Windows 8 Pro, Ultimate Upgrade $39.99

[fastcuda]

they announced due to low sales they are going to launch a new sales campaign in feb lol Didn't say what it was though.

 

[ElFenix]

they announced due to low sales they are going to launch a new sales campaign in feb lol Didn't say what it was though.

anything is better than the girl searching for rockets and playing angry birds.

seriously, they want you to buy windows 8 to play angry birds. they paid people good money to come up with: buy windows 8 so you can play angry birds.

 

[gorcorps]

anything is better than the girl searching for rockets and playing angry birds.

seriously, they want you to buy windows 8 to play angry birds. they paid people good money to come up with: buy windows 8 so you can play angry birds.

Meh, that's just one of them. I've actually liked a lot of the MS ads as of late. The Surface one was pretty cool, and I like the one where the little girl skypes with her dad to show the paintings.

 

[FitzGerald]

All,
Given the deadline is tomorrow, I figured I would download the upgrade today. I currently have XP installed on a 7+year old 250 GB hard drive, which has had no free space on the Windows drive (I have 17 GB on other partitions). It's asking me to free up 4GB. Is there no way to purchase the Windows 8 key for future download? There's no way I'm going to be able to free up 4 GB without doing partition gymnastics.... (I could free up 1 GB that way; but that's it).

 

[gorcorps]

All,
Given the deadline is tomorrow, I figured I would download the upgrade today. I currently have XP installed on a 7+year old 250 GB hard drive, which has had no free space on the Windows drive (I have 17 GB on other partitions). It's asking me to free up 4GB. Is there no way to purchase the Windows 8 key for future download? There's no way I'm going to be able to free up 4 GB without doing partition gymnastics.... (I could free up 1 GB that way; but that's it).

Does it yell at you about it before it even lets you pay for it? What I did was run the installer, bought the key (sends you an email copy too) then cancelled the download/installation once it started. If it doesn't let you get to that point then I don't know what to tell you.

 

[FitzGerald]

Yes. It scans my computer; and then it says "Free up 4GB before I go any further". From a price perspective it's worth it for me to go through partition gymnastics, don't know if i want to spend the time to do it today or tomorrow... guess I could just stick with XP.

 

[gorcorps]

Yes. It scans my computer; and then it says "Free up 4GB before I go any further". From a price perspective it's worth it for me to go through partition gymnastics, don't know if i want to spend the time to do it today or tomorrow... guess I could just stick with XP.

Is that the only computer you have access to? You can do it on a computer you don't plan on using it on just to get far enough to buy the key, and then cancel the installation once it starts like I did. Then you have the key to use on your XP box. You could probably even do it via the library if you had to.

 

[darkewaffle]

Burn a DVD or use a USB drive to free up the space temporarily? Or use another PC.

 

[sze5003]

All you need is the image ISO. It just scans your pc for compatible apps as if you were doing a straight install from the UI as an upgrade. That's why it asks you to free up space.

If you select to keep files before the download starts I don't think you can use that image on another pc. But if you download the tool and then purchase the upgrade and select keep nothing , at the end it will ask you to install or install later. Choose later and burn the image very very slowly or save the image locally and use a USB.

You should then boot from that USB on your XP machine and do a clean install.

 

[mikeford]

So far for me its one more day of my life lost to MS OS install. Lots of twitchy errors with no hint which MS rule you broke so it seems to work and doesn't, with the bonus that I totally hated my first taste of Win8.

Getting used to it though, and its cheap, so once more into the breach.

 

[coloumb]

So far for me its one more day of my life lost to MS OS install. Lots of twitchy errors with no hint which MS rule you broke so it seems to work and doesn't, with the bonus that I totally hated my first taste of Win8.

Getting used to it though, and its cheap, so once more into the breach.

Make sure you install a start menu app [Classic Shell is free] - that'll make it easier to get use to win8 because you won't be bombarded with the metro start screen

 

[conehead433]

Anyone here actually think W8 is an upgrade?

 

[oslama]

I have not purchased the $15 upgrade since I want to install from scratch. Is there any way to buy the upgrade license and download the iso?

 

[coloumb]

I have not purchased the $15 upgrade since I want to install from scratch. Is there any way to buy the upgrade license and download the iso?

Yup - you have the option [after purchase] to download ISO.

 

[gorcorps]

Anyone here actually think W8 is an upgrade?

Not if all you're using is a keyboard and mouse. It's a terrible UI for that and I'm not sure what they were thinking. If you have a touch device to upgrade though it's very nice.

 

[sze5003]

Not if all you're using is a keyboard and mouse. It's a terrible UI for that and I'm not sure what they were thinking. If you have a touch device to upgrade though it's very nice.

They were going for the all in one pc like Imac but with a touch screen. It's bearable for a 22+ screen at high resolution but for laptops yuck.

 

[mikeford]

Make sure you install a start menu app [Classic Shell is free] - that'll make it easier to get use to win8 because you won't be bombarded with the metro start screen

Son came down a few minutes ago griping about Win8, that was a 6 hr install on his system tonight finishing at 12:15am, attempted, but no clue if the free media center key went through, but his complaint is that he could not play League of Legends due to the MS web nanny. He eventually found out how to turn that off, but I am sure much more stuff to turn off is yet to be found.

Upgrading him from XP had some errors, but then just ground on and on so freaking slow, including a stage of rebooting with guess which option to pick (Win8, windows setup, Win7).

If he still hates it after a few days I may have to find a Win7 for him. ;(

 

[sze5003]

Yeah you need to install that windows media center before the end of today. I have a key too and forgot. It's useful if you have a tv tuner card. Otherwise, I don't have much use for it.

 

[PokerGuy]

Wowser, the prices are actually going way up? For a lousy product that doesn't even include a big feature like WMC that windows 7 had? Talk about a losing proposition.

At $30 or $40, it was a reasonable fee, but anyone who even thinks about paying $120 or more just to get win 8 needs their heads examined.

 

[JBT]

Its been fine for me so far. I installed a Start replacement app though. The game I play most often Lord of the Rings: Online is noticeably snappier and I have no slouch of a system.

 

[FitzGerald]

All,
Given the deadline is tomorrow, I figured I would download the upgrade today. I currently have XP installed on a 7+year old 250 GB hard drive, which has had no free space on the Windows drive (I have 17 GB on other partitions). It's asking me to free up 4GB. Is there no way to purchase the Windows 8 key for future download? There's no way I'm going to be able to free up 4 GB without doing partition gymnastics.... (I could free up 1 GB that way; but that's it).

I solved the problem I had. Using the program "WinDirStat" I was able to discover that a number of online games my son played downloaded into the Application Data folder. I ended up freeing up 6GB! I guess this directory is set via Mozilla profile settings and it looks like I'll need to migrate my profile to another directory.

I'm aware I've got a 32-bit ISO, and will need to find a 64-bit computer to grab that ISO off of... but at least I have a valid key. I figure W8 must be run on top of W7 structure, so there shouldn't be much pain in migrating to W8. Since I never played games (until my son came along now); I did not have much need to go to W7.

 

[sm625]

I would have purchased a couple upgrade licenses, but the crap I been reading here tells me why bother. Why should I buy something that is going to be an utter pita to install?

 

[FitzGerald]

I solved the problem I had. Using the program "WinDirStat" I was able to discover that a number of online games my son played downloaded into the Application Data folder. I ended up freeing up 6GB! I guess this directory is set via Mozilla profile settings and it looks like I'll need to migrate my profile to another directory.

I'm aware I've got a 32-bit ISO, and will need to find a 64-bit computer to grab that ISO off of... but at least I have a valid key. I figure W8 must be run on top of W7 structure, so there shouldn't be much pain in migrating to W8. Since I never played games (until my son came along now); I did not have much need to go to W7.

I guess it doesn't let me create an .ISO file right now (not that I'm going to install it now anyway) since I'm on 32-bit Windows XP. I guess that's kind've frustrating, but on the plus side I haven't done anything to FUBAR my current OS, which is the most important thing.

 

[darkewaffle]

Wowser, the prices are actually going way up? For a lousy product that doesn't even include a big feature like WMC that windows 7 had?

WMC is a "big feature"? Only about ~1.5% of users ever had it open for more than 10 minutes. Win7 has no "must have" feature aside from the fact that WinXP was finally reaching EOL.

Why should I buy something that is going to be an utter pita to install?

Most people would have trouble moving from any version of windows to another. There's just a lot of things that a user can screw up lol. Personally my first download was corrupted and I had to re-create the USB drive before I could install, but you can hardly pin that on MS. At least not definitively.

I guess it doesn't let me create an .ISO file right now (not that I'm going to install it now anyway) since I'm on 32-bit Windows XP. I guess that's kind've frustrating, but on the plus side I haven't done anything to FUBAR my current OS, which is the most important thing.

You should be able to create the media from XP/Vista/7 at any time afaik, I think in order to create install media you may need to select the "I want to keep nothing" option in the Upgrade Tool, but I'm not 100% on that.

 

[mikeford]

The real pain isn't now, its months from now when some project is due and the OS takes a nose dive, and you get to try and remember all the hoops to jump through to re install like installing a previous version again first for upgrade only keys.

BTW I DO pin it on MS, their quasi hokey security, total lack of meaningful error messages if incorrect options are selected, and both the need to do a clean install and having that blocked if you use an upgrade key.