News Windows 8 cut-price offers coming to a close

Eagerly awaiting that to happen with W7 so I can get a copy that actually uses both my processors.

OK, it was my own fault for not researching SMP compatibility before I bought, but still spending $70 for an "upgrade" that gives me less performance just to get the free add-on I actually needed doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling. That and the fact that I keep pulling XP programs onto my W7 because the 7 flavored versions suck.

Yeah, just me whining.

 

Ahh excellent, thank you.
Might well take this up then, I'll no doubt want to try W8 again sometime before W9 comes out and this saves doing it the "alternative" way.

 

Win8 seems to have pretty much polarised opinion, so I have been very hesitant in upgrading to it. Rather than risk spending money on something I'll never use, I tried an unlicensed copy of Win8 on my laptop, just to see how I get on with it and whether or not it's worth plonking down my hard-earned for a proper copy on the desktop. I have no qualms about having used an unlicensed copy because that quick trial was more than enough to convince me that I do not want it on any of my PCs; the laptop was wiped the day after and I went straight back to Lubuntu.

I get the interface and I can navigate around it quite well; I just don't like it. I keep wanting to poke the screen, even though I know full well that I don't have a touchscreen. Installing all the hacks/patches to restore a "proper" Start menu and make the desktop the default holds little appeal for me; I just can't see any practical benefits to making Win8 look like Win7 and paying for the privilege to do so, as opposed to just sticking to Win7. It's not like the move from XP to 7, as there would have been a definite impediment in me continuing to use XP: the latest version of DirectX would was not compatible with XP. If that happens again with DirectX 12 not being supported outside of Win8 then I'll have to re-evaluate at that point; I don't really want to shell out money at this point on pure speculation, even if it is only £25.

They already have: ChromeOS. And there's also a free alternative to DirectX which, incidentally, was around before ChromeOS: OpenGL.

Google aren't going to drop their efforts with ChromeOS overnight, so I can't see them building any other type of "traditional" desktop OS any time soon. Even if they did it would likely be based on Linux anyway (even if only a forked kernel), so there'd be little incentive to use that over A.N. Other Linux distro. Other than having Google's Chrome-centric UI, of course (the functionality of which can largely be replicated with apps for the Chrome browser - at least from what I've seen). I quite like ChromeOS, but there are other lightweight Linux distros out there that do the job just as well and offer more functionality.

 

Very much so.

I tried the beta and pretty much hated the Metro UI, but I have bought the upgrade version because I'll figure out a way to make it work for me. I still don't like the UI, and would rather do without it, but I'm persevering for now; if only to show friends and family a way around it in the future.

Having used Windows 8 for a little while, I can't shake the feeling that it's just a re-skinned Windows 7 - it does use windows 7 drivers. So, with that in mind, the upgrade is a cheap way to get Win7; sort of.

 

Then it seems that I have a decision to make, and soon - cheers for the heads up!

To be honest, I don't even know if any of the games I regularly play are even using DX11. What I'm really waiting to see is what Valve can do with OpenGL and Linux.

That's my point; I already own Win7, so - aside from DX11.1 support, which is as-yet unreleased - what advantage is there to pay for Win8 if all I'm going to do is hack/patch the desktop to make it look like Win7? DX11.1 support is the only thing that's tempting me, but even that is only based on the pure speculation that game devs start regularly using DX11.1. To be honest most of the games I play these days are indie titles which probably aren't even at DX10 levels of graphical complexity (FTL and Torchlight being my current time-sinks).

 

Fair point.

However, in my case, half the machines in the house are still running XP; so £25 a pop is probably a bargain.

 

I caved, I'm pulling it down now. It can sit on my NAS in case I'm forced to upgrade.

I echo your sentiments BLC, unless I took a major shine to the UI, which is unlikely.

 

Took advantage of this and bought a copy of W8 for $15 or so. Installed it to my alternate gaming computer.

Two weeks later and I've re-installed W7. I tried to give it a chance, and I'm no beginner with adapting to unintuitive/intrusive OS UIs, but I never thought that Windows could sink so low. Horrific doesn't even cover how borked the Modern UI is for a touchscreen-less computer.

Massive waste of time, no matter how low the price.

 

You're not kidding; you certainly couldn't get an XP to Win7 upgrade for that price!

 

This.

Windows 8 with the default UI is obviously completely unusable for anything other than mucking about on a tablet. I'm extremely cautious about buying it for a video editing station such as this one I'm currently whacking with my fingers. I need, well, you know. The usual stuff. Windows and icons and menus and pointers, and some sort of file manager. Not a bunch of squares. I presume you can somehow get back to a normal desktop?

Nonetheless it's possible that some day someone will find a way to run After Effects under Windows 8. I presume I can buy it now, but stay with SaneOS until such time as I'm absolutely forced to go to 8.

 

Looking at sales numbers it does not matter how cheap your product is if its not accept by consumers.

OEMs own more copys of windows 8 than the Consumer does at this present moment.

All this is going to do is stop sales totally in there tracks in the consumer market.

 

I think you're missing the fact that the Metro (or whatever they renamed it) UI is just the front end. With one click you can have your normal looking desktop sans start button.

I have no problem with the looks of the UI - not my idea of pretty, but not exactly dreadful - what annoys me is the clumsy nature of it - look at the steps you have to take to shut it down with a mouse. It just feels unnecessary.

Sure I can mangle it and change bits to get it to do what I want but, straight out of the box, it's flawed.

 

Exactly, my start screen consists of a shortcut to the desktop and thats it. After that its an improved version of win7, and if I do get a win8 tablet down the line, I can re-enable all the metro cross platform stuff then.

 

You can, once i downloaded it and burnt it to disc i started a clean install and it works fine. Just make sure you have your serial number ready during install

 

I wont, because I am not buying it. Ever. (Well, until I build a whole new rig and have no choice).

 

I have vista 64 bit with a recovery disk, if i went ahead and got win 8 how would this work or not as the case may be. Do you need the full vista install ?

 

I am no fan, feels tacky, I am sure they asked a bunch of 9 year olds what would make windows better and they came up with this mess.

Waiting for windows 9, or I may just give in an get a huge tablet.

 

I wouldn't touch windows 8 with the entire nuclear arsenal of North Korea.
Win 7 works perfectly well....before i bought that i used XP for maybe around a decade. Why do people feel the need to continually upgrade and pay micro$haft an amount of bucks that just is not necessary?

They supported XP for a number of years and in some circles still continue to support it until next year.

13 years folks.

On one OS.

What that means to me is that my operating system will be supported by M$ for at LEAST another 5-8 YEARS. This "upgrading for upgradings sake" is horrendously typical of the throwaway culture that we live in nowadays. They're relying on idiots being told that if something is newer, it is therefore better and they must buy it.

Personally, i am GLAD that windows 8 is not selling well because its about time we, as consumers, sent a message to MomCorp Micro$haft about buying unfinished and unfit for purpose software.

An operating system that feels like i am playing the bubbly offspring from an early 1990's tetris rip off?

yuk.