I'm still pissed off at them for not allowing me to upgrade or even purchase a standalone version of Windows 8. I live in Bolivia, why can't I purchase a DIGITAL GOOD using something like Paypal.

Every other online business accepts my hard earned money, Microsoft doesn't. Fuck 'em. (Pardon my french)

I really really wanted to go legit and buy myself a copy of Windows 8 but not legal paths are provided for me.

Maybe there's an obvious answer, but why can't they sell it in a non-upgrade version for download too (even at $200)?

I'm a Mac user who wants a legal Windows 8 VM but short of buying Windows 7 + the upgrade (except the online MS store doesn't seem to have 7) or joining MSDN ($700+) I can't find a legal way to do it.

Perhaps the most important question is... why would a desktop user want to "upgrade" to windows 8? Seriously, to this day I still don't know.

Someone really needs to hit their unit sales target before January ends... ;-)

Now, seriously, this has been known since before the launch.

A word of warning to those upgrading. If you upgrade from a 32-bit version of Windows you are forced to upgrade to 32-bit Windows 8 with no access to the 64-bit edition.

Annoyingly, some manufacturers (in my case Dell) shipped 32-bit versions of Vista and Windows 7 on 64-bit processors, presumably to save costs.

How much is the "standard" edition? Can't find it in the website, always redirected to buy Pro.

That should increase sales.

By the way, if your BIOS doesn't support "Secure Boot", forget it.

So HN is taking ads now?

Microsoft has been all about the cash for quite sometime now, after the scam they ran with vista/langehorn (or was it longhorn), I'll go linux before I'd spend another cent on one of their o.s.