Customer Ratings & Reviews

It's an operating system, it works, hopefully Microsoft learns and does indeed take the best things from 7 and 8.1 and make 10 the best! I played around with the preview and it looks that way, until then you can make due with this 8.1 , takes a little to get used to but your favorite windows features are there, just buried. Installation and setup is easy.

I got this to update my computer. Is GREAT! Get it if you have Windows 7 because the update will make all the difference, to maximize speed and performance of your computer!

If you are looking for something that will run faster without all of the bloated background windows services. Although this looks more like a tablet or smartphone system it is still full of user friendly features. The only negative thing I found is that you can't revert the theme back to windows classic or windows vista/7 theme.

Downside, I bought this to upgrade from Win7 to Win8.1 only to find out that Win10 was announced about a week after, and they were offering free upgrades from Win7 to Win10. I sort of needed "something" as my Win7 partition was corrupt and I lost my backup copy. Upside, I'm now on Win10 and loving it. Super smooth and fast.

It's a little unfair because I only bought Windows 8.1 so I could boot from the DVD and repair a machine that was stuck in the middle of upgrading to Windows 10. It performed its purpose well. I installed 8.1, then I put Windows 10 on top of that.

Bought this to upgrade an older computer to make a venue lighting console. The touch screen option works great our program. Easy to install with no issues.

Was a little pricey but lived up to my standards. overall good operating system although i like windows 7 more.

Being as I'm pretty tech savvy, I don't find Windows 8 to be a big deal. It is different, but you can do most things from the desktop screen which isn't much different than Windows 7. A small learning curve. I was coming from Windows Vista. I'd suggest a clean install as opposed to an upgrade.

Need to update a laptop from Vista to something, never made a recovery disk and vista was outdated, picked up a win 8 dvd, plug and play full install new hard drive, found all the drivers and then a little tweaking to get a start menu the way I wanted it, works for me, just waiting on Win10

I work for a tech company and was still running Windows 7 Pro at home, so I decided to upgrade to Windows 8.1 to gain more experience with it. I was very skeptical as I don't particularly care for Microsoft's decision to gear Windows 8 almost entirely toward touch-screen users, however I am pleased with Windows 8.1 focusing more on the idea of the traditional desktop. I'm a big fan of the OS design and I think that it performs very well. There's still a lot to get used to, but overall I'm happy with the decision to upgrade.

My windows 7 was running poorly so I decided to format my hard drive. I decided to upgrade to windows 8. I had an audio program that wouldn't install into windows 7 but it did install into windows 8. To me there is a flow in windows 8 that wasn't in windows 7. I'm glad I upgraded.

love windows 8, got it when it first came out on my gaming notebook and didn't really like it at first but after just a little bit of use and finding out some of the built in features 8 had i fell in love and would never go back to 7. so i bought this for my new gaming desktop i built. WINDOWS 8 IS A MUST. even without touch screens its a must, cause i don't use touch screens, can't stand them to be honest

Never having used this OS before and the more I play around with it, the more I'm loving it. Very simple layout and easy to navigate. The installation was a bit tricky with next to no indicators that things were still loading, but once I got past that, it was all good!

easy to upgrade with enchanted features, runs smoother than windows 7 and the charms functionality is easy to learn

Purchased new retail copy of windows 8.1. Packaging is very nice and well designed. Straight forward insert and run disc. Had an issue with activation key not working for some reason just had to start process over and worked fine I might have put a wrong digit in. Overall windows 8.1 had been a pleasure to use and has gotten easier to use. There are several shortcuts to access same information like programs and control panel. Would recommend. Using on custom built personal computer

Microsoft's decision to no longer support XP I needed to upgrade my OS. Windows 8.1 made sense to me and with Vista not available and Win 7 already becoming obsolete, Win 8.1 was the obvious choice plus the so to be released Win 10...no brainier.

Having used windows operating systems from the beginning, this one is very fast and slick looking. It can be difficult to customize things, and relies too much on being connected to the internet. This system is designed around tables as well. It *IS* stable, quick to be able to switch between programs, and when you get the tiles set-up like you want, it becomes one of my favorite operating systems. Give it a chance, I think you will like it.

I purchased Windows 8.1 and installed myself. It was very easy and fast install. It works great.

Win8.1 is a serious improvement to Win8 but Microsoft's repeated ideology to make huge changes each time they release something creates many problems for end users. I know the MS die hards will give us the security and improvements speech but for the practical user who just wants simplicity and usability Windows8 is not it. The OS seems to function fine and they have improved USB device driver installation so you can plug in most anything and it will recognize it and install the proper drivers without much interaction - much improved. Its Average and if you have Win7 I would not make the change until you have to.

Some of the computers in the office were struggling with basic browsing, but a reset/upgrade to windows 8 resulted in much better performance. Same could be said for a laptop I upgraded a year ago. Windows 8 was optimized for low powered PC systems, so this makes sense and is pretty awesome. Along with your purchase comes a free upgrade to Windows 10 when it comes out in June, compliments of Microsoft.