So, you have a blank new machine and want to buy Windows for it, what do you do? Well, judging by Microsoft's own web store, you can't buy Windows 8 unless it's an upgrade from Windows 7. Is there a full retail version if Windows 8 anywhere? Nope.
You could, arguably, buy a full retail version of Windows 7 and then upgrade that to Windows 8. But for some very odd reason, you can't buy a download version of Windows 7 from their store anymore. Even if you already have their installation media, you're force to go through sipping times (and waste) just to get the license key. Then, and only then, you can download an upgrade to Windows 8.
Oh, what a mess. Luckily, there are some OEM versions of Windows 8 on TigerDirect, but then again this all depends on physical media, and you can forget transferring the license to any other machine, let alone trying to dual-boot that using some kind of virtual machine.
Published on December 7, 2012 at 21:26 EST
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