Windows 8 Preview users can upgrade to final version for $39.99

I take it you don't like win8 then...

I'm just glad MS is not listening to anyone and just doing what they want. I'm also glad they are trying something different, that's how progress is made.

Oh, I am glad too. Because that's exactly the kind of philosophy you wanna put into practice when your a company trying to sell a product to the public. Don't listen to the people buying your product. Piss on them. I couldn't agree with some of you guys more. These Windows 8 haters. They can all kiss my ***!

Hell, as long its "different" and something "new" I'll buy it. Even if it's a polished turd. Hey its new, right?

that's badass and really cheap.

There are so many holes with all of your arguments, it would simply take me hours to prove you all wrong, and quite frankly, you are not all worth my time...

They way I see it is this: there IS a learning curve to the Start Screen. I disliked it for the better part of a week. But now I "get it." It's a generational shift, and a abrupt one at that, but it works better.

The only real issue I have so far with Windows 8, is the multitasking with the mouse. Hot Corners for multitasking? Retarded idea.

Start Screen? Abrupt, but necessary. (Analysts predict tablets and ultrabook/tablet hybrids will overtake desktop PCs by the end of 2013.)

Don't like it? Fine with me. There are many both telemetric and mathematical data used for many of the decisions surrounding the changes. Most of you, on the other hand, seem to generalize the future reception of Windows 8 by contrasting it with your own experiences. That is moronic. Windows powers 1.3 billion computers; that's a little over 20% of the world's 7+ billion population. Thinking that what you think, what your friends think, or what your friends' friends think is indicative of the overall reaction is shortsighted at best.

Just understand that--gasp--there ARE power users who can embrace the change. It has nothing to do with being a fanboy. I am personally a critic of everything, even of the things I own. Understand their pros and cons and I make an educated decision. If you happen not to be able to see value in Windows 8, that's fine, just please keep it to yourself. Having an opinion is fine, but complaining for the sake of complaining achieves nothing, and like it or not one thing for sure is going to happen:

Windows 8 will be released. And it turns out you are not being forced to buy it.

As has been ably demonstrated in the thread, the reasons for buying/not buying W8 are many and varied. A lot depends on the circumstance of the individual user. A couple of points to consider:
1. The overwhelming bulk of W8 licenses will be purchased by OEM's, and as such, W8's viability largely rests in their hands. Good sales = yes, Bad sales = no. Same as it ever was. The vast number of their customer base wouldn't know a tech forum if it appeared as a pop-up during their hourly fix of facebook.
2. Of the very small number of DIY retail/oem licenses that remain, a large percentage will be already have a view one way or the other (possibly swayed by pricing and hw/sw compatibility). Now, do you think that a frothing at the mouth diatribe littered with excessive use of capslock, question marks, exclamation marks, and suspect grammar is going to sway even the smallest of viewers to jettison W8?

When an OS has two desktops you know there's a problem.....

Indeed DBZ, there is also another dimension which many of these 'power users' seems never to have done, I.e. use a DOS computer, which I did for many years, hence, the habit of not relying on 'start' or many other menus. By the way I 'suspect' DOS was designed to 'test' memory + typing skills of users as well

Attacking my grammar is your defense for 'Windows 8'? LOL. With friends like you, Microsoft probably doesn't even need any enemies.All I ever did was respond to some of the more ridiculous statements about 'Windows 8'.
Ridiculous Statement #1 - "Windows 8 is by far the best and most stable OS I've used." - Okay, compared to what? If Windows 7 Ultimate has ever crashed on me I can't remember it.
Ridiculous Statement #2 - " I am pretty certain of one thing, it is damn fast to find an launch a program in W8 compared to windows 7" - Really? How much faster is it to click a tile versus clicking a shortcut on the desktop? Measured in milliseconds Im sure.
Ridiculous Statement #3 - "Windows 8 was not built with a cellphone/tablet in mind, otherwise there wouldn't be a special tablet version." - One of my personal favorites, btw.
I don't mind it that there are people out there that like shiny and new. I don't mind it that some peoples lives are so boring they have nothing better to look forward to than the installation of a "new" and "different" operating system. Just come out and say that. "I want Windows 8 because its new and different". Stop making ridiculous statements that are clearly lies, or technically correct but in practice just plain silly.

I do have one good thing to say about 'Windows 8' and I will swallow my pride and say it. The one thing I love about 'Windows 8' is that there is no government mandate that will force me to buy this piece of **** software. Thanks to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid for allowing me to choose my own operating system, at least for the time being!

It's not clear to me how Microsoft will test that the computer had another Windows installation before the Win 8 preview was installed. Because from the response that's still a condition, having had an older OS installed.

Nope. Attacking your grammar is just for the lulz. BTW, if you think my post is "defence" of Win8 then Comprehension...you're doing it wrong.

So I see;

You'll see their "ridiculous statements" and raise them "unresolved issues".

That should read "Ridiculous made up quote that doesn't appear anywhere except in ig-88's post...and then goes off on a tangent attempting to argue that made-up quote".

Hey, faster is faster. Can't see the downside there. You're arguing about milliseconds. -BTW, quite a number of apps I'm running are a hell of lot faster/faster loading than a few milliseconds (dual boot Win7 x64 Pro / Win8 x64 -both clean installs). Crysis 2 loading is a good 5-6 seconds faster with W8.
As for the third statement...who cares if the OS was built for desktop, tablet, cellphone or etch-a-sketch? So long as it works in the way that users want it to -and from my (and more than a few others) viewpoint it does just that. Is it a worthwhile upgrade for W7 -probably not. Is it worth adding to a new build, I really don't see why not. It took me a whole hour to get conversant with the UI, personalize it and make sure the keyboard shortcuts did what they should...imagine what a "power user" could achieve!

Another scatological reference. Quite the orator.
____________________________________________________________

I'm not entirely sure MS can determine what (if any) previous copy of Windows a user had- unless users are expected to furnish MS with their previous serial. I could see a run on some seriously outdated OS's in the resell market if that is the criteria.

Will you guys quit it?

ig-88, my understanding is that your only problem with Windows 8 is Metro. Since that's a design issue and not a technical problem, you need to acknowledge that it may not be a problem for others, or that some people might actually like it.

Technically Windows 8 has some underlying improvements to Windows 7. They may not be huge enough improvements to convince someone who hates Metro, but for those who don't mind it they're a decent enough reason to upgrade, especially at this price.

By the way this isn't any different from upgrading from Vista to 7. There isn't a huge reason to move from Vista, which is a stable OS and runs well given enough RAM, which is why I stuck with it even though I had a Windows 7 license since it was released (reinstallation is a hassle, though I'll do it soon now that I got my SSD). Still lots of people felt that the technical improvements in 7 were worth the upgrade.

http://www.techspot.com/news/49300-story-page-2.html post # 7 by "ThatGuy" in a different thread.
I didn't say all my quotes about Windows 8 were from this thread.
When you can no longer attack the issue from a logical standpoint, attack the one making the argument, nice.
Anyway, Im taking ET3D's advice. I've said all I need to say. Windows 8 is a choice, ,not a mandate, so let everyone do what they want. Im tired and going to sleep.

Wow, I see as usual most of you are missing the point of this upgrade entirely. Metro isn't going to be a big deal. The only reason people are complaining is because most people are always complaining about anything they aren't used to. The main thing most users should be considering is that this new OS has improved speed in almost every category compared to Win 7 and XP. For those people who have a hard time understanding this, that means just about everything you do on your computer everyday will go faster than it does now. Speed tests have proven this. But the best part is that all of this comes at only $40. That's a pretty sick deal for a speed boost across the board.

@DBZ

There is one huge thing which many missed with regard to new UI/kernel unification + optimization, I.e. MS is drawing up a course for 'unified' application development for mobile+desktop platforms. Skipping the merits or demirts of it, the logic seems solid IMHO, and if they succeed in it, it will stump both Google and Apple, putting them on-course to continue to dominate computer industry for many more years. The question is, can they pull it off and get programers on-board?

I think if they get the pricing 'right' with their Surface tabs, give compelling enough tools* to manage these devices in the corporate environment + economical/realistic desktop pricing they may well go someway in achieving their goal.

* I think BOYD will increase IT support costs across the board, so managing them will become a huge headache.

Marble the kernel from tho microsoft - if neder "Surface" canbe enocomical thro comercial thinking, than tho Apple or google note with the look in!

@Archean
I think the unified development is definitely where MS are heading. How they work to achieve it should be an interesting tale. Having a huge library/backround in x86-64 software has to be parlayed into the Win 8 RT market in a very compressed timeframe. I don't know of any high profile MS x86 based apps that are readily available for use with ARM's instruction set- although I'd be the first to admit that my knowledge is lacking in the mobile sector and derived from the ongoing debates surrounding the Surface

Archean, from what I've read until now, it sounds like ARM development will be limited to Metro apps, which IMO is a mistake. If Windows RT machines could run standard .NET apps out of the box, that would have been a great start.

@DBZ and E3

I think ARM and x86 debate may well become pointless, provided, Intel backs up Medfield with compelling offering, strengthening case for x86 chips in mobile devices. At this point in time, I am inclining towards Intel achieving this goal with some hard work and technological lead in its manufacturing fabs.

Short comment because I'm watching Alonso heading for a win (? as his tires seems to be running out of grip) at Silverstone with left eye, and hoping Federer nails Murray with right eye.

Note: I know I can multitask

People can get used to anything over time. I can get used to eating cold pizza and drinking warm beer. But if I have a choice I want hot pizza and cold beer. Windows 7 Ultimate was new when it came out and I never had to "get used to it".
The reason everything goes faster on Windows 8 is because cellphones and tablets were added to the equation when calculating what the final product would be like. "Speed" isn't the holy grail of how one chooses which operating system to use. It's a factor to be considered amoung many, many others. The speed of Windows 7 on my computer is just fine. Stripping out complex UI themes for simplistic tiles and telling me its faster isn't an incentive to upgrade to Windows 8. Of course its faster. Because instead of attempting to harness the full power of a desktop they started with the power of cellphones/tablets and used that as the common base when making software design choices. Saying everybody should upgrade to 'Windows 8' because of a speed boost is ludicrous. Releasing the same functionality at an improved speed would be something to talk about. Designing an operating system with cellphones/tablets in mind and then adapting it to the desktop and then telling everybody its faster than Windows 7 is comparing Apples to Oranges.
Yeah, $40 is a pretty sick deal. That's not a bad price to convert my desktop to a cellphone/tablet OS.

Actually, I don't think alot of people are missing what Microsoft is attempting to do at all. I think almost everybody who is unhappy with the new Windows 8 OS sees exactly what Microsoft is attempting to do. I think the unified application development of desktop+mobile platforms is the most obvious and glaring reason for most people's complaints about Windows 8. It's an assumption that one UI can be designed that will work equally well across all devices. So, whether or not you using a 27" desktop monitor or a 4.3" cellphone screen you will be using the same interface. I don't how your brain works but, on the contrary, this doesn't seem logical to me at all. It seems completely delusional. And since cellphones and tablets lack the raw power a desktop CPU the "unified" operating system gets designed around the lowest common denominator so that no child gets left behind.

I look it at nothing more then this is what MS wants you to do, not something we were asking for. They want to make all their products the same (pc/tablet/phone) so there is uniform between the 3. That is how they plan to catch back up with Apple in 2 of those 3 markets.

But to me this is like MS adding ribbons to their apps (no one asked), or like their xbox will use any controller except a mouse, for no good reason (limiting our choice on how we want to do things). I think MS hates mice. They now feel I want to touch my pc screen as if it is easier and faster. Both are false. So these changes are really are for their benefit and wanting to change something we are not asking for.

I look forward to after market apps to give me back a more standard desktop. I have not been asking for a desktop change, so I don't want one. It is also fair to judge it artistically and it's fugly, looks like an early 70's vibe of squares and odd non-favorite colors, I'm waiting for people to pop out of the squares and tell jokes and that the joke is on me. After market app's will use some of the metro technology to add good functionality with what we are accustomed to. A real benefit of both worlds and not the heavy forced hand of "You will do this!".