Windows 8

scooby359

Richie-from-the-Boro wrote: »

The protection seems to be the fact that it devours the existing key. Example Win7pro used to be £170 now about £100 - put a £25 Win8 upgrade on it and you lose your £170 Win7pro key.

It does this at source and instantly :

- you can't install 8 clean or upgrade on a 'wonkey' key
- when validated your old key is 'gone' from their dBASE

Either way they've already taken a key out of circulation.

No, your old Product Key is still valid. The guidance for the update specifically says that if you wanted to remove Windows 8, you could wipe it and reinstall your old OS

banger9365

Richie-from-the-Boro wrote: »

The protection seems to be the fact that it devours the existing key. Example Win7pro used to be £170 now about £100 - put a £25 Win8 upgrade on it and you lose your £170 Win7pro key.

It does this at source and instantly :

- you can't install 8 clean or upgrade on a 'wonkey' key
- when validated your old key is 'gone' from their dBASE

Either way they've already taken a key out of circulation.

yes it can,i've done it

Nine_Lives

IMO Windows 8 looks absolutely horrendous with those stupid boxes all over the place.

I'll certainly not be touching it at all. Unfortunately it'll be the way things are going to be now, so once Win7 is a distant memory i'll likely have little choice.

thelawnet

It's fine. You just need to get used to it.

Richie-from-the-Boro

scooby359 wrote: »

No, your old Product Key is still valid. The guidance for the update specifically says that if you wanted to remove Windows 8, you could wipe it and reinstall your old OS

My understanding is :

- you can't run 8 & 7 simultaneously
- its an either or
- if you put your 7 back on
- the 8 disappears from the dBASE

Either way they've already taken a key out of circulation

banger9365 & scooby359 are you saying you can run your old Win7 key and the new Win8 key simultaneously on different machines ? - if you are then I bow to your wisdom !

martin57

Well what I intend to do is (as I have already two versions of windows 7 on same computer) is to put one of the acronis images that I have of windows 7 on a different partition (use Easy BCD to point towards that partition in my boot) and upgrade the new partition of windows 7 to windows 8.

I would be very concerned if upgrading to windows 8 somehow deactivates my windows 7 key as for the forseeable future I want to be able to use both.

Grateful if any one can confirm that upgrading to windows 8 somehow doesn't deactivate windows 7 product key.

Martin57

TadleyBaggie

I tried 8 for a whole day, but I found that everytime I came out of sleep it would disable my laptops trackpad (after a pop-up saying another pointing device had been detected). This resulted in me having to reboot it each time to get the trackpad back, too much hassle. I'd done a full backup before instaling so going back to 7 was trivial.

banger9365

well i can tell you a fresh install and uses off the win 7 code that upgraded to win 8 ,activates fine in win 7

Paul_Varjak

Windows 8 has certainly been worthwhile on an ageing Vista PC, but I think I would have still preferred Windows 7 at the same price as Windows 8.

BTW, it seems it is now possible to upgrade to Windows 8 for just £10 if you download from Singapore...

http://asia.cnet.com/upgrade-to-windows-8-for-s18-in-singapore-62219265.htm

danmanchester

I did an in place upgrade from 7 to 8 rather than a clean install over the weekend on this laptop, no real problems, just a couple of niggles.

All my programs and settings transferred smoothly although my Kindle for PC program (or is it "App" now? ) seems to have lost about 20 books and won't sync with Amazon so will have to re add them manually one by one.

Secondly...Win8 didn't detect my printer, a Canon pixma ip4500 nor did Windows update - something the upgrade advisor compatibility thing never spotted. As I no longer have the printer cd had to hunt around for driver online and eventually found the x64 Vista driver works on Win8.

Played around with 8 for a couple of days now and I think I like it, but what do I know... I also like Vista!

Was it worth making the change/upgrade? Hmmm probably not, but for £14.99 I can't complain, there's nothing I've noticed that's drastically different from 7 other than that initial Metro UI. It does feel snappier and a bit more responsive..but that could be my imagination. One thing has puzzled me a bit...this laptop scored 4.9 under Win7 WIE but now only scores 4.7 since upgrade.