Soft-Download

The biggest difference you will notice is that windows 8 has a brand spanking new start menu. Tiles are used for all your programs making it easier for tablets and touch screen laptops and desktops alike. The tiles are a nice upgrade to the new interface. For one, they update you with information on the fly. For example, the email tile will give you a summery for your newest emails right on the tile! You are able to rearrange all the tiles to easily access programs that are more often used.

Another great inclusion to Windows 8 is the Windows Store. You can now buy applications on the fly right from your computer. Better yet a lot of applications are free and the ones that are not free are generally inexpensive.

The user interface has changed quite a bit and may take a few hours to become accustomed. For example, windows 8 programs will not show up on the task bar. Windows 8 programs are tablet ready and all windows 8 applications run in their very own window in full screen. As such, to switch between windows 8 applications, tap the right corner of the screen and select which program you would like to use. if you are opening a standard application, the desktop will popup and the application will run in a familiar windows fashion.

Although there are a lot of great upgrades big and small there are still a few things to be desired. For example, if you have a lot of programs you may have a difficult time locating one out of the applications line-up as every single program shows at the same time. Also if you do not have a touch screen but instead have a multi-touch pad, many applications will not support two touch scrolling making it difficult to get around. For all you techies out there, you will be disappointed to know that Microsoft has become more vague in there descriptions. For example, Many times during installation you will gets status updates like "Doing some stuff please wait". Of course we know you're doing stuff, I want to know exactly what you are doing!

All in all I think it is a worthwhile purchase. However I would not recommend the upgrade version as it may or may not work very well. I personally tried to upgrade my laptop with years' worth of programs and files.

Everything eventually installed but half the time it would not boot and when it would boot half the tiles would not even work. I recommend doing a backup and reinstalling fresh. Good luck and I hope you have a great experience with the new version of Windows.