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The Mayans supposedly predicted the end of the world at the end of 2012. The world runs on computers. Lately, both Apple with iOS6 and Microsoft with Win 8 are dropping the ball big time. People are saying that Apple are failing now without Steve Jobs, and even Cnet is saying Microsoft has had its heyday.

Maybe the Mayans meant that we'll see the end of both companies and going back to a less computer-reliant society, and doing some things manually again. With issues of identity theft and viruses etc, I can only hope that's what will happen.

Off-topic:
The Mayan calendar simply ends in a few weeks and because of that some religious freaks concluded that "the world that we know" will end.
The funny thing is that our calendar ends this year as well, on the 31.12.2012 to be more precise! However we usually don't make such a big deal out of it and just start again like we did last year...


On-topic:
Danilo, thanks for letting us know about this great deal. I'm going to purchase a new PC with Windows 8 soon.
By the way, do I have to install the upgrade version on my existing PC or does Microsoft simply need the verification that I'm running XP/Vista and then I can install it wherever I want? (On a completely new PC too?)

Important: What you are buying is the upgrade license that will only work on an existing Windows machine. You cannot use this Windows 8 license on a new machine that you could be building from scratch. If you wish to install Windows 8 from scratch on a new hard disk, you need the System Builder that may not be available at all locations.

http://www.labnol.org/software/upgrade- ... s-8/20946/

Anyway there is probably a way to elude this, just try to google about it. There is always. Even when I have installed my Win 7 upgrade I did it on a clean partition. This because I never do a in-place upgrade of my OS, I always install it from scratch, and then I never reinstall it. I find incredible how some people continually reinstall the same OS when they have a little problem they can't understand. Probably they have three programs installed. I spend some months fine-tuning it so I certainly don't want to reinstall it once a month.

netmaestro wrote: C'mon, luis! Don't hold back, say what you really think

luis wrote:I find incredible how some people continually reinstall the same OS when they have a little problem they can't understand

I've heard tech support companies tell newbies just to reinstall Windows when the user has a problem. That's where it comes from.

New installation of windows is easier than use Brain, Antivirus and so on

luis wrote:

Important: What you are buying is the upgrade license that will only work on an existing Windows machine. You cannot use this Windows 8 license on a new machine that you could be building from scratch. If you wish to install Windows 8 from scratch on a new hard disk, you need the System Builder that may not be available at all locations.

Thanks for the info. I'm planning to build my new PC on my own because it's cheaper and I can choose everything as I like.
Well it seems that I would probably have to install Windows XP first and then directly run the Windows 8 upgrader to get this special offering.

c4s wrote:Off-topic:
The Mayan calendar simply ends in a few weeks and because of that some religious freaks concluded that "the world that we know" will end.

Sorry, couldn't resist...



On-topic:
People nowadays want instant gratification and want always something new.
Maybe Windows 8 will take the consumer market by storm, who knows.
The time limited $40 price tag is at least a move in that direction; double the price of a MacOS update... but still.

Installing it right now, thx for the tip.

Several people in the german heise forum pointed out that this version is only for private use and cant be used for commercial purposes. See http://www.mswos.com/App_Repos/TOC/Windows8TC_en-US.pdf - paragraph 2

On the plus side - it was confirmed that the media pack for Win8 pro will be free until Jan 31st.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/For ... afcc0e675c

Wow, installed, works very well. (y) <- Like!

I grabbed a copy of this and installed it on my main machine. It's workable, but not because of the new features, but *in spite* of them, by tweaking and working around them. In my instance I've installed start8 from stardock to give me a decent start menu and I rarely visit the new start screen.

I rather regret the decision, mostly because I don't want Microsoft thinking that I approve of the direction they're going. I have 5 other windows 7 PC's still, which I will not be upgrading unless they reverse course a bit (maybe SP1?)

I keep hearing people say things like "you need to get used to it" or "you just don't like change"... in my instance neither of those is particularly true. I *know* how to use it, I've made a point to know how to use it, I *wanted* to be wrong about my first impressions. The metro UI (the biggest, forced changes) is quite obviously a tablet UI, and it does not translate well to the desktop for anyone who values heavy multi-tasking. Every time I see a notification pop up on my screen that asks me to "tap" I cringe. Many of the dialogs and modals are updated to the new metro style, many still are not. Even with the built in functionality it seems that the metro conversion didn't even get half done. It truly seems like a half-baked new OS, that's been glued on top of windows 7. "Schizophrenic" is the word that many other have used, and it fits pretty well.

Many of the built in apps are basically stores; Music, Videos, Games are all just fronts for MS's stores. Advertising appears inside some of the pre-installed apps as well.

It's quite obvious, this OS is Microsoft's attempt to abuse their desktop dominance to force app development for metro, in a vain attempt to enter the already saturated tablet market.

---
All that being said. The performance is good, it's stable, and it does have some overdue updates to many things, such as a new task manager, updates to file management features (the new copy/move dialog is quite nice), and some other polish. I have had a few compatibly issues with specialized software (the proprietary VPN client I need to use for work took a few hours to get working), but those haven't been a huge deal overall. I'm a web developer, and losing XP mode was rather annoying, as I still need to support IE8 on winxp. Hyper-V virtualization is pretty cool though, I'm glad I had a winXP disc kicking around still.

My first attempts at getting the Windows 8 upgrade installed were not entirely statisfactory...

- on WinXP you cannot download an ISO
- you cannot use a 32 bit system to download the 64 bit iso, and the other way around
- if you buy it online you get the media center pack for free (that is if you buy before end of this year)
- if you buy the disk in a shop you can't get the media center pack for free (haven't tried this route yet though)

And here's my case: I want to upgrade a 32 bit XP to 64 bit Windows 8. I want to be able to fall back to 32 bit if necessary. I want to create an ISO inc case my primary hard drive fails. Try that with the download upgrade...

Sigh. I'd almost (almost!) be tempted to go back to Vista...

What do you need stardock for? You can rightclick in the start screen, click all apps, and pin them to the start screen, then rearrange them and change size as you wish.. The search, is very powerful as well, so... I like it, its the best windows version by far.