So Windows 7

[Vindekarr]

I'd give 8 a miss for now, but I've really liked 7.

 

It's not as good as XP was when it came out-vastly amazing for any possible purpose and vastly better than all competion-but it's better for this generation of gaming than XP is, if you get what I mean.

 

So far I've had absolutely no trouble with it, in either reliability or use, and I quite like overall. The general thing I would say though is it sort of blends into the background abit, you find yourself ignoring it, not really noticing the aesthetics, or really feeling that it's doing anything amazing. In some respects this is one of it's biggest strengths, unless you're very unlucky you won't have any reason to notice it. it won't blow your mind, but it won't upset you either.

 

For me XP remains the best OS I've ever used; fast, responsive, easy to use, and endlessly strippable. I remember there was an OS modded from XP called Strewth that was literaly XP, and available as a kit, which was literaly everything you needed to play games and run programs, surf the internet, and do what a computer does, and nothing else. Literaly every spare kilobyte that could be shaved off, removed much like a car stripped down for racing. I doubt you could do that with a modern OS. The end result was about 50% smaller, and a helluva lot more streamlined, apparently it could boot 2X faster or something like that. SSDs started to come out around the same time, and I can't imagine a more fun PC concept than SSD with Strewth. The load times would be astounding.

Edited September 19, 2012 by Vindekarr

[Dazaster]

I hung on to XP till around January this year when I needed to upgrade to more ram, then got Win 7 64. Wish I had done it a lot sooner, Win 7 is XP on steroids. But in a good way, not a testosterone fueled madman way. More ram, plus DX11, whats not to like?

[davycrockett]

ah all you nah sayers will change your tunes soon enough 8 is aimed at next gen hardware now tell me you aint gonna upgrade your metal and silicon and you aint gonna want an all singing all dancing O/S at the helm .

[FMod]

Hopefully this is just overly opaque sarcasm.

OS is a tool, you want your tools to work, not just look cool. Everything else equal, a cooler looking tool is better, but everything else is not equal, and picking tools based on their looks makes you one.

 

I still prefer XP, and if they fixed XP-64 compatibility, updated it for DX10-DX11, and I think that's it, maybe add Trim... well, they'd sell a lot fewer Win7 and Win8 copies, that's for sure. XP is faster, smaller, runs applications better, and it does everything an OS needs to do.

However there's no way to have DX11 on XP and newer hardware drivers start being a concern, might get scarce after 2014, so the upgrade is being forced on you.

 

Windows 8 seems to have a smaller footprint than 7. That's good. There is, however, one problem.

Metro UI is horrible for k+m use. It screams "get a touchscreen".

Well, right. I'll go get a touchscreen for my 2560p projector and a fishing pole to use it.

[JimboUK]

 

I haven't heard good things about Windows 8 either. It looks like a resource hog.

 

 

Not really from what I've heard. It's just butt fugly . The Start Screen enough just kills it lol :P

 

I'd just stick with 7, it has support until 2020. Windows 8 is going to bomb IMO. I can see it used for smartphones and tablets, but not for a desktop or laptop. Think they designed it in mind to make a decent cheap tablet to compete with the Ipad.

 

Yeah and your CPU most likely supports 64 bit. I remember when the Athlon 64 came out, that was way back when now it seems :P

 

Yeah it's shaping up to be another Vista. It's a dogs dinner, it's aimed at two completely different interfaces and it does neither well, jack of all trades, master of none. There's a reason Apple don't use Mac OS on touchscreen devices, iOS on Macs and why Google developed Chrome OS.

[flamenx01]

Older games run well on it. Certain older games, Fallout and Fallout 2 in my experience, you have to kill explorer.exe before launching the game. The game will run if you don't, but all the textures will be rainbow in colour.

 

There is a program called PalettestealerSuspender which solves the rainbow colour issue for some games without you needing to kill explorer.exe. I use it for age of Empires 2.

[davycrockett]

ah dont condem it just yet , iv installed it to half a dozen different machines msi's gigabyte biostars asus amd's intels nvidia and ati and the later the hardware the better it performed better than 7 did i went as far as building up variations of each mobo type and it does well i5's and the virtual software love it lucid logix and nvidia work great exceeded my monitors refresh rate of 75hz in crysis 2 + high res tex and dx11 windows 7 and an amd phenom ii x6 3.2ghz ( older board too ) would average 35 - 50 fps and remarkably AMD's fx4100 get great gaming results no micro stutter on a asus m5 series board got it with my m4 mobo though, start up resume times can be counted on one hand it does love an SSD talk about snappy no figures for you there just observations, only problem is that stupid interface but i have a feeling or rather i hope an app to replace it with the 7 start menu will become available for users without touch screen monitors .

took me a while to realise the folder just to the right of the windows 7 start orb is the same as you will find by clicking the desktop tile in 8 .

 

but guess what i use on my workshop laptop a dell latitude ....XP why its a good tool and just that ooh xp with dx10 /11 thats a nice idea . iv just added an intel based rog to my life for gaming moved steam over to it gonna run 8 on it again when i get my new product key it ran much better than 7 does on it gotta use 7 till then though , but my phenom X6 dont like 8 maybe the hardware combo or lack of virtualization not looked into it and yes i do like my pride and joy rig to have a shiney GUI that uses resources but you can trim the fat you know that..run two user accounts one lean ,one full fat easy i didnt build this badboy to play the simms nah im going silly now still cant decide on sli-ing it or xfire though ati driver issues seem non existent with 8 thinking about it (for me that is ) so i can have HD Radeon and ASUS EPU support and LUCID LOGIX VIRTU support all on the same machine i feel two new asus 5770's coming on , so thats one plus point in 8's favour in my opinion .

 

and yeah i hear yeah you on the touch screen issue i dont want one either not needed but sadly time is short for support for with XP its a shame ,vista is long dead hurrah i cant do mac apple ipad thing its not for me i migrated from the playstation network getting on two years ago now havnt looked back now im eagerly awaiting the AR software thats in developement for 8 its gonna be cool stuff gaming with this tech it has many possibilitys dont stagnate move on if your budget allows .

 

 

im a fanboy i know .

Edited October 6, 2012 by davycrockett