Windows 8 upgrade - pointless?

I bought a Windows 7 laptop recently and as such, am eligible for an upgrade to Window 8 for £14.99.

From the little I know about Win8, it seems to be all about touch control and opening up the Windows tablet market.
So, with a standard non-touchscreen laptop, is it worth me upgrading? Am I just going to annoy myself with an alien layout (metro, or whatever it's called now) whilst missing out on the new touch interface?

I also heard that Win8 won't play DVDs! Not 100% essential, but with a brand new lappy it seems bonkers to switch off part of the hardware I've just forked out for!

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Originally Posted by DiscoStu

I bought a Windows 7 laptop recently and as such, am eligible for an upgrade to Window 8 for £14.99.

From the little I know about Win8, it seems to be all about touch control and opening up the Windows tablet market.
So, with a standard non-touchscreen laptop, is it worth me upgrading? Am I just going to annoy myself with an alien layout (metro, or whatever it's called now) whilst missing out on the new touch interface?

I also heard that Win8 won't play DVDs! Not 100% essential, but with a brand new lappy it seems bonkers to switch off part of the hardware I've just forked out for!

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If you are using your Win7 machine for anything remotely "serious" musically I would stay with W7.
The jury seems to still be out at the moment as to whether 8 will be as good for music as 7 is (7 is generally reckoned to be better than XP but my bog end equipment would not know!) .

The Litmus test is drivers as I see it. Check some AI makers sites and see if they have W8 drivers yet. I have not done so because I am sure W7 will see me out and I still use XP 50% of the time. Mnufctrs were VERY slow in getting W7 onstream despite the SNAFU that was Vista. If they have not learned from those two instances then I suspect W8 is going to be a PITA for a lot of recordist!

Dave.

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Originally Posted by ecc83

If you are using your Win7 machine for anything remotely "serious" musically I would stay with W7.

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This.

I know some developers at a well known company that markets a market leading DAW and their view of W8 is less than complimentary. There are so many bugs it should ahve been called Amazon ..

I'm just using it for normal laptop stuff! Surfing, downloading, photos, documents, muck.
I can't see any huge leap forward in Win8, and being relatively new to Win7 (from XP) I'm pretty happy with it.

I would pay the fee but I would hold off doing the upgrade for a year or so.

The PC column in Sound On Sound this month is saying leave it.

The designers at MS aren't bothered what us muso home recordists want. They want to serve the zilliions of dolts who are addicted to touchy screens on their phones with whizzy pointless FX and who are gagging to have the same nonsense on their home PCs/laptops. :p

All my music stuff has run just fine on my Win8 preview partition, including the x64 drivers for my Presonus interface.

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Originally Posted by Akeldama

All my music stuff has run just fine on my Win8 preview partition, including the x64 drivers for my Presonus interface.

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Yeah. ONE, maybe two people said that about Blista!

Dave.

One useful fallout of W8 is that computer prices seem to be falling.

I have just had a mail from Amazon which shows an HP g6 laptop with 6G ram 15.6" screen for £306. I have a g6 lappy with 4Gram and it is a very good machine and quiet enough to allow acoustic guitar recording in the same room.

I paid close to £400 for mine.
Dave.

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Originally Posted by ecc83

Yeah. ONE, maybe two people said that about Blista!

Dave.

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Well sorry. But it is my actual experience of Windows 8 rather than silly anti-MS assumptions.