Quote:
Originally Posted by BWinmill
On the other hand, you are making a decision that will impact future computer use. It is easier to master software that you stick with for a long time and it certainly is more comforting to use the same old thing. Yet it does make upgrading more of a hassle if you do so down the road. There are more things to relearn at one time, partially because there will be more significant changes in the OS and partially because you'll likely end up upgrading a lot more software at one time.
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I'd also make a distinction between my main "workhorse" computer, which I'll probably want to connect lots of peripherals to, and a laptop used for other purposes. For my "main" computer I'd certainly want an o/s with good driver support, and I'd probably hesitate about buying Win8 at the present time for that reason; I have a number of older devices (eg a very good printer which I really don't want to have to replace) which I don't know whether or not have Win8 drivers available. For stability reasons, Win8 is fussier about installing older drivers than Win7 is.
I'm running Win8 on a small laptop which I take "out and about" with me on my travels. I don't use any peripherals with it, so driver support is pretty irrelevant. For that, Win8 is perfect. It boots up in under 10s, so it's ideal for a laptop I want to simply switch on and use as quickly as possible.