I needed at 32bit.
Kerry Pierce said:
The "Home Premium" version will support up to 16GB memory, vs. 192GB for the "Pro" version, among other differences listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions
Click to expand...
That's a good point and a $40 savings. The problem is that I have 32gigs in this machine, to run CS6. The other machine that I'm building has 16gigs and could probably run fine with Home Premium, assuming that Home Premium would run a few PC games in addition to being a file server.

Thanks for the idea. I'll order the Home Premium to install on the 16gig machine and save the Pro copy for later.

Kerry
Click to expand...
 
Vernon D Rainwater said:
Kerry, I have NOT read all posts so perhaps parts of this may have already been discussed.
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No problem, I appreciate your input.
Vernon D Rainwater said:
I like most of Win 7 Pro 64 bit with a few exceptions. The main annoyance is the "supposedly" Security related things that are suppose to be for the user's benefit but I find them to be somewhat "weak" and basically just require more time and efforts by the user to get actual work accomplished.

I have managed to alleviate at least some of that Microsoft Fiasco.
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I assume that you're talking about UAC. If that's correct, may I ask what you've done to alleviate that?

thanks
Kerry
 
Kerry Pierce said:
Vernon D Rainwater said:
Kerry, I have NOT read all posts so perhaps parts of this may have already been discussed.
Click to expand...
No problem, I appreciate your input.
Kerry Pierce said:
I like most of Win 7 Pro 64 bit with a few exceptions. The main annoyance is the "supposedly" Security related things that are suppose to be for the user's benefit but I find them to be somewhat "weak" and basically just require more time and efforts by the user to get actual work accomplished.

I have managed to alleviate at least some of that Microsoft Fiasco.
Click to expand...
I assume that you're talking about UAC. If that's correct, may I ask what you've done to alleviate that?

thanks
Kerry

--
When is it "Okay" to be mean, petty or unethical?
-
my gallery of so-so photos
http://www.pbase.com/kerrypierce/root
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I assume by (UAC) you are referring to "User Account Control". I am the only user on this Computer.....

The issue I had was that there were interruptions (and rejections) regarding authority to access many, many areas even when using as Administrator. It took me for (what seemed like forever) to at least get rid of many of these issues. Even after approximately 8 months, I am still having issues with this -- however, the first attempt is regarding changing the security settings. However, sometimes this works and sometimes it does NOT.

I am sorry that I can not list all the things that I did and those I tried without results but hopefully you will have better luck than what I had (and have). There are some Folders of User Data that will not accept changes to the security settings and indicate "you do not have authority to access". This may not be the exact description but is close. This basically has absolutely nothing to do with security -- it is just some of the Microsoft CxxxP.

Overall, other than this issue, I have all but two of my MANY programs and utilities installed and working without issue -- so this is actually better than I had expected. One of these I never used and the other is related to System Backup for which I planned (and now use) different System Backup Program (to image file) software that performs without issue for both Backup and for Restore.

--
Vernon...
 
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Vernon D Rainwater said:
Evidently, there are rather important differences in the versions of Win 7.
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Such as? I mean: I know what the differences are (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions#Comparison_chart) but I wonder which differences you think are relevant to home users.

Most of the differences seem to me to be either irrelevant to home users, or can be achieved usually better with free alternatives. For example, VirtualBox is a rather better virtual machine architecture than the one in Win 7 Pro. Microsoft backup won't work over a network in Home Premium, but it's not a very good backup system anyway.

And, of course, Win7 Pro has a bigger memory footprint because of the extra services that run.

But I'm interested in your views in case I've missed or misunderstood something.
 
Kerry Pierce said:
Although there are lot of negative comments about 8.1 on Amazon, I asked here because the users here are probably more sophisticated than the average Amazon reviewer. If folks here don't like it, it must be a real doozy.
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Not really, but if you are of the opposite opinion, then you probably are smart enough to laugh at this and not worry about it.

http://xkcd.com/386/

xkcd.com

Duty Calls

xkcd.com xkcd.com

Thank you
Russell
 
Kerry Pierce said:
I really appreciate your comments, guys. I need to buy another OS license, which prompted my question. Given that I'm relatively happy with Win7 Pro, I'll just get another copy and forget 8.1.

Although there are lot of negative comments about 8.1 on Amazon, I asked here because the users here are probably more sophisticated than the average Amazon reviewer. If folks here don't like it, it must be a real doozy.
Click to expand...
I have a fair bit of experience with most versions of Windows that have appeared since about 1990. When I retired from my computer business in about 2008, I had recently upgraded to various versions of Windows Vista, and that was fine until another upgrade to hardware and software was required.

I had some experience with Windows 8.1 while assisting a friend to come to terms with his new computer. He had found that Windows 8.1 was almost completely unintelligible, despite being quite familiar with previous Windows versions (Win98 and WinXP). Touch screen did not suit my friend, and we both found keyboard/mouse operation very unfriendly, so I installed CS and all was well.

After my experiences with Windows 8.1, I chose to install Win7 on my new computers, and pressed an old copy of Vista into use on my spare (Internet) computer. I already had Win7 on my notebook computer, and it has been totally reliable. The new systems have been rock solid.

More recently, I bought a small notebook computer (non-touch) which came with Windows 8.1. With this computer, I chose to say with Windows 8.1 and it's quite usable after a few tweaks that eliminate most of the idiosyncrasies of the UI. I might add that I was comprehensively criticised when I reported my findings on Windows 8.1 on DPR. I was assumed to be incompetent or some sort of Luddite for detecting that Windows 8.1 UI was a turkey of the fattest variety.
 
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