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Comment by bluedevil2k | Hacker News Reader

My desktop and laptop have Windows 7 installed on them and my wife's laptop has Windows 8 on it. As someone who spends 8-10 hours a day on their computer programming/debugging/everything users on this site do, I'm not sure I could handle working in Windows 8 all that time. I feel like Windows 7 got so much right for power users of Windows, and that Windows 8 is for casual users of their computer.

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As a power user and after discovering "win+x" on windows 8, I can't come back to windows 7 but it is a matter of taste I guess

I looked that up; what does it offer that the Windows 7 (and 8) control panel doesn't?

Hitting the Windows key, and typing in any of those names will get you the same content.

Less effort. Key-strokes + click on 8/8.1, as opposed to opening the Control Panel, finding the most likely group for the thing you forgot the name of, and then clicking on the thing you need. The control panel is bloated, and it's organisation is not entirely logical (to me, at any rate).

Effort reduction is a fair point. However, most of the shortcuts presented are for tasks I do so rarely that having a quick shortcut to them adds relatively little value.

The few that I do use frequently from that list already have their own key bindings, or I can find them with 2-3 keystrokes after pulling up the windows start menu (something you can't do with Windows 8 if they aren't regular applications; you have to type and then select a different application category to search in).

Ctrl-Shift-Escape == Task manager

Win-D == Desktop

Win-R == Run

Alt-F4 (from Desktop) == Shutdown

The net result is that this is not enough of a value add to elevate Windows 8 above Windows 7.

Or Win-X + letter on 8/8.1. For example opening the Disk Manager is Win-X + k, Event Viewer is Win-X + v etc.

What advanced features from Windows 7 would you miss on Windows 8.1? Because they are most likely still there.

I use both and in terms of desktop i don't have any productivity issues. The only issue i have with Windows 8 is with USB 3 driver support but i'm not sure if it's microsoft or intel's fault.

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