New Ultranote II ordered! Which OS?

[obbiie]

Ordered the below spec this morning on a 3 day turnaround, it's already been built Great service so far.

I've been a Mac user as my daily driver for 10+ years but have finally had enough, wanted a pretty speedy and capable machine even though I'm not a gamer at all (aside from some very old 4x turn based games and a bit of Football Manager) Main use is Office, MS Visio and web browsing.

I've got licenses for Windows 7 & 8.1 and I'm not sure which is considered the best at the moment, without a touch screen is 8.1 really worth it?

I've been playing with Linux Mint 17 on a NUC for a month or so and love it so I may also dual boot.

Will do a full review once it's arrived and I've used it for a bit.

I also orded an i3 version of this, with the 1080P screen, 8 gig of ram and the 750GB 7200rpm hdd as a christmas present for my dad as well.

Chassis & Display
UltraNote: 15.6" Matte Full HD IPS LED Backlit Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Dual Core Mobile Processor i7-4610M (3.0GHz) 4MB
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON SODIMM DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
INTEL® HD GRAPHICS MEDIA ACCELERATOR 4600
1st Hard Disk
240GB KINGSTON HYPERX 3K SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 555MB/sR | 510MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
750GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD7500BPKX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
2nd/3rd HDD HARD DRIVE OPTICAL BAY CADDY (9.5mm)
Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Wireless/Wired Networking
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-7260 HMC (867Mbps, 802.11AC) + BLUETOOTH
USB Options
2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS AS STANDARD
Battery
UltraNote Series 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (62.16WH) (Up to 7 Hours)
Power Cable
1 x UK Power Lead & 65W AC Adaptor
Keyboard Language
ULTRANOTE SERIES UK KEYBOARD
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
DVD Recovery Media
NO DVD RECOVERY MEDIA REQUIRED
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Dead Pixel Guarantee
1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
FAST TRACK 3 WORKING DAY DISPATCH

 

[mantadog]

IMO go with 8.1, it can be made to function exactly like 7 but with all the benefits that will come from having the latest OS.

As a side note, why the dual core i7, id advise the quadcore. The slower clock speed is not important for 99.9% of applications.

 

[obbiie]

Cheers, doing some reading around and opinions vary wildly on the 7 vs. 8.1 issue, I'm leaning towards 8.1 as you say. Can use Start8 to get a more functional desktop etc...

I chose the dual core i7 as I was not planning on doing any virtualization or any video editing etc... so just figured I'd get the highest clock speed I can as I'm unlikely to need the extra cores. Will see how it goes. I probably would have benefited from advise here before ordering but I sold my macbook air yesterday morning and wanted to get the order in by noon to count yesterday as day 1 of the build.

 

[SmokeDarKnight]

Hello Obbiie

I would just like to throw in that i agree with mantadog, windows 8.1 i find it great even without start8. Has all the functionality of windows 7 with the bonus of being able to run smartphone style apps.

I would also advise going for the Quad core over the dual core, there's no wrong choice but the as its about £20/30 cheaper than the dual core. The quad would give you multi tasking advantage but both are still great CPUs,

 

[mantadog]

You can amend the order up until it goes into building for no extra charge.

 

[obbiie]

Cheers, it had already been built yesterday, I'm cool with the dual core though, will be fine for my needs.

Cheers for the help