Windows 8 Upgrade Deadlines Approaching in January

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Why would I want to upgrade my laptop to look like a smartphone. No thanks. Microsoft has jumped the shark.
 
They'll probably wind up extending these discounted prices or even lowering them if they want people to adopt the new OS -- Figure if you look at the sales off win 8 at these deeply discounted prices and how low they are if MS actually ends the current pricing and raises them above or level with what people can get win 7 for there is even less incentive for anyone to upgrade !!
 

stratplaya

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Part of the problem is that Win 7 is so good. I upgraded to 7 from XP thus skipping a release and I don't have plans to upgrade it to 8. I just purchased a laptop with 8 on it and I'm happy with it. The interface took a little getting used to but it does look very nice. My biggest complaint is that using the laptop's touchpad is a little tricky with 8. I'd recommend a mouse or a touch screen.
 

rebel1280

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Am i the only one that read "Windows 8 Upgrade Deadlines Approaching in January" and thought they meant they were going to kill Windows 8 off at end of January. sigh. I'll always have my dreams. My brother-in-law is tech support guy and even he has the that Start8 dock or some thing hehe.
 
Several people I know tried to get the $14.99 offer and they were denied...according to the Microsoft offer site they did not qualified even thought they bought a qualifying system. I told them they should be happy they did not get it. They could spend $15 on better things.
 

Parsian

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Dont get me wrong, I love it when its on the appropriate form factor. If I had a AIO PC or tablet (considering surface pro) or multi touch monitor I would of gotten it. I find the UI interesting. But my complaint is bad execution from Ballmer's side. There was no reason to not have the goddamn full traditional desktop.

I understand that MSFT had to standardize stuff so that app developers can design their apps base on a standard UI and the way they did it was to completely remove the start/search. That however was stupid because legit productivity software and toy apps are two separate category. Legacy desktop mode is far efficient to do productivity tasks than metro. So why not just have productivity softwares on traditional mode and toy apps on metro??? was that too hard?
 

shafe88

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[citation][nom]ravinmachine[/nom]Still not interested. The money that could be spent on this 'upgrade' can be better spent on other things.[/citation]Don't you mean "downgrade. And I agree Ballmer should be fired, or at least lock him in a room and force him to use Win8 on a non touch, non Modern UI friendly computer for 24 hours straight.
 

10hellfire01

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Don't they really need to double their sales of Win8 in order to match at least Vista trends for the 3rd/4th month of release? Wonder if this is going to be more of a nail in the coffin situation so to speak--most of the excuses I've heard of people upgrading were because the upgrade was rather cheap.
 
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You can subject me to the most awful ridicule and hate! but don't GIFT me Windows 8!!!
 

back_by_demand

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Well, plenty of negative comments here, so it's about time someone offered a positive
...
I bought the £24.99 upgrade and got the free Media Centre upgrade, also put 2 bits of freeware on it
Classic Start 8 - gives you a Start Menu and it's free
Start Screen Customiser - puts my desktop wallpaper on the Start Screen and it's free
...
So now I have all the under the hood improvements that no one is really arguing with and none of the negative points that people keep droning on about ad-nauseum
...
I do lots of work with ISO and other images and need to use legitimate software, now I can mount images natively I am saving more than the cost of the Windows upgrade already
...
People are looking at sales figures but you should really be looking at what it is able to do for you, rather than focussing on something that is a non-issue - and before someone pipes up "why should I have to use freeware to get a Start menu, it should be there already" well it isn't and moaning about it will not get it put back, I was the first person to howl with derision when DOS was finally relegated and I had to use DOSbox to run old DOS games, but I did the same as everyone else and sucked it up and dealt with it - I suggest you do the same because Start Menu is history and isn't coming back
 

phump

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I'm seriously disappointed with this group of readers. All of your critiques about 8 are baseless. Everything in Windows 7 is in Windows 8. Nobody says you have to upgrade if you have 7, but it is certainly not a "downgrade."

The Start Screen is better than the Start Menu in my opinion, but in no way is it worse. You can get it back if you want it. This crowd is supposed to be informed about PC tweaking. Tom's recently wrote a great summary about micro-stuttering and how you can download a utility to eliminate it. You're telling me it's too much work to install Start8, but you can create separate profiles for every game to fix a problem with video card architecture?
 

icepick314

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too bad Win8 is getting so many bad reviews because of ModernUI....

if you can bypass that and bring back start bar, it's just like Win7 with better memory management and faster interface...

I'm using Win8 Pro on both my gaming PC and laptop...I got it as $14.99 "upgrade" option when one of my relative bought a new laptop few months ago...you can still do full install (install to blank drive) with the "upgrade" disc...also received free Media Center update...

it made bootup and shutdown MUCH faster on both systems with older mid-grade SSD compared to Win7 Pro...

the interface also seem more responsive when programs is opened, using MS Office 2010, and closing them after using them...

I had no problem with any games so far except one and that's Bully: Scholarship Edition from Steam...surround sound doesn't work in the game...only in stereo...and some graphic glitches...nothing game breaking...

I may run into some more gaming glitches if I try to run older games but so far, any new-ish games still work great including Borderlands 2, Skyrim, CS:GO, and L4D2....

again...make ModernUI optional and bring back Start bar...MS really did improve Win7 but those 2 particular items are making people hesitant about the upgrade...
 

back_by_demand

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[citation][nom]icepick314[/nom]I had no problem with any games so far except one and that's Bully: Scholarship Edition from Steam...surround sound doesn't work in the game...only in stereo...and some graphic glitches...nothing game breaking...I may run into some more gaming glitches if I try to run older games but so far, any new-ish games still work great including Borderlands 2, Skyrim, CS:GO, and L4D2[/citation]
The upgrade assistant said my copy of Unreal Anthology was not compatible, tried it anyway and it works, all my other software works and some ones that were temperamental and glitchy now actually work better, probably down to memory managament like you say, as far as i'm concerned it's all gravy
 

bigdragon

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I had never seen someone yell at a computer to do something until Metro in Windows 8 showed up. What a horribly frustrating experience on a traditional laptop or desktop. It came preinstalled on a new ultrabook I bought as a gift. It took about 2 days for the new owner to come beg me to install Windows 7 on it. She couldn't tolerate Metro and its apps. Could I tolerate 8? I could make it work while complaining about the user interface. She could not and is not technically savy. She wanted to return the system, get a Mac, or have Windows 7 installed.

Anyone thinking of going after the Windows 8 upgrade opportunity who owns a traditional laptop or desktop would be smart to avoid this like the plague. You can spend $15 on much better things! Windows 8 is a downgrade from 7. It's too bad the Microsoft shills on this site can't relay the criticisms and problems of Windows 8 back to Microsoft to get them to actually fix things. 8 is not usable on traditional systems, period.
 

Bloob

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[citation][nom]Parsian[/nom]Dont get me wrong, I love it when its on the appropriate form factor. If I had a AIO PC or tablet (considering surface pro) or multi touch monitor I would of gotten it. I find the UI interesting. But my complaint is bad execution from Ballmer's side. There was no reason to not have the goddamn full traditional desktop. I understand that MSFT had to standardize stuff so that app developers can design their apps base on a standard UI and the way they did it was to completely remove the start/search. That however was stupid because legit productivity software and toy apps are two separate category. Legacy desktop mode is far efficient to do productivity tasks than metro. So why not just have productivity softwares on traditional mode and toy apps on metro??? was that too hard?[/citation]

Umm... you deserve quite a bit of downvotes for commenting with total ignorance. Windows 8 does have a traditional desktop for traditional applications, I am using it right now.

Windows 8 is pretty much the same as Windows 7, with a tad worse driver support. The fullscreen start-menu is a tad more useful than the old one, but I rarely use it for anything other than search anyway. Both 7 & 8 are definitely upgrades from XP or Vista.
 

Pherule

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I don't want to buy an upgrade version, I want to buy a full version. Guess I'll get Windows 8 the 'other' way if I need to, if you know what I mean ;)

It's more tempting to upgrade to Kubuntu or Lubuntu.
 

Soda-88

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[citation][nom]back_by_demand[/nom]Well, plenty of negative comments here, so it's about time someone offered a positive...I bought the £24.99 upgrade and got the free Media Centre upgrade, also put 2 bits of freeware on itClassic Start 8 - gives you a Start Menu and it's freeStart Screen Customiser - puts my desktop wallpaper on the Start Screen and it's free...So now I have all the under the hood improvements that no one is really arguing with and none of the negative points that people keep droning on about ad-nauseum...I do lots of work with ISO and other images and need to use legitimate software, now I can mount images natively I am saving more than the cost of the Windows upgrade already...People are looking at sales figures but you should really be looking at what it is able to do for you, rather than focussing on something that is a non-issue - and before someone pipes up "why should I have to use freeware to get a Start menu, it should be there already" well it isn't and moaning about it will not get it put back, I was the first person to howl with derision when DOS was finally relegated and I had to use DOSbox to run old DOS games, but I did the same as everyone else and sucked it up and dealt with it - I suggest you do the same because Start Menu is history and isn't coming back[/citation]
Don't bother, most people around here have the feel of entitlement to something they obviously shouldn't be having. If you can't see past missing start menu that has a free, 1 minute worth of hassle workaround then you don't deserve all the goodies that come along.
 

notsleep

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about the only *nix variant i use is android via my nexus 7. :p

google should tank/axe chrome os and replace it with android. :)

win 8 x64 pro isn't bad. people will hate it coming from win 7 x64 pro but they'll get over the metro interface after several weeks time. i did and i'm glad i switched over to win 8 for it.

there are lots of under-the-hood tweaks and optimization done in win 8 that's just not in win 7 or older versions.

if anything, win 9 will have more parts of windows looking like metro than win 8. in desktop mode, win 8 is very, very similar to win 7 in look at least. so please continue whining, i enjoy reading about other's 'complaints' over win8/metro ... :p
 

V8VENOM

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Considering the overwhelming majority of people that don't like Win8 ... telling them "it's the same" (when it isn't) is about as stupid a comment as I've ever heard. Ok so Win8 is the same, so why upgrade from Win7 if it's "the same"?

Then the same people go on to post about how we need to get "used the Win8 UI" ... wait a minute, I thought you just said it was "the same"? So is it or isn't it the same?

Win8 was designed for Mobile devices and in doing so the design compromised desktop users. And to further "improve" security IE defaults to a mode that many web sites will not work with ... ah yes, the lovely and ever restricting "sandbox" as a solution for "more secure" -- what's next on the security list? Maybe just lock the devices in a seal container so no one can touch them or use them and provide no means to connect to a network (any network) -- there ya go, security problem solve -- as well as the usability problem ;)

The real problem is that Ballmer didn't NEED to force a Mobile UI on to desktop users ... there just was NO point in doing that as it solve no consumer problems -- remember this is about the consumer, the ones that pay for the OS, remember them?. It was a risk/gamble that didn't need to be taken.

Software engineers (myself included) aren't going to deploy applications via Windows Store when we can get 1000X more exposure/potential for deploying on iTunes or Android's market. If we want to build Desktop applications then we build desktop applications ... don't use a Prius to haul 10,000 lbs of cargo, use a Truck!

And what's even more confusing, Win8 Mobile apps and Win8 Desktop apps aren't the same, there is no "quick switch" to make it all work -- only in the most basic and simple of apps can that philosophy be implemented. We're still writing two different applications ... and that's fine, because each environment is different, yes there is "some" overlap but same can be said for a Truck and a Prius (both have 4 wheels) but each is optimized for specific purposes one for hauling 10,000 lbs (the Truck) and one to use a little gas as possible to get you from A to B (the Prius). Such a simple notation, yet Ballmer thought otherwise?

Sadly I do fear Ballmer and crew will continue on with Win9 being even more "Metro" in complete ignorance ... the failure of Win8 will only push Microsoft to make Win9 even less usable for Desktop computers ... and in the meantime Apple will continue to dominate with iOS AND OSX because they UNDERSTAND the difference between Mobile and Desktop.
 
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