Windows 8 Pro for $40 - probably worth it

I was checking out a Maximum PC article about reorganizing your music library with MediaMonkey when I stumbled onto their review for Windows 8. It’s a fairly measured review of what Windows 8 has to offer for a happy user of Windows 7 on the desktop. They don’t spend any time on the touch controls, or what the OS means for tablet users, or any of the sort of thing you’d find in Ars Technica’s wonderful coverage.

If you happen to be one of those users, it’s probably worth a read to decide if an upgrade is worth it. It’s actually fairly concise, but for your benefit and my own, here’s a quick reference:

• The second page touches on using Metro and the state of multi-monitor support in Windows 8. The moral of the story being “Tablet Mode probably has nothing to offer for you on a desktop” (but you may be able to hack it away with the free Classic Shell or RetroUI which is $5 for three PCs)
• Third page discusses the improvements to the desktop experience - most notably startup speed (which, in terms of time saved per day, could be worth a lot of money over time)
• Fourth page is short and mentions some other new features, noting that it’s probably worth $40 for an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro (from XP through to Win7)
• Fifth page has some performance analysis of Win 7 vs Win 8 (surprise: there are pretty much no downsides to Win 8), talk about price, provide a few recommendations for minimizing the Tablet Mode side of things, and list a lot of miscellaneous improvements (better USB 3.0 drivers, better rendering stuff, and suspending desktop processes)

So, the thing about this upgrade is that it doesn’t have a lot of immediate value, but it has a lot of long term value. Some time next year when almost everything is compatible with Win8 (and tools to remove the Tablet Mode are perfect), the improvements would be nice to have - but not quite $200 worth of nice. But definitely $40 worth of nice. I guess January 31st is plenty of time to buy in, but I might hold the license a bit longer than that before using it. Even if there are restrictions on the $40 digital version, it would probably still be worth $60 for the physical version.

Plus, this is an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro - there are a number of nice features in the Pro versions of Windows, especially when it comes to compatibility. For example, Win7 Pro has “Windows XP mode” which is either a virtualization tool or a super-powered compatibility mode (I don’t know which, I haven’t used it). Win 8 Pro would probably have that and a similar mode for Win 7, if things do go wrong.

All in all, I actually think this is worth jumping on. Write the license key down and hold onto it for a while. Don’t worry about the touch stuff, don’t worry about the Windows Store, because it sounds like they’re entirely optional (provided you can stay in desktop mode). Everything from Windows 7 should work the same way, but with some bonuses. As a bonus, QTTabBar sounds like it will support Win8 fairly quickly so you can make Explorer not suck and, hopefully, remove the Ribbon.

Well, I’ve convinced myself that I should invest in this. Hopefully you’re convinced, too.

(this is actually an even better deal for me and anyone else who buys a Win7 PC between June 2nd and January 31st, 2013 - just $15)