The only constant is change.
The only constant is change.
Mac OS X works fundamentally the same as it did in 1985, outside of Finder. Windows, though, has been redesigned many times. The start menu was introduced in 1995, but that change didn't come with a promise to be there forever.
I personally feel the start menu sucks. They messed with it in every Windows iteration and never quite figured it out. Windows 8 start screen can be personalized and made really useful for each individual person in a way the start menu cannot.
Windows 8 seems good. It's nicer-looking, the start screen is better than a start menu, some games like Battlefield 4 take advantage of newer D3D revisions and run notably better, and there are a lot of little niceties like file transfer improvements.
I don't use it yet, but pretty much the only thing holding me back is the inability to disable desktop composition (meaning you can't run windowed apps without vsync), which I do for a couple emulators that don't support exclusive fullscreen when I use them in Windows 7. I've been thinking about just switching to Windows 8 and trying to patch the open source emulators as needed, lol.
I also think Metro apps seem pretty lame on a desktop. I don't understand why there's no option to just run them in a window. But they're easy to avoid, so no real harm.
8.1 won me over. Right click on the "start button" to get to the control panel & other system shit, left click for a graphic overlay that is actually moderately useful unlike the layered garbage of the old start menu.
It's not leaps and bounds, but it's quick as it needs to be. With the other enhancements listed, and 8.1 finally giving back what people wanted, I had no reason not to upgrade since I got it cheap.
Edit: Long story short, if 7 is working for you, stick with it. My install was acting shitty after X years for whatever reason so I did some cleaning and went with the new OS along with it. No regrets, no missing features for me.
Frankly I'm hoping I never have to buy a new version of Windows again, but I don't think Mac and/or Linux is going to catch up fast enough in the gaming department to enable that.
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