Saturday, December 1, 2012

I decided not to upgrade to Windows 8 at this moment

Microsoft has just launched Windows 8 operating system recently, and is now given an offer for existing Windows users to upgrade to Windows 8 Professional at the price of US$39.99 (download from Internet) or US$69.99 (purchase the DVD media). This offer period is until end of January 2013.

My Dell Studio XPS computer with Dell SX2210T multi-touch LCD monitor is running on Windows 7 Home Premium.

I have just gone to this website of Microsoft to download the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant tool to check if it's worth for my computer to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro by accceting this US$33.99 offer.


On that website, just click on the "Download Pro for $39.99 ERP" button to download the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant for free. Don't worry, there will be a few steps to go through before you actually need to pay the money and get the Windows 8 Pro. You can just run the assessment with the tool first without need to pay anything.

The assessment result for my PC seems to be quite discouraging.


I am informed that:
  • There will be no DVD player software in Windows 8 Pro. You will need to either install a 3rd party DVD player application or to buy Windows Media Center at a separate price.
  • Sidebar gadgets are not supported in Windows 8. This seems to be a bad news for AddGadgets.com who produced nice gadgets such as All CPU Meter, Network Meter, Drives Meter, GPU Meter, etc.
  • Windows Media Center that is included in Windows 7 Home Premium and above, need to be purchased separately for Windows 8 at US$9.99. I heard that Microsoft is offering this for free download to Windows 8 Pro now until end of January 2013.
  • My Dell SX2210T multi-touch LCD monitor seems not fully supported by Windows 8
  • There are quite some applications unable to run in Windows 8, including any component of Microsoft Office 2003 or earlier (including MS Project 2003, MS Visio 2003, etc.), Oracle VM Virtualbox, etc.
As such, I don't feel having the desire to upgrade to Windows 8 now.



0 comments:

Post a Comment

Hint: Click on the "Older Posts" link to continue reading, or click here for a listing of all my past 3 months articles.