Windows 7 Or Windows 8 for laptop

My wife has got a laptop with Windows Vista. I hate that oprating system so want to upgrade it.I have Windows 7 on my PC and like it a lot.Would it be better to get version 7, or 8 as an upgrade.The laptop has no touchscreen options.I have never seen Windows 8 working, but it is not something i would consider upgrading from windows 7.
Thanks in advance
Gavin

I went with Windows 8 Pro with Media Center APP on an old HP added a SSD and with Windows 8 it boots in 15 seconds and its an old dv9230us just make sure all your drivers are available in W-8 and enjoy. Run the W-8 compatibility assistant of the W-8 site.

Hi Gavin, welcome to the forums, I would suggest you to create a partition in Vista laptop, download this 90 days evaluation copy and experience it for a while and decide for yourself. You don't need a touch screen to operate Windows 8( I don't have but happy).
Download Windows 8 Enterprise Evaluation

my wife's laptop has Vista also,,I hate it too , it works great ,but its her laptop not mine,so I will leave it alone, I use win8 mostly , win7 sometimes

Thank you for the replies.I am downloading the evaluation copy.
Caperjack, it did seem from my post that i was just changing it for myself.The fact is, it was an OEM copy that wants to put 100gigs of rubbish on that no one needs, and she was complaining about how slow it was, so i suggested we try windows 7, but 8 is cheaper, and all she ever does is facebook on it. I will also look at an SSD now they are fairly cheap

I think the Enterprise Eval is your best bet at this point. Love it or hate it, you'll have long enough to play with it to be sure. I've become somewhat attached to 8 on my Wife's laptop, but 7 runs just fine on mine (a couple years older than hers).

Don't partition! Use VHD instead:

http://blog.concurrency.com/infrastructure/dual-boot-windows-8-from-vhd-using-windows-setup/
Sent from my Nokia Lumia 920 using Board Express

Gavin said:

OEM copy that wants to put 100gigs of rubbish on that no one needs, and she was complaining about how slow it was,

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cant disagree with that ,I removed it all the day I bought the laptop .
I use win8 and will suggest that as the best choice ,for speed and ease of use [I should get lots of comments for the use of the word ease ]

Given the choice between 7 or 8 on a laptop: Windows 8.

It's simply optimized for battery powered PCs from I believe parking the CPU and using less system resources overall to a refined DWM graphics module. It'll definitely put a kick in the pants of that vista PC!

i want to disagree about win8, because it wont give you extra hour of battery life or something like that, max plus few minutes, plus windows 7 would be better, cause its more optimized, much less bugs and other bad stuff, and you can optimize win7 for long battery life too. Another thing, if laptop came with vista - its OLD laptop, then it probably 99,9% wont have specific drivers for hotkeys and so on, cause i have laptop, which is win7 compatible, but it doesnt have any specific win8 drivers.

Windows 8 is battery friendly and user unfriendly. It was designed for smartphones and tablets and ported over to PCs. Personally I do not recommend windows 8 to any PC user unless of course one only needs to use the PC for Facebook etc. Win 8 is not faster than win 7 and it totally lacks in intuition. In fact it really looks like it was designed by FISHER PRICE!

Stick to win 7 and avoid win 8 like the plague!

Hi there
If you like the "Kiddy" interface which to me looks like a re-hash of AOL circa 1996 !!! ("Back to the future !!) then W8 -- if you have quite a few largish complicated applications stick with W7.

Actually I've found the image so enclosing it

(And Ms thinks it's modern).

Mind you I've just bought a nice thick woollen cardigan from a decent "Trendy" Clothes shop -- and do you know it reminds me EXACTLY of the one's you saw in that old TV Series "Starsky and Hutch" so old stuff does come back in fashion again. !!!!!!


Cheers
jimbo

I don't have a laptop, only use towers & Andoid smartfone, and I have been quite critical of M$ for not including traditional start menu and ability to switch off Metro. However, in fairness to being open minded, the following is an excerpt from an email I received today from a friend of my son, who is a university graduate in compuer science:

How great is windows 8? Best thing I have ever owned. Maybe because it works so well with a touch screen?

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Go figure? Horses for courses I guess!

Gavin said:

My wife has got a laptop with Windows Vista. I hate that oprating system so want to upgrade it.I have Windows 7 on my PC and like it a lot.Would it be better to get version 7, or 8 as an upgrade.The laptop has no touchscreen options.I have never seen Windows 8 working, but it is not something i would consider upgrading from windows 7.
Thanks in advance
Gavin

Click to expand...

Win7. Easier to use well and efficiently unless you mainly want fluff.

sandman said:

I went with Windows 8 Pro with Media Center APP on an old HP added a SSD and with Windows 8 it boots in 15 seconds and its an old dv9230us just make sure all your drivers are available in W-8 and enjoy. Run the W-8 compatibility assistant of the W-8 site.

Click to expand...

Boot time doesn't matter much if you suscribe to MS claims. MS says there normally is little reason to reboot Win8 in the normal course of usage. Of course software installation, etc., may require reboot.

Gavin said:

Thank you for the replies.I am downloading the evaluation copy.
Caperjack, it did seem from my post that i was just changing it for myself.The fact is, it was an OEM copy that wants to put 100gigs of rubbish on that no one needs, and she was complaining about how slow it was, so i suggested we try windows 7, but 8 is cheaper, and all she ever does is facebook on it. I will also look at an SSD now they are fairly cheap

Click to expand...

If price is an issue, you could always reinstall Vista if you have a disc. And, was it always so slow? Maybe you just need to do some maintenance. A new system is not going to make Facebook faster. Does her machine meet the system requirements for 7 or 8? Personally, while many did, I never had any problems of significance with Vista. If you get 8 and all your wife does is Facebook, they why get an SSD. MS claims that there normally is little reason to reboot 8. MS may make the same claim about 7; I don't recall.

I recently went with Windows 8 but run it in "Windows 7 mode". My detailed look at Windows 8 after coming off of Windows 7 I posted here, for what it's worth: http://www.eightforums.com/general-discussion/14374-hows-everyones-windows-8-experience-going-6.html

Here we go again: Windows 7 Or Windows 8 ?
In the past couple of weeks, I have fresh installed W8 5 Laptops for my friends and their Children without a single glitch. Initially everyone of them struggled with it but after a while, They learned their way around, they are all good.

@Znod, Yes boot up time does matter if you are using Laptop, I noticed a significant improvement as for Desktop, the difference may be just a few seconds. In the past, I was also the one who installed Windows 7 for all of them, tuned up, took out all the unnecessary services etc... and also taught them how to image backup their systems after installing all the needed applications for their use so I know their systems are all running in top speed when comparing the bootup time.

Here are my reasons I would go with Windows 8:
1 - Eventually the software companies will write their softwares for Windows 8, and of course it might run with Windows 7 but we will be back with the old compatibility mode just like Windows 7 running software for Windows XP.
2 - If I don't like to see Windows startup with Modern UI, I would use Classic Shell, Start8 or ex7for8 to get back to Windows 7 look and feel.
3 - I don't use Modern UI and don't care for it but there are quite a few free apps that I can download and play with which Windows 7 does not have. For example, Perfect365 is a free app that does touch-up for your portrait, Cookbook, Mixed Drinks....I bet your wife would love to have these, and if you have a touch screen it is a plus and eventually every manufacturer will come up with touch screen laptop, that's how the technology is moving.

In addition, Yes the Modern UI does not look impressive compares to IPAD Or Iphone, and who is stopping you from customizing it to the way you would want it look ?

@mustang again, I happen to agree with your son's friend, because that's what my background is for the last 23 Years.

So there you go, that's my 2 cents

Hi topgun,

My son has a reasonably expensive Sony VAIO laptop, (over $2,000), with mid-range Intel i7 CPU, 1920 x 1080 high res, and Win7 Home Premium 64bit. It's about 18 months old, and he's up for a clean install either from recovery console pre-installed, or maybe buy W8 Pro OEM 64 bit.

From your experience, in general terms, would he have any problems running W8, and after using hack Orb Start Menu? If it went pear shape, would W8 have corrupted the recovery console on installation ... in case he wanted to revert to W7, as he does not have an installation disk. I suggested he format the HD and just load W8 on as per normal clean installation.

Would appreciate your input, as I don't want to risk making his machine FUBAR.

Cheers M

Hi,
With a new laptop, the first thing when you turn it on is to make the recovery disks.
Second, I would make a backup image of the whole drive to an external HD.
I use Acronis True Image to make the backup but you can also use a free version of Macrium Reflect, just go to Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com and search for the free version, it is very easy to use and I installed it in every Laptop.

I don't think you'd have any problem installing W8 in your son's laptop, In fact you'll see a big improvement in term of speed.
My laptop is a 6 year old Sony Vaio and I have W8 running without any problem.

With every Laptop, there is a hidden partition where they store the recovery software. You can view it by right click on Computer->Manage->Disk Management, this partition is 10~15GB in size & usually does not have a Drive Letter assigned, that's why you won't see it in Windows Explorer.
For fresh install, use custom option, the next screen you'll see all the partitions: 100MB reserved, C: partition and the hidden Windows Recovery Partition. On the bottom of the screen, there's a button Disk options(advanced), high light the 100 MB reserved partition and click delete, do the same for C: partition, this becomes a single unallocated partition, next, click New, The installation will then create 2 partitions, a 350MB reserved and the rest is where Windows 8 will be installed, no need to format. Click next to proceed the installation.
It should not take more than 10 min to complete the whole installation procedure, Windows 8 will also install all the necessary drivers for the laptop except application such as webcam, you'd have to download from Sony Website, use version for Windows 7, it should work.

As long as you leave the Recovery Partition untouched, I don't think it will mess up the recovery console. windows 8 won't even see it to cause corruption.

NOTE: you could also allocate about 50GB for windows and use the rest for data storage, this will be more organized and make your life easy for backup & restore