Win8 Pro arriving tomorrow - should I upgrade?

I got Win8 Professional from Amazon for $39 (after a $30 promo). It arrives tomorrow.

I used the beta a while back and kind of like it. I am not intending to start a Win7 vs. Win8 war - at some point we all will be running Win8. My question is around the "fully finished" nature of Win8 + Lenovo's software.

If I upgrade my T520 tomorrow, will I have a bunch of driver headaches, or is Lenovo ready for Win8 (drivers and everything)?

 

I've been running Windows 8 Pro x64 RTM for months on my W510 with zero issues and I have yet to install anything from Lenovo.

 

I know Win8 can handle most everything, but are drivers such as the Trackpoint sensitivity settings a go? I can only use it at max sensitivity, a setting that requires the Lenovo driver package, etc.

 

I had a chance to review a HP with Windows Eight. It was nice as something different, but I don't see myself spending money to get it. I've got four PCs and to upgrade them all would cost me $150+. It's just not worth that to me, maybe if I had a tablet or something with a touch screen. I have a Windows 7.5 phone and like the software.

 

At least for older ThinkPads, I get significantly worse battery life on my X61t, which only thing I can attribute is beta OS or poor drivers (comparing Windows 8 CP vs XP tablet edition 2005).

I honestly didn't have "driver" issues with Windows 8, you can use Windows 7 drivers for Windows 8.

 

TrackPoint seems good on my x220, sensitivity setting works. The beta TrackPoint drivers I've suffered with over the last few months were unpleasant; however, the release drivers are available from Lenovo now and the TrackPoint works just like I remember it from win7. I don't use the touchpad at all so I can't tell you how well gestures on it work with Win8.

Maybe check the drivers page for your model to make sure everything you want is there (i.e. many people love the Lenovo Power Manager)?

 

I posted a thread about what's missing here, and I don't know how long it will take for this to change. This affects all thinkpads that were sold prior to this week when they began shipping with Windows 8 on board (and likely other brands that chose to replace their utilities with Metro apps) and the only 2 solutions are Microsoft creating a way for these apps to be accessed from the store for laptops that shipped with Windows 7 and below, or Lenovo bothers to port these new versions back to regular applications.

As it stands, I was able to use the Windows 8 power management driver with the Windows 7 Power Manager application and it seems to be working. However, a lot of the Fn keys are no longer compatible with lenovo's windows 7 software when using the Base Utility Package-they either don't work, open the relevant stock-windows menu (such as the wireless menu or the projector menu) or you're greeted with a message saying that the key combination requires the Lenovo Settings application (the metro app) Without the Utility Package (located in the windows 8 beta drivers page) the only fn keys that work are brightness, thinklight and sleep.

Check your driver matrix to see what is missing for windows 8 on your laptop. Everything I need has been updated, with the exception of Power Manager.

 

Installed today. I opted to do a clean install. Popped the DVD in, rebooted, ran setup, formatted my drive (removed the Lenovo partition), installed and it activated just fine. I'm glad the install process didn't complain about my license, since I did a wipe and clean install.

The Lenovo beta driver page is a wasteland. I had to CTRL+F for "T520" to find drivers. There was a power manager that I installed but it doesn't seem to be anywhere on my system. Weird. Anyway, liking Win8 so far!

 

Is there something on the beta drivers page that isn't available on the release page? The beta drivers are not as good as the release ones in my experience.

 

Just installed Win 8 and was fairly impressed. I am also having issues with some of the fn keys. I haven't installed any Win 8 specific drivers yet but thus far the Win 7 TP utilities and drivers other than the FPR work okay.

 

According to the Lenovo upgrade guide if you do a clean install, all you have to install afterwards is Lenovo's Thinkvantage Software Upgrade 5.0 on your Win8 system and then use it to download all the required Lenovo software, I would think this should restore all your functions just like before, after all Lenovo must have the working software drivers as they have already started shipping new Laptops of the same model with Windows 8 installed.

If you don't do a clean install they have a guide on what drivers you should uninstall before you perform the upgrade to Win8.

 

Thanks. I found the 5.0 install file...it won't install.

ThinkVantage Technologies Administrator Tools

Edit: nevermind, after a reboot it's installing now...

 

After playing around with Win 8 for half a day now, I am really enjoying using the OS. This is actually my first experience with Win 8, and it took me about an hour to get used to some of the quirks. One thing that does need to worked is how the OS handles multiple displays.

Separately, how do people reprogram the Fn keys? Since clean installing, most of my Fn keys stopped working since I no longer have Lenovo's drivers installed.