XP, Vista owners upgrade path to Windows8.

grumpycrab

Assuming current XP/Vista owners have a good enough computer and wish to stick with Microsoft what's the best way to get Windows8? 2 options?

1. Win8Pro upgrade is now upto £75 (and still have the grief of then upgrading to 8.1)
2. perhaps the easiest way is to buy 8.1 OEM? (assuming one can meet the requirements of OEM)?

Jivesinger

Microsoft seem to be encouraging people with XP and Vista to use Option 1; that is to upgrade to Windows 8 and then 8.1.

I'm not entirely sure why though.

50Twuncle

Jivesinger wrote: »

Microsoft seem to be encouraging people with XP and Vista to use Option 1; that is to upgrade to Windows 8 and then 8.1.

I'm not entirely sure why though.

I agree with you - The 8.1 upgrade is a ridiculous 3Gb download !!

PasturesNew

I have XP, on a 40GB HD. I have under 1GB of spare HD space remaining. I won't be forking out money and giving myself work, to try to upgrade when I'm perfectly happy with XP and have been since I started using it 15 years ago.

50Twuncle

PasturesNew wrote: »

I have XP, on a 40GB HD. I have under 1GB of spare HD space remaining. I won't be forking out money and giving myself work, to try to upgrade when I'm perfectly happy with XP and have been since I started using it 15 years ago.

MS reckon 8 requires

• Processor 1GHz or faster
• RAM 1GB (32bit) or 2GB (64bit)
• Hard disk space 16GB (32bit) or 20GB (64bit)
• Graphics card Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device or higher

I reckon that 8.1 requires
2Ghz dual core
4Gb RAM
100Gb HDD space (32 or 64 bit)


as an absolute minimum


So - your 1Gb available space is not going to do it !!
Even if you wiped it and started again - you are going to struggle - that is without knowing the specs of your machine
And anyway - how did you get Windows XP - 15 years ago - it was only released in 2001 (12 years ago) ...

Jivesinger

50Twuncle wrote: »

MS reckon 8 requires

• Processor 1GHz or faster
• RAM 1GB (32bit) or 2GB (64bit)
• Hard disk space 16GB (32bit) or 20GB (64bit)
• Graphics card Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device or higher

I reckon that 8.1 requires
2Ghz dual core
4Gb RAM
100Gb HDD space (32 or 64 bit)


as an absolute minimum

I find Windows 8 perfectly happy with 2GB RAM and a 1.6GHz processor; I disagree that you need 4GB. Obviously that's the 32-bit version (no point in 64-bit with small RAM).

So I assume Windows 8.1 will be the same (although I've seen reports of one or two bugs in that area which might need fixing).

I did try Windows 8 on a 1GB PC with shared video memory (so the OS had rather less than 1GB available to it). It was not happy.

espresso

As a regular, I would have thought that you would have realised by now that SH IT Technician 50Twuncle is the last one that people should take technical advice from!

nickbeee

I've done the 8 -> 8.1 upgrade over the last few days on a Samsung NP770-Z5E
laptop.

Post-install:

• It required downloading a new set of drivers using Samsung's SW Update app.
• 8.1 tries to get you to log in with a Microsoft Live account as opposed to a local user account. Initially I set it up with my Live but I was able to change it back easily.
• Fuzzy screen fonts in some applications. Fixed by choosing the appropriate setting in advanced graphics properties.

The start menu isn't anything to shout about but features that I missed in 8 such as shut-down are available via the right-click menu.

There is also a query over battery life, I suspect this is due to power settings and hopefully will be improved with either a M$ or Samsung update.

NiftyDigits

grumpycrab wrote: »

Assuming current XP/Vista owners have a good enough computer and wish to stick with Microsoft what's the best way to get Windows8? 2 options?

1. Win8Pro upgrade is now upto £75 (and still have the grief of then upgrading to 8.1)
2. perhaps the easiest way is to buy 8.1 OEM? (assuming one can meet the requirements of OEM)?

Specific machines in mind?

50Twuncle

Jivesinger wrote: »

I find Windows 8 perfectly happy with 2GB RAM and a 1.6GHz processor; I disagree that you need 4GB. Obviously that's the 32-bit version (no point in 64-bit with small RAM).

So I assume Windows 8.1 will be the same (although I've seen reports of one or two bugs in that area which might need fixing).

I did try Windows 8 on a 1GB PC with shared video memory (so the OS had rather less than 1GB available to it). It was not happy.

Windows 7 would NOT install on lower spec PC's
I have a feeling that MS have removed this lower limit for Win 8/8.1 - leaving it up to the individual to decide whether the lack of speed can be lived with...


I too, have just re-graded my laptop to 8.1 and surprisingly - it appears considerably faster than Win 8 - it takes around 20 secs to boot up (i5 dual core, 8 Gb RAM, 1Tb HDD..
But I still find the OS hard to use - if I had a touch screen, maybe I would stick with it - but not on a non-touch screen.....

AshleyPomeroy

grumpycrab wrote: »

Assuming current XP/Vista owners have a good enough computer and wish to stick with Microsoft what's the best way to get Windows8?

There's actually a cheaper alternative if you don't mind Windows 7 - this article outlines it pretty well. You download a Windows 7 ISO mirrored from Microsoft's Technet, and then use this tool from Microsoft to burn it to a USB stick, and then you pop off to Amazon and buy a licence key for Windows 7 Home for £30.

Add on £70 for a 120gb SSD and you have a new PC for £100. This is how I revitalised my old HP TC4400 (one of those old tablet PCs with a stylus). There is the potential risk that the ISO images are infected with a subtle botnet but I suspect that the collective nous of the internet would have spotted this by now.

As for Windows 8, I upgraded my ThinkPad X61 from XP to Windows 8 back when it was £25, and then more recently to 8.1 by downloading the update. The X61's hardware is generic and so the upgrade was straightforward. Now that the price has gone up I would be tempted to bite the bullet and buy the full 8.1 retail box.

My X61 is a 2gh Core II Duo with 2gb of memory and a 120gb SSD. The 8.1 installation directory comes to just over 8gb; add on a bunch of utilities and I'm only using 20gb of the hard drive. I store anything substantial on an external drive.

AFAIK Windows 8 absolutely requires a late-period Pentium 4 - it simply won't install on earlier models, there's a BIOS requirement that the early Pentium 4 didn't have - but my hunch is that on a fast Pentium M with 2gb of memory it would be limited more by the motherboard, the weak onboard graphics, and the PATA drive than by the CPU.