I would be glad to offer my opinion, but I can't address this specific question because I'm perfectly happy with Win7. After all that I've read, and after horror stories from friends that have tried it, I have no interest in even bothering to try Win8 in its present form. Why should I? It offers nothing I need that I don't already have access to. It's free to try? Great. Free annoyances. No thanks. IF they make some changes before it gets to RTM stage then I MIGHT try to run it on a VM myself, but from what I've seen so far I seriously doubt it. I'll let everybody else be the guinea pigs. Maybe when they release SP1. Or I'll skip it entirely. I've worked with computers in one way or another since 1973. Since I worked with them every day, I felt no need to have one of my own for the longest time. I finally got one in 1998. I used Win98 for a couple of years, moved to Win2K which I stayed with until about four years ago or so, then went to XP for a couple of years. I moved to Win7 about 2 years ago and I must say that I have found the overall experience with Win7 better than the rest in all ways from initial installation, program and hardware compatibility, speed, look, etc. I finally moved to x64 just this year, not out of any particular need but felt the technology had finally matured enough I was willing to give it a try. LOL No problems so far. I know that a lot of it is what you get used to and/or personal preference, but I'm very happy. There is no hardware or software reason requiring me to move to Win8. There's nothing I can't do in Win7 that I need to do, and if there was I know lots of folks that can help me, including the ones here at MSFN along with other sites I frequent. I try to keep up with what's going on with past, current, and future versions of MS OS, but I do not see any reason to subject myself to the abuse that Win8 appears to be for extraordinarily little reward, none of which is really needed.
As to the general question if an OS works as well on VM as one installed on actual hardware, the current generation of VMs available today do a pretty good job on today's hardware from what I have seen. The differences in operation haven't been enough to cause an experience difference bad enough to change one's opinion of the OS that is installed. It might be a little slower, but that's to be expected when doing anything virtually, and today's hardware has made the speed penalty very slight. If the experience of Win8 in a VM is noticeably worse than that on actual hardware I would tend to chalk that up to yet one more thing that Win8 has managed to "break".
I think we all agree there are a few, a VERY few things that might be an improvement in Win8 compared to Win7. But they are not anything that we can't live without or can't get from third party software, and they do not make up for the features that have been removed or changed in such a way to make what we want to do more difficult if not impossible. Not to mention things that have been added that we don't want or need, such as Metro. So it is not something we feel is worth the money for us to purchase or to recommend that others purchase for home or business use, at least not for either desktop or laptop use. It might very well be good for tablets, good enough to be worth the money is another question, but I don't know a single person who owns a tablet. I know plenty that own a smart phone, not that I want one necessarily, I don't even have a cell phone at all, (MAYBE next year), but no tablets.
You might want to take the advice similar to what you suggested to Andre and start your own thread for folks that
like Win8. I'm sure MS hopes that there are many like you, and I might be surprised, but I have a feeling you will be very lonely there.
Cheers and Regards
OT - If it's easier, you are more than welcome to just call me BP. It's easier to "say" and remember.
This post has been edited by bphlpt: 14 May 2012 - 02:35 AM