Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[pscocoa]

I am setting up a new small office in London. Conflicting advice is being offered but the requirements are modest and will just will be for word, excel, outlook, PowerPoint and Access with quick books accounting package and little in the way of publisher stuff. I feel myself 8.1 is the way forward and that the IT professionals are peddling windows 7 as a safe option just because they are used to it and it is a no risk recommendation.

We are talking 4 pcs, nas drive and normal speed broadband with no mega computing or security requirements.

Would appreciate any views as I need to order all the kit this week (all cat 6 and power is in) as builders finish Friday next.

I am proposing to use Googlemail for flexibility and cost.

[zirk]

If it was me looking at what your doing, I would stick with Win7, although very slightly outdated now its a good stable platform.

[AndyRoid]

+1 for Win 7 in the environment you describe.

I'm certainly no techie but I'm reasonably confident when navigating Windows, and I'll have a bullseye with you that your users will be on the phone a lot more if you inflict 8 or 8.1 on them.

[aaronjb]

7


The question is - do you want whoever is supporting this (I assume outsourced) to spend a day fixing a simple problem because you're travelling untrodden ground, or an hour because it's well known and well documented?

If you can find an outsourced IT support company happy with 8.1 and you're confident they're not just blowing smoke up your nethers then go with 8.1, but if the people who are going to be supporting it are saying 7.. go with 7.

[cem_devecioglu]

win 7

[pscocoa]

Pretty conclusive then.... Thanks to all.

[AndyRoid]

Pretty conclusive then.... Thanks to all.

Sure you don't wanna phone a friend? 

[TheBoy]

The problem with Windows 8 is its dual personality if employees are not used to it.

IME, "IT Professionals" always recommend Win7 or Win8 due to not being able to personally get to grips with Win8. Same happened with XP v Vista, with Vista universally hated by IT Pros, but general well liked (performance aside) by end users.

If you can educate the users over the Win8 interface, I'd probably go in that direction, unless you have apps that do not work too well with it, in which case Win7.