Windows 8 Upgrade Diary: What to expect

October 28, 2012

Windows 8 is here, but plenty of Windows users are still on the fence about whether to take it for a spin. In the wake of Windows Vista, you can't blame Windows users for being cautious; upgrading unquestioningly to the latest version of our operating system is a luxury we may have envied in our Mac OS brethren, who can (usually) look forward to the newest big cat without reservation. If you're thinking about upgrading to Windows 8 but you're concerned that you might permanently mess up your PC (or be stuck with an OS you don't like), read on to see whether the new Windows is right for you. Meet our test PC For the purposes of this article I decided to use my main desktop PC. It's a home-built system cobbled together mostly from older spare parts, so if anything were likely go wrong with a Windows 8 install, it would probably go wrong with my FrankenPC. The computer packs a decent amount of power--a 3.4GHz AMD Phenom II X4 965 CPU in a DKA790GX Platinum MSI motherboard, 4GB of DDR2 RAM, an Nvidia GTX 570 video card, and a pair of hard drives (a 7200-rpm 1TB drive I use as my main Windows 7 boot/data drive, and an older 5400-rpm 100GB drive I used for my previous Windows XP install). I also have a fair number of associated accessories and gadgets plugged in: two monitors, speakers, a headset, an external mic, a Wi-Fi dongle, a PS/2 keyboard, and a fairly high-end gaming mouse, among other things, so I figured that this would be a good opportunity to see if anything significant broke. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2012809/windows-8-upgrade-diary-what-to-expect.html