I absolutely abhor the idea of giving up my beloved Win XP 32bit Pro, but times are changing, and the bottom line is I must change along with it. So, iI went down to the local computer shop, told them what my dream machine would have to be, and it is being built right now. It will have an Intel Core i7-4770K Haswell 3.5GHz LGA 1150 84W Quad-Core processor, Win 7 premium 64 bit, 32 GB DDR RAM, Liquid cooling, (2) I TB solid state HD's with a 4 TB external HD, and a NVIDIA Quadro K2000 2GB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 video card. I gave a lot of thought to this machine, and have discussed it with a lot of my techie friends, so I am thinking I will be happy with it. Each of them recommended Win 7, and I have to agree. My wife's personal Dell machine has Win 8.1, and it truly sucks wooly mammoth. I absolutely hate it, and neither of us have much luck getting things to work properly on the damn thing. She has a machine running Win 7 at one of her businesses, and I initally set it up for her. I had zero problems with it, and it seemed more like what I am used to. I've been working on computers for quite a while - since Win 3.1, and Win 8.1 is just way to foreign to me. My understanding is that MS wanted to make an interface that was much like the current mobile touch screen devices, which have no place in my life either. Being an old man has its advantages. I embrace technology, but I have said for many years that if my life was so busy that I had to carry an iPhone or tablet around with me to manage my life, then I definitely have no REAL quality of life. I have a little Jitterbug phone that has 5 Star on it to keep in touch with medical alerts, but I have had it for several months and I have used about 15 minutes on it. I am better for it..

Win 8.1 is not for me, and I will keep my Win XP machines off the internet and use for a render farm. Hopefully I will not live so much longer that I do not have to subject myself to Win 8 or its upgrades...

C~