News Microsoft sets Windows 8 upgrade pricing

Please remember that Apple's OS upgrades are cheap because they turn a huge profit on the hardware and restrict the upgrades to recent machines to keep people buying new ones. Microsoft only sells the OS, and doesn't place any restrictions on it. It's a totally different model and you can't really compare the two.

 

In retrospect, I do agree with the ultrabook bit, i take back my remark and i'll put the peeve demon on a shorter leash ^^

On apple's build quality however i'd disagree. Yes they don't creak or flex like some other laptops/pcs do, but they have to be one of the more common returns due to faults. Or the people who buy from where I work just treat them like crap.

 

On one of their upgrade sites they did say it was "for use on individual PCs", don't know if they'll be launching a family pack or anything like that. Still though, at least you can upgrade from anything running XP onwards. Not being able to upgrade from Leopard to Lion (skipping Snow Leopard) is one of the reasons I got rid of my mac. Swings and roundabouts.

 

What does 8 bring, other that that frikkin god-awful fugly not-metro-anymore interface?

TBH, I completely lost interest after seeing the UI so, if I'm turning it off, what does 8 bring to tempt me away from 7?

 

Dave, I'll surprise you, I agree with everything you said.

I can only see the appeal if you have XP on a machine and want to save some pennies when upgrading.

 

Greetings!

I am not the greatest fan of Metro in the Desktop (it works well with touch enabled, small screens gadgets, though) but Windows 8 is a great technical achievement from Microsoft.
If not for the absolutely stupid decison to force Metro (SS, Charms, apps, etc) it would be regarded as the best Windows OS ever, I have no doubt about it.
Thankfully there are tools to make it behave better as a desktop\laptop OS. Try Windows 8 with ViStart, Classic Shell or Start8. Those tools still need some polish but make you appreciate the work done in Windows 8.