Windows 8 coming October 26th, 2012

[Andrew]

Via G4TV.

Windows 8 has a release date. Drum roll, please. You'll be able to buy or upgrade to Windows 8 on October 26, 2012. The news came from Steven Sinofsky while speaking at Microsoft's annual sales meeting.

According to Microsoft, there will be over 30 games available at launch "with a variety of genres, price points and business models." Microsoft says that Windows 8 is a huge opportunity for game developers and gamers.

[JaoSming]

Yet I still don't want it........I think......

[formx]

My brother got it for free too, but I haven't decided to install it yet.

[Andrew]

I wasn't too enthused by the preview version I tried out. I've seen speculation that it's going to flop and I wouldn't be totally shocked if it does, or at least doesn't go over near as well as Microsoft is anticipating, because it is a radical change.

[el badman]

I think I'll give it a shot, but I'm not too sure if any of the changes will make any real difference for me, it seems mainly focused on social media and sharing stuff.

[chicagoRAW]

I got it. I don't like a few things, but I always go with the latest version of software.

[JaoSming]

have you tested to see if all the current 2K tools work for it?

[Like A Boss]

I just don't think Windows 8 will work out... I mean it is built for touch screen desktops.

[chicagoRAW]

have you tested to see if all the current 2K tools work for it?

I haven't really tested anything on it, just installed it messed around a bit. Haven't even played 2k13 on it yet. I'll try, haven't had much time on my home pc lately.

[john_red]

i tried nba2k13 and nba2k12 on windows8, works fine with all my games,

[ixcuincle]

Installed it on my laptop, but not on the PC. It's 15 dollars here if you qualify for an offer (and apparently anyone can get it for 15 bucks in the US even if you didn't buy a new Win 7 PC lately)

[el badman]

Installed it on my laptop, but not on the PC. It's 15 dollars here if you qualify for an offer (and apparently anyone can get it for 15 bucks in the US even if you didn't buy a new Win 7 PC lately)

Really? I've only seen the upgrade for $39.99 offer for now, but then again i haven't looked very hard yet.

[AreaOfEffect]

I already have it for almost 2 months (professional edition). My school is a "partner" of Microsoft so we get almost all of their softwares for free. I like it, specially the new IE and its much faster I think, I've been using it instead of google/mozilla since. No compatibility issues so far, all of the softwares I have installed made it through to update from win7 to win8.

[volsey]

Installed it on launch ($40 is cheap enough reason for me to get a legitimate copy), only programs thus far that had any issues with is Media Browser Plugin for Windows Media Center (which was to be expected as WMC is now an "add-on" as far as Windows 8 is concerned), and Daemon Tools (again somewhat to be expected).

Everything else has worked flawless, no crashes or anything of the sort. I had an issue with the main Music Metro app, and surprisingly got a hand written email (or just a new an improved bot) from support with detailed instructions that remedied the problem.

There are a number of small non-essential things that bug me about the new Start screen and Metro apps, but in all, it's a very smooth, and quick OS. Once there are more apps I'll definitely be using the Start screen more often, as my PC is hooked up to my bigscreen, the big tiles just look too perrrty.

[Manni Live]

i dont wanna get it im afraid that it might have some bugs or programs wont work on it
so ill just stick to my windows 7 for now

[JaoSming]

Now I am concerned NVidia's 3DTV Play won't work, since I gotta use a modified .inf for the Playstation Display for it to even work.

[el badman]

Downloaded it and installing it right now. There were only a few program incompatibilities, pretty minor stuff. Will post more impressions when it's up and running.

[ixcuincle]

Installed it on my laptop, but not on the PC. It's 15 dollars here if you qualify for an offer (and apparently anyone can get it for 15 bucks in the US even if you didn't buy a new Win 7 PC lately)

Really? I've only seen the upgrade for $39.99 offer for now, but then again i haven't looked very hard yet.

It was 15 dollars until they closed the "loophole", but they were pretty lenient in allowing anyone to sign up and get that upgrade. I got it twice, once for my laptop, and again for my custom-built PC.

DIdn't install it on the custom-built PC yet, which has all the games. Don't know how Windows 8 will do with games, but it should be just as good as Windows 7.

[benji]

There really shouldn't be any compatibility issues or problems with programs and games or even hardware on 8 since it's just a more polished 7.

This is basically the same 6.x kernal, driver model, etc. that Vista introduced.

[el badman]

There really shouldn't be any compatibility issues or problems with programs and games or even hardware on 8 since it's just a more polished 7.

That's what I thought too, but it turns out it's not that simple...My first two installation attempts failed, and I'm still not sure why, but it looks like there are plenty of similar examples online, due to incompatibilities with antiviruses, firewalls, and random programs like Hulu, Nero or even Adobe Flash plugins.
Everything was going well, and right before the end of the installation, I got a "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA" error, which then prompted the system to restore the previous version of Windows, and that happened twice already.
It looks like that could also be due to faulty RAM, but I never had any such issue before. Still gonna go ahead and run the memory test to make sure I guess...

[benji]

Well, I don't condone updating Windows anyway, just installing a fresh one. That's independent of the version.

[el badman]

Finally managed to install it after 2 hours spent on the phone with an Indian dude remotely messing with my PC...Turns out stupid Microsoft Essentials from Windows 7 was the program preventing the full installation.
Definitely stylish stuff, but it's gonna take some getting used to, it's a pain to navigate and set up personal preferences right now.

[chicagoRAW]

Been exploring the Apps and stuff some more. I'm really liking this tablet set-up they have going, they have an app store, it's actually really cool and gives it a different feel than the same old boring windows. Problem is...the Microsoft store is really really really limited. (Is it called the Microsoft store?) Also, you can get games from Xbox live and earn achievements which is cool. Smart glass lets you access your XBOX dashboard, which is a cool feature but you can't really do much else. I don't even think you can message your friends on xbox. You can do a virtual remote control, which is kinda crappy because you use the mouse to click all the buttons from an on screen controller which is mapped out weird, anyways wasn't able to really see how it works because my xbox is in another room, and It has to be turned on for you to use smart glass. Overall I like where they took Windows 8, but it's very "bare bones" right now compared to Android and Apple apps wise. Would like to see more in depth options from current Apps like the smart glass for your XBOX.

[el badman]

Liking what I'm seeing so far, some of the apps are quite good already, and everything is very fast and responsive. I thought it would mostly look and feel good for tablets, but it works really well on a desktop PC too.

[ixcuincle]

I updated from 7 to 8 without problem.

Everything works fine except the apps. There are few apps I'm interested in, and the ones that do work are buggy. I was trying to watch "The League" on Netflix and 1) the subtitles froze up and 2) it crashed for no reason at all back to Metro.

Other than that, everything seems to be fine.