Is it worth upgrading to Windows 8.1 from Windows 7

The SSD advice is the greatest advice I could imagine.
Thnx m8

Hey,

What does a SSD have to do with it? A SSD would help either system if a bit more speed for a high storage cost is your thing and would have nothing to do with my decision to upgrade or not. They are separate upgrade issues! W8 boots faster on either type drive than W7 but if you do a lot of traditional PC work W7 could be faster overall on either drive due to familiarity. I had both and prefer W7 for the "heavy lifting". I have a pretty powerful quad core 8 gb W7 machine but my lesser W7 Pro 32 bit 2.9 ghz dual core with only 2 Gb of dual channel RAM is actually quite zippy and my favorite because all but one of my old XP programs including Photoshop installed and run quite well on it without having to use the lower quality graphics settings in the virtual machine. That one program would not install there either because the virtual machine did not have an older virtual graphics processor!

Heck, I prefer W7 for everything, reinstalled the W8 OS, and gave it to my niece. Aside from familiarity issues, W8 is the first Windows OS that requires much personal info to be fully functional and I hate the default music and photo viewing apps even after becoming familiar with them. If you upgrade say hello to your big brother for me.

"What does a SSD have to do with it?" I think what was meant was, if your going to spend $100 on an upgrade, which would be better, a ssd or win 8?

I am running win 8 with a free program called "Classic Start Menu" and I can by pass the modern UI AND I don't have to give MS any information to log in and use. So, you gave away a pc because you didn't know about Classic Start Menu, and all of the other similar programs available? Wow!

My answer to the original question is: No! Keep win 7 and use it until you need a new computer, and at that time, you'll get the newest OS.

You think what was meant?? Yes, part of the problem is his opening statement is hard to fathom. In fact, the way the entire thing was phrased it was difficult to cull the advice. It sounds like it would be worth upgrading to W8.1 IF you have already installed a SSD too.

Yes, I am familiar with the available classic start menu, I beta tested W8. I said "Full Functionality" dude, not log in info and getting a start button back. It you want the full functionality you have to use the apps and to do that you have to sign up for things other than your log in. You also have to keep the "let the apps know my location" turned on for that full functionality. It is the default setting and many would not even know to turn it off if something like that would bother them. So, you argued with me because you can't read or because you don't know all that much about W8? Even rookie idiots know about the available Classic Start Menu. That was the first thing that popped out as an after market upgrade to W8.

So no, I did not give a computer away because I did not know about your silly "Classic Start Menu". It was for having to add stuff to a "jack of all trades master" of none OS and other issues you failed to grasp. I gave it away because I don't like W8, could afford to not sell it, and my poor niece needed a computer.

Most computer users are not that savvy. I've helped many learn how to use their W8 machines and repaired many. They activate and use apps that in many cases are less functional than traditional programs for their purposes and are being "watched" more closely than any previous OS ever allowed and they don't know it.

I'm glad at the end of the day you agree with me that he should keep W7. I'll agree with you that if he waits to buy a new computer till he needs one he will get the newest OS.

BTW, to fend of a possible question, I did not buy a W8 computer I did not like after beta testing it. A friend's daughter had one whose battery then HD failed about 2 months after warranty and they never made the recovery media. Also, the daughter lost the power unit at a slumber party the night the HD died! Hahaha. He did not want to spend $60 for a HD and $25 to HP for recovery discs despite my offer of free help for a laptop with a dead battery and no power supply so he sold it to me for $10 for parts because I help many for free or cheap.

After it sitting around for a few months and realizing there was not $10 worth of parts to me (2 Gb sticks of RAM are not worth the space they take up anymore, the world of matching up screens is crazy, and mobo swaps are unlikely etc.), I decided to buy a hard drive, use one of my spare HP power supplies that matched, and bought the recovery discs to use the laptop as an always plugged in streaming device for my HDTV. I figured the best use for that W8 machine was to do some simple work that would save wear and tear on a real computer! (Quad core 8 Gb W7 Pro 64 bit machine)

During that process I became convinced HP sent the wrong or faulty recovery discs. That happened before. They assured me they were OK and wanted me to send it in for a guaranteed $250 repair. Later I was able to install both my original W8 trial version and Linux on it so they elevated my complaint 3 times till it left India and landed in Canada. That guy changed the status back to in warranty and arranged for a free fix to see what their problem was in that case and they even stuck a new battery (possibly by accident) in it for my troubles. They were only obligated to find out why their recovery media would not work when others would. That is the laptop I gave to my niece.... along with one of the extra power supplies I bought for my HP Pro notebook so I would not have to crawl around and move them with the laptop.

Dafydd.

Depends on your point of view. If you mean I did not see a need to give him my power supply, hard drive, and recovery discs I paid for a few months after I offered to get those items at my cost and do all the work for free then yes, I suppose I ripped him off. If doing over 25 hours of work before getting HP to participate counts for nothing then yes, I ripped him off. Also, he does not use computers, and was pissed at the daughter for losing the power supply and other things, but not pissed enough to buy her an iPad by the time this all evolved.

You sound like many ungrateful fools I've helped. Donate parts and countless hours towards their betterment, then catch an accidental break worth less than 1% of the previous help, then they cry foul. My friend knows what happened and is happy I got a bit back and that I could give it away to someone else. Odd that a stranger would claim foul. I bet you always ask for help but never give any.

You do not "help people" you are an opportunist who feeds off the "ungrateful fools" that may take your crap as gospel. God help it if I ever had to call on you as a tech.

Dafydd.

I dunno... While I'll certainly admit to having my doubts about the guy's technical skill level even being within sight of the lofty perch he thinks he occupies, I have to side with him on this one.

A classy thing to do might have been to offer to sell it back to the friend for the cost of parts and maybe a six pack of your favorite beer for the labor, but this sort of thing goes on all the time. There are all those TV shows about people who buy a house, renovate it, then sell it for a profit. Not to mention it's a time honored tradition, in the US at least, for someone to buy a classic car and restore it... Sometimes just for the fun of it, sometimes for profit. Short of changing the oil and some other rather basic maintenance, I'm essentially useless with cars and know it. So let's just say the transmission went out... I don't have the tools to replace it, the time to do it, the necessary skill to accomplish it, let alone the space to do it all in if I had the other three things. In such a case I'd probably be better of selling the thing to someone for pennies on the dollar, even if I know full well they'll just spend a couple hundred on a new transmission, pop it in some weekend, and sell the car at a pretty hefty profit.

Legally and ethically speaking, the guy did absolutely nothing wrong. Socially he might be in a bit of a gray area under normal circumstances, but it sounds a bit like his friend was trying to teach his daughter a lesson in this particular instance, pushing him a bit closer to the socially acceptable side than socially deviant.

with Jimmy on this one Dafydd, he offered to give the friend the parts for cost and do the labor for free. The friend declined.

Digger

Maybe I read it wrong. But I do know he could've fixed it for his "friend" without ripping a laptop off for $10. Sorry, but my opinion.

Dafydd.

With friends like that, Who needs enemies?

Digger

I did not rip it off, I declined a $40,$30, $20, and $10 offer. He then said I could have it for the odd computer club that grew up around me and I said, Ok, I'll give you $10. I might run across a need for the DVD burner in the next year or two.

Either way and regardless it was a deal done in America by two intelligent people with no hidden details or agendas. Are you a commie or something?

computers I'm finished with for free. Didn't know there was a $10 "friend" charge for it. I usually toss in the disc which go with it too.

Thanks for the somewhat veiled support. I did say I kept my friend informed but failed to mention I offered the laptop back after getting it back from HP for my actual costs, a six pack, and a shot of his $200 bottle of scotch. He declined but gave me the shot and a couple beers. By adding the shot in I'm sure that twit the called me a thief would continue to.

I'm here and far from home to care for elderly parents. I was supposed to be here for a couple months to help them transition into a home then got talked into staying to keep them out of one. I've been here for 12 years now and all my stuff back home is in storage. With much time on my hands and having fixed one computer for a niece for free, I soon found myself fixing them for other relatives and their friends for free during my "glorified babysitter" days of not much to do other than keeping an eye open and a computer club with about 30-40 people grew up around me. Some have always been there, some move or are never heard of again, and new ones filter in. About a year into it I started charging a beer a day for my help and gave priority to poor people...especially those wanting one for their kids.

Your doubt's about my technical skills might be correct depending on your point of view. Many people here think I'm a genius and I reply "No, I'm not. I only know about 25% of what is possible to know about home computers but that 25% is enough to fix 99% of the average guy's problems."

If my friend was trying to teach a lesson he was doing a bad job by getting that iPad. He tries to hard sometimes to recapture the expressions of unconditional love, happiness, and joy from her that was so easy to get just a few years earlier. Might be an only kid thing. She made me promise to marry her when she was 5 and when asked if she remembered that says yes but now I'm to old and ugly!! (not in a mean way, with a pat on the back and a hug) She knows about the laptop too and is happy with her new toy. I left over 100 unicorn stickers on the laptop till I got it back and was sure she did not want it.

Well, I hope this takes me out of the "friend" gray area in your eyes so we can focus on computer sword play.

I beg to differ. I've offered help on many occasions in these fora. I agree with Jimmy on your level of technical skill. That is, I don't think you have it.

Dafydd.

That's funny, because Windows 8 has had local accounts since the beginning. All your complaints seem to be little more than a thin veneer for your own arrogance. You fancy yourself some kind of computer expert and thus the idea that you might have to start over at the same level as everyone else and learn something new threatens what you perceive as your elevated social status over the average person.

You look at Windows 8 and see a threat to your carefully constructed image as an expert on computers. Afraid of people finding out you don't really know nearly as much as they think, you badmouth Windows 8 and blame Microsoft for your shortcomings. I look at Windows 8 and am like a kid in a candy store because here's this brand new area where I can experiment and learn new skills. If someone asks me a question I don't know the answer to, I see that as an excuse to go learn something new, not a threat to my masculinity. You never know when some bit of knowledge may come in handy down the road. My primary disappointment with Windows 8's start screen is that it wasn't disruptive enough. There's really not a lot of meat to it when you start digging. Of course Windows 1.0 was probably pretty similar and it's only after about 3 decades of development that it has become as rich as it is, so maybe I'm being a little unfair.

Whether or not MS hit it out of the park on their first attempt isn't the point; there's finally a little bit of innovation taking place in the GUI world again. Unless someone can develop a reliable crystal ball to figure out what will and won't work, there may well be some more missteps along the way, but there's finally some forward momentum again to find a more efficient and/or effective way of doing things.

Also, just for the record, I went into using Windows 8 pretty much blind. I'd never used Windows Phone, and had maybe 10 minutes or so of exposure to Win 8 prior to using it. All I had to go on was having used every version of Windows (except NT 3.1-4) from 3.1-7 with a couple year detour to Linux. Took me maybe 10 seconds to figure out how to make a local account. I discovered how to close modern apps without even trying. Took me maybe 5-10 minutes to figure out the start screen. Took me maybe another 5 minutes to finally figure out that the "Store" app didn't, in fact, replace Windows Update as I assumed based on some of the articles about the 8.1 upgrade. So let's just say that my previous experience gave me a significant leg up overall. What took me about 10 minutes still shouldn't take the average person more than an hour to figure out if they just sat down and started saying, "I wonder what would happen if I did this," and then finding out. It's how I learned. I broke a lot of things along the way, but learning how to put them back together was just as instructive.

I didn't know that.

Ummmmm.... You are aware that the old Windows desktop is still there in Windows 8, right? And aside from replacing the start menu with the start screen, it functions pretty much exactly like Windows 7. You rarely even have to see the start screen if you don't want to, once you set yourself up with some icons on the desktop and/or taskbar. Once the shock of the new wears off on the start screen, it's basically a wash IMO. In some ways it's considerably better, like being much more efficient at finding specific programs than scrolling through 2-3 layers of horizontal menus, in others it's worse, like how it's an extra step and can be a bit disorienting visually because it's so different looking.

But as to why you might spend your money on it, see some of the reasons I list above for a few. Those are some not insignificant reasons. Sure, most of them are under the hood, so not very sexy or front and center so people will notice, but they're worth noting just the same.

Ummmmm no it's not. You say the old windows desktop is still there then list several but not all things that are missing or different. You even say "when the shock wears off."

Like what? Seriously. Name one thing that is missing aside from the start menu. That's not a trick question or anything either. Beyond the start screen and Windows 8 having a more "flat" look aimed at making it easier for lower powered tablet GPUs to render, I'm seeing nothing all that much different. Even the "flat" look is purely cosmetic since all the Windows controls are in the exact same place they've been since Windows 95 and the close window button is still red like it has been since Windows XP. I suppose Windows Explorer, or whatever they renamed it in Windows 8 has the third generation of the Ribbon UI, which is something I forgot to mention above... It took a few years of experimentation, but MS finally managed to get the ribbon UI more or less right. By default it just shows the individual tabs, which only expand if you click on them, saving screen real estate, but it provides ready access to far more commands than any previous version of Windows Explorer and it changes based on context similar to the old Formatting Pallet from the v.X and 2004 versions of Office. So if I click on a video file, I get a new tab with video specific commands.

It does never ceases to amaze me how a few minor graphical differences can throw people. When has anything ever been exactly the same in life? If you get a new TV, isn't the remote layout always different? Aren't any on-screen menus laid out differently? But eventually you learn to adapt to the new remote and find what settings you want. If you get a car, not everything is in exactly the same place. Some have the shifter up by the steering wheel, others have it down between the front seats, some have stereo controls on the steering wheel now, some don't... People look different as they age, cities change over time, the examples go on and on and people somehow manage to cope. Yet when it comes to computers, suddenly it's like all the rules for every other aspect of life don't apply.

The one thing missing is a close button at the top of the screen. I have talked to a number of new users and the first question they ask is "How do I close out of the current window?" If you are a tablet user, swiping the current window is a nice way to close it. But if you're using a mouse and you move it to the top of the screen, why not have the option to just click it closed? Also, the scroll bars at the bottom of the screen are not mouse friendly, IMO.

I have installed a program that by-passes the modern UI on many PC's and every owner is happier because the result is a pc that is familiar.

Rather simple, though I can't help but note these are tifka related issues when I was specifically asking about the desktop part of Win 8. Still, many tifka/modern apps allow for some kind of interaction with the interface, so how would it work if every time you clicked inside the program it closed it?

And you do know that Windows 8.1Update 1 now boots to the Windows Desktop by default, right? No third party software required. I'll grant you it was probably a poor decision to try and force PC users into the start screen every boot. At least having an option to choose one or the other would have been a good idea. I get why the decision was made not to, but I think in this case a little inconsistency in the delivery would have probably stopped a lot of the tifka hate in its tracks.

I'd say to your list:

1: XP Mode was a bad idea in the first place. XP was already long in the tooth and while I have some degree of sympathy for people who are stuck supporting legacy hardware from a company that went belly up, for the average user, XP Mode was pretty much unnecessary. Probably 99.9% of programs ran just fine on 7 natively that ran on XP. Of those that didn't probably around 90% could be coaxed into running using the compatibility mode settings that came along with XP SP1/2000 SP4. Of the even narrower subset, probably 90% were highly specialized programs like a HDD diagnostic program. Leaving a rather infinitesimal number of programs that actually needed XP. The rest were the really poorly written programs that you have to stop and wonder how they worked in the first place. But because XP Mode was there people just got into the habit of thinking that Windows 7 had no backwards compatibility save XP Mode.

2: See the "Live" tiles on the start screen, plus gadgets and the Active Desktop garbage that preceded those as far back as IE4, were major security hazards just begging to be exploited. Live tiles are at least sandboxed for a change.

3: Never had to try it since using Win 8, so I'll give a conditional "fair enough"

XP mode was a very good idea if you had expensive or irreplaceable software you needed or wanted. The XP programs only ran well on W7 machines if you bought a fairly rare 32 bit edition. Your 99.9 percent guess is way off. My W7 Pro 64 bit virtual XP machine could not really handle my old Photoshop but the W7 32 bit version does great. Long in the tooth does not mean can't be useful. I demoted my XP computer from business work long ago but still use a couple for other purposes. Heck my brother still uses a W98 machine with a $2500 program to run a $10,000 machine that cuts large stuff in intricate patterns. We need a new computer with W98 mode!!

Since XP still commands almost 30% of the market and more than both versions of W8 and Vista put together you don't have to feel sorry for any legacy hardware vendors because there is no such thing yet! Feel sorry that they have to do stuff for such a small number of W8 users.

He is right, safe mode is a pain. So is the new safe boot and other bios settings.