Now I'm confused, what OS can upgrade to Windows 8?

really confused. Based on the Microsoft announcement yesterday, it seemed perfectly clear that Windows 7 was the exclusive upgrade path to Windows 8. At least that’s what this chart seemed to insinuate: [caption id="attachment_15938" align="alignnone" width="600"]upgrade path to Windows 8 upgrade path to Windows 8[/caption] I wrote about that and had (kinda) made peace with it until I read Mary Jo Foley’s related blog post. You see she has some very smart commenters on her blog and I take my hat off to aaron44126 who remembered that Microsoft had said something a little lot different last November. You see in a post last November called “Improving the Setup Experience”, there was a different story about viable upgrade paths. An excerpt:

Although millions of people choose to upgrade their existing PCs, most people choose to get a new version of Windows preinstalled on a new PC. In the past that often had to do with increasing system requirements in new Windows releases, and the need to purchase new PCs with more power to run the new version. With Windows 7 however, we made a commitment to work on many more existing PCs by keeping system requirements low and maintaining compatibility. We’ve continued that commitment with Windows 8, so many of you with existing PCs can simply upgrade. Looking just at Windows 7 customers, there are currently more than 450 million PCs that will be able to run Windows 8, but we expect that many systems running Windows Vista and even Windows XP will also be eligible.
and even later in the post, there was this: [caption id="attachment_15939" align="alignnone" width="600"]Windows 8 Upgrade path last November Windows 8 Upgrade path last November[/caption] This leaves the following options:
  • The November 2011 post is accurate and Windows Vista and Windows XP ARE supported for upgrading to Windows 8
  • The November 2011 is inaccurate and things have changed – Windows Vista and Windows XP ARE NOT supported for upgrading to Windows 8
  • Something else I can’t think of right now  🙂
I’ll send a question in to Microsoft and see if there’s any comment. Then I’ll take a nap. What do you think?

Microsoft Update

So I just got a response from Microsoft’s PR group.
Thanks for your question.  We have nothing more to share at this time regarding the upgrade path to Windows 8 beyond what has already been mentioned in the blog posts.
There you have it. Time for my nap.]]>

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