Any advantage to Win 8 over Win 7?

[Magic Static]

I have never heard anyone mention that there is something they can do with Win 8 that can't be done in Win 7 or at least an easier way. I for one have decided to skip Win 8 like I did with Win ME and Vista so I don't have much experience with Win 8. I know I dislike the GUI in Win 8 (.1). Like most people I resist change . But I wonder sometimes if I'm missing something there?

 

[Ronnie-]

To me it is an overall better experience. I can not really think of any use that I personally have besides a better tablet interface that I can not accomplish with win 8 over win 7, but the overall it is a faster OS. And with any of the free or cheap start button replacements, you never have to use the metro UI if yo do not want to.

Of course with 10 coming, I would likely just wait for that to upgrade if I were you.

 

[Drucifer]

Well Win10, is supposed to have the front end of Win7 and the guts of Win8. So I think you will be happy with the FREE upgrade to WIN10 that's do out next month. As MS trys to get all their customers on the same OS.

 

[king3pj]

I'm not a fan of the Metro UI but it's not a big deal to me since I never go into it. I also never had a problem with not having the old start button. I use Windows 7 every day at work and Windows 8.1 every night on my gaming PC.

On both computers my most used programs have shortcuts on the desktop or pinned to the taskbar. I probably go months at a time without using the start button on my Windows 7 work PC outside of putting the computer in sleep mode

That wasn't true before 8.1 but now that I have my computer boot directly to the desktop instead of the Metro UI there is almost no actual difference between the two as far as I'm concerned. On both computers I just click the shortcut of the program I want to use. No Start button or Metro UI necessary. I don't even have one of the Start button replacements msmith198025 mentioned.

I'm not sure there are a ton of advantages for using Windows 8.1 over 7 but it's not the nightmare people make it out to be either. The one big thing I like about Windows 8.1 is the instant searching. It brings up results as fast as I can type when I am looking for a program or file on my PC. It works just like Google searches where the results are narrowed down with each letter you type.