
Windows 8 Pro price going from $40 to $200 on Feb 1 - djt
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/buy?ocid=GA8_O_WOL_SM_NewPC_FPP_Null
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sergiotapia
I'm still pissed off at them for not allowing me to upgrade or even purchase a
standalone version of Windows 8. I live in Bolivia, why can't I purchase a
DIGITAL GOOD using something like Paypal.

Every other online business accepts my hard earned money, Microsoft doesn't.
Fuck 'em. (Pardon my french)

I really __really __wanted to go legit and buy myself a copy of Windows 8 but
not legal paths are provided for me.

~~~
djt
can you buy a copy from amazon and get it shipped?

~~~
sergiotapia
The thing is: Why should I?

Why can I ilegally download a Windows 7 .ISO, apply a serial key and have it
work?

Why can't I do the same for Windows 8 legally?

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petercooper
Maybe there's an obvious answer, but why can't they sell it in a non-upgrade
version for download too (even at $200)?

I'm a Mac user who wants a legal Windows 8 VM but short of buying Windows 7 +
the upgrade (except the online MS store doesn't seem to have 7) or joining
MSDN ($700+) I can't find a legal way to do it.

~~~
dangrossman
There is no full-version retail Windows product, and probably never will be
for future versions either. If you want to install on a new PC or VM, you are
to buy the System Builder ('OEM') license.

[http://www.amazon.com/Windows-System-Builder-
DVD-64-Bit/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/Windows-System-Builder-
DVD-64-Bit/dp/B0094NY3R0)

[http://www.amazon.com/Windows-Professional-System-
Builder-64...](http://www.amazon.com/Windows-Professional-System-
Builder-64-Bit/dp/B0094NXBZ0/ref=sr_1_2?s=software&ie=UTF8&qid=1358613482&sr=1-2&keywords=windows+8+system+builder)

Previously, the OEM license was only for installing Windows on PCs intended
for sale. The newest System Builder license includes a provision allowing you
to install it on a system or a virtual machine for personal use. That's why
they don't need to produce a consumer retail box any more.

~~~
petercooper
Ah yeah, I should have stressed the download part. My local Amazon (UK) has an
OEM version available on DVD which is ultimately probably how I'll have to do
it and then rip it to an ISO. But it's 2013.. c'mon MS.

~~~
djt
yeah that sucks. It may be a deal with the OEMs thats creates this weird
situation.

~~~
myalt
They run all their taxes through the country they stamp the discs in.

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Mahn
Perhaps the most important question is... why would a _desktop_ user want to
"upgrade" to windows 8? Seriously, to this day I still don't know.

~~~
pizza
Windows 8 is a fantastic improvement to Windows 7. Not that I've taken
measurements, but it feels much faster. The built-in tools like task manager
and even the copying utility are much more informative and useful now. I was
much more impressed with it than I thought I would be, and now it's running on
two of my family's laptops and our desktop.

Are you saying a desktop user wouldn't want to use windows 8 because of the
Metro UI? There's only really one place where I ever see Metro on Windows 8,
and that's in the start screen (which replaced the start menu), which is
easily navigable using just a keyboard. In fact, I prefer the start screen to
the start menu in Windows 7, Vista etc. because it's just a lot faster.

~~~
kunai
Try Stardock's Start8 utility and you'll see just how useless the Start screen
is on a desktop. Start8 is just like a curated Start screen Start menu hybrid.
It's a far better implementation than Microsoft's.

Sorry, but I still think Microsoft screwed up by putting a tablet interface on
a desktop OS. If they just had spent a little more time on how exactly they
planned to get Metro on the desktop, things could have really been great.

~~~
Zr40
This is what choice is about. Like the start screen? No problem. Don't like
the start screen? Use one of the many start menu replacements.

------
rbanffy
Someone _really_ needs to hit their unit sales target before January ends...
;-)

Now, seriously, this has been known since before the launch.

------
teamonkey
A word of warning to those upgrading. If you upgrade from a 32-bit version of
Windows you are forced to upgrade to 32-bit Windows 8 with no access to the
64-bit edition.

Annoyingly, some manufacturers (in my case Dell) shipped 32-bit versions of
Vista and Windows 7 on 64-bit processors, presumably to save costs.

~~~
Stratoscope
You can't do an in-place upgrade from 32 to 64 bit, but you can do a clean
install.

The older machines that had 32 bit Windows on 64 bit hardware were usually
done that way for software compatibility back when a lot of devices didn't
have good 64 bit support. Also out of conservatism in corporate sales.

~~~
teamonkey
It was a clean install. If you use the upgrade tool to upgrade a 32-bit
version of Vista or Win7, the version of Windows 8 that is downloaded (and
which you can burn to DVD) has no 64-bit support.

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wiradikusuma
How much is the "standard" edition? Can't find it in the website, always
redirected to buy Pro.

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macspoofing
That should increase sales.

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MaggieL
By the way, if your BIOS doesn't support "Secure Boot", forget it.

~~~
Zr40
Not true. Windows 8 runs regardless of whether Secure Boot is supported.

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peterhi
So HN is taking ads now?

~~~
djt
nope, i am going to buy a copy before the price goes up and i thought others
here might too. I assume MS would keep the price low for Win 8, but apparently
not.

~~~
peterhi
The link you submitted goes straight to the Microsoft sales page. No news, no
discussion. Just pure advertising.

If you are upgrading to Windows 8 then good for you. But the link you posted
is just an advert.

~~~
djt
If Raspberry Pi was increasing its price on a certain day then I don't think
people would complain.

At least it's honest. Half the blog posts are just SEO for people in tech's
businesses.

------
ceiloazule
Microsoft has been all about the cash for quite sometime now, after the scam
they ran with vista/langehorn (or was it longhorn), I'll go linux before I'd
spend another cent on one of their o.s.

~~~
kunai
Well, of course they want money. They're a business, and last time I checked,
businesses, uh, made money. I believe it's part of their job description.

And Vista/Longhorn wasn't a "scam" like you say. It was a crappy OS, but it
certainly wasn't a scam -- scam = fraud. Fraud = litigation. Nobody sued
Microsoft over Vista. Sure, it was a battery and resource hogging, slow,
buggy, unintuitive, annoying, unstable operating system, but to say it was a
scam is going a bit too far.

And there's a reason why many people still run Windows. I'm running Xubuntu
12.10 on my box right now, and it's the best OS I've used so far -- except for
the software library. GNU/Linux has a very limited software library, whereas
Windows has the largest. And before you shout "WINE!", many applications do
not run properly on Wine, and many recent apps aren't even supported, i.e.
Adobe Creative Suite 6.

GNU/Linux still has a long way to go in terms of software, so it cannot be
considered a viable replacement for Windows. Until somebody develops a native,
modern, full-featured office suite and Adobe ports CS to GNU/Linux, many pro
and business users are left with two options: to buy an expensive OS X
machine, or to buy an expensive OS upgrade for their PC. Either way, the
customer loses.

I still dual boot 7 for this very reason, even though it's not even close to
Xubuntu in terms of stability. And it's not that 7 is a bad operating system,
it's just that Xubuntu is so good it makes 7 look lopsided in comparison.
Don't get me wrong -- Windows 7 is a very good OS, apart from the security
problems, which aren't even that bad compared to previous versions of Windows.
Don't run as root and you'll be O.K.

Microsoft has gotten a lot of flak lately, some of it deserved, some of it
not-so-well-deserved. But they're a company. Companies make mistakes, and I
don't think it's fair to label them as scammers just because they rushed an OS
to market.

~~~
ubercow13
Are there really still notable security problems?

~~~
kunai
Yes, there are. The main problem, and by far the biggest flaw is that during
setup, Windows assigns you to the root account by default. This is a gigantic
security hole that has not been fixed in over 17 years. The primary reason
that GNU/Linux, BSD, and UNIX systems are secure is that they do not assign
the default user root. It's very dangerous. Ask anyone who has fallen for the
"sudo rm -rf /" trick how they felt about the power of root access.

What makes matters worse is that there really is no equivalent of sudo in
Windows, and the CLI utilities are very limited in nature. If one wants to
install new software, there's no prompt to authenticate with your password --
if you are an admin, the system only presents you with a yes/no dialog box.
The only way to secure a Windows environment and make it somewhat like a *nix
system is by setting the hidden Administrator account password, and using a
standard user account for daily tasks. If you need to install new software,
you can authenticate with the admin password.

It's not a perfect solution, but unless Microsoft realizes how easy it is for
malware to propagate in NT, this is the only option.

~~~
djt
Couldn't this be chalked up to usability for 99% of users that use Windows?

