The discount offer on Windows 8 that we heard about as far back as May has just gone live. If you bought a PC in or after June, you could be eligible for a dirt-cheap new operating system.
Microsoft has historically offered the new version of Windows to people buying PCs around launch time in order to prevent people from waiting until the new OS is released to make their purchase. It happened with Windows 7, and now it's happening with Windows 8.
If you bought a PC between June 2 of this year or plan to buy one before the end of January 2013, you can pick up the new OS for $14.99. Just go to Microsoft's upgrade offer website, where you'll be asked to put in some information about your PC and the product key that came with the older version of Windows.
Come Oct. 26, when Windows 8 officially launches, you'll get an email and upgrade online.
Buy your PC outside of the cutoff date? You can still upgrade for $39.99, but you can't pre-register. Note that in either case, you need to be running Windows 7 to get the upgrade — you can't have the preview version of Windows 8 installed. Unfortunately, for a lot of people that means uninstalling 8, installing 7, then reinstalling 8. But the price is right.
More information can be found at Microsoft's blog entry about the upgrade.
Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.
