Upgrading to Windows 8 will cost just $39.99 when it's made available later this year, Microsoft has announced.

According to the company, users in 131 countries will be able to purchase the software as an update, and get Windows Media Center as a free add-on.

“Starting at general availability, if your PC is running Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 you will qualify to download an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for $39.99 in 131 markets,” said Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc in a company blog.

"If you want, you can add Windows Media Center for free through the 'add features' option within Windows 8 Pro after your upgrade."

Microsoft said customers purchasing the upgrade from its website would be guided through the download and upgrade process, with tools to highlight potential problems.

According to Microsoft, the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant will check hardware and software for compatibility and provide a report detailing issues users need to address before or after the upgrade.

Upgrade limitations

Although users upgrading from Windows 7 will be able to carry all their personalisations forward to Windows 8, anyone using older versions would see some loss of functionality,

“You will be able to upgrade from any consumer edition of Windows 7 to Windows 8 Pro and bring everything along which includes your Windows settings, personal files, and apps,” Microsoft said.

“If you are upgrading from Windows Vista, you will be able to bring along your Windows settings and personal files, and if you are upgrading from Windows XP you will only be able to bring along your personal files.”

The company also said a DVD version of the upgrade to Windows 8 Pro would be available for $69.99 during a promotion that runs until the end of January 2013.

The offer comes on top of a previously announced offer for new PC buyers to upgrade from Windows 7 to 8 for $15.

UK pricing has yet to be confirmed.

-- This article is taken from PC Pro magazine.
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Even if this translated into £40 for the UK, as is normally how they do the conversion, this is still a great price point. I can see a lot of people upgrading, especially as they are also allowing XP owners to use their licenses for the upgrade.

This was something I was really annoyed about with Vista and Windows 7, as the upgrades from XP cost over £100 to Vista and then the same again for Windows 7. I did upgrade to Vista at the time, buying the Ultimate edition for something like £169, but with Windows 7 they wanted nearly the same use for an upgrade. Madness. I should be able to happily use my XP or Vista licenses to obtain a legitimate copy.
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Out of interest, why did you purchase Vista?
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Regardless of what people say, Vista was a big step forward from XP. Many people held on to using XP (some even still do), but after using Vista and now Windows 7, almost exclusively since Vista was released, going back and using XP feels very dated and old fashioned. Also Windows 7 doesn't feel that different to Vista, just a little cleaner UI, a little smoother and faster to use etc but people slag Vista off a lit and praise Win 7 at the same time. The reality of that is exactly the same as when XP was first released. When both XP and Vista were launched the average home PC was not really up to the spec needed to run them well. With XP it really needs 1GB of ram and a 2GHz+ CPU to feel smooth, responsive and nice to use. At launch most people had 256MB, and luckier ones 512MB ram. This gave people a really negative impression of using XP as it ground to a halt resorting to harddrive caching to compensate for the lack of ram, and with hdd's not being so fast in most people's PCs at the time didn't help either. And with Vista it was the same. You really needed 2GB of ram, a 512MB or more dedicated GPU, and a 3GHz CPU. Most people trying Vista at launch had their XP spec PCs with 1GB ram, a 2-2.5GHz CPU, and worst still many with more budget PCs and Laptops had built in graphics that shared system ram and were not good. With these setups Vista just ground to a halt. Throw it a dual or quad core CPU, 4GB ram and a 1GB GPU and it was very nice to use.

As for the actual main reasons for professional. To access more than 4GB of ram I needed a 64bit OS, and XP Pro x64 was completely rubbish with hardly any driver/hardware support and very limited compatibility. Vista 64bit fixed this and allowed me to run 8GB ram for video editing (which is the one area you really need every bit of ram you can throw at a system for ram previews during development if a sequence). Also Adobe started to drop support for XP and some of the software in their complete Master suite was starting to state a minimum of Vista to work. A less important reason for upgrading to Vista was DirectX 10 support for newer graphics cards, and games directly supporting it. With XP people are stuck with DX9.0c. And with 32bit OS's you have the 4GB ram limit shared between the GPU and CPU, so if you have a current 2GB GPU are are going to find only about 2.5GB of system ram available, regardless of how much physical ram is installed.
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Hi All
The joy of Windows Vista. It is still a good os i had it running on a compaq with 1Ghz processor, 512mb. 40gig HDD, 256meg grapics card. and it was stiil fast enough for everyday use well for me
any way.
Many Thanks
Andrew
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I've only used Windows Vista once or twice, and have only used Windows 7 a few times. I primarily use it at college to click on the Start menu (or whatever it is called these days), and click on the OrCad button.

As a Linux user I have no need to use newer versions of Windows. I'm curious to see Windows 8, but I doubt I will have any use for it.
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For me Linux is great for server/web development, but not mature enough as a desktop OS. It also hasn't anything to compete with professional design software on the PC/Mac.
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I'm tempted...but history with Windows means I will wait. Bugs are bound to be found!
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Historically that was very true, but remember that Windows 8 is heavily based on Windows 7, and that itself was a very well bug fixed version of Vista. So in theory Windows 8 should be pretty good from the outset. Also take into account that Windows 8 has been publicly available in beta form for a long time for anyone to download and try out... so it is the most bug fixed and tested versions ever.
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I wouldn't even waste my time thinking about Windows 8. It's utter ******** & I wouldn't use it even if it was free.
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