Windows 8 upgrade

clairestelle

I was given a netbook with Windows 7 starter and it came with an offer to upgrade to windows 8 for £14.99. The netbook does seem to be a bit slow but not being terribly tech-minded I'm not sure if this is to do with the starter system or just the netbook itself which is a Packard Bell Dot 32 bit. Can anyone advise whether it would be worth upgrading and whether this is a good deal? Many thanks for any advice!

Jivesinger

Hi Clairestelle,

I'm afraid I don't know much about netbooks, but just to help those who do, could you tell us the spec of it (eg. do you know how much RAM memory it has)?

If it's eligible for the £14.99 deal I guess it's a fairly new one? If it's an older one then it might be £24.99 to upgrade (as long as you buy the product key by the end of Jan - today or tomorrow!).

I suspect that upgrading to Windows 8 won't make a vast difference to performance. You'll probably gain a bit because a new operating system install gets rid of some of the clutter.

However Microsoft claim (about halfway down this blog post) that one of their goals in Windows 8 was to give longer battery life, which would be useful on a netbook. So you may see improvement there.

Also, the version of Windows you get when upgrading is a full-featured one with a few more features than the Starter edition.

Yoingco

I have the same model and upgraded to Windows 8. It gained in performance/speed over Windows 7 Starter edition, but is NOT ideal if you want to use the Tiles/Metro User Interface IF YOUR SCREEN RESOLUTION IS 1024 x 600. This is because Windows 8 complains with a notification/error message saying 'the app will not work with this low resolution' (or words to that effect). So what you end up doing is switching back to the Desktop Screen to get apps to work, such as Skype and Internet Explorer.

Regards

John

clairestelle

Jivesinger wrote: »

Hi Clairestelle,

I'm afraid I don't know much about netbooks, but just to help those who do, could you tell us the spec of it (eg. do you know how much RAM memory it has)?

If it's eligible for the £14.99 deal I guess it's a fairly new one? If it's an older one then it might be £24.99 to upgrade (as long as you buy the product key by the end of Jan - today or tomorrow!).

I suspect that upgrading to Windows 8 won't make a vast difference to performance. You'll probably gain a bit because a new operating system install gets rid of some of the clutter.

However Microsoft claim (about halfway down this blog post) that one of their goals in Windows 8 was to give longer battery life, which would be useful on a netbook. So you may see improvement there.

Also, the version of Windows you get when upgrading is a full-featured one with a few more features than the Starter edition.

Thanks for the advice! V. much appreciated and you certainly seem to know more than me about netbooks! It is a PB dot s netbook with 1gb of memory.

clairestelle

Yoingco wrote: »

I have the same model and upgraded to Windows 8. It gained in performance/speed over Windows 7 Starter edition, but is NOT ideal if you want to use the Tiles/Metro User Interface IF YOUR SCREEN RESOLUTION IS 1024 x 600. This is because Windows 8 complains with a notification/error message saying 'the app will not work with this low resolution' (or words to that effect). So what you end up doing is switching back to the Desktop Screen to get apps to work, such as Skype and Internet Explorer.

Regards

John

Thanks John. It doesn't sound as if it would be worth the bother upgrading if I had to keep reverting back to Desktop Screen. I suppose i just hoped it might make it all run a bit smoother and quicker and give me the added benefits like changing your screensaver pic etc. Thanks very much for the advice!

Jivesinger

Hi Clairestelle,

1Gb is just about enough to run Windows 8, so I think it should work. However obviously Yoingco has experience of running it for real, so you'd want to take that into account.

The one thing I'd add is that the Windows 8 Upgrade offers expire today.** The upgrade that which I can buy for £25 today would cost me £190 tomorrow!

I'm in the fortunate position where if I lost £15 or £25, it wouldn't unduly affect me. Plus I'm happy faffing around with technical things. So if it was me, I'd be tempted to grab a product key now while it's cheap, in case I wanted to try it later. It's possible to run the Upgrade Assistant to the point where you've just got a Product Key (make sure the email arrives and you've copied or printed the Receipt so you have the Product Key safely recorded) and then exit at that point without actually downloading the Upgrade. (It leaves a link on your desktop which you can use later.)

Then you could spend more time making sure you had a full backup of your Windows 7 setup so you could return to it later if Windows 8 didn't work out for you. But the Product Key would need to be bought today if you wanted it.


** I believe the £14.99 upgrade may not end today, but the £24.99 one definitely does, and not every Windows 7 PC is eligible for the £14.99 upgrade; it would be a pain to get to February expecting to use the £14.99 upgrade and discover that you weren't eligible, so I'd look at it today if you're interested, unless you have verified with Microsoft that you're eligible for the £14.99 deal - they send you an email with a code on it.

clairestelle

Oh wow Jivesinger! Thanks for such helpful advice. I will check with Microsoft as you suggest and if it all seems eligible for my netbook I think I will purchase it - it is a pretty amazing saving! Thanks again!

Toxteth_OGrady

@clairestelle

I would suggest you buy your Win 8 upgrade product key before the £14.99 offer runs out but don't install it just yet!

When you get your upgrade offer promo code you then need to run the Windows Upgrade Assistant on your netbook to buy it. That will check that your netbook will work ok with Win8. You then get the options to download and install the upgrade.

I strongly recommend that when you get to the installation options after the download you select "Install Later" and then "Install from other media" and finally select "Install from iso." Save the iso file in your documents or on your desktop.

That will allow you to do two things:

1. Read around Windows 8 reviews - it's not everybody's cup of tea. There's a useful thread here

2. Saving the install iso today at £14.99 still buys you time to try to speed up your Win 7 installation before you commit to Win 8 - you could follow Closed's sticky thread on how to speed up a slow PC. If that doesn't work you can then make a more measured decision to go to Win8.

Yoingco

Here is what you will see if your netbook is using a screen size of 1024 x 600......check your screen resolution before upgrading to Windows 8 Pro.

Sorry I cannot post a directly link yet

yoingco dot com /windows8netbook.png

Regards

John

clairestelle

Thanks all so much for the advice. Weighing it all up i didn't feel that windows 8 would run to its best capacity on my netbook so decided to save the money. All your comments were really helpful!

molerat

One of the best options would be to buy a 2gb stick of ram. It does make a lot of difference to the dot s.


Bit of a pain to install though as you have to remove the keyboard to take the whole base off the machine to find the ram in the position you would expect to find it, at the bottom..... who designed that one