Rumor: Windows 8 Upgrade To Cost $14.99, Starts June 2
Good news for PC users who plan to purchase a PC with Windows 7 in the coming months. New details about Microsoft's upcoming upgrade promotion have come to light. News broke a few days ago that Microsoft was planning a promotion for customers who'd purchase a PC running Windows 7 Home Basic or better in the near future. What we did not know at that point in time was the upgrade price, when the promotion would launch, and what upgrade paths were offered.
Today, additional information about the deal where revealed by Mary Jo-Foley and Paul Thurrott. The promotion starts on June 2 according to their information, which falls in line with the release of the Windows 8 Release Candidate. With Windows 8 rumored to be released in the fourth quarter of 2012, it gives customers buying a PC with Windows 7 ample time to upgrade to the operating system, should they wish to do so.
This marks a shift in strategy, especially when compared to the Vista to Windows 7 upgrade promotion. Back then, Windows Vista customers could upgrade to Windows 7, but only to the version closest to the one that shipped with the PC that they did purchase back then.
Windows 8 Pro is Microsoft's retail flagship product, with the only other version competing on the desktop simply named Windows 8. When you look at the differences between the two versions, you will notice that Windows 8 Pro ships with business related features that the regular version does not ship with. This includes Client Hyper-V, Domain Join, Group Policy, Remote Desktop (host), and Bitlocker encryption.
It is interesting to note that buying a Windows 7 PC and taking Microsoft up on the upgrade offer may come cheaper than buying a Windows 8 Pro PC directly when the operating system comes out.
The upgrade price is more than fair, especially since users get the Pro version of Windows 8, even if they only purchased a PC with an "inferior" Windows 7 version. Keep in mind that this has not been officially confirmed by Microsoft yet.
I'd suggest to check with the retailer first before making any purchases, to make sure that the PC you want to buy is included in the upgrade promotion.
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That’s about $15 too much to charge for turning a perfectly functional computer into a giant Windows phone without phone capacity.
I agree!
The “experts” have predicted that Windows 8, along with Microsoft’s phone will suffer the same fate as Vista and MS will be left looking like fools, which they’re quite good at!
No need to downgrade when Win7 works perfectly fine! :)
So true, why would anyone want to downgrade to Windows 8
only thing windows 8 has going for it is the fast boot feature… which my solidstate drive can do that already with win7. Win8 is phail.
Great! And then you can spend all the money you’ll save upgrading on license to PowerDVD. So… everyone’s happy? O_o
Or install a free third party DVD player instead.
No, you can’t if you want both Metro & Desktop functions.
VideoLAN’s Jean-Baptiste Kempf:
VideoLAN cannot plan anything about VLC project,
since developers are volunteers :) However, we have
given Win8 a quite serious look. So far, VLC runs
on the Win8 desktop without any issue. However, for
the Metro interface, it requires the usage of the
WinRT sandbox. The WinRT seems too limited for VLC,
so far. With a lot of work and resources, it should
be doable, but we do not have those resources yet
:) Any help is welcome! Note that the browsers are
allowed on x86 to get an mixed application mode
(used by Mozilla and Chrome) that is not available
for other applications, so we cannot use it.
That does not really impact DVD play though.
This is the first time ever that I am not upgrading to Windows new operating system. I’m sticking with Windows 7 for as long as I can.
I really hope that is true, otherwise it would be waste to spend so much money on a computer with old OS.
Vista to Windows 7 was for free.
Thank you, but no thank you.
I was planning on purchasing a Win 7 desktop soon – not because I need one – not because I want one – but to avoid ever getting stuck with Win 8. I guess I’ll just use that $15.00 on something useful.