Advice on upgrading to Windows 8.

I was thinking of taking the plunge to getting the discounted windows 8 upgrade for my computer. I meet the requirements by far, and at $39.99 for digital copy, I am thinking of taking the upgrade.

I was curious if anyone could shed some light on whether or not this would be worth it? This sales goes on until sometimes in Feb 2013. The Windows 8 Compatibility tool comes back with 100% compatible review of my computer.

I ran the public preview of Windows 8, and I liked it alot, and would like feedback from the Windows 7 community.

With the upgrade you are given a choice, you can back up the documents folder only, backup documents and settings, or do a fresh install (which is what I would do), they also have it for $15 more you can get the upgrade on a disk. They say upgrade, but this is really an upgrade/new install DVD/Digital Download.

I was thinking of maybe just buying it on DVD and holding on to it for when I decide to install it, it is cheap, and goes up to full price after Feb 2013.

Indianatone said:

tlarseth said:

I was thinking of taking the plunge to getting the discounted windows 8 upgrade for my computer. I meet the requirements by far, and at $39.99 for digital copy, I am thinking of taking the upgrade.

I was curious if anyone could shed some light on whether or not this would be worth it? This sales goes on until sometimes in Feb 2013. The Windows 8 Compatibility tool comes back with 100% compatible review of my computer.

I ran the public preview of Windows 8, and I liked it alot, and would like feedback from the Windows 7 community.

If you personally LIKED the preview and tested it thoroughly then YOU should upgrade if YOU feel it will be worthwhile. It is relatively inexpensive. I personally can't stand 8 but that is my opinion. As you are well aware Windows 7 is stable and 8 has some so called under the hood improvements and the "Interface formally known as Metro" I am a little concerned that the old key to your old operating system could be invalidated should you change your mind. I would check into that.
If you can live with 8 and you like it, that is all that matters.

If you get the DVD copy it doesn't do anything with your current key, the digital does, it has to be installed within I think 72 hours according to the EULA for it.

Not to mention Metro can be turned off, that is what I did during the preview. I also had less overheating issues on my laptop with the win8 preview, which is another factor that I am considering.

SIW2 said:

Which preview were you running - and how exactly did you "turn off" metro. ?

MS have been progressively spreading metro like an unpleasant disease to try and prevent people removing/turning it off.

I think the previous poster had the general idea :

W8 is less "hackable" if u are in these sort of thing...The new W8 will shift towards cloud computing mostly and i don't like it

If you really want to buy the thing in spite of all that, you can just get the $39.99 deal - download the files , and it will knock up an iso for you.


You can install from that at any time.

When you install from the iso , it will check you have a qualifying version of windows on the machine you are pointing it at.

If you get the DVD copy it doesn't do anything with your current key, the digital does

What do you think it does - and where did you get that idea from?

http://techmell.com/how-to/disable-metro-ui-windows-8/ said:

Steps To Disable Metro UI in Windows 8

1. First, press the Start + R buttons, to open the Run menu.

2. In the Run window, type “regedit” and hit Enter.

3. Now scroll on the top of the list and double click on “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE”. This will expand the folder.

4. Do the same for “SOFTWARE “.

5. In the list, search for “Microsoft” and open it.

6. Now using the same procedure, navigate to Windows->CurrentVersion->Explorer and some registry entries will appear in the right side of the screen.

7. Click on the one called “RPenabled” and change its value from “1″ to “0″.

This will cause the metro UI to be replaced with a familiar looking Windows 7 start menu. To revert this all you need to do it to change the value of RPenabled back to 1.

It is possible to disable the Metro GUI. From what I understand you aren't given the option to create a disk from the digital copy until after you install it.

A friend of mine had an OEM install on his desktop, and was successful in calling Microsoft and getting them to reactivate the Win7 key on his daughters desktop that was running XP, now she has Windows 7 using his old key, and he has Windows 8 on his computer. He had ordered the DVD disk, but from what I understand they told him that if he used the Digital Copy he couldn't have done that.

1.That reg tweak is for the very early Developer Preview release only.

It does not work now.


2. You are given the opportunity to either install now - OR make an iso for later.

You can burn that to dvd - or you can get it to put the media on a flash drive.

You can use that any time you like - or never - up to you.

Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant - Download and Run