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Currently Microsoft’s punting Windows 8 at a rather bargainous £25 a shot, but after tomorrow, it’s going to jack that price right up to around the £120 mark. If you’re ever likely to need an install of Windows, buy it now. Windows 8 really isn’t that bad, for £25 that is.
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I’m still dithering, do I buy this or wait as I’ll no douby get it when I upgrade to my next laptop anyway…..decisions decisions.
Now! Then you can just reuse the code in the future if you ever end up building another computer. The code counts for number of active installations.
I’m a laptop person through and through so I’ve decided not to as the next laptop I buy will have it installed anyway and the general view is if you have 7 it’s not really worth going to 8 (especially as I have some custom stuff that ‘might’ not work).
I’ve found Win7 compatibility mode to be very helpful for custom stuff like that.
But yeah, it’s not a significant upgrade.
Tried it but the problem with the OS is everything is hidden under more layers or UI than it ever was before. I just find it slow and cumbersome to use and even though it starts up slightly quicker, I leave my PC on all the time anyways so it doesn’t bother me.
Still cannot believe they don’t have any kind of built in SSD protect software though, have to spend ages disabling a load of stuff on Windows so it doesn’t shorten the life dramatically.
Curious about disabling stuff to prolong the life of my SSD. Could you point me in the direction of what I need to be looking at, pretty please?
I swear they do build in SSD protect software? When you run the auto-detect, it turns of defrag and that. It’s just, Windows doesn’t tell you it turns off defrag, it keeps ‘drive optimisation’ active, it just changes optimisation to trimming, instead of defrag.
Might sound like a daft question, but if I buy it, do I have to download it straight away? Or can I keep an e-mail with a link in it for when I want to download it in future – perhaps when I finally get around to upgrading to a new PC?
same question!! I don’t want it now, but I wouldn’t mind having it on standby.
When you download it you have an option to keep the .iso file for burning to a disk. That way you don’t have to install it straight away.
IIRC, your just download a small file (the Upgrade Assistant), during the initial setup, it asks you for your product key, from that it know which version of Windows 8 to download.
You don’t have to install it straight away, but as long as it issues you with a valid product key, you can use that at any time. Only one PC can be activated at a time though.
Thanks for the info – both of you. Much appreciated! Now, lets hope I have the cash to actually pay for it..
I bought mine and have downloaded it a number of times. They just emailed me a serial and a download link.
Had Vista – startup time of 10 minutes (or more) sometimes so it was a no brainer for me. Did it last night and appears to have gone smoothly but I need to re-install any programs that I need.
Don’t like the interface but if I whack on an emulator I can get it looking like a “normal” desktop again.
You don’t need an emulator!? The desktop is pretty much exactly the same sans a start menu..
Yep, I’ve bought five licenses in two days because of this rubbish. Two of those aren’t even claimed yet, I’m just keeping the product keys until someone I know needs them.
PSA will for me always mean Prostate Specific Antigen, due to me not being from the US.
As for W8, it is quick, I’ll give that.
This is the upgrade for £25… how much is a new license?
I took the offer to take advantage of the price and after doing a good back-up, also tried installing it to see how it feels. Spent a couple of days getting a feel for it and then went straight back to Windows 7. They’re going to have to do an awful lot of work to Win8 before I’ll install it again.
The metro IE with no favourites, but still the option to add a favourite, which then puts it in the favourites folder of the desktop version of the program… which you have to go to in order to mess with internet settings, there being nowhere to do that from within metro IE. Also seemed to be no way to change the size of the icons in the ‘pinned’ bar to allow more pinned sites to be seen – which process also forced you to make them Start Tiles… which was just a waste.
Then the built in mail wouldn’t allow me to use my POP mail server (only IMAP or EAS supported) which meant I needed to use Windows Live Mail – which again was a desktop application… and also means that if you want to use the Win8 charms for sharing etc… they won’t work – because the desktop apps won’t take advantage of it.
I have a multi-monitor set up and fancied having the Start tiles on one and the desktop on the other, but if I clicked on a desktop program the start tiles disappeared – so the active tile content seemed to disappear whilst I was in a desktop app. You can stick a metro app to 1/3rd of a screen to appear next to a desktop app… but there didn’t seem to be real options for resizing or altering the presentation.
Meh all in all… I’m honestly not sure that I made the right choice. It seems to me that they’ve got two paradigms trying to co-exist in order to make an OS that will work for their touchy feely Surface and tablets – but you end up dropping back into the desktop paradigm way too much and the level of integration between the two paradigms is really not great.
I guess it’s £25… what’s the harm… and I may end up using it down the line sometime….