Windows 8 - only 2 weeks left to upgrade for £25

Lum

Also worth noting that the Windows 8 bootloader now includes a "Refresh" option which, as far as I can tell, does a reinstall from that ESD folder without the need to boot from a DVD.

Personally I'd still rather use the DVD. I'm sure someone will eventually write a piece of malware that infects the image in the ESD folder so that it can reinstall itself.

Peter999_2

I bought one of these just before christmas :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-11-6-inch-VivoBook-Touchscreen-Integrated/dp/B009YUF4ZS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358610501&sr=8-1

I've been using Windows 8 since the first beta, but never used metro as its not good without a touchscreen.

Now I've got a touchscreen its fab - really intuitive and easy to use. I sold my iPad 3 the day after buying it and havn't missed it at all.

Personally the best feature for me is the swipe from the left to juggle between apps (great when using RDP/Terminal services that I do a lot of). I can see me having this laptop for a long time (I usually change laptop every 12 months) as I like it so much.

I think its a bit of a marmite thing - you either hate it or love it.

Peter999_2

Oops - double post. Apologies - Its this rubbish laptop ;-)

frankie

railbuff wrote: »

I used this offer some time ago (21/11/12) to upgrade to Win 8 and the download went smooth. at the same time i ordered the Win 8 backup DVD for £8.99 which never arrived, so got onto MS after i found a live person to speak too and it was no problem we will order an new one for you, Great I got the email confirmation of the new order and waited and waited and still no DVD, so this time i thought i would email their CEO from the email listed at !!!!!!!!!!!!!. at fist emailed their UK CEO and waited with no reply, soi i sent a copy of this email to their USA CEO and this is when i got some action. I got a call from their USA office apologising and saying they would send me a copy by courier (UPS) and give me a full refund for my trouble and still keep my key active. their was slight delay in this as it was over the christmas period, but i could see where it was through tracking system. this arrived on the 28th Dec.

Any one else experiencing delays getting their DVD and what action has worked?

prowla

I've been using Windows 8 for a while now.
When I started using it, I found it very cumbersome to use.
And the styling looked very retrograde.
Now, I've been using it a while I have to say, that I was absolutely bloody right!
£25 for that is £25 too much, and if Microsoft think that they will be able to sell it for $199.99 they they are delusional.

womble12345

Thanks for the heads up, I just ordered a new SSD for my aging XP PC and will also upgrade to Win8 so hopefully now it will be very quick!

Lum

That will be a nice combo!

I wouldn't bother putting XP on that SSD however, wait until both arrive and do a fresh install of Windows 8 onto the SSD, with your old hard drive unplugged from the system

This will allow the Windows 8 installer to sort out the proper partition alignment etc, to get the best performance out of your SSD. XP doesn't know how to do this. It will also ensure that your old data is untouched.

Since you have bought an upgrade licence for Win8, you will have trouble activating windows, but this is easily sorted with this procedure.

Once you have Windows 8 set up, you can plug your old hard drive back in to get at your old data and (if you like) use it for bulk data storage.

womble12345

Thanks. I bought the Win8 upgrade today (so I got my license key number) and chose the option to 'Install by creating media' which meant I could download an ISO file that I have now burnt to DVD so I was planning on waiting for the SSD to arrive and then replacing my existing hard drive with the SSD and then booting from the Windows DVD and doing a clean install. Reading your link it seems that plan probably wouldnt have worked so thanks for the heads up.
Womble

Lum

Your plan would have worked, and is exactly what I was recommending you do. You just have to make that one registry change to get it to activate afterwards.

The official procedure would be to install XP to your SSD, activate it, then install Windows 8 over the top. To get the partition alignment correct you'd need to delete the XP partition from within Windows Setup, then make sure you get the install correct first time or else you'll be installing XP again.

Far too much effort, just do a clean install and then the registry hack.

ahll

I was wanting to take up this offer for Win8 but I have tried a few times to backup my acre NetBoot using Win7 backup to no avail. To start with it doesn't tell me how much disks space it needs then some hours later after it don't 32gb it fails saying it needs 20gb more space but on the disk there is 70 gab ! Does anyone know what the problem is ?

Needless to say I didn't want to risk the upgrade without having a backup !