Today is the last day to take advantage of special pricing for Windows 8 Professional. If you are currently running any Windows OS older than Windows 7 then you should consider upgrading to take advantage of this deal.
You do not have to perform the actual upgrade today but you do want to buy the key. The process is simple.
- Allow the Windows 8 upgrade wizard to check your computer for issues, compatibility problems and such.
- Save or print the report and proceed to purchase Windows 8.
- You will be given a key and sent an email with purchase info.
- Print your key information and then next you will be able to choose whether to migrate user settings or keep nothing. Choose either option and proceed.
- The next step will be to download Windows 8 which is over 2 gigabytes in size. You can cancel this if you wish or download it but tell the wizard that you wish to save to desktop and install later.
- That's it. You have saved $160.
To purchase the upgrade click on the link below.
Windows XP users should especially take note. The newer hardware and applications take advantage of 64 bit OS's. The 64 bit OS breaks through the 4 GB memory barrier that constrains your computer's speed and ability to run memory instensive applications. On many XP systems, 3 GB is the maximum amount of memory addressable. Anything above that is not used by the system.
If an application exceeds the available amount of RAM then the OS utilizes the paging file (virtual memory) which is significantly slower than RAM.
To further the case to move up from a 32 bit OS to a 64 bit operating system consider the fact that on a 4 GB workstation, 2 GB of available memory is dedicated to the OS. This is explained best by the following 2 paragraphs from a Microsoft site.
Warning: Technical terms are used below, not for the faint of heart. For those who crave more of this stuff, Bing or Google the terms: 4GT or PAE
Memory Manager
The 32-bit versions of Windows are able to address 232
bytes (4 GB) of memory by default. Windows splits that memory,
allocating 2 GB of memory to the kernel and up to 2 GB of memory to each
application’s private address space. This is done in order to provide
protection for both the operating system and the applications. The
kernel mode functions get 2 GB so that they will have enough room to
perform mandatory processes without running out of space. User mode
applications therefore cannot address memory in the kernel mode space
and accidentally corrupt kernel mode memory.
Each application can also utilize up to 2 GB of memory. This is true regardless of the number of applications on the server and despite the operating system’s ability to natively recognize only 4 GB of total memory. If the total memory requirements of all applications exceed 4 GB, the memory manager uses a paging file to substitute for RAM. This process is described in the following paragraphs.
Each application can also utilize up to 2 GB of memory. This is true regardless of the number of applications on the server and despite the operating system’s ability to natively recognize only 4 GB of total memory. If the total memory requirements of all applications exceed 4 GB, the memory manager uses a paging file to substitute for RAM. This process is described in the following paragraphs.
How graphics cards and other devices affect memory limits
Devices have to map their memory below 4 GB for compatibility with non-PAE-aware Windows releases. Therefore, if the system has 4GB of RAM, some of it is either disabled or is remapped above 4GB by the BIOS. If the memory is remapped, X64 Windows can use this memory. X86 client versions of Windows don’t support physical memory above the 4GB mark, so they can’t access these remapped regions. Any X64 Windows or X86 Server release can.The new Windows 8 has security feature built in that makes it the most secure Windows experience yet.
For more information about memory limits for Microsoft OS's, click the following link.
Memory Limits for Windows Releases (Windows)
Windows 8 Ready Workstations
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