Microsoft sets the price for a Windows 8 upgrade at $40
For all those customers who can’t wait to enjoy Windows 8’s Metro UI, Microsoft has announced pricing and availability of an upgrade package for users of previous versions of Windows. Customers running Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 will be able to purchase an upgrade to Windows 8 for $39.99 during a promotional period …
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Re: I upgraded from Win 7 to openSUSE...
Yeah - try getting Mint to work out of the box on anything with a Broadcom wireless chipset. Y'know, those ones that every second laptop had about 4 years ago.
Re: Games?
OK, what about all the silly payroll and accounts and CAD and graphics applications that real businesses in the real world use?
Spoken as an Ubuntu and Mint user.
Re: I upgraded from Win 7 to openSUSE...
"7 recent Linux installs" - and clearly not one of those 7 had either of the following:
Wireless Network Adapters
NVidia Graphics
Re: I upgraded from Win 7 to openSUSE...
On the contrary - 1 laptop, 1 netbook and 1 desktop running on wireless without ANY problems at all - the others are ethernet anyway. 1 3G dongle, 1 Epson scanner/printer, 3 serial-USB convertors, 1 Samsung laser - again NO problems. 2 built-in bluetooth and 1 USB bluetooth - no problems. 4 webcams - no problems
2 have Nvidia graphics again no problems - one running vdpau hardware acceleration which is needed really to playback 1080p/50 video
All are on OpenSuse 11.4 but in any case I've not had any serious problems for years
Re: I upgraded from Win 7 to openSUSE...
That's what I have Broadcom 4312 on a laptop - runs fine without any probs on OpenSuse 11.4
It's always better to check with a LiveCD of the distro if you can to spot any potential problems but I've not seen any for years
Re: I upgraded from Win 7 to openSUSE...
@Chemist - so, you've never had problems upgrading the Kernel, because you've not upgraded the Kernel when you know there will have been a problem.
As for your assertion about drivers, the last two peripherals I purchased (a USB video grabber and a USB wireless network thingum) both didn't have linux support natively in either CentOS, Fedora or Ubuntu. One doesn't work and the other required me to download the driver and compile it myself. Neither of which are acceptable for hardware that's been on the market for well over six months.
(Yes, they did both work on Win and Mac)
Re: I upgraded from Win 7 to openSUSE...
"because you've not upgraded the Kernel when you know there will have been a problem."
I don't chose to upgrade I let the update mechanisms update when necessary I don't really understand what your point is ?.
As for none-working hardware if manufacturers chose not to provide drivers or give the necessary info then so be it . I'd always do a little research before spending any serious money.
Re: Drivers
Cheers for the replies all. I did try getting them an HP but it liked to behave erratic at best - maybe I just got a dud.
Re: I upgraded from Win 7 to openSUSE...
You seem to be changing to goalposts of what you're claiming... You said you've never had a problem upgrading Kernels, but you've had to wait for hardware support (drivers are compiled into the Kernel.) But also that you just let the automatic update mechanisms handle it for you.
You also say that you have never had hardware problems, forgetting to mention that you have had to research the hardware which you buy. You then begrudgingly admit this later on, but say that it's the fault of the manufacturer not providing the drivers, not the community for not having got round to it.
Re: I upgraded from Win 7 to openSUSE...
Why would I manually upgrade a kernel when the update mechanism will do it and the kernel modules for me - what would be the point ? I've never had a problem upgrading kernels probably for that reason and I never claimed that I (randomly ?) upgraded kernels manually - those days are over.
Drivers are NOT compiled into the kernel generally - they are loaded as modules when required and have been for years - look in /lib/modules/{kernel-version}/kernel/drivers/
I only research NEW and expensive hardware - everything else on 7 machines of wildly varying types and ages just works - I'm sorry if that fact upsets you.
I build all my own except laptops and they always work.
It IS the fault of the manufacturers - they don't release the necessary details in many cases which means supporting new hardware is a thankless task performed by some extremely talented and hard-working individuals who I thank daily and if it takes a while for a new driver I'm prepared to wait.
Re: I upgraded from Win 7 to openSUSE...
> And how are your games running?
> My time is money and free is too expensive ...
My time is is too valuable to waste it playing games.
Re: I upgraded from Win 7 to openSUSE...
"And how do you think your games will run on Widows8RT? The answer is of course, THEY WON'T, not unless you buy them again from Microsoft."
Why (or how?) would you be installing WindowsRT on a desktop or normal laptop? Are you telling me your main games machine has an ARM processor?
Though that said, Metro games will be able to run on any Win8 device - tablet, PC, Phone 8. So the answer isn't "they wont" for a lot of lighter games that will come out, actually.
Actually I have a vista laptop as my HTPC at the mo so might be interested, this can't be any worse then vista can it people?
Tell me please, not up for paying to go win 7 for this box that plays movies and nothing else but maybe I'd like better performance with win8?
@myarse
TBH you'd probably be as well off looking for Windows Home Server if it's HTPC work you're after. OEM copies can be had for cheap (as in, ~£40) and I can't imagine it being more resource-heavy than Vista.
Re: @Captain Underpants
"Windows Home Server if it's HTPC work you're after. OEM copies can be had for cheap (as in, ~£40) and I can't imagine it being more resource-heavy than Vista."
Yep. I got WHS 2011 for roughly that price. Although the installation insists on 160GB disk and 2GB RAM as a minimum, it happily runs on less once installed, and swiftly too. The built in backup feature has been as solid as a rock for me. You can also backup connected Windows PCs and restore them by creating a bootable USB stick and booting from that. It's all driven by simple GUI dialogues so it's pretty easy once you figure out where they are.
There is a caveat here of course. Delete a PC from the WHS 2011 console and put it back again with the same name, and it's likely to pick up old backups on a restore.
Good luck using the monitor with any fancy drivers or high resolution, the idea is that after the initial configuration you unplug the keyboard, monitor and mouse,. and use a separate PC running WIndows 7 to access it.. XP will work, sort of, but I couldn't get access to the WHS 2011 Dashboard from XP despite many attempts (workaround: use Remote Desktop or a KVM).
Re: @Captain Underpants
Actually, yeah - the big gotcha with WHS 2011 will be graphics support. Given the limited support for decent resolutions on external monitors with laptop-integrated GPUs it's not a given it'll work, though IME if you've got a dedicated GPU in there (even a feeble one) you'll be fine.
That said, I replaced an old Dell laptop with a Proliant Microserver and dropped in a cheap PCIE graphics card, then stuck WHS 2011 on it so it works as a combination NAS and HTPC, so it's not like I've tested it. Mind you, WHS 2011 is based on Server 2008 R2 so you could always download the trial of that, stick it on the hardware and see how you go.
So the real cost for non Win 7 users is..
250 (win 7 licence) + 40
So a 290 + tax upgrade ?
Pffft no.
Re: So the real cost for non Win 7 users is..
Why does a non W7 user have to buy W7 when W8 is released?
Re: So the real cost for non Win 7 users is..
+40
According to the article the cost is the same if you run Win Xp, Vista or Win 7
Re: So the real cost for non Win 7 users is..
Except there is no upgrade path from XP / Vista to Win 8.
Well not if you don't want to completely nuke your machine.
Sorry MS, my time is valuable, more than 40$ valuable.
Re: So the real cost for non Win 7 users is..
Except there is no upgrade path from XP / Vista to Win 8.
Well not if you don't want to completely nuke your machine.
Sorry MS, my time is valuable, more than 40$ valuable.As opposed to upgrading to Linux, you mean?
Not...
Not a bad price, not at all... This is what companies should be doing. Good on Microsoft.
Of course I wont be buying it, frankly the UI they are selling is an abortion!
Yes...I'm that guy
Been running Win8 preview on my home PC for 2 weeks straight now.
Running a mix of games, social stuff and web development.
Took about 3 hours to get use to the new "workflow", but after that everything becomes very fluid.
Metro takes everything social and parks it under one hood where it's neat and contained.
Desktop apps function as always and the desktop now feels like a real "work space".
Switching between desktop and metro is visually jarring for the first few hours, mainly because metro looks very slick and a deskop looks a little 'last decade' by comparison, but after that is about the same as alt-tab in terms of annoyance.
Launching apps and searching for local (and remote) content in metro by just typing is easy and fast.
Starting Gimp is "Windows-Key-gim-Enter". Actually considering how much work has gone into the UI, getting tasks done with the keyboard is seriously fast and efficent. Application "contracts" are the secret sauce here.
I've got concerns about Win8 on ARM and I'm not sure it's an enterprise os.
But for my money at home I don't plan on looking back.
WR
Not just you
When I downloaded the Release Preview I wasn't expecting much, mainly because of all the negative comments on the net. But after using it for a while on the laptop I'm typing this I have to say I really like Windows 8, Getting used to it to the changes and the Metro UI (which works perfectly fine without touchscreen, thank you) took me less than an hour, and now it's installed on one of my two desktop workstation as well (one stays at W7 as long as W8 is still pre-release). There are many small improvements in Windows 8 which (at least for me) make it so much better than its predecessors. I'll definitely buy the updates for all my PCs once Windows 8 is released.
Will WIndows 8 become the next Vista? Maybe. Vista wasn't a failure because it was a bad operating system. It became a failure because driver support by IHVs like ATI and Nvidia was atrocious (even when they had more than enough time to prepare for launch time), and because some wannabe-scientist (Peter Gutman, I'm looking at you!) published a paper with some ridiculously stupid theories about what Vista does and what not, which has been spread by an incompetent press unreflected, and has been taken up by the dumb masses as the ultimate truth. An early variant of a shitstorm. So it's still possible the same can happen to Windows 8.
Re: Yes...I'm that guy
Agreed, me too.
IIt's on my gaming laptop. I don't have a problem with Metro (and in fact some of the free apps are very nice), but Itreat it as a full screen start button.
The OS boots much quicker and is generally very swish.
The only thing I would change is an option to turn off all the hot spots around the screen in desktop mode (other than the "start button")
Re: Not just you
Davidoff said: "Vista wasn't a failure because it was a bad operating system. It became a failure because driver support by IHVs like ATI and Nvidia was atrocious (even when they had more than enough time to prepare for launch time), and because some wannabe-scientist (Peter Gutman, I'm looking at you!) published a paper with some ridiculously stupid theories about what Vista does and what not..."
Davidoff, you are badly mistaken. Although Gutman was quite right to question the desirability of baking DRM into the OS, Vista was a failure not because of anything he said, but because it flat out did not work at all with many PCs, including ones that were purchased from major manufacturers with Vista installed. I've seen several myself, running so slowly that you could see windows drawing themselves on the screen. (This is on Core 2 Duo machines, from companies like HP and Toshiba.) The fact that Vista worked splendidly on SOME systems turned out not to be good enough. Go figure.
Win8, on the other hand, will be a failure because it was designed by a committee of marketers, not by anyone with a real understanding of ergonomics, nor by anyone with any vision of design aesthetics. Nor even by anyone with any understanding of what existing Windows users (all 500,000,000 of them, by Microsoft's count) actually want in an OS. It's a two-headed monstrosity that will neither steal away the design-conscious Apple audience, nor retain the knowledgeable Windows user.
Re: Not just you
<quote>
Win8, on the other hand, will be a failure because it was designed by a committee of marketers not by anyone with a real understanding of ergonomics, nor by anyone with any vision of design aesthetics
<end quote>
Laughable:
http://kruzeniski.com/2011/how-print-design-is-the-future-of-interaction/
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/archive/2011/02/16/from-transportation-to-pixels.aspx
Re: Yes...I'm that guy
I love how everyone is being downvoted simply for saying "I like it". Not saying "you should like it", just "I like it". It just emphasises the childish, immature nature of your typical Linux evangelist who claims to support freedom and choice but is personally affronted if you exercise that freedom to disagree with them.
Maybe Linux users are just so angry all the time because they have to use Linux.
Re: Yes...I'm that guy
starting gimp on win-7 is exactly the same. Except the whole screen doesn't become schizophrenic :)
Re: Yes...I'm that guy
>I love how everyone is being downvoted simply for saying "I like it".
Yeah, it seems a bit off, doesn't it? They have gone to the effort of installing Win8 and and have used it for a while, and have been kind enough to report back here with their impressions... and people have just downvoted them.
I won't be getting Win8 on the basis of their favourable impressions, though- I will test-drive it myself, if I'm made aware of Win8 having any compelling advantages over Win7.
I do appreciate that secure boot will is rightly a matter of concern to the Linux community- relatively novice users are not likely to implement workarounds or disable it in order to run an alternative OS (though some would say that novice users aren't too likely to partition their HDD and configure GRUB from a text file, either)- but this has nothing to do with someone's appraisal of Win8's UI.
Re: Not just you
"Although Gutman was quite right to question the desirability of baking DRM into the OS"
To question the desirability of baking DRM into the OS??? Are you kidding? You obviosuly never read his stuff. This guy must have been on crack at that time, he wrote lengthy drivels about what Vista does block and what you can't do, which were so plain silly that even someone with only basic IT understanding would have known that it was just a pile of crap. He phantasized some wild theories which clearly were not from this world and concluded that Vista can't do voice communication, will corrupt medical images because it thinks it's pirated pron, refuse to work with some monitors due to HDCP, and will block or degrade the playback of your ripped music files. Gutman deliberately cherry-picked from outdated MS white papers to support his crude theories, while supressing all contradicting evidence. He has been asked to demonstrate his claims but somehow never got around, and became nothing more than an embarrassment for every scientist working after sceintific standards.
You should really read the crap he wrote (the original unredacted version is probably still out there somewhere), and I also recommend the debunking articles Ed Botts wrote at the time.
"Vista was a failure not because of anything he said, but because it flat out did not work at all with many PCs, including ones that were purchased from major manufacturers with Vista installed. "
Really? Which ones have that been (rethoric question, as there weren't any!)?
You're wrong pal, sorry. Vista did work on most the computers it was sold with (otherwise the manufacturers would have had some pretty hefty lawsuits on their neck as they would be responsible that it works, not MS!), at that time I bought a few hundreds of them for my employer so I should know if they didn't work with Vista. It even worked on PCs much older than Vista (the oldest one I had it running was a Dell Optiplex GX110 from 1999). Some low-end consumer PCs were sold with too little memory and slow processor but that was neither unique with Vista nor was it a Vista-specific problem (such crap is always on offer). There however was an issue because the Vista Ready stickers didn't actully gurantee that the Aero desktop would work (specifically laptops with GMA900 graphics, but that was intels fault), which lead to some bad press mainly in God's Own Country where compensation claims are plenty and enormous.
There were also issues with self-build PCs if the components were crap. Unlike XP, Vista required a fully ACPI compliant BIOS to work with, and while companies like Dell provide that since the P3 aera when Vista came out many mobo manufacturers only had half-baked or broken ACPI implementations. Some were fixed with a BIOS update, some not. But again, this was the fault of the hardware vendors or buyers who didn't check the requirements, as ACPI was listed as a requirement for Vista.
"Win8, on the other hand, will be a failure because it was designed by a committee of marketers, not by anyone with a real understanding of ergonomics, nor by anyone with any vision of design aesthetics. Nor even by anyone with any understanding of what existing Windows users (all 500,000,000 of them, by Microsoft's count) actually want in an OS. "
Yeah, sure, MS is of course full of idiots who have no clue what they are doing and no clue on ergonomics. Had they only asked you (or the El Reg forum in its entity) before committing into new projects, to get the ultimate insight what Windows users want. MS (or Apple, or Google, or any other company) will never get it right if they don't listen to the collective wisdom of the El Reg forum. If you really believe in this then sorry but you're delusional. MS may not do everything right (even Apple does make mistakes) but you can bet your arse that they have done some research before settling for Metro.
You also seem to believe that your litlle view of the world of Windows users is actually representative, but trust me it isn't.
Re: Not just you
Davidoff said: "You obviosuly never read his stuff. This guy must have been on crack at that time, he wrote lengthy drivels "
I read Gutman's stuff very carefully. I read the technical background. I read the many posts by Vista users who found their legitimate videos being blocked. There's no question that Microsoft compromised the internals of the OS to suck up to Hollywood. Microsoft admitted it; there was no doubt. How much real-world damage was done? Not as much as Gutman feared, maybe... but his point remains valid. When i install an OS, I expect 100% of the code to be working for ME, not some copyright troll in Hollywood. Code that works against the user is kind of the definition of malware.
As for Vista working on "most of the computers it was sold with," I think you need to a) define "most of," and b) define "work." Vista most definitely did not "work" at all well on far too many of the computers it was sold with. The failure rate was worse than I can recall with any other version of Windows, including Me. Lots of people seem to think that because Vista worked fine for THEM, there was no problem for anyone. Well, Vista worked fine on my high-end desktop too, but it failed totally on many brand-new portables that I saw being purchased by friends and acquaintances. That's not acceptable.
Regarding Win8... I did not say it was designed by idiots, I said it was designed by marketers. The 'research' concerned not usability, but market numbers. You can hear this explained quite clearly in Microsoft's own 2011 BUILD conference videos, especially the one titled "Introducing the Windows Store." Look it up on YouTube. Metro could have been optional on the desktop PC, but it's mandatory for no other reason than to build developer support for Microsoft's tablet push. As someone else said, they were happy to 'throw desktop users under the bus,' if it seemed to even marginally improve their odds of catching up in the tablet world.
Whether your views or mine are more 'representative' remains to be seen. But the facts are the facts... Microsoft has foisted a really bad design on desktop users, purely as a marketing ploy. Just because you happen to enjoy being treated that way, doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Downgrade option?
Do you get downgrade rights with this Win8 offer? 'upgrade' WinXP to Win8, then downgrade it to Win 7 for $40. Beats $130 for an OEM copy.
Re: Downgrade option?
You do, for the price of a retail copy of Windows 7 + $40 for the Windows 8 "upgrade".
For all those customers who can’t wait to enjoy Windows 8’s Metro UI....
...they need to be rounded up and shot dead.
Re: For all those customers who can’t wait to enjoy Windows 8’s Metro UI....
Whats that skippy....<snif>....<snif>....smells like a troll?
Why yes it does.
@WR
Calling the editor a troll? That's not really fair now...
After all the trouble he went through... Carefully listening to this MS announcement to share the news while /still/ doing his utmost best not to start laughing out loud when hearing / reading this.
Re: For all those customers who can’t wait to enjoy Windows 8’s Metro UI....
".they need to be rounded up and shot dead."
I didn't know Jeremy Clarkson worked for Google.
The most import market
I believe that the most important market is the Business Sector, if they can't be swayed then it's a garaunteed fail for W8, and I just don't see what benefit Metro has in the workplace
I'm getting it for my tablet.
But all my laptops and desktops in my house are remaining windows 7.
The stupid, stupid Metro just pisses me off.
"Offer extends through January 2013"?
It's alright, chaps. I think he means that the offer runs until the end of January 2013.
A sure sign they're desperate but this movre seems a bit anti-competitive and the US at least has laws against dumping.
anti competitive? against whom? the only real competition they have is earlier versions of windows.
"Will someone please think of the CHILDREN!!!!!"
They made your server look like an XBox - what more do you want?
Shameless
honestly i cant believe some of you lot. you dont like it fine, get over it and stop moaning, everyone who was moaning about it going to cost a fortune seems to have suddenly shut up so it is possible
The story here regardless of your take on Windows 8 is that this is an upgrade, (fresh install if you want) a Microsoft upgrade, thats going to cost not much more than a couple of Dominos Pizzas!
Yeah you can download Linux and have an OS for Free, and thats fine, you do that, but some of us actually prefere Windows, and this is a big deal.
I know the MS hate in here is always high, but can you not at least put your Secular OPINIONS aside and actually have a normal convo about this, in the World of MS where anti MS opinions are irrelevant, this IS a big deal.
Re: Shameless
It IS a decent price, on a par with what Apple charge. Maybe that's deliberate, maybe not...
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