Cheap Windows 8

[d000hg]

I'm aware that MS have been doing cracking deals on upgrading new PCs to W8, and down-load only copies of W8 for older PCs, but what's the story here exactly?

• Download price of £24.99 looks great but can I download the file and store it, or am I paying to install right away?
• £49.99 for a disc-based copy seems expensive, are there better deals around - or easy ways to burn my own download copy straight to DVD?
• Are licenses single-PC now or can I put it on a new PC or move it from a test PC to my main desktop when I decide I trust it?

[Sysman]

I bought the 50 quid box earlier this week simply because my Plan B accomplice was hit by the flu so I had a couple of days unexpectedly free.

I also had a Win7 Home Premium license I wanted to use. I don't know yet whether the upgrade DVD will allow an installation on an empty box.

The 50 quid job is a single user licence.

It looks like they have tightened up the activation stuff here. I restored a 2010 backup of Win7 Home Premium into a VirtualBox VM (not without some considerable hassle I might add), and upgraded that. I then cloned the disk to decrease its size, but when I fired Win8 up using the cloned disk, it promptly demanded that I purchase a new licence, or contact MS to get the copy re-activated.

[VectraMan]

If you purchase the download only for £24.99, it gives you the option to add a back up DVD for a further £8.99.

I assumed it was a retail version - i.e. could be reinstalled on a different PC, assuming the different PC had a valid licenced Windows (which Sysman's VM clone probably didn't).

[Spacecadet]

I bought the 50 quid box earlier this week simply because my Plan B accomplice was hit by the flu so I had a couple of days unexpectedly free.

I also had a Win7 Home Premium license I wanted to use. I don't know yet whether the upgrade DVD will allow an installation on an empty box.

The 50 quid job is a single user licence.

It looks like they have tightened up the activation stuff here. I restored a 2010 backup of Win7 Home Premium into a VirtualBox VM (not without some considerable hassle I might add), and upgraded that. I then cloned the disk to decrease its size, but when I fired Win8 up using the cloned disk, it promptly demanded that I purchase a new licence, or contact MS to get the copy re-activated.

How did you clone it?
I have been told on good authority that one should avoid using the tools inside the virtual hosts to clone systems as they will cause licensing issues.
It's better to copy the files and then use the "move" VM feature

[Sysman]

I assumed it was a retail version - i.e. could be reinstalled on a different PC, assuming the different PC had a valid licenced Windows (which Sysman's VM clone probably didn't).

According to the licensing stuff, each virtual machine is regarded as a separate PC. I would have probably been OK if I had tried to shrink the disk before booting up the restored Win7, because once I did that it did the activation thing due to different MAC address, disk UID etc.

Incidentally, if you tell the upgrade to start afresh rather than keeping original settings it doesn't actually zap the disk, but puts your old installation into Windows.old. How to use the Disk Cleanup feature to delete the Windows.old folder after you install Windows Vista sort of gets you there - using the Disk Cleanup solution you need to click on "Clean up system files" then scroll down the list of things to delete and tick the box for deleting old versions of Windows, then tell it to proceed. I got over 12GB back with that.

[d000hg]

If you purchase the download only for £24.99, it gives you the option to add a back up DVD for a further £8.99.

I assumed it was a retail version - i.e. could be reinstalled on a different PC, assuming the different PC had a valid licenced Windows (which Sysman's VM clone probably didn't).

Typically don't "upgrade-only" copies work just fine on any old PC?

When you buy the download, do you simply buy a download of the file you can back up or put on a USB stick to use later, or does it immediately force you to upgrade as part of the process i.e. you're buying an installation rather than a download?

[Sysman]

How did you clone it?
I have been told on good authority that one should avoid using the tools inside the virtual hosts to clone systems as they will cause licensing issues.
It's better to copy the files and then use the "move" VM feature

I used VirtualBox itself to clone the entire machine, so my experience backs up what you have been told. As per my other reply, once I had restored Win7, it went through the activation procedure for that configuration and passed OK, because it is after all a valid license (spelling pedants: please note that I use the US spelling for software licensing 'cos various utilities I run are spelled that way ) Lesson learned: I should have shrunk the disk before booting.

Why did I want to shrink the disk? The crap that is Windows 7 backup and recovery wants to restore to a disk at least as large as the original, and when moving from a physical partition to a VM I didn't need so much - think moving large folders off to a server. Fortunately if you choose a dynamically allocated disk in a VM you can get away with less physical space. In my case I managed in Windows 8 to shrink the resulting system disk from 100GB to 50GB, actual VM disk size 31GB, and I am reasonably happy with that.

My experience with various older boxes which I normally run Linux on but still have Windows on just in case I ever need it, is that if you don't boot Windows for a long time, it wants to run activation again.

I suspect the activation process is happy to see you clone from a physical machine to a virtual one, but not more than once.

[Sysman]

Typically don't "upgrade-only" copies work just fine on any old PC?

Don't know the answer to that one, except it did work when shoving the contents of an old PC into a VM.

When you buy the download, do you simply buy a download of the file you can back up or put on a USB stick to use later, or does it immediately force you to upgrade as part of the process i.e. you're buying an installation rather than a download?

Dunno about Windows itself but I just downloaded Visual Studio 2012 Express onto my Win8 system and it came as a 900K file which when run looked pretty much like a normal installation program but was obviously downloading what was needed for the full monty.

[VectraMan]

When you buy the download, do you simply buy a download of the file you can back up or put on a USB stick to use later, or does it immediately force you to upgrade as part of the process i.e. you're buying an installation rather than a download?

You download a 5MB installer wizard, that includes purchasing the code and doing the full download and installation. However it looks like you can get it from MS again if you need to.

[AtW]

They would not sell it that cheap if it was any good.