Which Win OS?

[Tunnelcat]

My hubby needs to get a new computer. Which OS to get, 7 or 8? We're leaning towards 7 right now since our other rig is a 7 gaming system and I still have another unused license for Office 2010. He doesn't want a touch screen either, just a normal desktop for office use.

[BUBBALOU]

Win 7 pro

[Krom]

8 can be made to behave almost exactly like 7 (look up classic shell) so they are effectively the same. 7 just requires less work out of the box to be familiar.

[Grendel]

7 Pro or 8. Latter is probably preferred esp. w/ 8.1 (free update) around the corner.

[Duper]

just fyi, I found out yesterday that Win8 sports exclusively DX 11.1. The new BF4 release is recommending W8 as the game will make use of the DX rev. (whatever )

[Tunnelcat]

Duper, this box is not going to be used for gaming, just an office computer. What my hubby's more concerned with is the familiarity of use compared to XP and possibly the color scheme the OS uses for all the windows. My hubby needs really good contrast to see things on the screen. I personally like Win 7 Pro because it's similar to XP, but the colors seem more pastel and washed out looking than in XP, even with Aero turned off. And the high contrast mode is downright ghastly and eye burning in appearance. Are the system colors more crisp looking in Win 8? I haven't used Win 8 in regular desktop mode, so I don't know what it looks like. I guess I could look at it in a store, but familiarity of use may still be an issue with him anyway.

[fliptw]

Aero is gone in windows 8.


Google windows 8 desktop images and it'll show you how it looks.

[Grendel]

What my hubby's more concerned with is the familiarity of use compared to XP and possibly the color scheme the OS uses for all the windows. My hubby needs really good contrast to see things on the screen. I personally like Win 7 Pro because it's similar to XP, but the colors seem more pastel and washed out looking than in XP, even with Aero turned off.

Did you try the Windows Classic theme ? Basically XP. If all fails you can actually create your own theme.

Are the system colors more crisp looking in Win 8? I haven't used Win 8 in regular desktop mode, so I don't know what it looks like. I guess I could look at it in a store, but familiarity of use may still be an issue with him anyway.

The build-in desktop is virtually the same as W7. The W8 native GUI is quite a PITA if you don't have a touch screen or large touch-pad w/ multi gesture capability. In terms of looks it's quite simplified tho. Stop by at Staples, they have multiple tablets & laptops on display running W8.

[Sirius]

I do not miss Luna (especially not the default color). For all people complain about the Win8 start screen, it's very hard to be more hideous than XP was.

Except if the title bars were also in Comic Sans.

Anyway, yeah, contrast is one thing Windows 8 probably has more of than 7, since there is very little transparency at all. If you pick a suitable window background color it should work well. Start screen still confuses people for a good while but there are third-party utilities to switch it off should you decide to go that route.

[Tunnelcat]

Did you try the Windows Classic theme ? Basically XP. If all fails you can actually create your own theme.

Yeah, I'm running it on my slug of a Win 7 small laptop. No Aero and I killed it on my gaming rig too. The colors are not as crisp and strong as in XP. They're still kinda pastelly and soft. He needs strong colors that don't fry the eyes. XP's colors are loud and garish, but they're better than those in high contrast mode in 7. Ick.

The build-in desktop is virtually the same as W7. The W8 native GUI is quite a PITA if you don't have a touch screen or large touch-pad w/ multi gesture capability. In terms of looks it's quite simplified tho. Stop by at Staples, they have multiple tablets & laptops on display running W8.

We might wait and see what 8.1 looks like. You're right that the touch interface is PITA. Birdbrains at MS. We just want a general workstation for work, not a tablet or gaming system for play. We did notice that most workstation systems are coming loaded with Win 7 Pro. That should tell MS something about what businesses want.

[Sirius]

Yeah, I think most of us saw it coming actually.

[Krom]

8 was always aimed at the consumer market, MS didn't expect it to sell to businesses as well as 7 IIRC.

[Grendel]

Don't know about that -- W8 Pro and Enterprise are aimed at business environments. I think MS just got cocky, trying to shove their vision of the future down our throats.

[Tunnelcat]

And business said to MS: "Thanks, but no thanks".

[Krom]

Consumer market first. That is what I get from posting on a smart phone.

The pro and enterprise editions seem more tacked on because the majority of it was already in the 6.x source anyway. The start screen was definitely thought up with a consumer/tablet target in mind. It makes a lot more sense when it is actually on a tablet or other compact touch screen device (See the Surface Pro), but for an existing non-touchscreen desktop/business machines (or something with a 20+ inch monitor) it is too inefficient and clumsy.

You also have to keep in mind that a LOT of businesses still use Windows XP. I see XP systems EVERYWHERE. Even though the pro / enterprise editions of vista and 7 are quite solid contenders with a well proven track record. It isn't that businesses turn their noses up at 8, it is that they turn their noses up at anything new because moving to a new OS in a corporate environment is a gigantic and expensive pain in the ass. So basically nobody is going to retire all these old XP systems till the proverbial disks go square.

[Tunnelcat]

Consumer market first. That is what I get from posting on a smart phone.

The pro and enterprise editions seem more tacked on because the majority of it was already in the 6.x source anyway. The start screen was definitely thought up with a consumer/tablet target in mind. It makes a lot more sense when it is actually on a tablet or other compact touch screen device (See the Surface Pro), but for an existing non-touchscreen desktop/business machines (or something with a 20+ inch monitor) it is too inefficient and clumsy.

You also have to keep in mind that a LOT of businesses still use Windows XP. I see XP systems EVERYWHERE. Even though the pro / enterprise editions of vista and 7 are quite solid contenders with a well proven track record. It isn't that businesses turn their noses up at 8, it is that they turn their noses up at anything new because moving to a new OS in a corporate environment is a gigantic and expensive pain in the ass. So basically nobody is going to retire all these old XP systems till the proverbial disks go square.

Well, either way, they're going to have to bite the bullet come April, no matter how painful or expensive it will be.

[Sirius]

There is a theory that the malware peddlers are waiting for the first post-XP wave of updates, and then they will go party. May in fact happen, because there's little reason they couldn't do it. Once XP is a little less heavily used, it'll become safer to continue using it, but it'll be best to use great caution in mid-2014.

And, yeah, Windows 8: when you've already got the business market handled with Windows 7, and there aren't a lot of improvements you could make that would actually convince them to pay for a new version, and there are - to say the least - grave issues popping up in the tablet market... what would you do? It was a risk, but there was awfully little reason not to take it.

[Tunnelcat]

There is a theory that the malware peddlers are waiting for the first post-XP wave of updates, and then they will go party. May in fact happen, because there's little reason they couldn't do it. Once XP is a little less heavily used, it'll become safer to continue using it, but it'll be best to use great caution in mid-2014.

Our XP rig is going to get retired way before then. If it's ever used for anything, it will be never online after that. XP has always been malware spongy. In fact, this very rig had problems when it was new. When we first got it, Dell hadn't set up something right and through their tutelage and fussing, we had to reinstall the damned OS. Guess what? They didn't bother to send us copies of the latest hotfixes on their recovery CD's, so as soon as the machine went online, in crept the Sasser Worm, over and over again each time McAfee got rid of it. Couldn't even get online long enough to get the hotfixes from MS. Thankfully, we'd created an image before trashing the OS, so that saved our bacon.

[Sirius]

Yeah, that seems to hint that it was never truly gone and just kept reinstalling itself from somewhere. I remember trying to clean out a Win2000 machine... maybe eight years back? Kept coming back there too - only solution was an OS reinstall (which, luckily, is always a solution - just never the one you want).

[Tunnelcat]

Especially with a brand new computer.