Sorry... I fail to see the difference. If you open more then one instance of the same application it will get stacked behind the apps icon in the taskbar. You can pull any icon from the notification area back onto the taskbar. It is as customizable as it can be. If I select "never combine" in the taskbar properties it will look like yours.

"cbrillow, do you refer to the program "classic shell"?

Yes, that's what I use on one Windows 8 machine and one Windows 8.1 box. I have left it off a 3rd Windows 8.1 machine to evaluate the Start button change that came with 8.1.

There are other Start button replacement utilities -- one has already been mentioned. Some are free, some come at a modest cost. I've only tried Classic Shell and it works just fine. Doesn't seem to have any negative effects on the system or software. I don't know about resource usage, because I've had no reason to look into it.

Thanks, ddm, for your response. Cinegobs keyer would be one older 32 bit program that I'd be using...

Okay; thank you cbrillow for that information!

OldSmoke wrote: "If I select "never combine" in the taskbar properties it will look like yours."

Thanks to OldSmoke and others on this thread, I'm going to have a whole lot more knowledge going into a new OS, LOL!

I had what I considered to be some very good reasons for upgrading to a more modern operating system from XP, which I held onto through the Vista and Windows 7 eras.

I'll only touch on a few, and I won't even include the controversial and tentative impending end-of-life of XP support in April. (Don't want to start a separate thread diversion on that topic...) I also won't talk about new O/S features or improvements that I consider worthwhile -- and there are some.

1) My audio/video editing machine was running 32-Bit XP Professional with 4gigs of memory, all of which were not usable because of the architecture.

2) Several programs that I use -- Vegas, for example, starting with Vegas Pro 11 -- were not supported under XP. This left me stuck at Vegas 10 on my a/v computer. Vegas 12 added a feature to the mask utility that saved me MANY HOURS of tedious work on a project last fall. If I'd stuck with 32-bit V10 under XP, my hourly rate for the project would have been way over budget for the customer and I would not have felt right billing him for it. This alone, was worth the price of admission for both Vegas 12 Pro and Windows 8.

3) Updating to Windows 8 Pro with Media Center cost me $40/machine. I've been able to go 64-bits on three of them, with minimums of 8-gigs of memory, all of it usable on those. I'm able to run most 32-bit older XP applications on the newer machines, but the converse isn't true. There are newer 32 and 64 bit applications we use that will not run on XP. My wife's embroidery digitizing software is a prime example.

For these reasons and many more, it made sense for this family to move from XP, and Windows 8 was the most cost-effective. It's not perfect, and there are annoyances, but I am very satisfied overall with the decision.

There is nothing bad about Windows 7 (and Win8, I suppose). The problem is that there isn't a very long list of anything that is better, at least when measured by improvements in workflow.

To use the old phrase: compared to XP, Win7/8 is a

Hmmmm. I had none of those options. Maybe it's a difference between Home and Ultimate?

There a lot in in both Windows 7 and 8 that is a huge improvement over XP. First and foremost is security. Second is 64 bit addresses. Yes XP had a 64 bit version but no one supported it. Third is far better graphics handling. This was first implemented in Vista and carried over in Win 7. Forth is tighter audio support in 7 and more so in 8. And over all a much faster and quicker snappier user experience. Win 8.1 loads super fast even on a non SSD system.

There is a great deal more that Windows 8.1 offers but for many that are not all that interested it looks to them as a bad OS. Example was the mention of Media player not having the ability to play DVDs. This is true except MS offered a download for doing this. Its called Media Center.

Also I paid $40 for Windows 8. I got 8.1 free. I was an early adopter.

Thanks for your comments!

Maybe a choice of operating systems will morph into yet another third-rail category, like politics and religion.

I use XPpro with 2GB of ram. When I am editing a two-camera, wild audio, two-hour project (current task this week), V9 is using about 346MB according to RamPage. So the XP usable ram limit of 3.5GB is not in play. Perhaps there are many other Vegas projects that could soak up ram, but I don't run across them with the kinds of DVD projects I do.

As for security, I have no idea. I run an antivirus program and check from time to time for bad stuff in my system, but don't find any.

As for cutesy graphics and translucent borders, feh. I don't care. It's like having a whizzy screensaver. Very cool, then after a while I get tired of it and pick something else.

For improved graphics handling, I have no idea what improvements have been made. I have a mid-range graphics card in my workstation, and of course V9 doesn't care about graphics cards anyway.

I play DVDs with WinDVD and PowerDVD. I don't use Media Player for anything, never cared for its limitations.

As others have mentioned, latest versions of Vegas require W7+. Fine. V9c is brilliant, never crashes, contains Elastique (which I adore), and just recently I found out the wonders of multicam syncing with PluralEyes, which also runs beautifully on V9. So until there is some must-have feature or requirement, I am happy where I am, just shooting video projects in HD and then creating DVDs for people. And recording concerts and building CDs that sound as good as I can tweak them.

Oops...looks like I've gone off on a tangent. The fact is that most people reading this thread don't have the option of running XP and V9, because they're not available any more. I guess my point is that Microsoft brings out new operating systems because they make no money off the older versions after the initial sale. And I reject that planned obsolescence strategy. Getting back to the original question, once again I see MS throwing W7 away in order to re-invent the wheel with W8, and I reject that scam, too.

I hear there are some (perhaps many) writers who compose on a typewriter. Some even use a manual typewriter! Like them, I'm happy and productive where I am. But who knows--perhaps there will be a pressing need for 1TB of ram for some applications in the not-too-distant future.

I love this thing called technology. I always have, ever since I built a kit computer as a young boy. What a great time to be living.

Since my primary income is from my work in the IT industry, I tend to run all versions of Microsoft operating systems. I am currently using Windows 7 Professional for the two machines that I use for video editing. My DVR is running Windows XP Professional. The most notable exception is that I was quite successful avoiding Windows Me and Vista.

I ran the Windows 8.1 release candidate on a Xeon-based server with Vegas Pro 12 and while it worked fine, I have no compelling reason to change at present.

Windows 8 only loads faster because it doesn't usually switch off. If you do switch it off it doesn't load any quicker. Windows 8 is much more of a pain to use with image restore systems like Macrium Reflect because of the different boot process.

Chienworks

When you right click the Taskbar and click options do you get this page: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39278380/taskbar_properties.jpg?
I have Win 7 Pro and Win 7 Home Premium and both have those options.

No that is not true. I physically turn my computer off. Windows 8 starts a lot faster.

Old Smoke, now that you have me check, yes i do. I remember specifically that i didn't when i first got this laptop. There have been several major updates in the mean time though, so perhaps there were enough complaints for Microsoft to add the feature back in.

Wow... from all the posts I guess this "simple question" has a non so simple answer.

Q. Windows 7 Pro or Windows 8.1?

I've used both because I have to test that my Vegas Pro plug-ins work with Windows 8 and I would have to say that Windows 8 is designed for a touch screen and if you don't have a touch screen, everything will be 2 or 3 more mouse clicks to do than you had to in Windows 7 (once you figure out where to click because everything you need every day like shutting down is hidden away for some reason).

For this reason alone I'd say stay with Windows 7 unless you have a touch device. Windows 8 has no value for a "keyboard and mouse" user and, in fact, has a negative impact on productivity (at least it does on mine).

~jr

Not in my experience.

Not in my experience either. You can boot into the desktop mode and never even see the Metro interface.

meh... just get used to adopting the new. if there is an issue, the net will blow up about it and it will get fixed. 8.1 boots faster, runs better regardless of extra code. I adopted to 8 then 8.1 asap and never looked back. have had no problems, and seems faster.

I do use iobit start menu and the whole thing operates just like 7 again. I NEVER see metro nor the goofy side bar junk

Thanks everyone for the additional comments.

For what it's worth: Why Windows 8 Has New Start Screen and Metro Apps

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/modern-ui-metro-windows-8-microsoft-ux-designer,26057.html#xtor=RSS-998