I considered moving to Windows 8 for some time.
Read this.And thisAnd Gabe's opinion.I'm not very convinced anymore. Unfortunately I can't really experience it in a virtual environment due to choppy performance, and I'm not willing to waste a couple of days of moving to Windows 8.
I think I'll wait for Windows 8.1(blue) and see how that fixes some annoying things.
Like many others, I just don't agree with being forced to boot to Metro. Yeah it's nice, but I'm not exactly the illiterate facebook addict that uses his computer just for browsing. I fear windows 8 is a complete failure when it comes to productivity. The desktop- I like. But... switching between Metro and Desktop is confusing.
I'd love a Windows 8 Desktop edition...
Furthermore, Linux distributions are starting to become promising alternatives. Ubuntu might be the star of the show, but there a couple of ubuntu based(debian based) distros that strive to resemble a familiar windows-like environment. Linux Mint is popular, for example. With Wine and Play on Linux, you can run lots of windows apps. It's just that it's not very stable yet.
And there's Zorin OS, which is a Linux distro specifically designed to be a Windows alternative. It comes with a similar interface, and Wine and Play on Linux installed by default.
At some point we will be forced to upgrade- that's if Linux distros won't be solid alternatives by then. Windows XP was a great OS. I switched to Windows 7 at the end of 2010. Are you still using Windows XP?
That said, it would be nice to get the full potential out of my DX11-capable Graphics card...
Ive got mine 7 for free from my college, windows 7 professional. Before installing it i was using Windows 7 Ultimate. Not much difference, but against XP windows 7 is a great improvement.
You can easily improve loading time of windows 7 by disabling the crap you don't need.
Win 8 isn't more optimized at all, the only new thing in win 8 is DX 11.1 , which is bullshit to make you buy a new system because of that. Thats why Micro$oft deserves to get its ass wopped by linux.
My windows 7, with out SSD loads in 20 seconds from end of POST screen to login screen, than 10 more for everything else. Total of 30 seconds.
If thats too long for you than i dont know.
Even if it were loading for 5 minutes, putting your PC to sleep makes it load instantly.
Also:
I don't fucking roll on fucking Shabbas!
You might not think so, perhaps you've never tried one, but Linux distros already are promising and solid alternatives. I've used Linux Mint and I can tell you there's a bunch of settings in it somewhere that can make it look just like Windows if that's what you want. I personally don't care what it looks like as long as it works the way it's supposed to work. The only thing that was holding me back from moving over was gaming, and now that Steam for Linux is out, I don't even need to care about that either.
With some luck, Win 8.1 will be half decent. In the way that the original Win 98 was just a half assed upgrade to Win 96 and it sucked so bad they had to haul ass to push Win 98 Second Edition out, which turned out to be awesome. I don't think this will be the case, though, so I have strong intentions of moving over to Linux at the first opportunity.
So long as my major programs work I will totally switch over, or maybe just keep dual boot win7 as a backup.
Also, Win 95* (just a typo )
My conclusion is that for me, Linux is the correct choice for a specialised box or a server, but Windows is the only option for a general purpose computer. Hopefully that changes in the future
Windows 8 is silly, with all the shoving tablet interfaces onto a desktop environment. 8.1 is a tiny step forward, but not enough to convince me to upgrade. Hopefully MS see the light and fix 8.2 or 9 or whatever to not be crap