Now that I have a few machines running Windows 8 I thought I'd share my upgrade experience and thoughts after upgrading 2 machines from clean installs.
Firstly, if you're running any other windows OS other than Windows 7, this upgrade really is a must for the price. It's really hard to argue with what's on offer for £25, even if you hate the UI, because there are a ton of easy tweaks to make them go away.
I've got a ton of active machines to pick from, so deciding which machine I was going to test all this out on was tough. Either way, I was always going to be going for clean installs, as I'd bought 2 128gb SSDs for the purpose. It just so happens that the first machine I installed Windows 8 retail on, was my housemates laptop.
His Samsung laptop was running an OEM Vista 32 and had activation problems for a year. The upgrader was run on a Vista machine, he bought his key and I burnt off installation media through the upgrader. Any time a new key is needed, run the upgrader, buy a key and write it down. I believe it's a limit of 5 per person.
Install was by far the smoothest MS OS install I've ever done. Most of the drivers were installed with installation and they were up to date and correct. The chipset drivers were accurate for the most part and the only driver I had to download was for WLAN, as it was out of date.
Considering some of the more "specialist" drivers the laptop needed, especially after having installed Vista on it for him numerous times and it being spartan to say the least, MS have done a good job with their driver choice it seems.
It's also worth noting that by the time I could be bothered offering to help him to get Win 8 running like Win 7, he'd become used to the UI and was actually using the launch page.
For my own machines, I almost have too many choices. I know I can't install Win 8 on my Samsung Q1 without some hassle. It won't upgrade because of the CPU speed, I may try to install it and see what happens. My main gaming machine is Vista 64, it was free, it works fine now after the bazillion updates it took to fix it - no real reason to upgrade, but there's an SSD waiting for it. My HTPC is a quad core machine running Vista. My XPS laptop could use a kick up the arse. It's a Core 2 running XP at the minute and Windows 8 really will improve that machine. My netbook is running Win 7, so I really don't see the point in upgrading it. I've got a few more XP servers in various states of use, even for £25.. they may just be best running what they run, they don't face the real world anyway.
I decided to upgrade my gaming machine last night.
Again the installation went smoothly and quickly. From format to playing around on the desktop can't have been much more than 20 minutes start to finish. By the time I'd had a pot of coffee, I was reinstalling steam on the SSD and pointing to the old HDD.
The only drivers I had to install were Nvidia drivers and an updated Intel SATA driver.
Personally I don't like the Windows 8 UI. I didn't like it in preview and I don't like it now. With multiple monitors, the default boot process gives your primary monitor the app view and the secondary monitor the desktop view. Although my intention was always to boot directly to desktop, this default setup isn't bad. If you click on the desktop visible on the secondary monitor, your primary monitor switches to desktop. Whilst this is ok, I disabled it anyway and go directly to desktop.
The controversial lack of a start bar, is for me something that I guess I could work around, but I really don't want to. I'm programmed to use UI's this way now, for MS to take that away from me.. smells. It's their though, they can do what they want. That's why workarounds and tweaks exists. Roll on..
www.startisback.com.
There are lots of options for replacement start bars, but this one is unobtrusive, cheap as chips ($3 for two lifetime installation licences) and just works. It's tiny and it does the job. It doesn't even create any indication that it's installed. Right click on the start button and you can configure some stuff, other than that, it just works.
I can't have spent more than an hour on installation, updating and adding 3 tweaks (startisback, autologin and boot to desktop) and setting up the taskbar. Apart from a few things, this now runs identically to my two windows 7 machines.
The simple fact of the matter is, that Windows 8 is a bargain at £25. If you wanted to upgrade any machine to windows 7 previously and you couldn't justify the cost, I certainly suggest you consider Win 8 strongly. If you're on any other OS.. what are you waiting for?
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