I have about a dozen machines here, half of which are running Win7-64 and the other half running Win8.1-64. I've had no problems with Win8 whatsoever, I'm looking forward to the update.

please return with your views on the update - i'm sure a great many of us would be most interested.

I just upgraded from Windows 7 Ultimate to Windows 8.1.1 Pro and so far all my tests are good. I have more tests to make before I make a final conclusion.

The Intel USB 3 drivers for Windows 7 were a major pain to uninstall. The drivers are not compatible with Windows 8.

After the install, I had to update the chipset driver as well as the Sound Blaster X-fi-HD driver.

Without the updated drivers my card reader would not work and there was no sound.

I had previously did an upgrade but it was faulty and probably why it never reliably worked.

I am using the latest NVidia driver and playback is full speed. I have not yet tested the render speeds. I will report on that later.

Windows 8.1.1 boots straight into the desktop as it should. Shut down is a Windows button and click on shutdown.

Boots up lightning fast!

I do have a clone of my Windows 7 boot just in case something breaks. Highly recommended before anyone upgrades and/or does a clean install. I did not want to reinstall everything so I did the upgrade starting with Windows 8 then 8.1.1. There are many ways the install can go bad so it helps a lot to have something one can start over with.

More later.

@vidmus - i think this might be a case of wanting to know your sys specs, etc ;-)

knowing which nvidia driver would be useful too.

i gather you 'upgraded' - if you have a b/up image of 7 why not a clean install?

as ever, thanks for keeping us informed

I will be updating my systems specs soon. Now if I can only figure out what I tossed in that case. LOL!

I was using the 335.23 NVidia drivers. Preview speed was much better than with Windows 7 and the 296.10 drivers. However, the rendering time was 5% slower. I will test the latest drivers with Windows 7 later on. I had to stop my testing to get a project done.

I only have the upgrade version of Windows 8. I can sort of do a clean install with what I have but I cannot activate it. It will only activate as an update not a full install. It is sort of good for testing that way but not much else because it is 8.0. I got the cheap upgrade from when Windows 8 was first released.

The biggest problem with Windows 8, 8.1 and 8.1.1 is the way it does not work properly with USB3 on my system. I have tried everything imaginable and I simply cannot get Windows 8 to work properly all of the time with USB3.

What happens is I get it to work and after the system is shut down for a while, I boot up and the USB3 devices work as USB2. One time I installed the latest drivers for my Motherboard from MSI and it worked fine but then again after being shut down for a while it was back to USB2 again.

This happens with external drives and my card reader. Now if I turn on an external drive and the USB2 thing happens and if I leave the external drive on and then do a restart, when Windows 8 boots up it will then show as USB3 like it should and remains that way but then after a startup, it goes back to USB2 again.

The fast start (boot) gimmick of Windows 8 does not allow for a proper refresh of hardware when booting up. One has to do a restart to get that refresh. With Windows 7 it takes longer to start-up but at least it will properly recognize the devices. This can possibly cause unexpected problems while editing later on because some devices might not be fully recognized properly and that may crash the entire show. I do not want to think about troubleshooting that one!

Windows 8.1.1 gets a lot of things as they should have been in the first place but still falls short. The USB3 problem is a deal breaker for me so I am now back to using Windows 7.

Oh how wonderful it is to have a cloned backup that will get me back to where I started, as if nothing bad (Windows 8) ever happened!

I sincerely hope that when Vegas 13 comes out that those who test and/or upgrade to it will remember to make a backup of their system(s) BEFORE they do anything with it!!! Not only make system backups but also test them to make sure they actually work!

Maybe Microsoft will finally get it right with Windows 9? I will have to wait and see.

Vista (dud) to Windows 7 (Yea!), Windows 8 (dud) to Windows 9 (Yea?), we will see...

thanks for that - appreciated.

i'm sort of in two minds about 8, one, why fix it if it ain't broke, two, what SIGNIFICANT advantage does / would it give me over 7?

i read recently a lot of chatter about 9 looming on the horizon? maybe i'll simply hold off till then, when i'll probably be due for some hardware upgrades*

*as it is, i'm downgrading my monitoring from my bm intensity pro to a calibrated ips panel - when the intens. works it's great, but i've been getting regular freezes when switching away from vegas and only having it come back online sporadically. this is with the latest bm drivers.

so, my set up is; onboard hd4600 driving preview monitor, gtx650 driving 2650x1440 main display. i have yet to start faffing around checking out quicksync / opencl... at the moment i don't use any gpu for rendering, and will probably hold off doing so till 13's results come in.

I have two systems one with Win 7 and one with Win 8. The only difference I notice is that Win 8 boots faster. Win 8 also has all that app rubbish and metro which are terrible for desktop use. You can get rid of them but not for good and every now and again they pop back unexpectedly. A real PITA.

What I also hate about Win 8 is that it's more difficult to adjust settings. A lot of the settings are hidden or difficult to get to without a lot of searching. For example, even when set to performance mode with nothing set to sleep or hibernation it's not possible to stop Win 8 switching off HDD's - all you can do it make the time before it does this longer. I've changed mine to 10000 minutes. Every time the primary drive is switched off Win 8 freezes and I have to reboot so the inability to easily get rid of this "feature" is another PITA. I'm sure there must be a way but it's not obvious or easy to do.

If you have Win 7 and don't want slightly quicker boot times then, in my opinion, don't waste time and bother upgrading to Win 8. If it's a clean install on a new system then maybe go for Win 8.

"The only difference I notice is that Win 8 boots faster. "

Actually it doesn't. The order in which processes come on line has simply changed slightly to give the APPEARANCE of a faster boot. That and the fact that some of the candy cane windows 7 look has been removed (which is why I can't stand windows 8... it's like a step backwards)

If that's the case then there seems no point upgrading from Win 7. Best to wait to see if Win 9 is any better than Win 8. The only other thing going for Win 8 is that it's apparently supposed to have better recovery options but having only used it for a short while I haven't looked into that too deeply and just back-up as I do on the Win 7 system.

If you're already running Win7, there is no compelling reason to upgrade to Win8. If you're building a new machine, there is no reason not to install Win8, it works just fine.

i should point out here that there is a MAJOR and i mean MAJOR problem using win 7 built in imaging software

it DOESN'T work if your pc uses uefi bios!!!!

i went through a nightmare a few months back when i decided to wipe an old ssd and use it as boot in my new pc. i thought 'tally ho' off we go, only to find i couldn't install ANY of my multiple images. i don't remember the exact error, but it was along the lines of this system uses uefi and restore requires bios' to install.

i have since moved over to macrium reflect...

this is a thread describing the problem, though none of the answers worked in my case:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1750286

does win 8's image restore work on uefi?

As far back as I can remember I have avoided relying on windows for any kind of restore/backup feature. Microsoft has a license to protect so most of the time they will do some kind of exploration on your machine prior to install/restore to make sure its the same machine.

Other third party backup/imaging system don't care about any of that

JC says;
"there is no reason not to install Win8"

Maybe it's just me but I can't stand the flat, plain Jane look of Win8 (and they have done the same hatchet job on the latest office software as well)

Win7 has Aero and in today's machines there is plenty of power and memory to run such features. I would imagine aero was removed in order to streamline win8 for tablets and other such smaller devices, but for full blown desktops it makes no sense. It looks cheap and ugly.

What's all this flat plain jane talk??

I just upgraded to W8.1. It boots (very quickly - SSD) to desktop, where I double click the Vegas icon, and I am once again working on my current project.

It looks exactly the same as when I edit in W7.

"Maybe it's just me but I can't stand the flat, plain Jane look of Win8"

That's entirely a matter of taste, in my case, I thought the Aero interface looked like I running a Fisher-Price computer. Different strokes, I guess.

"I just upgraded to W8.1. It boots (very quickly - SSD) to desktop"
And this is important .... because?
I mean don't get me wrong. As JC points out, different strokes for different folks, but I actually boot up a computer maybe a dozen times a year. It either stay on or sleeps.

"What's all this flat plain jane talk??"
Even XP looks better.
I have an opposite reaction than JC. Win8 looks to me like a cheap toy when compared to the look of past editions.

But regardless, computers are about choice. I can streamline and flaten out the look of XP or win7, but they have REMOVED the list of choices from Win8. That's a backwards step.

If you switch it off completely then it doesn't boot any quicker. However, I do think that copying might be slightly faster in Windows 8 but I dislike the way it deals with overwriting.