Upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for only $39.99!

[B00tDisk]

Back on the topic of win 8, are there any reliable info on how long new versions of direct x will support win 7?

This is what I'd like to know.

I think once MS realizes that 8 is a dead pigeon they'll start forcing people off Vista and 7 at bayonet point with DX.

[runequester]

This is what I'd like to know.

I think once MS realizes that 8 is a dead pigeon they'll start forcing people off Vista and 7 at bayonet point with DX.

Does XP still get new versions or has that capped out?

[TheBilgeRat]

Does XP still get new versions or has that capped out?

I think they capped at 10.

[commodorejohn]

My bet is that you'll end up running it and you won't hack anything.

I'll bet you a dollar that it never touches a single one of my machines.

I'll bet you a $1 they drop the horrid Metro  interface and go back to legacy Windows desktop look and feel.

Gonna have a hard time finding someone to take that bet, even for a dollar, my friend. It's a sure thing.

I think once MS realizes that 8 is a dead pigeon they'll start forcing people off Vista and 7 at bayonet point with DX.

A.k.a. "the DX10 gambit." The sad thing is that it's worked once before...

I think they capped at 10.

9, actually. 10 was the carrot to get people who wanted Bioshock to look as pretty as possible to switch to Vista.

[TheBilgeRat]

Metro is here to stay.  Is what it is.

[Duce]

I like how all the people that have no intentions of ever trying W8, or have never tried it yet - are completely and painfully oblivious to the fact you can run it in normal desktop mode if you like.  You're free to dislike what you like, but Jesus - do some fact checking, lol.

I've got it on one of my machines now with nary a trace of "Metro" around at all.  It's a heck of a lot snappier than W7 was on the machine as well, machine boots in under 10 seconds from cold boot (SSD's, obviously).

[Iggy]

I think they capped at 10.

XP? DX9 actually.
Vista, DX11.

[psxphill]

I'll bet you a dollar that it never touches a single one of my machines.

I'd give you a dollar for you to "cut off your nose to spite your face", it would be funny.
 

Gonna have a hard time finding someone to take that bet, even for a dollar, my friend. It's a sure thing.

It's a sure thing alright, he'll be losing that dollar. Windows 9 might be different to Windows 8 in those areas, but it's not going to go back to how it was before.
 

A.k.a. "the DX10 gambit." The sad thing is that it's worked once before...
 
 
9, actually. 10 was the carrot to get people who wanted Bioshock to look as pretty as possible to switch to Vista.

New DirectX features require new graphics card drivers & Vista has a new graphics card driver model, to support new stuff. Justifying a whole new round of driver development, testing and certification for an old operating system is difficult.

[billt]

Not even Windows 3.1 was this inexpensive!

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2012/07/02/upgrade-to-windows-8-pro-for-39-99.aspx

I wonder how it'll sell.  I think the low price will make it move.

For $40, what the heck, even if I'm not sure I'll use it. Though my first attempt to install (in a virtual machine using VirtualBox), it failed and rolled back to Win7. Eh...

[B00tDisk]

A.k.a. "the DX10 gambit." The sad thing is that it's worked once before...


9, actually. 10 was the carrot to get people who wanted Bioshock to look as pretty as possible to switch to Vista.

I hacked 10 onto XP while that option was still available for the faint-at-heart; of course I also had hacked SLI drivers running (nVidia bought the Epox technology and ****canned it).  You just had to write the mobo ID where the latest Nvidia drivers looked (they looked at the registry for the motherboard ID, not directly at the BIOS)...hee hee, it was a terrible kludge but amazingly it was rock solid most of the time.  Every once in a while (and ironically, every time this happened I wasn't gaming) the system would unload it's own video drivers and I'd have to spend a while convincing the computer I actually had cards that were more than "Standard VGA Adapter(s)", but that was extremely rare.

Then I got an Asus board and nVidia quit being dicks anyway about SLI, but I still sold the board with a CD with the hacked DX10 driver and hacked SLI driver...

Sorry, I do go on.

[tone007]

Well, I downloaded Win8 from MSDN, can't say I'm a fan.  I could get used to the tiley interface, and it does run at least as quickly as 7 did, but I don't enjoy the two or three unhappy face "" errors (think sad Mac) and reboots I've received in the week or so I've had it installed.  Guess I'll have to go back to 7, or stick to Fedora until SP1.

[kedawa]

I wouldn't be surprised if MS chooses not to issue any service packs for Windows 8.
It's a rather arbitrary way of bundling updates, and not exactly elegant.

[runequester]

I wouldn't be surprised if MS chooses not to issue any service packs for Windows 8.
It's a rather arbitrary way of bundling updates, and not exactly elegant.

I guess it makes it easier to identify what exactly your system looks like, so there's that.
 
I guess every method of patching/updating has drawbacks though.

[Iggy]

I also had hacked SLI drivers running (nVidia bought the Epox technology and ****canned it).  You just had to write the mobo ID where the latest Nvidia drivers looked (they looked at the registry for the motherboard ID, not directly at the BIOS)...hee hee, it was a terrible kludge but amazingly it was rock solid most of the time.  Every once in a while (and ironically, every time this happened I wasn't gaming) the system would unload it's own video drivers and I'd have to spend a while convincing the computer I actually had cards that were more than "Standard VGA Adapter(s)", but that was extremely rare.

Not Epox (that's a board manufacturer). ULi, they made the chipsets you're thinking of.

[ChaosLord]

Upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for only $39.99!

For people who can afford the luxury of a $4.00 keyboard and $4.00 mouse, wouldn't Windows 8 be a downgrade from Windows 7?

Is there anything in Windows 8 that was actually upgraded from Windows 7 for regular people who have a mouse and keyboard on a regular computer with a regular 61 inch monitor?

[SamuraiCrow]

The memory handling of DLLs is shared like the AmigaOS shared libraries.  But other than that, the upgrade is overpriced.  It should have been a service pack for Win7 instead.