And if she does ask - she'll have a point. Why did you need to buy this, Richard? Serious question, btw - I'm not a typical user, so I'm struggling to see the benefit to upgrading?
It says in the small print: Does this mean you get 5 activations or you can only buy 5 copies at this price (so you can upgrade 5 machines)???
Fair enough. I think I'll get it and see what all the fuss is about, it's not that expensive after all.
You'll notice the following: -> Start screen is just a start menu, but full screen with tiles that can give you info without the need to run these programs. -> The default layout of the Start Screen isn't great. But once you pin folders, and your programs, make your groups and clean it up. It becomes a breeze to use, with a touchpad. -> Its sucks at turning off your computer, but not a real killer thing that won't make you use the OS, and searching has no longer "All" argument, for in favor to show you more results, which takes used to. -> You instinctively would click on the bottom left corner of your screen to show the start screen, so the lack of button is fine, and makes sense why they did this, when you have a metro app on the left and desktop on the right portion of your screen. And that is it. That's what people are freaking about, as they see screen shots, and not actually use the OS. Anyway, you'll see. It's not perfect (Start menu, in Windows 95 was not great either), but nothing that Windows 8 Update code name Blue won't be able to solve.. or at least make it better, thanks to use new telemetry data from users, that Microsoft collects.
I've seen some conflicting advice elsewhere, so I thought I'd check here to see what other folks think. I'm currently running XP SP3, and I'd like to buy a couple of Windows 8 Pro licenses while they're cheap (one for me and one for my wife's computer). I can't find anywhere in the Microsoft store to just buy a license key; every link for the Windows 8 Pro upgrade takes me to the upgrade assistant. The problem I'm facing is that the upgrade assistant will read my PC, see that I have XP, and will force me to download the 32-bit version of Windows 8 Pro. I'm planning a hardware upgrade in February or March, so I'd like to get the 64-bit version so that I can burn the ISO to a DVD and do the actual upgrade when I get the new hardware. I tried to run the upgrade assistant from my parents' PC (64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium), but the upgrade assistant froze and never recovered. Is there an easy way to purchase the Windows 8 Pro download without having to run the upgrade assistant? I'd really like my next upgrade to include more than 4GB of RAM, but there's little point in upgrading at all if I'll be forced into a 32-bit OS.
You are going to have a baaaaaaad time with Windows 8. You have the learning curve of Vista + Windows 7 + the steep one Windows 8. OUCH! Just be mentally prepared for this. It will feel drastically different. And the more you wait, the worst it gets. Perhaps you might want to look into a start menu replacement for the first 6 months until you get past Vista and Win7 learning curve, and then remove it, and invest 1-2 month getting passed Windows 8 learning curve. :/ Be sure to set in your BIOS your SATA controller to AHCI mode, before installing Windows 8, and after your done with XP and ready to say bye bye to it. This will improve your HDD performance if you have one. XP doesn't natively support AHCI (full SATA specifications). The Upgrade assistance will check if your computer is Windows 8 ready. It's the avoid the Vista mess, where people who really DID NOT have Vista minimum requirements (which was already pushing the term "minimum" already), and putting Vista and freak out about their piss poor performance. Also, you can't just get the full version. The offer is for upgrade only. Also, in stores, there is no more full version. The only version you can find in full, is the System Builder license (aka: OEM). The better news, is that as you come from XP, and also switching to 64-bit, in any case, the setup will do a clean install. Now, as you mentioned. You need to run the setup on 64-bit system to get Windows 8 64-bit. This limitation is because the setup can't write 64-bit code on the disk to make it bootable. If that is not possible, than I am afraid you need to purchase the disk version in store. Are you sure it froze or just busy scanning your system, but there is so much stuff, it gets stuck. OR the A/V or security software is blocking it, as it might think it's a virus or malware or something. Go at the store and purchase it, but you pay more (price of the box, manual, disk, transport, and most largely: retail profit, needs to be added. The retail box upgrade is also on special... it will go up in price after Jan 31st if I am not mistaken)
It's not so bad. I use Windows 7 and OSX at work, Windows XP on my home PC, IOS on my phone, and Android on my Nexus 7. I'm adaptable, and I'm always open to learning to navigate a new environment. Thanks for the tip! Yep, that is my intention. I've done enough XP clean installs over the years that I'm totally comfortable backing up my data and wiping everything so that it can upgrade. That's a possibility. Their computer is fairly new, so I'm less inclined to think that there is a lot of stuff for it to go through. I'll look into the A/V. Thanks for the response. Considering that there are people like me who are running Windows XP on 64-bit capable hardware, it would have been nice for Microsoft to offer the option to download the 64-bit version of Windows 8. Since the XP-to-8 upgrade is doing a clean install anyway, I imagine it should be technically possible.
That won't help. I tried it with Windows 7 with a friends computer who have XP 32-bit. Once the disk was done, it was not bootable. And when, you try via USB flash drive, no mater what solution you do, it will fail when making it bootable. You need to do it on a 64-bit OS. I don't really know why it's like this. For your upgrade assistance problem, if its not the security software the problem, you can try performing a clean boot (load Windows without any non-Windows services) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135
I just had a thought - I'm not sure why it never occurred to me before. I ran the upgrade assistant from the Windows 7 virtual machine on my Macbook Pro. It only took about 2 minutes to get to the point where it gave me the offer to place the order (I chose the option to keep nothing). Now, there is no indication if it's going to offer me the 32-bit version or the 64-bit version, but since it's Windows 7 I'm guessing the latter. My only concern is that the virtual machine might somehow throw off the upgrade assistant. Has anyone else had experience with something like that?
Open the System panel of Windows 7, does it say 32-bit or 64-bit? If it's 64-bit, it should download the 64-bit version. I doubt the virtual environment will throw the upgrade assistance off.. I mean it's very unlikely. Oh, in your BIOS of the computer that will get Windows 8, if you have HPET control somewhere, you need to set it to 64-bit mode (if you don't have that option, then it's auto, so you don't need to worry about it), you need to do this after your done with XP and ready to install Windows 8 from disk. NOTE, the upgrade assistance will start the Windows 8 install once it finished burning the disk or preparing your USB flash drive, from what i recall. So, you might need to be prepared to kill off the setup, once the disk/USB drive is done.
I should have been more clear in my previous post - my apologies. It is indeed a 64-bit Windows 7 install. My only concern was whether the virtual environment would confuse the upgrade assistant at all. Awesome; it looks like I have my answer. Thanks again for the input!
I would recommend Start8 From stardock as well. Puts a proper start menu back in. Makes it more win7 like. -J
I'm really not that concerned about the loss of the Start menu. In my opinion, that has been one of the most overblown complaints about Windows 8. I don't use it all that much in Windows XP or 7, and I don't have it at all in OSX, IOS, or Android. I don't think I'll miss it.
QFT - great bit of software. I don't often buy software like that, but for $5 (£3.20) it is brilliant. Plus, you can download it for free to try it for 30 days. If you have Start 8 running Windows 8 isn't so different from what you're probably used to.
I haven't really bothered with start8 or any other start button replacement, as I simply haven't needed it
Is anyone else struggling to receive a media centre key from microsoft? I've tried with 3 different email addresses now and still nothing. The first was sent over a week ago.
