Not seeing much on this. Everyone still happily putzing along with Windows 7? Anyone taken the Windows 8 plunge? What's your report on it?

Devon

Wow, no one?

Devon

I moved from Win 7/64 bit to Win 8 Pro/64 bit.
Quite happy so far.

Two things I did after system setup:
* Disabling Windows Defender -> increased my performance (caused a lot hard pagefaults)
* Installed Classic shell/classic start menu, I don't like and don't need mero on my desktop

All in all it's quite stable and I'm happy that I've done the move, nothing to regret here.

i dont feel the need to update to win 8 from 7 atm. pretty the same feeling that i have not to update my cubase 6.5.

+1 for Win 8 Pro 64. Actually don't mind the new start menu so no further customization.

NMG

I installed Classic Shell, too.

I'm pretty happy with Win8 Pro 64.

I did. Performance is good. The UI is annoying as hell.

Win8 32bit from a clean install
Everything running fine.
Less ram usage.

I upgraded to Windows 8 Pro a couple weeks ago. I like it fine and have had no trouble with it. I'm reinstalling a lot of software, and I haven't had anything not work yet. As a DAW, I've got Live 8, FLS 10 and Renoise 2.8 on it, and all work fine so far.

They've made a lot of improvements: my boot time went from about 4 minutes until I could do anything to about 30 seconds (coming off Vista which I ran for about 5 years); file copying is much faster; Task Manager is easier to decipher; UAC is less intrusive. Even with the hassle of reinstalling my software, it was worth it to me to upgrade

Anyways, it didn't take me long to figure out the changes made to touch-enable the interface. I don't have a touch screen, so whenever a file type is configured to open in a Metro app, I switch it to use my Windows app of choice. For example, PDF's would open in a Metro reader app, and I switched that to use Foxit Reader. I've got it now where I don't see much of Metro at all.

Roy

I thought HARD about the Windows 8 pro upgrade but now the price is gone up . If its not broken dont fix it , so I will stay on Windows7 64 . But , if I was building a new machine Id probably go W8pro 64 oem with all the classic shell tweaks to make it just like W7 .

Me too. Except when I have to take Win7 64bit out on the internet and read Win8 threads and MS 'Metro' is 'Modern' propaganda.

Can't imagine 'upgrading' to an OS that I'd have to hack like the XP Rainlendar days to get rid of the PlaySkool interface. I want my tracks to have charms, not my operating system.

My system has been booting in less than 12 seconds for 3 years, so not seeing how Win8 will help on the performance side. If I decide to run my 100+ track projects on a 10" tablet with a weak 25 watt TDP dual core, then Win8.5 might be an option.

Another sticky thread I was reading on Gearslutz was showing mostly positive results with a handful of applications and drivers that don't work. To be expected, as usual.

Aside from wasting hours to reinstall everything and lining MS's pocket's some more, I haven't seen any compelling reason to switch yet. Anyone else?

Devon

I did!
Firewire soundcard works better(saffire pro 14).
Boot and shutdown times are fantastic compared to win7.
The new start menu is great to. Cant understand all the complaining?

Windows 8 Pro is snappy. I love it. The only customization that I did was installing Classic Shell. Both Sonar and Reaper working great.

No hacks, I just picked "Open with..." from the menu and set Foxit as the default for PDF's.

If Windows 7 is working for you, I'd stick with it. I've got it on a laptop that I'm not planning on upgrading the OS on. It's fine.

Roy