Windows 8 upgrade going cheap - should I bother?

[Thorsson]

MS are offering it for £24.99, however it looks like some things don't work with it, including Dragon Age Origins, which I recently bought and am only part way through. Is this really true though? The other thing is that I gather the sidebar gadgets no longer work and I've quite gotten used to having them, especially things like calendar, weather, network usage.

Any comments from people who've tried it?

[Phage]

Tried it on a Surface RT - and hated it.
I'll be staying with 7

[Thorsson]

Tried it on a Surface RT - and hated it.
I'll be staying with 7

Care to say why you hated it?

[shaithis]

7 vs 8....hmmm

If you use things like Skype, facebook, linkedin, box.net, google drive, sky drive, twitter, flickr etc often then the "integration" you get with Windows 8 might make it worthwhile. Personally, I have found Windows 8 is growing on me more and more and I am almost as fast using it as I am with windows 7....

£25 though.....hmmm....tough call really (luckily I get Windows 8 from volume licensing so didn't have to pay for it)......I think if I had paid £25 for it on release I would have been a bit miffed....a few weeks later though and I'd probably be saying it was worth it.

YMMV

[Phage]

Care to say why you hated it?

I accepted that there would be a learning curve, but I'm not a big user of the apps Shaithis mentions (almost pure gaming). I found it hard to find the things I wanted and it was very very slow to do stuff.

This was an RT so some of it could be hardware, but apps took ages to launch, it kept dropping off my WiFi, power off and other common commands were difficult to find and I had to keep going back to the Metro screen to do anything.

It felt clunky, slow and non-intuitive. I could probably get used to it, but I'll wait until I have to.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You can always use Classic Shell or Start8,and get a more Windows 7 feel to the UI. At £24.99 it means you have a decent saving over getting Windows 7.

[Phage]

Good point.
Do you have a Windows licence already ?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Good point.
Do you have a Windows licence already ?

Just use the Developer Preview and upgrade from that!!

[Dutchjonsey]

Double check that it will work with your pc, not just the min specs. I got it for my m15x, the old one, and the motherboard/bios is incompatable with 8. It wouldnt even get past the installation, even after a day of trying ><

[phil4]

You could of course buy it but not use it for now. Who's to say (wishful thinking perhaps) that MS won't sort it all out in SP1 and suddenly you'll want it.

Or perhaps, as tech and games move on, a year or two on and you'll practically need it.

It might save you money to buy now, and use later. A bit of a gamble, but if the price goes up it may pay off.

I'd do it for the reason above, though I have it already and work around the bits I hate (thanks to Start8 for example).

[Colossous]

I've been thinking about giving it a try, as phil4 mentions above, it will improve and things will develop for it.

[Thorsson]

I have Win7 64 Pro, so it would be an upgrade. Of the mentioned applications I don't use most of them very much. Normal web surfing, a few games, downloading stuff, iPlayer - that sort of thing.

[Saracen]

....

If you use things like Skype, facebook, linkedin, box.net, google drive, sky drive, twitter, flickr etc often ....

In my case, that'll be ....

.... not recently, not at all, nope, nope, no way in hell, even more no way in hell, why on earth would I want to, and very rarely ..... respectively.

[Samwood]

I've been using windows 8 for about a month now and I really like it. It was a big shock moving from 7 to 8. Simple things like turning off my PC (i.e. 'Shut Down') have moved. But the 'Metro' system is much much nicer to use once you get used to it.

You can easily organize all programs, games & folders that you regally use on the Metro. This clears up your desktop, which I now only use for files that I'm working on (i.e. word docs etc).

The way I think of windows 8 is that it is windows 7, minus the start menu plus Metro and 'apps'.

The one thing I really dont like (and I guess this was implemented mainly for tablets etc) is how the new apps work they open and run on a completely different system to normal windows programs. i.e. they dont open in windows at all, but full screen like how tablet/smartphone apps work. They dont show up on your task bar, the only way to switch to/from them is to either hit the windows key and go to the metro or to move your mouse to the top right corner and a little 'preview' opens (like the ones that open when you hover your mouse over program icons in the taskbar).

Good thing is windows 8 is quite a bit faster. The post-BIOS boot time is about 5 seconds now (with my SSD and Intel rapid start), compared to about 15sec that I was getting on Win7. Shutdowns the same story and benchmarks I ran are showing a few % boost to all round performance (hexus did a post about speed boosts a month or so back).

So its worth getting Win8 IMO. Not a huge jump over Win7, but for a new build or from XP/Vista etc easy choice.

[Thorsson]

Thanks guys, as I'm just getting a new "core" (i5/Z77) and I already have an SSD then I think I might bite the bullet before the current price ends.

Just one other question, if anyone has done an upgrade, does it leave the old Windows around clogging up the SSD, or does it replace the Windows directory?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I am running Windows 8 on a E3300 with 2GB of RAM and a Nividia IGP. Seems OK os far.

If you want a Start Menu just install one of these applications:

http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/