Upgrades.....

[mvbighead]

I'd figure upgrade version is usually retail, so you should be good with 7.

 

[coolpurplefan]

LOL! Just when I think I have it decided to go ahead and move to Win 8.1, I get an answer to an email I sent a friends son whom works at MS. He gave me 2 reasons to reconsider the move to Win 8.1. I backed everything up via "easy transfer" before tearing down my old system.......but he tells me only personal files will be transfer to Win 8.1 from a Win 7 easy transfer backup. Also, and maybe this is already common knowledge on Anandtech, MS will have Windows 9 ready for retail purchase by early 2015. from what he told me, it may be wise to wait because MS may well be putting all versions (desktop/laptop/tablet) on a DVD and you install which ever you want to use. Desktop will not have all the "touch" functionality and will be more visually and functionally similar to Win 7.

Back to thinking I'm just going to try to install my copy of Win 7 Upgrade, hope for the best and wait for Win 9 early next year........

If that's true, it looks like some weird miscalculation is going on. They could have waited until Windows 9 came out before ending support for XP.

Now it looks like they may sell Windows 8 to some users who will eventually may end up getting Windows 9 anyway. That could give a lot of people a lot of work for nothing (saving files, re-installing Windows etc.).

 

[EndGame]

Thought I would update this because I was very surprised.

Upon installing my Win 7 Upgrade version, Windows asked to activate as usual. I really didn't think anymore about it as I got into install drivers, updates, etc.. Last night it occurred to me that I hadn't had any nag screens or anything concerning activation so I went to "System" and was very surprised to find that Windows was
"Activated"! I completely changed my system.......I mean everything except the case & optical drive and Win 7 apparently activated without a problem upon installation! I had more problems with XP activation after upgrades than Win 7!

 

[mfenn]

Retail keys FTW!