To upgrade, or not to upgrade? A lot has been said about Microsoft’s latest desktop operating system, Windows 8. Some love it, others hate it, but surely almost everyone has considered upgrading from Windows XP, Vista or 7, whichever one you may be using at the moment.
Windows 8 brings significant advantages to those who are upgrading their PCs. The Windows 8 operating system offers a significantly different user interface straight up, but also offers improvements in performance, and doesn’t cost a lot of money to either upgrade or buy a new license.
Today, we look at the top five reasons why you should shift to Windows 8, on your PC or laptop.
1. Doesn’t cost much: Windows 8 does not cost a lot of money, unlike the previous OSes from Microsoft. If you have purchased a new laptop or desktop after May this year, you are most likely eligible for an upgrade to Windows 8. The cost for this upgrade would be Rs 699. If however, you are buying a full license of Windows 8 without linking to an upgrade, the cost for Windows 8 Pro will Rs 1999. Compare this to Windows 7 Home Premium, which cost upwards of Rs 5000.
2. Faster performance: On the same hardware, the system performance of Windows 8 is much quicker than its predecessor. Not to say that Windows 7 was sluggish in any way, but Windows 8 just takes the speed to the next level. Start-up times are shorter, and the general usability is quicker as well. If you happen to install Windows 8 on a Solid State Drive (SSD), then the experience will be better than delightful!
3. Equally comfortable with touch and the keyboard+ mouse combo: The Windows 8 user interface seems to be walking the perfect balance between being compatible with touchscreen devices and on a conventional laptop with a keyboard and a trackpad/mouse. The idea was always clear - this OS will work on a tablet as well as a laptop. We will see a rise of hybrid devices - ultrabooks that also offer touchscreens.
4. More secure out of the box: It is said that “this is the most secure Windows ever”, but that is usually said for all new OSes. But, let us examine the evidence here. Secure Boot will prevent the OS from booting up on any device that isn't signed up by the OEM or by Microsoft. All apps downloaded from Windows Store go through a thorough process of ensuring that they are clean. NSS Labs claims that Internet Explorer 10 is blocking 99% of malware headed its way, something no version has done till now. Surely, the potential security benefits should be enough for you to upgrade!
5. Reset & Refresh: Windows users are well versed with the pain of reinstalling Windows, be it because of bloating over a period of time, or because of some driver/application issue. With Windows 8, the problem has been solved to a huge extent. You can use the Reset feature, which will restore the PC to the exact factory settings as out of the box. This is the alternative for reinstalling the OS, as we are used to. The Refresh feature, on the other hand, retains some settings, files and Metro apps, but removes the rest of the software, applications and changes that may have happened recently. This feature is the alternative for the “Restore to an earlier date” setting that we had seen on Windows versions till now.
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