Upgrade from Windows 8 to Windows 8: Legal?

Hi guys,

Over at the German ThinkPad forum some guy upgraded his Windows 8 Release Preview to Windows 8 Pro for 30€ through the upgrade program. Is this legal? I thought you needed to have a valid XP, Vista or 7 install in order to qualify for the upgrade.

 

I believe there's a way to do a clean install from an upgrade disk, so I'm not sure it's such a big deal. Microsoft has their money.

 

The point is: If you upgrade from Win 7 for example, your license gets "swapped" for a Win 8 one right? So basically If I paid 60€ for my Win 7 and another 30€ for Win 8, I end up paying a total of 90€ for Win 8.

But if I upgrade from the free Win 8 RP which anyone can download, and I use that as my base to upgrade to the full Win 8 pro, then all I pay is 30€ and I still get to keep my Win 7.

Did I get that right? I'm really confused about this whole thing at the moment.

 

If they're letting people upgrade the Release Candidate, count me in!

 

You have to be able to perform a full (clean) install form an upgrade disk because "upgrading" to Windows 8 is really just installing a new copy of Windows 8 and rolling over/replacing the OS license from the previously installed OS, which, iirc, can be done by punching in the previous serial in lieu of actually installing over the original license. The question is: will the Windows 8 upgrade license take effect when the OS you're replacing is the free Windows 8 Release Preview.

I'll probably buy a copy when I get home in 8 hours to see - if the upgrade doesn't work on my desktop and I have to buy the full edition there, I can at least upgrade my laptop's OS. As much flak as Windows 8 is getting, it's really not that bad. I'd like to have the Start button back, and it would be nice to boot directly to the "classic" desktop instead of Metro, but the Metro thing is a matter of two seconds when I start up, and I can work around the Start button thing in about a dozen different ways. This is the new Windows. If it bombs like Windows Vista did, the solution will be refining it like 7 did to Vista, not rolling back to the old paradigms. Might as well get used to it.

 

If you want the start button: Start8 for Windows® 8 - Bringing back the Windows Start menu

 

I know this but (a) it's $5 for every machine you need to install it on to and (b) it shouldn't be a 3rd party upgrade.

Historically no, never been able to "upgrade" from an RC or Preview release. However you can do a clean install with an upgrade disk. No problem. You can't update the key in an RC or anything though.

 

I had some issues with payment and had to spread it out over two days, but I have officially downloaded and installed the $39.99 Windows 8 Pro upgrade over Windows 8 Release Preview. There were some articles from circa June that reported that this might be allowed as an incentive for beta testing and an easy way to sell more copies, but I didn't see anything more recent that confirmed it.

There's still no telling (as far as I've seen) whether or not MS intended this to be possible, but since it worked for me, I'm going to guess they did. Either way, I got Windows 8 Professional for $40 and you probably can too if you've got the Release Preview installed. Good news for those of us who had nothing but. Combine this with the free Media Center add-on they're offering for a limited time and you've got the most complete version of Windows 8 licensed for $40. Not bad, I must say.

 

Thanks for the clarification. If Microsoft didn't want this, they would have done something against it already. Guess it is possible to get a full Win 8 Pro for 40$.

This is great news. I will be upgrading now too.

Edit: According to this it is actually LEGAL to upgrade from Windows 8 Release Preview! This is sooo sweet!

http://www.netzwelt.de/news/92925-windows-8-preview-tester-erhalten-40-dollar-update.html