Price of Windows 8 Upgrade To Rise!

Only eleven more days to get it for $15.

Both the upgrade offers and the WMC free upgrade always were time-limited offers. Microsoft said at the outset that these would end on the 31st January 2013. The WMC upgrade will then become $9.99 as originally stated by Microsoft.

The Win8 upgrade then becomes exactly the same as the Win7 upgrades.

Good luck with that MS.

you don't need to install Win8 by the deadline. only need to have purchased it by the deadline to get that price. And since they're going to more rapid iterations of Windows (yearly is the guess), getting the Win8 licence and holding it would probably be the cheapest way into the new Windows (codenamed Blue).

but for the free WMC, you have to install it by the date. you can't just hold onto a free WMC key. so yeah, basically, you would need to install Win8 in order to redeem your free WMC.

but WMC is only $10 thereafter. less than the cost of a movie ticket.

All the more reason to enjoy Win7 for it's full life span.

I think the problem with these price increases are that Win7 was an O/S in huge demand after the problems with Vista, so in a lot of situations, people were prepared to pay the asking price just to get shot of Vista. Windows 8 is having the opposite problem. There's very low demand, as people are very reluctant to move from Win7, so increasing the price will only hurt the O/S even more.

Granted, this shouldn't effect the people buying a new PC, unless MS are going to increase the cost of an OEM license as well!

MS needs to follow the same pricing that Apple has for their OS. I recall buying a copy of Snow Leopard for only $30, full retail price. I wouldn't shell out more than the $40 I paid for my Win 8 upgrade. It looks like I'm going to have five expired free licenses for WMC because I don't plan on installing Win 8 in a HTPC anytime soon. Win 7 works just fine for me, thank you very much.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6674/getting-the-best-out-of-an-ivy-bridge-htpc-windows-8-madvr-and-more/3

Relevant info regarding Netflix on 7 vs. 8.
They don't mention WMC remote use.

That's the normal price for Windows.

i have been debating getting 2 or 3 upgrade licenses at this price for 2 months, just in case i want to go to 8. still have 10 days to go lol.

Can somebody check my math.

My HTPC is WinXP SP3 and the forces of nature are forcing me to move to W8 which I have purchased and is an ISO on a disc.. I use Acronis True Image11 to create and restore images for XP. Acronis 11 won't work on W8. I don't want to fling myself into W8 at this point but I'm trying to beat the WMC free option (1/31/13).

My plan:
1) wipe the drive and install W8 then apply the wmc plugin (before 1/31/13)
2) Create an image of this build with W8 (I believe I've read it's actually W7 imaging)
3) Create a rescue disc in W8 (I assume a rescue disc is used to restore a prior image of the OS)
4) Use the acronis true image 11 rescue disc to restore the prior WinXP image
5) continue to run WinXP
6) When I'm ready, use the W8 rescue disc to restore the W8 w/ wmc plugin image
7) Continue on my merry way with W8.

Is there anything wrong with my plan.

just pull the band aid off!

Any chance you have an extra hard drive lying around (or buy one)?

1. Disconnect (don't have to remove) old hard drive
2. Connect new drive (temporarily)
3. Install Windows 8 to new drive.
4. Disconnect new drive and put it away till needed?
5. Reconnect old drive.
6. Continue to use XP.

Do 1, install something such as StartIsBack, and then 7. Then do step 2 at some point.

Why are you going to go through all that?

Update

Just got off the phone w/ M$ W8 people and they say my plan will work. My specific questions:

1) Entire OS imaging available in W8 - -> yes (actually W7 imaging)
2) Entire OS image can be stored on a local hard drive (this is how I would do it, didn't ask about network drives or optical media or usb thumbs) -> yes
3) W8 can create a "rescue disc" (rescue discs are what you boot into in order to restore an image file - in this case a W8 image) -> yes
4) There should be no problem using acronis11 rescue disc (boot into) to restore the WinXP image -> I know this already, they did not confirm
5) There should be no problem using the W8 rescue disc (boot into) to restore W8 image -> confirmed
I will probably have to flip/flop rescue discs when flip/flopping OSs - Acronis to restore WinXP and W8 to restore W8

The only thing that confused both of us was the role of uefi (w8) vs legacy (WinXP) bios -> I'm thinking I should set bios to UEFI when installing W8 and then when I'm flip/flopping OSs just to flip/flop the bios setting (legacy vs uefi). Can anyone offer insight on this issue?

So it seems like if I'm in W8 and want to return to XP, I use acronis rescue disc and set bios to legacy. When I'm in XP and want to return to W8 I use W8 rescue disc and set bios to uefi.

I'm thinking the 2nd hard drive option is not necessary and jumping off the bridge without a net is not in the cards.

Side Note: M$ did tell me that a clean install (no prior OS) would create an error that would require me to call them to force through a fix that would allow it. I was under the impression a clean install from an ISO would be possible without assistance. Good thing I called -> panic avoided.

The same ways around this for W7 work with the W8 upgrade keys as well

it seems like it's a lot of work to save $10. if you're not ready to move to Win8, just buy the license and stick with WinXP. no need to go to all this trouble to just let the installation sit in a disk image.

but the sooner you start learning the new OS, the better you're going to get familiar with it. Like with Windows 7, the people that had Windows Vista knew all the "new" techniques of Windows 7 because Windows 7 feels very much like Windows Vista in terms of user interface. Same start menu, same shortcuts, etc. Windows 7 is just a tuned-up extension of Vista. But the people that jumped from XP to Windows 7, they had to make a lot of adjustments. And I know a ton of people that manipulated Win7 to look and feel like XP to meet their comfort level.

especially since Win8 is the new paradigm going forward for Microsoft. its design is pretty much here to stay. but worst case, there are lots of ways to make Win8 look and feel like Win7 or heck, even XP.

.

The "when" is trying to save $10. The "what" is going to happen regardless. No matter when I start moving from XP to W8 I'm going to approach the migration in this fashion. I'm not going to cut XP loose from this machine until W8 is exactly how I want it. That's going to take weeks, maybe months. But, during that time, I'm going to have the HTPC that I've come to know and love and trust. All of the trials and errors will happen on a "non-production" machine and there will never be a time-critical fix.

I used a VL iso to install my Win8 Pro on three PCs and they all accepted the upgrade key.

But since you write M$ and are still on XP I guess we are beating a dead horse here.

I'm no expert in this area, but I'm pretty sure the UEFI BIOS is a function of the motherboard firmware. Chances are if you're using an older motherboard with XP it probably doesn't have a UEFI BIOS.

Please chime in and let me know if I'm mistaken in my line of thinking on this. I've only seen UEFI BIOS on the latest motherboards I've purchased. I'm using one in my unRAID server and the other is in my primary HTPC. The one PC on which I've installed Win 8 doesn't have a UEFI BIOS nor is there any provision I'm aware of for activating one. It just boots with the same old DOS-like interface.

UEFI is a function of BIOS, but if you want the super fast boot speed you will also need a video card which is UEFI compliant. Right now I do not know of any which are - though some of the newest might have BIOS updates to allow it. It is vendor based as well, so one ATI might have it and another of the same type but different vendor might not.

The two motherboards I own that have UEFI BIOS both use CPUs with integrated graphics. My sole Win 8 PC boots way faster than either of them and it uses a fairly old nVidia graphics card and does not have UEFI BIOS. It's also a fairly basic setup with an SSD for the OS, optical drive, and 2nd hard drive for files. The unRAID server uses an AMD A4 Illano CPU, but it also has two Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 8-port SATA controllers and it has to poll each drive connected to it so it takes a while. The other is my HTPC which has two InfiniTV4 cablecard tuners, a Hauppauge 2250 and an AverMedia Duet ATSC tuner and also an Intel PCI-e NIC. It takes time to initialize all of the devices and boot into Windows. The point being that boot time is dependent on lots of things other than just having a UEFI compliant graphics card. No doubt it may help shave a few seconds off, but you're still at the mercy of the OS to get everything else up and running.

Correction

I just checked and the board does not have UEFI. So that whole issue is irrelevant. I've thought about the HTPC as a "new" build for far too long. It's a C2D processor on an MSI board. Checked newegg history and it turns out that machine's pieces are from 2007. Time sure flies. My desktop PC is a i3 on an intel board and that does have UEFI. Knew I saw that switch somewhere.

And back to the original post... 9 more days to get the cheap Win 8 upgrade. Less than 9 more days to get the free WMC key (since it can take up to 72 hours to arrive).

I think I'm still sitting on about six unused WMC keys.