Solve : Full upgrades to Windows 8 only from Windows 7?

Computerworld - Microsoft will support full upgrades to Windows 8 only from the three-year old Windows 7, according to a report Thursday.
Yesterday, ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley, citing unnamed sources, said that Microsoft has informed select partners of the upgrade paths to Windows 8.
Microsoft has not yet set a release date for Windows 8, but most analysts expect it to go on sale this fall, most likely in October.
Full story: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9228661/Report_Full_upgrades_to_Windows_8_only_from_Windows_7
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ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley, citing unnamed sources

I don't know. I don't trust either "unnamed sources" nor her in particular, given her munging of statistical information to support her somewhat wild claims regarding Vista and how "everybody" was dumping it for XP a few years ago.

Since it's already in RC and ulikely to have any major changes... Though, I don't know how the RC works regarding upgrades either.

BC, look at this:
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Microsoft launched earlier this month its latest Windows Upgrade Offer, via which users who purchase Windows 7 PCs between June 2, 2012 and January 31, 2013 can purchase a copy of Windows 8 Pro for $14.99, once it is available.

That part of her story is true.
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REDMOND, Wash. — June 1, 2012 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the availability of the Windows Upgrade Offer for consumers purchasing a qualifying new Windows 7 PC. The Windows Upgrade Offer provides consumers who buy an eligible Windows 7 PC the option to purchase a downloadable upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for an estimated retail price of just $14.99 (U.S.) during the time of the promotion, which will be redeemable when Windows 8 is generally available. The Windows Upgrade Offer is just the first of many consumer offers that will roll out in conjunction with the general availability of Windows 8.

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2012/Jun12/06-01MSWindowsPR.aspxOh wait, I misread. I attributed the "Microsoft will support full upgrades to Windows 8 only from the three-year old Windows 7" to MJF. I hope she can forgive me.

According to what I can find, this is more or less true, in that it won't let you upgrade in place for older OS's.

Arguably though I've always had a better experience clean installing a new OS.Hi all

Just in case no one is aware of it. The new BIOS that is in town UEFI is getting a whole lot of attention. I have read on some sites that MS very WELL may be a big contributor to the new BIOS and believe big old MS is behind it and pushing for it.

Some Linux releases may not even be able to install "because of secure booting" I have run into issues with the Intel MoBo's that have UEFI bios but the issues have mainly been using SSD for boot drives or raid set-up using SSD.

I also just found an article about "Linux manufacture vendors" may have to pay MS to get past the UEFI coding. http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/microsoft%E2%80%99s-take-uefi-may-impede-linux-and-that%E2%80%99s-being-polite

In my opinion when Vista came out a lot of PC's and hardware went into landfills or was your new doorstop Because of driver availability and or hardware compatibility of course some companies after vista's initial release things did get a little better. If this end up holding true this will mean no Linux, no UN-signed drivers no hardware that is not approved.

Boy and years ago people thought Apple was out of there mind cuz the same thing happened (all apple HW and SW had to be approved) but at least you could try to make it work now with almost seems like if there is no digital signature ? well I guess time will tell.

From what I am reading and finding out MS Windows 8 may make a subscription OS that will work for a year (12 months) and then you would have to buy a new lic? There also is talk of MS making a non-UEFI VERSION of windows 8 but I have found very little on this.

Enjoy, Mike Most of the stuff regarding UEFI- particularly with REGARDS to Linux- is inaccurate.

Here is one example. Short story being they couldn't install KUbuntu on a Machine. They blamed it on UEFI, Microsoft'discovers evil proprietary Vendor lock in, etcetera.

Later, they discover that the machine in question doesn't even have UEFI and it was a result of a silent failure of the GRUB installer.

thankfully there are articles refuting some of the wilder claims.

here
and here Even slashdot!

Anyway, on the Linux side, the problem is ironically with the GPL.

UEFI will allegedly be a requirement of Windows 8. UEFI supports a new feature, Secure boot, with requires a chain of trust until a bootloader. This means the bootloader needs to be signed. GRUB cannot be signed, however, because of GPLv3 limitations.

Somehow, Linux advocates argue this is Microsoft's fault. I would allege that it is the GPLs fault, really.

It's also interesting to note that this problem will not be shared by LILO, since that falls under BSD, which is far less restrictive than the GPL. More importantly, this would only be an issue on machines that don't have an option to turn off UEFI, which I don't see as being very common.

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In my opinion when Vista came out a lot of PC's and hardware went into landfills or was your new doorstop Because of driver availability and or hardware compatibility of course some companies after vista's initial release things did get a little better.

Yes. This was because of the factors you describe regarding hardware driver availability; and some vendors simply didn't want to make drivers for their older hardware- this is alarmingly frequent with regards to Printers of the era. After all- the vendor already has the customers money- they aren't selling those printers new, so there is little reason to actually write Vista-compatible drivers for it.

The problem is that people didn't blame HP or Brother when their printer stopped working when they switched to Vista; they blamed Vista. After all, all they really changed was the OS. This is SIMILAR for Software that wasn't compatible.

Software products that aren't "Vista compatible" or have issues with Vista do not have issues because of Vista, but because they weren't written properly to begin with. This is particularly true with regards to UAC as well as the use of files in the Program Files folder. The conventions were established with Windows 95, but most developers just grazed over it and figured "eh we'll just throw it all in the Program Files folder". now, however, the Program Files folder contents are not writable by programs running in a Limited User account (actually, this isn't true, since this is also the case for Limited User Accounts on previous Windows Operating Systems). Programs should have been using The Application Data folder for Application Data already. Same for minor changes to various APIs; maybe an API changes here or there to work with different arguments, or have stronger checking of arguments, and people find that they can no longer pass some completely undocumented parameter to a function and have some specific thing happen. For example many API function will state "This Parameter cannot be NULL" but maybe a developer never read the documentation and passed NULL for whatever reason. It worked and they didn't have proper code reviews so it got released.

Years later when a new version of windows rolls around, such as Vista, that actually goes "OK, if any of these values are NULL imma be pissed off" and checks the parameters, and possibly returns the INVALID_PARAMETER argument. Now the program no longer works. People using the software will blame the new version of Windows- not the program.

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If this end up holding true this will mean no Linux, no UN-signed drivers no hardware that is not approved.

It's not true. it's completely fabricated FUD. It's all based on a single blog entry by a guy who was quoting one of his friends experiences trying to install Linux on a machine with EFI, which is completely different from UEFI and doesn't have any cryptography involved. Being good FOSS advocates however the obvious conclusion was that he had trouble installing Linux not because he didn't understand the basics of booting from Optical Media, but because Microsoft was doing something evil.

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From what I am reading and finding out MS Windows 8 may make a subscription OS that will work for a year (12 months) and then you would have to buy a new lic?

This is false. I can find nothing about this on technet or MSDN. There is Office 365, though, which is subscription-based.

Only Windows 8 running on ARM requires UEFI. x86 and x64 versions of the OS run fine on systems without UEFI or with UEFI disabled (if that is possible).

On a side note: if anybody ever wonders why there are sometimes random letters in my posts, it's because this laptop's touchpad keeps clicking on the text area and moving my cursor and sometimes I don't fix it properly.Quote

The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and PLATFORM firmware. ...
Unified Extensible Firmware Interface - Wikipedia

Required Reading.