Worth Moving to Windows 8 from Win7?

[BigNumbers]

So here is my dilemma... I am a pretty tech savvy guy (for a dad!) and I have a nicely-overclocked Ivy Bridge setup that I use mainly for surfing and some FPS gaming when the kids are asleep (rarer and rarer, sadly...)

Can/should I move to Win8? I like the 'normal' windows layout, but I understand there are ways to get a normal desktop, start button, etc...

Is Win8 worth the upgrade if all I am after is making it look more like windows 7? Is the back end performance good enough to justify the move?

Are there driver/game issues I should be aware of?

Thanks CPers

[sworkhard]

I'm not aware of any game issues (assuming your coming from 64bit win 7), and for a modern system, the drivers are fine. There are some games (BF3 in particular) that run smoother on windows 8, but then others run better on windows 7.

If you got it for $40 or less, it's worth the upgrade, but otherwise you won't really notice a difference.

[Rathji]

I wouldn't pay full price for a retail copy, but assuming you could get an upgrade for a reasonable amount, I would do it.

[Hack&Lube]

There is no reason from a performance standpoint to upgrade unless you are not already on 64-bit Windows 7. The new changes will also slow you down from what you are accustomed to.

I would not switch to it as a regular user unless you want to get used to the new OS and if you want to use the touch features on a touch capable device.

From a desktop user perspective, most of the new features are not really worth the effort to move to unless you are coming from an IT point of view where you might need to evaluate the features and related support from 2012 server products.

[J Diddy]

Windows 8 on a tablet is a beautiful thing. Windows 8 on a desktop is kind of annoying and needs more polishing.

If you want to spend more time playing games and surfing stick with Windows 7. If you want to deal with some headaches and spend time getting used to the new feature set and the small learning curve then upgrade to Windows 8. You will not see much of a performance difference on your system for what you use it for. Also, you may want to wait for 8.1 to be released...maybe prices will drop at that time and maybe it will be more desktop ready.

[TorqueDog]

No driver or game issues so far as I've seen.

Performance, you'll see faster boot times, applications seem to load a bit faster for me (particularly Photoshop and other memory hogs tend to be a bit lighter on their feet). Security has been improved upon drastically, less chance of the kids being able to find a piece of malware that completely obliterates your machine. And some of the new stuff they've added in like the new file copy manager is pretty wicked (ability to pause file transfers, hell yes).

There's plenty of resources on good reasons to install as well as a lot of articles that detract from it.

If you don't have a pressing need to (software requirement, product end-of-life, computer exploded), it's hard to justify anyone upgrade their OS unless they really want to and/or like having new stuff to play with.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Personally I'd wait until later in the year when Windows 8.1 comes out. It will fix a lot of the issues with Windows 8 (though not all) and there's likely to be a discount for buying early like there was last year when Win 8 first came out

[sworkhard]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

Personally I'd wait until later in the year when Windows 8.1 comes out. It will fix a lot of the issues with Windows 8 (though not all) and there's likely to be a discount for buying early like there was last year when Win 8 first came out

Windows 8.1 is a free upgrade to windows 8. It's basically windows 8 SP1. That being said, it's likely still worth waiting, as even if there is no discount, you don't have to deal with upgrading twice.