Don't Expect Deals Before Windows 8 Debuts

Microsoft is unlikely to offer price cuts for Windows 8 upgrades, as it did before the release of Windows 7, analyst says.

"I would expect upgrade pricing to consumers to be on par with Windows 7," said Stephen Baker of the NPD Group. "They had a compelling reason to get consumers off of Vista and priced [it] to make that happen [in 2009]. But the reason to get consumers onto a more modern platform with a software upgrade is a lot less now than in 2009."

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Don't Expect Deals Before Windows 8 Debuts | PCWorld
 
A price deal is not necessarily warranted for Windows 8.

It would take a book to describe the improvements in this OS versus Windows 7 and earlier. I think a fair estimate is that they have made tens of thousands of improvements. Most of these are system wide and under the hood for geeks and techs to appreciate.

The OS is magnificent and the best system available to the general public.

By the way, one may go directly to the desktop (bypassing the metro) by using hibernation. 8 uses a super fast scheme to hibernate your desktop and cold reboot (from hibernation) in less than 10 seconds.

Also, the familiar start menu is available.

 
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Hi there
It's a free market in a sluggish economy -- so ALL bets are off on speculating whether deals will appear or not.
I'm sure these will be based on business decisions taken nearer the time. I can't imagine decent update deals NOT being offered however - depends on

1) Does MS want to kill off W7 - strange as corporations are JUST beginning to switch from XP --they won't want do do the whole thing again almost immediately and

2) do MS really want to push W8 or just let it feel its own way while they possibly develop a tablet and adapt W8 as a proper smartphone OS.

cheers
jimbo
 

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Microsoft is in a strong position to sell Operating Systems. People need Operating Systems like they need food. Windows 8 will be targeted to the "consumer" and not business. It is quite amazing that this OS will be sold to people in every country on the planet. All over Europe, India, Russia, Australia, Japan, etc...

The life of an Operating System is determined by current technology.


 

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Microsoft is in a strong position to sell Operating Systems. People need Operating Systems like they need food. Windows 8 will be targeted to the "consumer" and not business. It is quite amazing that this OS will be sold to people in every country on the planet. All over Europe, India, Russia, Australia, Japan, etc...

The life of an Operating System is determined by current technology.



I'm not sure you should be trying to bamboozle everyone with logic.
 

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Nice bit of news. I am surprised however. They usually offer free upgrades for recently purchased new computers.
Still, a new OS for the price of a large pizza !
 

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That makes sense.

Win8 is so unpopular , they will have a hard job selling it for much more than that.

In case you hadn't noticed, MS is changing its business model.

They are going all out for full line forcing.

What does this bit mean:

With the free Windows 8 Pro offer available for PCs running Windows 7 Home Basic or above, we'd expect this offer to be popular over the back-to-school and holiday periods
 

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It means that people will be using Windows 8.

I do not believe they will have a hard job selling it.
Free (or low cost) upgrades are normal and expected with newly bought systems having an older version OS.

In the marketplace, there is always an enticement for a new product.

Store bought Windows 8 will be priced the same as Windows 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista, and 7.

I am not a Microsoft hater.
They make useful products that you can choose to buy or not.

You are welcome to use DOS, Windows 3.1, 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista, 7 or Windows NT.
You are welcome to use Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Suse ...
...Or Linux Mint or Slax.
Give MAC a go !
 
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Unless M$ does a 180" turnaround and gives us the start button and choice for classic desktop UI as the default boot on Windows 8, I'm going to actually enjoy watching M$ fall flat on their faces for their incredible display of hard-nosed arrogance and flipping of the finger to desktop users.

:haha:
 

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Unless M$ does a 180" turnaround and gives us the start button and choice for classic desktop UI as the default boot on Windows 8, I'm going to actually enjoy watching M$ fall flat on their faces for their incredible display of hard-nosed arrogance and flipping of the finger to desktop users.

:haha:


When cars went from a start button to an ignition switch, did you go back to the horse and buggy. You seem to be awfully hung up on a start button, you do realise it doesn't really start Windows I hope.
You should send an email to MS and demand a big fat start button on the home screen.
 

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He is perfectly entitled to love the start menu.

I like it too.

There is something odd going on at MS.

Either they have contracted some kind of collective insanity, or they have something up their sleeve we don't know about.

I think the latter is more likely - and I have a couple of theories about what it might be.

We shall see.
 

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I liked bell bottom trousers, but I've learnt to live without them. There is something odd going on at Microsoft, they're trying to stay relevant in a world that's drifting away from conventional computing.
They can sit around and do nothing and end up like RIM, or do what they're doing now and hope they've got it right.
Considering the world is moving to touch, I think they're on the right track. It doesn't mean that keyboards and mice are banned, it just means that now you've got more options. Also for people who want to stick with Windows 7, no one is making you move, it will be there for a long time yet.
 

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Considering the world is moving to touch, I think they're on the right track. It doesn't mean that keyboards and mice are banned, it just means that now you've got more options. Also for people who want to stick with Windows 7, no one is making you move, it will be there for a long time yet.

They took off native DVD playback and WMC that they would now want for an extra price, they took off the Start button and the classic Start Menu and put no option to put them back (unless you install third party stuff), there is no option to skip the Metro screen after you log on, there is no choice to disable the Metro entirely, they plan to make their software development kit make "only" Metro apps and that they would charge for something that makes traditional applications, Metro apps don't even have window controls, Aero will now be removed cause it was "cheesy" even though many still like it me included, they would treat tablets better over PC's and laptops along with legacy apps when it comes to Windows 8 even though the latter was their bread and butter. With Metro apps, they want you to pay for monthly subscriptions so they get more income. We do understand that touch is NOT applicable to all user environment and neither should M$ focus on that concept entirely on their new OS.

How would you justify it just means that now you've got more option with all those lack of choice stated? The truth is that they stripped off many of the important options. They did not give users more choice on Windows 8, but rather its true that people are being encouraged not to move from Windows 7 or switch to other OSs.:dinesh:
 

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@vertex, the options you talk about weren't being used by many people, around 6% or less, what's the use of these things if no one is using them. I love WMC but I'm willing to forgo it for the sake of a better faster system, same with Aero, I like it, but it doesn't do anything for me really.
I would much rather any day, have a faster nimbler computer than have all this stuff most people don't need or want. You might call the options important, but most people would beg to differ.
If you decide you need all these things, by all means download free versions to make your computer what you want it to be. Let me have my computer the way I want it to be.
 

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Unless M$ does a 180" turnaround and gives us the start button and choice for classic desktop UI as the default boot on Windows 8, I'm going to actually enjoy watching M$ fall flat on their faces for their incredible display of hard-nosed arrogance and flipping of the finger to desktop users.

:haha:


When cars went from a start button to an ignition switch, did you go back to the horse and buggy. You seem to be awfully hung up on a start button, you do realise it doesn't really start Windows I hope.
You should send an email to MS and demand a big fat start button on the home screen.

Actually I'm not nearly as bothered about the start button issue per se but the lack of a user option to set the default UI at OS set up so that at every boot I can have it automatically boot to the desktop UI as the default.

The motorcar was more efficient compared to the horse and buggy. Metro and touch UI on a desktop or laptop is not.

The bottom line is for desktop and laptop users with productivity needs touch and metro
IS NOT BETTER, millions of users have told M$ so, and I'm sure their research has also confirmed that fact.
Touch may be the future for folks playing with WindowPhone and Tablet toys but not the ordinary desktop and laptop users. Touch and metro both are awkward, inefficient, clumsy, and tiring to use on a desktop.

The best hope we have is that a few of those M$ employees that walked out of the meeting last year stuck around and are arguing for what I speak of. For some reason I have a hunch that my wish will actually be a reality in the final release.
 

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Well I hope for your sake you're right because it's just around the corner, I don't really care either way. I just want to be able to build a computer and put on an operating system that allows me to do what I want, Windows 8 still gives me that choice at the moment. If at some stage in the future it won't give me the choice to do what I want, I'll look elsewhere.
The thing is I believe there is a need for touch on the Desktop and Laptops, while I believe most of the work is best done with a keyboard and mouse sometimes its easier to just swipe something out of the way,and also if more than one person is at the desktop it's easier to touch the screen than to fiddle around with a mouse and keyboard.
 

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@vertex, the options you talk about weren't being used by many people, around 6% or less, what's the use of these things if no one is using them. I love WMC but I'm willing to forgo it for the sake of a better faster system, same with Aero, I like it, but it doesn't do anything for me really.
I would much rather any day, have a faster nimbler computer than have all this stuff most people don't need or want. You might call the options important, but most people would beg to differ.
If you decide you need all these things, by all means download free versions to make your computer what you want it to be. Let me have my computer the way I want it to be.
I understand, you don't want to see Windows 8 fail but gosh, I can't believe how stubborn you are with that opinion. Only 6% of users use those options I listed like the Start Menu and Start button they removed? Did you even read my whole post? And where did you get that statistic? You came to the conclusion of your "own" or maybe sharing with Micro$oft's conclusion that "most people" don't need or use those features. As far as I'm concerned, most Windows users would still prefer a Start menu and a Start button and a choice of UI to use and that can be reflected on the posts of many people here on this forum and you know that. I use WMC for watching TV and I believe, a system like Windows 8 could still perform equally fast and well even in WMC is natively installed. I agree that removing the Aero would slightly improve performance as the removal of transparency effects would use less resources in turn but what's the big deal if modern computers are powerful enough to handle all that without a sweat unless you are using a less powerful netbook or tablet?
 

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@veryex, I probably generalised a bit too much, but WMC is only used by about 6% of users, playing a DVD could be even less, from Microsoft, I don't believe they would have any reason to make that up. The Start button I have no idea of the usage, but again from Microsoft, a lot of people don't even know what it's there for.
The main thing is that MS is trying to get this OS right across the board from Desktop to Tablets and Phones, some of these systems will have much less power, hence the need to drop any extra baggage.
Hopefully they are doing this right, if they are, one day we'll look back at this and laugh, like we do at the people on XP. If they're doing it wrong, we might all end up making Apple even more money.
 

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