Is it worth doing the Win8 Upgrade now?

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kiwidude83

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#111652 10-Nov-2012 10:57

Is it worth purchasing the Win8 upgrade now for $20? or would it be ideal to wait until the last 1-2 days of the promotion in case of service pack fixes??

I want to upgrade a netbook from winxp to win 8 - netbook is only used to run isky on tv so its nothing major but i dont want to be downloading a fix after fix after fix for it....

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#715074 10-Nov-2012 11:00

There won't be any service pack release for months. A service pack is a collection of hotfix patches. Those hotfixes are released as needed.

Go and install now if you want it.

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sidefx

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#715075 10-Nov-2012 11:01

It's $50 - $20 is the price to upgrade an eligible (recently purchased) win7 system. (Though I think there was a loophole that you could use to get this price even without a win7 system but this is now closed)

If that's all it's used for (isky) I'd maybe just leave it on winxp...

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#715080 10-Nov-2012 11:16

will a netbook run win 8 smoothly? gosh mine netbook (single core and lousy GPU) wouldn't even multitask on XP let alone windows 7

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#715081 10-Nov-2012 11:20

One of the reasons netbooks failed to capture a market is because once the consumer bought one and realised they weren't really that great for anything except for booting the OS they were either (a) returned or (b) forgotten.

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kiwidude83

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#715124 10-Nov-2012 13:25

sidefx: It's $50 - $20 is the price to upgrade an eligible (recently purchased) win7 system. (Though I think there was a loophole that you could use to get this price even without a win7 system but this is now closed)

If that's all it's used for (isky) I'd maybe just leave it on winxp...

I purchased a laptop recently so am able to get the $20 upgrade - but instead of putting it on my win7 i thought may as well chuck it on a netbook and see how it goes....

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#715130 10-Nov-2012 13:38

I have W8 on my I3 powered netbook. Runs fine.

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#715161 10-Nov-2012 14:46

I3 is very powerful ... Can run a desktop ... I thought netbooks run atom

netspanner

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#715832 12-Nov-2012 13:36

Been working with updating classroom machines and laptop to Win 8 at the moment. We need them for programming Win 8.

Man what a job!!

Once you get it working its great but the incompatibilities and issues we have make me wish we hadn't tried. Although there isn't a service pack, at present its downloading almost a gig of windows updates, so there is tons of something out there it needs.

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#715905 12-Nov-2012 15:31

joker97: will a netbook run win 8 smoothly? gosh mine netbook (single core and lousy GPU) wouldn't even multitask on XP let alone windows 7

You should check your netbook meets the minimum resolution(s) for Windows 8:

1: The minimum resolution in which Windows 8 "Windows Store" apps will run is 1024x768.

2: The minimum resolution required to support all the features of Windows 8 (including multitasking with snap) is 1366x768

mattwnz

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#715915 12-Nov-2012 15:54

Unless you are running a touchscreen device, I would stick with windows 8. Also win 7 will be better on a low res netbook, as some windows 8 features, including apps aren't supported on low res screens, which makes it pretty useless for low res netbooks.

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#715958 12-Nov-2012 17:29

You mean win 7

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#716203 13-Nov-2012 09:36

I installed it recently on a spare laptop and have been playing with W8 this week. I have to say the more I use it the more I like it. For 'Joe Bloggs' its going to be pretty good. You can easily get to your email, facebook, music and videos etc and if everything you need has a 'tile' I doubt you will end up in the old style desktop too often.

If you want to do more than that it can sometimes seem a little frustrating to end up in the desktop and on a smaller screen (mine only does 1280) you wont get to use the 'snap' feature. Not having basic information like a clock and date in the gui, for me, is a mistake. I shouldnt have to use a couple of tiles for that given the extra space around the side of them.

Its clearly built for a touch screen, but once you get the hang of the 'four corner' approach and how you do the common tasks its pretty easy on a laptop.

Interestingly my wife (who can barely use Skype on a smartphone) opened this laptop instead of hers (they are identical), had a quick look around and immediately said 'oh this is nice'.

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#716212 13-Nov-2012 09:51

Ragnor:

1: The minimum resolution in which Windows 8 "Windows Store" apps will run is 1024x768.

This!

I had the consumer preview of Windows 8 on my HP Netbook. The OS itself ran very nicely. No "metro" apps would load though due to the 768 minimum resolution. I did manage to force the resolution to be 768 (squashed the pixels) but it wasn't workable long term. I went back to Windows 7 but that was for another reason.

Im now running Widnows 8 on my laptop now as my main OS and cant fault it. I never/rarely use the "metro" apps as most of my work is in the "dekstop" world so to sum up I will probably put Windows 8 back on the netbook soon.