Whoopee...

I was curious so I ran their upgrade assistant on my "vintage" machine.  Let's just say it's not an option.

Pretty much.  That's ok though, Dino's got a lot of character.  I'll just let him keep wandering aimlessly about in the woods eating his tired old berries.

I downloaded my copy in the early hours of the morning [Sat in Aus].  I have yet to install it, but I reckon it will go smoothly if the purchase and download process is anything to go by.  I'll get round to installing it once I've sated myself with my first forum foray of the day, however.

I'm going to install it on my main rig as that has the higher specs and the 2 SSD's in RAID0, which will boost its performance considerably over the platter drive it was on.  I had been running Win 8 Customer Preview in a dual boot configuration with Win 7 as the primary OS, but to get the best performance from my CPU and the OS, I need to be running Win 8 on the SSD's.  This time around, however, I will not be dual booting.  I will be installing Win 7 on my second rig upstairs, while my Win 8 rig remains downstairs.

Quoting LightStar,

reply 2

Whoopee...

Like you, Tom, I was not at all impressed with Win 8 when the first previews were released, but I gave serious thought to some relevant points and persevered with it.... and with the latest edition of Stardock's Start8 installed, it's not a lot different to using Win 7.  Yes, the Metro interface put me off as well, but with Start8 installed you never have to deal with it, booting directly into the desktop, which as I said, is just like running Win 7.

The points to consider are: Microsoft is very unlikely to return to previous incarnations of Windows now that it has taken this step to merge the various platforms it uses, meaning that in a few short years you'll not be able to purchase XP, Vista or Win 7 pre-installed or on an installation disc.; Microsoft will pull support for XP and Vista sooner rather than later, and for Win 7 around the time Win 11 is released.  What this adds up to is that we're going to have to adapt to the new way of doing things or get left behind, and it's probably best to begin that transition with Win 8 as things will have changed considerably more when Win 11 is released and the older incarnations are dropped/no longer supported.

Well that's the way I see it, and while I'm not a fan of Metro, I will familiarise myself with it to avoid getting left behind further down the track.

I got the $14.99 deal because I work on people's PCs around here ( my friends and relatives).

I'm gonna need to be familiar with 8. I expect a lot of business.

Oh, I have Windows 8 starkers, I am using it on my little netbook computer with Start 8.  It's OK, but until it can be skinned it is no better than Windows 7 to me.  The UI is downright ugly!

Sure, we’ve seen and heard a lot about it, we’ve been able to try the Consumer Previews, we've been able to get our hands on the final bits when they were made available back in August and now that we have the official release of Windows 8 all we got is ... Start8 ... !?

i got it last evening from the media store... installed it overnight...
no problems during any installation process ( left the on off charge drivers from gigabyte out )

The only problem i have is that skype the new one for windows 8 that runs in the metro interface does not allow you to logout-
i dont like that so i got the old desktop one. 

for that amount of money definitely a good deal.  

When the time comes for me to deal with an rig with Win8 on it, I doubt it will have the benifit of Start8, so the whole "experience"  can be had by me without me wasting money "keeping up" with crap. Since it will be a paying repair job, I'll make money instead.

I'll skip this one.

nVidia has had Win8 drivers ready and available for some time now and yes, I am running Win7/64 Ultimate.

I guess i can live without 3 milliseconds speedincrease. Also the idea to get locked in MS's version of Applestore doesn't really attract me that much.

By the time Win11 comes out and win32 is phased out so you can only install MS approved apps from their store i imagine the run for other options will be impressive. At least i'll be gone.

I wonder how many corporate IT guys are actually aware of the honeytrap win8 is, and how MS is babystepping towards a whole new virtual monopoly.

Let's face it, the only true reason MS turns such huge profits is because they rent out the same product that cost hardly anything relative to the returns to make due to their marketposition.

If in fact mobile computing becomes the new market (which i seriously doubt will be any kind of tablet form since that is only useful to look at things, not to write your masterthesis on) they lose their position so they need a new monopoly.

To my mind they got it completely wrong. This tablet fad is going to blow over as soon people get wise it's  a gadget, not a serious platfrom to get any work done on.

No corporation in his right mind is going to replace its laptops/notebooks with expensive toys that add no real value other then prettiness.

So they'll be stuck with a horrid GUI and hardly any corporate sales. So either they must hugely increase the price or suffer some serious losses.

But i might be wrong, given the current state of education the IT people might very well be silly enough to buy the whole thing hook, line and sinker.

Time will tell.