Well, wanting to further my IT career, I decided to finally take the plunge and bought the Windows 8 upgrade.

It requires at least XP SP3 to be installed for you to upgrade ... turned out, I had an old Windows XP SP2 disc in a box (one that I had slipstreamed SP2 into, way back in 2005). I found instructions for how to slipstream SP3 into it and took about 30 minutes to do that and burn it back to a bootable CD-R ...

Installed XP on a spare 320 GB hard drive.

Now Windows 8 is installing over that (well, I actually told it to do a clean install, as there was no point in doing an upgrade install).

I can confirm that you do *not* have to activate your XP installation in order for Windows 8 to upgrade. I was a little concerned about that because the Windows 8 box says you must be running "genuine" XP (which is defined by Microsoft as being activated) ... I guess it was an empty threat.

I can tell you though, that on my six-year-old Phenom X4 box (with 4 GB RAM) the install is SLOWWWWW ... I can't imagine what it would be like on a system that meets the minimum Windows 8 specs, 1 GHz ... mine is 2.6 GHz.

Anyone else got any experiences to relate? I don't know if I'm going to like what David Pogue calls "TileWorld", or if I'll just turn it off in favor of the good old Start menu.

 

Good Luck with all that. W8 might be the new Vista! I am avoiding it. They wrecked enough stuff in W7.

Did you actually do 8.1? -- If so, then you should have a start button -- although of limited scope from what I've read.

I've also read that when you have the desktop up, you're really just running an app, and that you don't have access to everything.

Tile City -- I like that.

Good Luck,

hj

 

i had a laptop with win 8 on it for less than one day.
if the machines with XP die and can not be revived, i will no longer be on the internet.
"new and improved" is not always better.
there is absolutely nothing wrong with XP, and they should give us the option to use an operating system we want to use.

 

Windows 8, I'll be nice, it SUX! I totally hate it. If there is/was a way to revert back, ie., make it work and act like XP, I'd do it. I'm no pencil necked computer geek, 62 years olde, and just can't grasp acronyms and vague directions. I don't even have a pocket protector, or wear long sleeve flannel shirts in the summer, all buttoned up/down at that. It seems like everything electronic is geared that way anymore. Like it's being implied, "I can do it and understand, are you stupid or something?" I just finally figured out how to post photo within 20 minutes with the crap installed on this thing.
Sorry about the possibly off subject thing, I'm done, for now.

 

I'll take windows 7 over 8 any day.

 

I tried using Windows 8 to do simple things like find a file I saved, and it was a miserable experience. If it takes a user with sufficient technical knowledge longer than 30 seconds to figure out a relatively simple task, then the operating system has failed at its attempt to be a compelling product.

I built a new PC last November just after Windows 8 became available on NewEgg and still opted to go with Windows 7. I still have XP on my older machine. At work we typically use Windows 7 but keep Windows XP on our lab stations to support some older applications.