Windows 7 Pro on ASUS F555LA-AS51?

I recently bought this laptop: Amazon.com : ASUS F555LA-AS51 Core i5 15.6-Inch Laptop : Computers & Accessories (1366×768 60Hz display, i5-5200U/HD 5500, 8GB DDR3, 1TB HDD... and Windows 8.1)

So, I plan to remove the HDD when I get the laptop (it's in the mail) before even powering it on for the first time and save it for possible warranty needs, backup use later on, or similar. Then, pick up a 1TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD and a copy of Windows 7 Pro 64 bit SP1 to install in it.

Drivers are likely going to be somewhat of an issue since ASUS likely only offers some of them with Windows 8/8.1 compatibility, but I think I can get around this by doing more hunting for them from the component manufacturers, or elsewhere, from what I've seen. (If any of you have had similar needs and can offer some pointers, feel free to share them.)

The question is though, since I don't plan on hopefully ever needing to use the license copy of Windows 8.1 that comes with the laptop: Is there any way I can get a full or partial refund from Microsoft for it, or possibly a "downgrade" discount from them for a copy of Windows 7 Pro?

Seriously, I'm not fond of Windows 8/8.1 and in particular I don't want to support (fund) its trend in OS GUI design, but needed to get a decent laptop to use none the less.

I would say no.

You could just install Windows 10 for now on the new ssd, save some money.

Then, if you like 10, just pop the 8.1 drive back in, upgrade to 10 for free (When it comes out). Then make an image of 10, then put the image on the ssd.

Personally, I`d still get 7 :)

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional With Service Pack 1 - 64-bit, License & Media, OEM - FQC-08289 at TigerDirect.com

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit - Operating Systems - Newegg.com

SSD 850 EVO 2.5" SATA III 1TB | Samsung Solid State Drives

Download Windows 10 Technical Preview ISO - Microsoft Windows

Thanks for the suggestions.

I am still somewhat curious about Windows 10 as I haven't delved too deeply into the info out there on it yet. I'm going to check out some more info on it. Likely though I'll still get another copy of 7 for seamless software compatibility/functionality with my main home PC. I'm hoping it isn't too much of a pain to set up 7 on the laptop though, with getting all the right drivers working correctly. But hey, at least I won't have to mess with the bloatware that comes with the laptop.

...

Well, Windows 10 does seem like a more preferred and user friendly mobile and desktop OS. If I had a Surface Pro or similar, I think Windows 10 would be very tempting. As it is now though, I have a few rooted Android devices that offer all the additional functionality Windows 10 seems to offer (excluding DirectX 12, of course) and then some, which I'm sure Microsoft won't be inclined to offer. I have my Nexus 5 with me pretty much all the time, so I don't really have any need for the features 10 seems to have.

So, I think I'll stick with 7 still this time around. I am somewhat impressed with what I've seen so far of 10 though. I think it has the makings of a decent one-size-fits-all OS. That's just not what I'm looking for from Windows, for the time being.

Just an update and some musings for the curious:

I ended up customizing 8.1 on my laptop with Classic Shell, even though that wasn't really necessary since I put links, this pc, and program popup menus on the task bar, and have been using it like that for a while.

Just recently though I've ended up putting the newer Debian on it with the KDE desktop. I've used this in some virtual machines on my main PC for a while, but was a bit leery about using it as the main OS for compatibility reasons, especially on a newer laptop. But, everything went fairly well, better than expected. I did have to backport a driver/firmware package to get the Intel 5500 HD Graphics acceleration working. Other than that and some of the proprietary keyboard function buttons not working (I wasn't expecting them to), everything seems to work fine from the webcam, Wi-Fi, sound, SD card reader, and so on. I of course booted to the "live" install DVD I made first though just to make sure things worked well enough.

Don't take this as a "people should switch to Linux" kind of post. It isn't. I'm just enjoying messing around in it and customizing it to my liking. I have a backup of the Windows 8.1 laptop install that I can switch back to if I ever need or want to. To be fair to this flavor of GNU/Linux (and presumably others as well), it can be very capable and feature rich, with a bit of resourcefulness and determination. I don't think it's for everyone though.

Coming from the perspective of someone who started out using DOS on 8086 computers that he pieced together from scrap parts as a kid, Windows is also a lot more solid and capable than many in the "Linux community" seem to think too though. Like any other intricate technology, it just needs a working knowledge of how to use it to get the most out of it and keep it secure and up and running smoothly. I've especially liked Windows 2000, XP, and 7, and they just got better from one to the next. From my experience with 8.1 so far, it's very stable and functional as well. I'm mostly just not fond of the default GUI layout with its tiled icon screen and seemingly redundant and overlapping settings menus. I like my desktop PC OSs to be desktop PC OSs. Fortunately, it was pretty straightforward to customize Windows 8.1 well enough to my liking, even without third-party tools.

I'm also a bit worried about the direction Microsoft is taking Windows. (I'm that guy that doesn't use Facebook and has to hear it from his wife to find out what's going on. Use Windows to share my Wi-Fi password with my Facebook friends? Ha!) I suspect layout customization will be similarly good enough for Windows 10, as well as people being able to alleviate some of its privacy concerns with enough effort. Frankly, I'd much rather buy my OS than have it use and sell my info to help sell me things. Isn't there already an app for that?

My main PC is going to stay on Windows 7 as its primary OS for the long haul. I enjoy using it and run a lot of custom software on it, host servers on it, game, and crunch for BOINC. Take this with a grain of salt as these numbers aren't perfectly balanced across different projects, but this computer (which doesn't use any ASIC components) is within the top 500 computers for recent average work done out of some 14 million worldwide that crunch for BOINC. The total amount of work the computer has done so far (about 336.83 quintillion floating-point operations) is a bit more modest in comparison, being within the top 1000 of those computers. Besides shamelessly showing off, my point is that as you can imagine, this computer is up and running mostly loaded nearly all the time, often for several weeks at a time while also being used as a gaming rig, workstation, and host of three Minecraft servers running in a virtual machine. Not too shabby for a "desktop" OS, I dare say.

Cheers and happy OS endeavors.

I've found using separate drives a great idea for different os's Linux included :)
Most of the new os's 8-8.1 and now 10 do not play well and are better off on their own where it can be alpha among it's self same goes for win-8-8.1

Dual booting with Linux is a little too cozy for me so again it's just safer to do it on a totally separate drive

Not to mention none of these installs know about each other except for Linux it knows when another hdd is being used even if that os has never been connected at the same time
Which is very interesting
But confirms Linux is very able to read/ alter bios which is a little scary

Linux can also run off ram so if there was a bug that can live in ram that would be an interesting smart bug

I have had the previous version of Debian/KDE installed on one of those tiny, thumbnail sized USB jump drives plugged into a port that's directly on my motherboard to use as a secondary emergency boot option and then have my BIOS set up to pause and wait for me to press Esc after entering in the BIOS boot password. This makes it easy for me to just press Delete to get into the BOIS and choose a device to boot to. It's nice that the BIOS give me this option so that I don't have to mess around with saving changes to them and power cycling the computer again.

I did have some issues back when I was trying to installing the GRUB bootloader on that jump drive. I had to disconnect the HDD (I didn't have an SSD installed yet back then) prior to the install process to get the Debian install bootable. Kind of a weird issue that had me puzzled for a bit.

But anyway, thanks to the ease of use of the BIOS, setting up a dual boot wasn't needed.

...

Oh, and by the way, I was pretty significantly off on my computer's BOINC workload numbers in my previous post. They're correct now.

That's what I get for trying to do math before having my coffee after a night that I stayed up too late.