It'll be almost 3 years since Windows 7 launched when 8 comes out.
During those 3 years there has been a big shift in how millions of people use computers and applications, resulting in the radical UI change in Windows 8. And quite a lot of improvements to the desktop experience.

People that don't like change probably have no reason to upgrade. I don't think Windows has any "must have" features. But I think those that do want to upgrade will find it worth it and not just in their head.

Bit like digital cameras, though, the improvements are tending to diminish with time, because most of the things your average person really care about are generally fixed, ie constant crashing, 4gb limits, etc. Learning a new interface is more often seen as a pain than a benefit.

So theres a stronger argument to maybe skip an OS or two than there used to be, just like getting every years new camera will tend to mean much smaller improvements than their earlier days.

Otara

When you have a 2 or 3 year gap between OSs the change is certainly going to be less than the 9 year gap between XP and Vista. We definitely got our money's worth out of XP. Shame Microsoft can't do something about the prices now that they are going with a more rapid release schedule of 2-3 years, so people didn't feel like they had to skip an OS because of price. Naturally I understand a lot may not think Windows 8 is worth $$$ to them.


PS. February 29th is the rumored release date of the Consumer Preview of Windows 8.

Not a rumor.

 

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Does it use the Windows 7 driver model? I really hate waiting years for the drivers to get "good" for these new OS's. That's what happened with Vista.

I guess I'll wait for benchmarks on the same hardware between Windows 8 and 7 after it's release.

With that said, I am really happy with Windows 7.

 

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the ONLY reason i went with 7 right out of the gate is because i had vista so i could have more than 4 gigs of ram. and vista sucked. i won't upgrade away from 7 until i'm forced to do so.

 

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Yes, the driver model is the same from Vista to Win7 to Win8.

 

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I hope they learned their lesson with xp> vista drivers, a lot of issues with vista were drivers.

 

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The issue was the lack of the drivers. Not much was done to force driver creation, 2 huge issues were nvidia in specific and printers in general. Nvidia just had total garbage for drivers, after the fact, 29% of Vista crashes were attributed directly to nvidia:
http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2008/03/28/29-of-windows-vista-crashes-caused-by-nvidia-drivers/

Printer companies make money on ink and new printers. They are meant to be disposable, not something you repair, so they saw no reason to make new drivers for old printers - the problem is that people see that their printer worked FINE with XP, and when they upgraded it didn't so it much be Microsoft.

This go around there is a large focus on in box driver verification and a push to have lots of cerification around it. Shouldn't be a problem, though any OEM that makes an .exe installer rather than just giving the drivers, can cause issues, when the drivers might be fine under Vista, 7 or 8, yet the .exe model was made only for Vista, and won't work well or run at all to install the damn things in other versions.

 

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I don't think there was any lesson to be learned by Microsoft. They needed to improved the driver model, they gave plenty of warning and the manufactures didn't heed it properly.

I'm sure a time will come when Microsoft will need to improve the driver model again and I'm sure hardware manufactures will slack off again too. Though I think I read somewhere that Microsoft was going to do something to try avoid or curb the issue next time. Forgot the details though.