Windows 7 Home Premium 16GB Ram Limit - Should I upgrade to Win8?

[pinotnoir]

Unfortunately, I just discovered my copy of Windows 7 64bit Home Premium has a 16GB ram limit. I learned this after I purchased another 16GB of ram to max out my machine. I have two options. I can upgrade to Win 7 64bit Pro or Windows 8 Pro. It's going to cost about $90 for Win 7 Pro and I have to do some research on the Win 8 cost. What would you all recommend? Stick with Win 7 which I am familiar with or go with Win 8? I have Win 8 on one of my HTPC's. However, I am not familiar with it. Thanks!

[ebony]

windows 8.1 is a little better then windows 8.

And i got my start bar back and its a lot better for keybord mouse users :P

[rfarris]

I'm liking Win 8.1. I used Vista and Win 7 for a long time. Went to Win Server 2012 (same as Win 8) for a while, but finally settled on Win 8.1 as my main gaming box, and will install it on the replacement. Many nice features and didn't take long to make the jump from Win 7.

[JohnGabriel]

Do you have alot of programs running on your current system? Do you have alot of accessories in use? Is so you'll likely have programs that need updating and drivers to hunt for if you go to Win8.

[Ualaa]

I'd personally stick with Windows 7.
But haven't used 8 or 8.1 to compare.

Win7 does everything that I want it to do.

I've heard of some incompatibility issues with the next version.
Eventually (maybe already...) they'll go away.

What new features does Win 8 (or 8.1) introduce that you cannot do with Win 7 ?

[heyaz]

Unfortunately, I just discovered my copy of Windows 7 64bit Home Premium has a 16GB ram limit. I learned this after I purchased another 16GB of ram to max out my machine. I have two options. I can upgrade to Win 7 64bit Pro or Windows 8 Pro. It's going to cost about $90 for Win 7 Pro and I have to do some research on the Win 8 cost. What would you all recommend? Stick with Win 7 which I am familiar with or go with Win 8? I have Win 8 on one of my HTPC's. However, I am not familiar with it. Thanks!

I started with Win7 pro on my build (64gb). I went with 8 because of performance and security enhancements and after watching several dozen turotials, youtube vids, etc, I figured Win8 would only take a few days to get used to - and it was such. I never really needed a start button because for me running programs - win key start typing, which is exactly what you do on Win8. I've always been a hotkey type and a couple videos sold me as they added dozens more to Win8, especially some nice ones for multi-monitor support.

Essentially it's a decent app/tablet'ish interface that pops up but has Win7 on steroids under the hood. The biggest and first "tile" on my start screen is Desktop. I use desktop type stuff on the first 3 monitors and move the fullscreen Win8 UI to the 4th monitor to use Netflix, news readers, music players, etc. which I really like as those things either had janky browser UIs that sucked (Netflix, music services), or desktop apps that weren't much better. Touch screen not required and even if I could touch I wouldn't bother lifting my arms given the number of hotkeys, mouse scroll tricks, etc. built in.

I was surprised to have just about zero compatibility issues and the install is done in place (while Windows 7 is still running). I haven't used 8.1 yet but I hear it solves a lot of the issues for people that think a start menu was necessary - I'm more sold on being able to snap and run a lot more Win8 apps at the same time (there are limits per monitor and it can get weird with several monitors on Win8.0).