Win 8 upgradable?

Hmm. Was thinking today how I wouldn't mind upgrading my M17x R3 to Windows 8 once it's out.

Firstly does any forsee any driver incompatibilities or issues? Also does anyone know if there is a simple upgrade feature that will just upgrade the OS from Win7 to Win8 and still keep your files without required a full reformat?

 

stay away...its for mobile/tablets not for us. no gain IMO

 

But what about when it officially releases for PC? Obviously they'll be releasing laptops with touch screens shortly.

Just wondering there will be an easy solution for those of us that want to upgrade.

 

Not sure about the driver stuff, but I have a buddy running the beta on his laptop and he's enjoying it.

If you go here to this site it lets you sign up for an alert when you can update your windows 7 machine to 8 for cheap. It's sponsored from Microsoft, so I thought what the hey, I'll sign up for it...

 

I wouldn't want to be an early adopter of an OS. Its mainly built for touch screen computers. From what I have been reading, its not as resource heavy, so if your looking to squeeze every bit of power out of your computer go with it.

 

Most are speculating that it will be another 'Windows Me'. I have no use it, so I won't be using it.

 

When my Vista gen laptop went to 7, you could keep all your files and preferences if you wanted to stay on the same level of windows, IE home premium - home premium or professional - professional. If you tried to switch versions, then you had to do a clean install.

 

I think I still might try it out when it gets released at the end of this year...just to see it.

 

I'm posting from windows 8 release preview as we speak and other than special video card drivers, I'm using all the drivers from windows 7. From a personal point of view though, not really worth the upgrade.

 

Pay attention to this. And all the other people saying "dont do it". Its a bad idea for non touch screen computers...and barely a good idea for touchscreen computers. It is a disaster.

Seriously...MS thought people hated Vista??? OMG I would bet the farm that they will really really REALLY hate this OS. Watch this non-power user get lost, confused and mad at Win 8.

How Real People Will Use Windows 8 - YouTube

And while I am at it...Vista was not that bad!! Dang it caught a bad rap. It was a resource hog and had driver issues in the beginning but other then that it was fine. Seriously, the drivers would have caught up. If you had a decent computer (not the cheapie $500 models they threw it on soooo often) Vista was fine!

--End Rant--

 

Its not all bad. The new task manager is a nice upgrade and the boot up time with my SSD is Super Fast. The task bar appearing on both monitors of a dual monitor setup is also pretty cool. If you got your system after june 5th(or whatever the exact date is). I think its worth the $15 to upgrade once some mods are released to replace the "star screen." other than that. I don't think its really worth the full price that microsoft will undoubtedly sell it for.

 

I don't feel this at all. I have my X61 tablet with an SSD with Windows 8 Consumer Preview, I don't see how it is any "faster" as an SSD is already "fast". For reference, my Alienware has RAID 0 Intel 320 series, I get a usable desktop in like 10-11 seconds, while my X61 tablet with X25-M G1 80 GB SSD boots up in like 14-15 seconds (usable desktop).

I find if you don't have a tablet or a multi-touch device then Windows 8 is a bummer, they've move alot of things around that I don't like/peeves me. But to each their own, just a word of caution if you want to "try" it out, make your recovery discs as if you upgrade install over you cannot use your recovery partition to go back.

 

Am I the only one who has actually installed the system?

I did, and I would DEFINITELY recommend it. The drivers for my R3 are all compatible and work flawlessly (except for the Killer N official drivers, but it works perfectly fine with the native Windows driver, so no big deal).

For those of you saying it's for tablets: Uh... it's actually the same as Windows 7, but with a START MENU that is tablet optimized. The new start menu is simply far better and can be fully customized. I don't understand the hate for it. It's different, but it's also better. Don't be afraid of change, the old start menu needed to evolve badly. Now I feel weird whenever I have to use a Windows 7 machine and expect the new start menu

The interesting part comes in terms of performance. My laptop BOOTS MUCH FASTER, and feels extremely smooth and responsive. I have Windows 8 also installed on a 5 year old laptop with a regular HDD and it boots as if it had an SSD. And here's the major kicker: for whatever reason, I don't get ANY throttling with my GTX580m when playing Diablo 3 (only game I've tried under Windows 8 so far). In Windows 7, I get massive throttling unless I stick a pair of Gatorade caps to raise the back. So yeah, Windows 8 is more efficient.

Give it a try. Make a new partition and test it out. You have nothing to lose. I think MS did a good job with the new OS. There are some things that could be improved, but overall there's simply no reason not to improve. It's Windows 7, but faster and better looking.

 

Running win 8 on my home desktop. And you know , i am going to upgrade to win 8. A bit faster than win 7 , i find it's more flexible. The possibility to use metro and regular desktop is a win win situation for sure. Boot time is amazing !
Still have some glitches with my graphics , but i am sure it's all about drivers atm. Think everyone should give it a go , try it.

 

I meant boot time. Sorry I should Have specified. As to people who miss the old start menu, I'm sure there will be a mod or hack available at some point that will add it back in.

 

You can turn off the touch screen features (metro ui) and its pretty usable. I found that the active desktop was pretty neat for organizing commonly used games/programs.

It has an improved scheduler and it it gave me 8fps in most of my games on my old rig with a dev win8. I was using 6950crossfire@5040x1050 and a 955BE x4 @3.8Ghz. To each their own.

p.s. cpu-necked games will give you big gains, but as I havent seen a game push i7s to 100% on any core... I doubt we'd have any real improvements.. maybe 3 fps tops.

 

This 10char

 

would be A nice feature but i would not want finger prints all over my screen

 

I'll probably take advantage of the upgrade offer for sure. But first thing I'll be doing is ditching Metro and awaiting some clever clogs to find a registry hack or something that disables Metro permanently and maybe even reinstates a Start menu button!


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I have it on a VM and really don't like it at all. 7 is much better in my view.

 

I installed Windows 8 on my old laptop. I am not a big fan. I would not recommend paying to upgrade it in the future. Honestly, if i purchased a new computer with Windows 8, I would probably downgrade it to Windows 7. Windows 7 was perfect in many people's opinions. Microsoft is now throwing a wrench in that to keep up with Apple and the tablet Market. Windows 8 will probably be a great tablet OS. But I just can't be excited about it for a PC.

 

Although I'm not keen on what I saw in the pre-release candidate version myself, I bet you bottom dollar some who've said they hate it and won't upgrade, will be convinced to after it's been out a few weeks and videos start turning up on YouTube of gamers seeing X% FPS increase in X game!

And it's almost set in stone someone is going to come up with a registry hack that disables Metro by default.


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If you are a normal person sometimes it is OK to go with the flow on opinion. But if you are tech savvy and you know what you are doing go form an opinion on your own.

Windows 8 is the most radical change in OS interface ever for any OS. People are creatures of habit and they don't like change. So they immediately bring up issues with windows 8. It will take time to learn the ins and out of windows 8, but until you do that you cannot make a call.

For all the bad people talk about which is generally very vague comments like, its for tablets not desktops people often gloss over the good.

Windows 8 boots up and shuts down so fast you wont care about sleep or anything else. I am saying this after running windows 8 on a OLD 250GB hard drive, not a SSD. I don't care what anyone says that is awesome. Pairing this up with an SSD should be nuts and the real delay is in getting through BIOS now.

Also windows 8 can install from online over windows 7 easily and detects most drivers and works right out of the "box". So its not much of a risk.

It is snappy and fast and getting better with each update.

However there are things that are bad, such as some tasks take more steps to get done, like shutting down the computer.

My main point is if you are tech savvy grab the consumer preview and have some fun learning it, form your own opinions. After using it for months I can say it has a ton of benefits no one is talking about. But it is not without shortcomings. No doubt you will at least have experienced one of the most innovative products to come out of any major software developer.

 

Sure bootup, but as I said, as SSDs become cheaper and more prevalent, boot up speed on a mechanical drive will be a moot point. Plus why would you get a mechanical drive at all, the risk of your drive failing alone makes me buy SSDs for all my computers.

No, AFAIK Microsoft will not let any applications change the old start menu for the retail release. There currently is a 3rd party hack you can run and it will re-enable the old start menu.

 

+1

This guy is talking sense in all honesty.

 

Somebody made a Youtube video, it must be true. (stated sarcastically in-case anyone was wondering)

 

Not necessarily, but it was bloody funny


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$14.99 upgrade for Microsoft Store customers who purchase a Windows 7 machine between 2nd June 2012 and 31st January 2013.

$39.99 upgrade price for anyone running XP, Vista or 7.

Those prices are quite tempting, and I think many will take advantage of the offer.


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might have to take the bite we shall see.

 

Hmm heard on the news that upgrade availability to those of us in the UK is still not confirmed.


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I believe these are relevant:
Sheldon Cooper on Change - YouTube
and,
Sheldon - Windows 7 vs. Windows Vista - YouTube
This.

ANYWAY...I am looking forward to seeing what Windows 8 will have to offer. Until than I will keep my Windows 7 and invest in Windex stock.

 

comments like this are why posting something in forums are fun!
(stated sarcastically in-case any one was wondering)

 

I say try it out first, MS usually has a 1 month trial period for you to test it out before getting locked for an activation key.

to be honest, I'm perfectly happy with win 7 but of course there will come a time you'll need to upgrade. be it a software requirement, direct x compatibility or what not, even perhaps application designed with Metro UI in mind etc...

 

I tried the preview and it wasn't as bad as everyone made it out to be. It did boot faster which was a bonus and I even installed steam plus some games on it with no problems at all (HL2 and Diablo3). Drivers were not an issue.

Yes, the layout is different and does take a little getting used to. It was not a big leap for me honestly and I didn't really have any problems figuring out where things are.

I would point out that from a power user point of view, getting to some things did take a little longer, but it was all still there and honestly just felt like a more efficient running Windows 7 with a new GUI designed to bring tablets and phones in line with one operating system.

I believe that give it time, it will be a success.

PS: Old people\non computer people are ALWAYS going to have a hard time adapting to the change, but it is a fact of life and once they learn how to use Windows 8, I think they will prefer it over Windows 7. Think about it, these people use computers for very little. Browsing net, emails, word, maybe music. Having those options in big easily visible tiles will make it easier. One of the reasons Apple is a success if because they have made stuff easily usable by even the most technically challenged people. Case and point, my parents are HUGE apple fans now....much to my disgust.

EDIT:: You can also customise the Metro screen so things that take longer to get to can be brought to the main screen. Also, all the same keyboard shortcuts work in the desktop mode so I found that helped my navigation

I would like to mention that I am not a pro Windows 8\microsoft fanboy, but I just thought I would give my opinion as there appears to be a lot of Windows 8 hate just because it is new and different. It almost feels like some people haven't even tried it before ripping it.