Did you know that if you purchase(d) a Microsoft Windows 7 notebook or desktop between June 2, 2012 and January 31, 2013 then you may be eligible for a Windows 8 Pro upgrade for $14.99?
The offer is for customers (e.g. home users, students, and enthusiasts) who purchase a qualified PC. A qualified PC is a new PC purchased during the promotional period with a valid Windows 7 OEM Certificate of Authenticity and product key for, and preinstalled with:
- Windows 7 Home Basic;
- Windows 7 Home Premium;
- Windows 7 Professional; or
- Windows 7 Ultimate.
The promotional price is limited to one upgrade offer per qualified PC purchased, and a maximum limit of five upgrade offers per customer.
Check out Microsoft’s Windows Upgrade Offer page for full details.
Nice cheap way to give Microsoft’s new OS a go 🙂
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I believe Asus has its own deal too for a mail in rebate to make the upgrade free!
So keep a eye out for secondary discount offers as well.
Thanks IAN, it’s really great proposition I will definitely take advantage of this…
Along with this program, you run Windows8 upgrade assistant to see what is incompatible on your PC. The problem is many programs are incompatible and is not solved simply by upgrading drivers. I wouldn’t be in such a rush to upgrade. Wait and see what develops in this early stage before you put your programs and hardware at operating risk. One woman’s opinion. I prefer to wait until I purchase a Windows 8 device at some point. I truly believe this OS needs a PC with a touch-screen to be fully appreciated.
@Laurie, I have a promo code for a copy based on a new notebook I bought for the wife. I will NOT be putting it on her notebook as she’s a bit of a technophobe so even changing the position of an icon can throw her 🙂 I’m deciding where to use the license for testing and yes, I’m not ready to put it on one of my “production” notebooks yet. That being said I don’t want my experience to be “tainted” by putting it on older hardware either. I do have an old Toughbook CF-19 which would be perfect because it does a touchscreen, but then it’s a pretty low specced machine for power conservation. I ran the Assistant across it and nothing came up as overly incompatible. Arghhh, the dilemma 🙂
Oh and I suspect Android will remain my “consumer” tablet OS of choice.
I upgrade my 6 month old Acer Aspire One. It’s 11.6 inch screen (not touchscreen), 4GB RAM and a 1ghz dual core processor. I swapped out the hard drive for a 90GB SSD. It’s slow, but no more so than a tablet. The upgrade happended with no hassles.
Mmm…. what are the benefits. Flashy new lock screen which displays waiting emails, time, next calendar appointment. Gets some getting used to, but once you do its intiutive (in my opinion). The charms that come up on the right hand side are useful. Basically this brings up the setting for each app. The share function is good. The tile homescreen look good and the tiles being bigger than standard icons is nice. Active tiles – not sure. So, I can see news article revolve on the tile. But if I wanted to see the news, I would tap the tile and look at the app.
There are a number of apps out there for programs that I use frequently e.g. OliveTree Bible and Logos Bible. They look good, but the functionality is waaaay behind their equivalent “Win7” counterparts. But then all the Win7 apps work fine on Win8. There’s a desktop tile that takes you to a Win7 lookalike – a nice security blanket. Security Essentials is built in.
Is it more stable? Don’t know. Is it faster? Doesn’t seem so. But maybe. What’s the big motivator to upgrade? Perhaps a touchscreen? I would be interested to see if anyone with a touchscreen sees the benefits.
Downloaded it only because it was 15 bucks, after purchasing a new lappy in July. Got the ISO, but, even if I do install it, I’d probably hold off until I got something with a touch screen.
I did install it into a VM on the home box, and installed one of the start replacement apps, to make navigating a little easier.
Looks like WIN7, with a new interface to me. (and all the win7 updates)
Downloaded and installed on a Panasonic Toughbook CF-19 mark I. Worth noting that the image download is 2.7GB, keep that in mind if you’re on a capped internet plan.
Runs well on this low speced (1.06GHz) machine with 1.5GB of memory though it’s really just a download box for me so haven’t loaded office or anything like that on it.
The new “Metro” view start page is interesting. It’s easily navigated by using a touch screen, but a little more difficult to use with a mouse. There’s not that many apps (that I use) that fully integrate with the “Metro” view yet so to me it almost feels like you’re running two different systems; the “Metro” view and the traditional Windows 7 type desktop (without a start button).
I can see where this will be nice on a full touch screen device however am currently in two minds how it’s advantageous on a “traditional” desktop/notebook.