windows 8 coming soon

[NaturalViolence]

Quote:Didn't Windows Vista and Windows XP become cheaper when Windows 7 came out?

Slightly. Most of the price cuts came later down the road.

Windows 8 is so cheap to begin with that I doubt win 7 will be any cheaper. Also microsoft knows that windows 8 is making unpopular changes and is trying to force it on us anyways to get developer support, they're not going to kill it by making windows 7 the cheaper option.

[Axxer]

How cheap is Windows 8 OEM? I would really prefer 7, but if 8 is cheap I could deal I guess.

[NaturalViolence]

Quote:Microsoft Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, XP, Vista, Windows 7 Upgrade Pricing: $199 after a promotional price of $69.99 expires on January 31st 2013, $39.99 Windows 8 Pro upgrade pricing & more!

Microsoft's Windows 8 Pro software will be priced at $199 after a promotional price of $69.99 expires on January 31st 2013, according to one source familiar with Microsoft's plans. The software maker will also offer a Windows 8 to Windows 8 Pro upgrade option at retail stores for $69.99 until January 31st when the price reverts to $99.99.

Microsoft previously announced its $39.99 Windows 8 Pro upgrade pricing for existing Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 users — a price available exclusively online for those wishing to download the software without a DVD option. Retailers will stock a $69.99 Windows 8 Pro option in stores, one that may be offered as a traditional full version of Windows for those without a previous copy. Both the Windows 8 to Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8 Pro copies will be made available from retailers on October 26th.

So for those of us with previous versions of windows it would only cost $40 to upgrade to windows 8 professional edition, which is chump change compared to the hundreds of dollars we normally pay at launch. You could pirate XP and do that or get the regular version for $70.

[Axxer]

I won't pirate XP because that is illegal.

I'll look into how I can buy it.

[AnyOldName3]

The buy wasn't even in inverted commas. He may actually be considering spending money!

Also, windows 98 is available with a free licence key which microsoft have said is acceptable to use without paying. That may happen with XP relatively soon (or in 10 years, as so many people have stuck to it).

[Garteal]

Quote: *NaturalViolence stares at his free copies of windows 7 x64 professional retail and windows 8 x64 professional retail that he got for free through dreamspark and begins laughing maniacally*

Ah, I forget about Dreamspark. Downloading free stuff now as I write.
My school didn't even mention this yet for some reason.

Quote:So for those of us with previous versions of windows it would only cost $40 to upgrade to windows 8 professional edition,

We only have to pay €15 to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro, which is roughly $19.

[daaceking]

Windows 98 is free?!?

That would make dosbox redundant. If thats true I'm gonna dual boot or whatever you call it. I may need an ssd to speed things up though. Maybe raid 0. Then it becomes a question on compatibility because 98 is fat32 and I dont know if it handles raid 0 or ssds.

I have a question when I had 98, I used to play crusader no regret. It wouldnt let me run it. It used to restart and after the bios, it would load the game and when you exit, it would load the os until you wanted to play again. How do you do that with 7?

[AnyOldName3]

Any OS before Windows Vista doesn't handle its disc access in a SSD friendly way. Basically, any deletes on an SSD will shorten its life, and HDD cache and anti-fragmentation methods (or something like that) involve a lot of small deletes and rewrites. Don't put Win98 on a SSD.

[NaturalViolence]

Quote:asically, any deletes on an SSD will shorten its life, and HDD cache and anti-fragmentation methods (or something like that) involve a lot of small deletes and rewrites

But windows 98 doesn't have built in support for defragmenting and superfetch......

Also I doubt he'll be able to get raid working in win98 unless he has a very old raid controller lying around.

[AnyOldName3]

I made those up. They were examples of things that look like a good idea until a SSD is used.

Also, Win98 has the same defrag utility as 95 and XP, just no automatic defrag while it writes new files.