Hello all,
 
I got my new computer yesterday.  I fully intended to stay with Win 8 . . . BUT  I absolutely HATE IT !!
 
I cant do anything constructive with it.  Its just too hard to get where you want to go.  I hate it.  I think METRO for desktop users are the wort thing ever.  I can see how great it wood be on a tablet without a keyboard, but its not for a desktop system, specially one dedicated for one purpose.  Wheather its a graphic workstation, a CAD workstation or Audio workstation.  If you have an all-in-one computer with a touch screen . . . fine.  I would hate to have to do CAD drafting on Win 8.
 
So . . .  I've decided to sacriface a little performance for Win 7 Pro 64bit that I can actually work with.
 
I didn't know the free X2 upgrade had a time limit . . .  so had to spend $99 for X2.  I'm still collecting/downloading various drivers I need.
 
During the last couple of weeks I found our about afew surprises.  One is about the HD.  I was trying to get all 6GBps drives.  I know now that SATA III speed & throughput can be obtained by SSd only.  ALL mechanical drives can't even hit the SATA II limit of 3GBps !!  The only advantage is the larger cache they come with.
 
Another surprise was "Raid 1".  If the read/write drive for recording/mixing is one of the Raid 1 drive, the setup can actually slow the read/write process in a more intense disk usage.  I decided to set up a Raid 1 for my boot drive only (two 500GB drives).  All my audio software are going to be installed on a separate 2TB drive without Raid.  I have an external ESATA 2TB drive for CLONING my audio "work drive" once or twice a month.
 
I think Microsoft should come up with a different version of interface thats more like Win 7 and call it Win 8 DT (Desk Top) and call the other one Win 8 Metro.  Looks loke I'm gonna be on the fence about Win 8 like I was when Vista came out.  I stayed with XP for a long time.
 
Winows 8 SUCKS the big one for me.  :)
 
 

edion - you've only had W8 a couple of days.  I had the same initial reaction but decided to wait and learn the differences.  It quickly became apparent that underneath this is pretty much the same as W7 but with (seemingly at least) better performance, connectivity and everything else that comes with several years of development.

You can pretty much ignore Metro, though I use it for instant feedback for email and a few other things.  Other than that the desktop UI works exactly the same.  Just remember the windows key shortcuts (expecially wC, and wX) and you won't even need to download a start menu plugin.

With correct drivers in place you should be fine.  I would not go back to w7 now.  I just built a new pc with my 15 y/o son and his mate from school.  They wanted to put w7 on it but I got a new w8 Pro OEM disk.  After 10 minutes of using it at the worryingly rapid pace of understanding you have at that age they both agreed it was a worthwhile update.

If the teen tech-heads are convinced, I am!

edion2


Any comments on Win 7 or Win 8 ??
 
How difficult is it to go BACK to Win 7 if I had to purchase one with Win 8 already installed ?? 
 

Hey there, just my 2p worth.
 
I've run Win 7 x64 since launch, recently did an upgrade to Win 8 x64 on my DAW partly due to hardware upgrade and also the fact that I'd read some reviews and was mildly curious - had some free time and thought I'd go ahead and try it for myself.
 
My findings were a real mixed bag: The OS itself seems to be pretty optimised and solid from a code perspective and it all seemed to zip along, however from a day-to-day operational perspective I hated the Metro front end and to compound matters further I had a few teething issues with performance that I couldn't immediately resolve (I do remember having some teething issues with Win 7 back in the day also though).  I have regressed back to Win 7 for the moment and all is well.
 
In terms of going back; I was lucky enough to have a full Windows 7 Pro license from when I bought my PC and have since purchased the Win 8 Pro license, during the initial Microsoft early adopters promotional pricing.  Not sure if there is an official route offered from MS, but there are lots of people discussing the Win7/Win8 proposition: -
 
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-windows_install/can-i-downgrade-to-windows-7-from-windows-8-on-a/7a9b3ee6-92d1-4d10-9e71-79ca4f1b5720?page=1
 
 
 

 

Wood67


edion - you've only had W8 a couple of days.  I had the same initial reaction but decided to wait and learn the differences.  It quickly became apparent that underneath this is pretty much the same as W7 but with (seemingly at least) better performance, connectivity and everything else that comes with several years of development.

You can pretty much ignore Metro, though I use it for instant feedback for email and a few other things.  Other than that the desktop UI works exactly the same.  Just remember the windows key shortcuts (expecially wC, and wX) and you won't even need to download a start menu plugin.

With correct drivers in place you should be fine.  I would not go back to w7 now.  I just built a new pc with my 15 y/o son and his mate from school.  They wanted to put w7 on it but I got a new w8 Pro OEM disk.  After 10 minutes of using it at the worryingly rapid pace of understanding you have at that age they both agreed it was a worthwhile update.

If the teen tech-heads are convinced, I am!

I totally agree with wood on this one, give it a chance, don't just throw the towel in after two days man.
you don't want to be that guy who is the last to upgrade to windows 8 because you don't like it.
sooner or later youll be forced to upgrade because a software you have dosent support earlier versions of windows.

Echoing some sentiment here. Tried Windows 8 --> Rolled back --> Installed Windows 8 again and decided to give it a couple of weeks. No way would I want to go back now. Very fast and smooth OS.

musicroom


Tried Windows 8 --> Rolled back

Glad it worked out for you in the end, just out of curiosity, what was the reason for your initial rollback, purely aesthetics or did you have any performance issues? 
 
I may not have rolled back to Win 7 if it hadn't been for the DPC spikes, (which can probably be fixed at some point)
 
Cheers.

NorthernElite

musicroom


Tried Windows 8 --> Rolled back

Glad it worked out for you in the end, just out of curiosity, what was the reason for your initial rollback, purely aesthetics or did you have any performance issues? 
 
I may not have rolled back to Win 7 if it hadn't been for the DPC spikes, (which can probably be fixed at some point)
 
Cheers.

Primarily because I was losing some of my programs... Soundforge 8 for instance doesn't work cleanly within Windows 8. But in the end, the benefits of a smooth running X2 lingered in my mind and I went back to W8. 

musicroom

Primarily because I was losing some of my programs... Soundforge 8 for instance doesn't work cleanly within Windows 8. But in the end, the benefits of a smooth running X2 lingered in my mind and I went back to W8. 

Ok, that's cool and makes perfect sense.  I think it's great to get other people's upgrade experience.  I'm actually really annoyed that I needed to roll-back, because I was initially willing to work through the pain barrier of the Win 8 GUI. 
 
Hey, one more question for you if I may, when you mention a smooth running X2 on Win 8, were you not able to get a smooth running X2 on Win 7 whilst still maintaining the use of SF8?

x2 ran smooth on 7 but it runs just as smooth on win 8 for me and I see a little bit more performance in the OS, and in sonar x2.I do know the developers aimed sonar x2 as a piar for windows 8 (as the last up date stated)
so why not ? it sems the logical thing for me.

I strongly suggest people to give it a chance, remember as well when switching OS and reinstalling sonar on has to go through and tweak everything as they did in windows 7.
sometimes as I noticed, windows 7 had different preference settings compared to windows 8 when I installed sonar.
so one could think there is something not right when in fact its just some driver, latency, buffers that need to be adjusted.

NorthernElite

musicroom

Primarily because I was losing some of my programs... Soundforge 8 for instance doesn't work cleanly within Windows 8. But in the end, the benefits of a smooth running X2 lingered in my mind and I went back to W8. 

Ok, that's cool and makes perfect sense.  I think it's great to get other people's upgrade experience.  I'm actually really annoyed that I needed to roll-back, because I was initially willing to work through the pain barrier of the Win 8 GUI. 
 
Hey, one more question for you if I may, when you mention a smooth running X2 on Win 8, were you not able to get a smooth running X2 on Win 7 whilst still maintaining the use of SF8?

One major difference is that I was coming from Vista64... A very good working version of Vista64. So X2 worked fine, but the gui was glitchy every now and then with X2 (not X1). And the latency is quite bit better in Win8. Another small thing I noticed was X2 and the project files load much quicker now. All in all, these types of things point to a more refined OS. 


BTW - I did get SF8 to work in Windows 8. Definitely no going back now. I'll probably upgrade SF to V10 down the road, but wow - the price of that upgrade ($240) is not worth it now as long as SF8 keeps doing what it has always done.