I tried Windows 8 over the weekend. It has horrible compatibility issues with older games. Diablo 1 (1996) would end up with "Process has stopped working" a minute into the game. Outlaws (1997) would give a pallet error when attempting to start the game in any mode other than basic Windowed GDI mode. Mafia (2002) refused to start at all. Same with Max Payne 2 (2003). I tried every single compatibility option with each game to no avail. These were just a few of the game I tried out of the hundreds I own. The only thing that fixes it is switching back to Windows 7. I've had excellent luck with older game compatability with Vista and 7.
So the newest game you've had an issue with is nearly 10 years old??? I'd think that kind of issue would be expected.
More like, let's HEAVILY push New Coke, but the old Coca Cola recipe is still available. These people are complaining about New Coke ads, but they can still get Old Coke if they want. And then you realize that these arguments are rather stupid.
Microsoft isn't like Apple.
It's too bad that Microsoft decided to shove mobile on everyone. The Start menu is very important to my work flow and the search feature in W7 is superb. Besides the missing Start menu the biggest gripe I have is the lack of Aero Glass.
I don't sit around staring at Windows Explorer all day but I still like my eye candy. Microsoft states that they dropped transparency because it was a resource hog. Perhaps it is but when the average desktop has at least 4GB of RAM and decent graphics there is no reason to force the flat and boring design on us non-mobile users. I get the clean and simplified look for tablets and for laptop users that want to save battery life. When I have my ass in my comfy chair in front of my monitor at home though, I want eye candy Microsoft.
I have been testing the speed difference as well and sadly W8 is no faster than W7 for me. The average boot time actually increased slightly by two seconds.
So far i've only found one thing that can't be done in 8 that was in 7 and that's sidebar/gadgets.
I do miss my clock in the upper right hand corner along with weatherbug and my disk usage utility.
As for transparency, i just meant that perhaps the resource issue were much more profound on the integrated side. I used to be in support and I do recall having to tell a few people to turn it off to get higher end apps to run properly. I'm on a FireGL at the moment and i've still got a couple that turn aero off on their own at startup. Though, admittedly they're a few years old.
I'd say that's more expected than interesting. AMD BD and PD owners may see a performance gain from the improved scheduler that's better suited to the "modular" architecture of those CPUs than W7, but even that improvement will be marginal most of the time.