I recently got an HP laptop that came with Windows 8. I haven't yet set it up. After watching some video guides to Windows 8, that OS seems very disorienting to me; it's just so different than all the older versions of Windows that I am used to. I'm also often hearing about various software (and external hardware such as capture devices) being incompatible with Windows 8. For those reasons (mostly the former), I was thinking it might be nice to run Windows 7 instead. I believe the factory-installed OS is the regular Windows 8, not Pro, so I likely don't have downgrade rights, but I do have access to a full (not upgrade-only) copy of Windows 7 through Microsoft's DreamSpark program (I'm a Computer Science student), so I can just wipe my hard drive and perform a clean installation of Windows 7 on it.
However, there are no Windows 7 drivers for my computer; the only ones available are for Windows 8. Is there a good chance that I may experience some incompatibilities with them in Windows 7? Would there be any other concerns with running Windows 7 on my Windows 8 laptop? According to this, HP hasn't tested Windows 7 on all of their Windows 8 machines.
Do you suggest that I give Windows 8 a chance first (or avoid wiping and installing Windows 7 altogether)?
Thanks!
