Solved Reluctant upgrade to Windows 8.1

[Finfan]

Hello. I admit I am an unrepentant Luddite who feels that Microsoft reached it's peak with XP. Unfortunately I am now being forced by various upcoming security upgrades to move to a more recent operating system. I have an old netbook that runs Windows 7 and I do not care for that at all. So my first question is do you consider Windows 8 to be any better? Also I did a compatibility scan and it told me my system firmware would not be able to run "Secure Boot". Can I live without this or would my system be inoperable if I tried to upgrade?

Thanks in advance for any help on this!

 

[Cliff S]

On the subject of secure boot it's not a problem some people who dual boot(Linux users mostly) turn it off. Without secure boot, you even have the possibility to set up a XP 8(8.1) dual boot system if you have a large enough disk.


From Webopedia:

By Forrest Stroud Microsoft Secure Boot is a component of Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system that relies on the UEFI specification’s secure boot functionality to help prevent malicious software applications and "unauthorized" operating systems from loading during the system start-up process.
While there is some concern that Microsoft Secure Boot will make it difficult to install Linux or other operating systems on a Windows 8 computer, the secure boot functionality in Windows 8 is primarily designed to protect users from rootkits and other low-level malware attacks by blocking unauthorized (non-signed) executables and drivers from being loaded during the boot process.

Personal computers bearing the Windows 8-certified logo will be required to ship with Microsoft Secure Boot enabled.

 

[KYHI]

No issue if your system does not support Secure Boot.. None at all..

But if you do not really like windows 7 - then it may be a handful to get use to windows 8.1..

 

[Ztruker]

Windows 8.1 + Classic Shell or Start8 == useable system for XP/7 users