Has anyone used the driver station software on Windows 8 yet? We’re thinking about using a Windows 8 laptop to host our driver station for this year (yes, I realize its a bit late to be thinking about this, but better now than never 
), but if the software isn’t going to work then it’d be nice to know beforehand. Thanks!
We have both LabView and the Drivers Station software running on a Windows 8 laptop. Works fine,… if you like Windows 8 that is. 
No issues here…our drive PC is a Win8 machine
Windows 8 is officially unsupported. As said above, odds are they’ll work, but they have not been tested officially, nor will you get significant help from FIRST or NI.
Technically anything other than a Classmate running an official FRC image is “unofficial.”
Use at your own risk I suppose.
Windows 8 is terrible and I don’t see why you would want to use it in the first place.
Please keep discussion on-topic. There are plenty of other places on the Internet to discuss your opinions on Windows 8; Chief Delphi is not one of them.
Windows 8 works fine for the Driver Station, especially if you have a touchscreen laptop like we do. Labview works fine with Win8 but I got really frustrated with it at times, I recommend using a mouse for Labview.
Also, the process of opening up the Driver Station software and Dashboard is much more long and tedious on Win8, but it’s doable as long as you’re on-time for your match.
LabVIEW executables seem to be a bit slower on 8 than on 7, but it still works fine.
My only issue is that the driver station / crio imager / anything else LabVIEW seems to not close properly and I have to break out the task manager to kill them. Minor inconvinience though.
I honestly have not had any problems with Labview, Windriver(C++), Driver Station or any of the other FIRST software yet.
If it helps here are my processor and ram specs:
Windows 8 Pro x64
Intel Core 2 Duo 3.33GHz (x64)
4GB RAM
I have had no problems at all and with a touch screen its nice to be able to tap the enable/disable in the driver station
Awesome, thanks, this is quite useful. We just ordered our Windows 8 laptop, and I’m really looking forward to exploiting the touchscreen capabilities Worst case scenario, we fallback to the Windows 7 laptop from last year.
If you have the Professional version of Windows 8, no need to switch laptops. The Pro license gives you the ability to downgrade to 7 for free and then go back later on if you want to.
Sure about that? I think that only applies to VL customers.
Regardless if you really need Windows 7 there are various ways to get it (your school may have a VL, MSDN academic, etc.)
Nope. Device Partner Center
If it came preinstalled, it’s an OEM copy, which provides downgrade rights.
Has anyone used Windows 8 at a competition yet?
Yes. Our team did at Portland and we did not have any comms problems all weekend.