Not a "bad" price, not the $200+ people used to pay for windows OS', But still windows 8 is just too... "metro" for people that actually care. Of course windows 8 will still make them big profits from the casuals no doubt.

Something about it reminds me of the tacky box art from the 90s.

Pay for Windows 8? Microsoft you're not funny. I wouldn't use it even if they gave me small payments to do so.

Be prepared to pay $70 for the privilidge of watching DVDs...

Not sure if I want to pre-order...or hold off til lauch and just get the digital copy for $40....decisions, decisions...

The real question is: Why is it still being shipped on a CD and not USB key? Many laptops and ultrabooks... hell, even desktops these days lack an optical drive. With the price of flash memory, $6 more to have it on a USB key would have been a no brainer in my opinion.

Because you can download the ISO for $40 and put it on a flash drive yourself?

So Windows 8 Pro Pack is Windows 8 Pro with Media Center for the same price... Is it possible to install pro pack when you have windows 7? or is it some kind of upgrade if you already have a windows 8 version?

According to Microsoft's own website, "Windows 8 Pro Pack" is an addon to Windows 8 much like the "Plus Pack" was for Win9x.

8 working very nicely here with a recent change from 7. Pretty solid out of the box, all feels faster an smoother. So far everything works apart from bridged networking in VMware Workstation 9. The oft noted clash between 'old way' and 'new way' does grate a little from time to time. 8 desktop is a decent evolution of 7. 8 metro (or whatever it should be called) is obviously a new way. I like it and I know I'll like it more with a proper touch device (and then less so the desktop.) It's a confident and bold move by MS - to bridge the old and new ways of interacting with our machines - I like it a lot.

thanks for your constructive opinion. i haven't tried yet but looking forward to it.

I really hope thy sell Windows 8 BOX for 99$ because i don't want to spend 99 every time i change my motherboard or something important like a new case to mount bigger GPU. For this moment i never even bought a copy of any earlier version mainly because BOX cost me whole 1 month payout which again is only to prevent additional cost of upgrade which is a cost itself. Stupid politics are not my problem.

Pay for Windows 8? Microsoft you're not funny. I wouldn't use it even if they gave me small payments to do so.

Such ignorant statements like this make Win8 sell bad. Some people are just too blind to realize how well this system performs. I use Win8 at work, and I've shown superior responsiveness, usability, performance, Start Menu lookups and customizability, and the effect? Jaw drop striaght into "meh, I've read that is sucks". ---- Still, don't get me wrong - Win7 is a good system and if you're satisfied with it now, you'll likely be satisfied with it in a year or 2 or even more. Nonetheless, stop bashing Win8, as it really works well. ---- Back to topic: Box - it's not very appealing. Win7 box looked more interesting. Pricing - we'll see them at the release, and I'd like EU prices to be similar. However, MS products frequently cost way more in EU than in US, which is sad. There's also no Ultimate version of Win8 - there is Pro and Enterprise and you can't upgrade Win7 Ultimate to Win8 Enterprise, but only Pro.

How much pro are we talking about?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_8_editions <== not really super-detailed, but you'll get a glimpse. Pro is not that bad. It's actually quite decent as it gets some stuff known from Win7 Ultimate/Enterprise, like BitLocker. However I opted for reinstall to Enterprise as I wanted to be able to use "Windows To Go" in the future.