Microsoft sets October date for Windows 8 release
Microsoft has set the date for the release of Windows 8: the operating system will be released to manufacturers in August ahead of a general release at the end of October. "The wait is almost over," said Tami Reller, chief marketing officer of Microsoft's Windows division. "Windows 8 is on track to be released to manufacturing …
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Re: Your over confidence astounds me!
You utter moron. Many of us Win8 haters are devoted MS fans who feel let down by the steaming turd Microsoft have just crimped off. Read some tech news. Better yet, install the Win8 preview.
Re: Your over confidence astounds me!
The browser decides for you which websites are allowed to use flash.
Re: Your over confidence astounds me!
Blitterbug: "Many of us Win8 haters are devoted MS fans who feel let down by the steaming turd Microsoft have just crimped off."
I feel like Microsoft is trying to blur the line between tablets and desktops/laptops but forgetting that the two have different purposes and should be designed as such. Personally, I am not touching Windows 8 with a 2,500 ft pole.
Re: Personally, I am not touching Windows 8 with a 2,500 ft pole
Me neither. I'm pretty galled, too, at the number of so-called MS 'fans' who think all the negative comments are from fruity fanbois. Bah, humbug! It all started so well, too. Installed both previews on two different lappys, one a 4-year old dual core and the other a core i7 jobbie with touch screen and nVidia graphics, to find:
1. Win8 installer refused to proceed on either laptop 'cos it detected Alcohol 120%. Uninstalled Alcohol. Installer said it was still there. Ripped every Alcohol entry from the registry. Installer said it was still there. In the end opted for 'Install and destroy all existing apps' option as the only way to try Win8.
2. Windows refused to run widescreen on the older machine. It defaulted to 1024x768 and would not recognise the 1280x800 screen.
3. Tried some cool-sounding Metro apps only to find my Core i7 + nVidia lappy creaked and grumbled over pinball and other games. The older machine gave a frame rate of about 1fps.
4. Was very, very, very impressed by 20 seconds boot time.
5. Was impressed by the Metro mail app. Until I found it lacked half the basic functions.
6. Very much liked the Win8 desktop fishy goodness. An Up button on the explorer toolbar - yay!
I was going to keep the later preview on my newer machine, until I found serious problems - can't recall the exact details now, but it felt really beta-like and I couldn't understand how real people were getting real work done on the previews. For me, the bugginess was too problematic.
The reason I'm so pissed now is that my experience turned me into a raging hater, from a position of excited anticipation. Now I'm just sad and angry at the whole thing...
So let's get this straight
Windows 8 (no matter how ugly and useless it is), will only cost ~ca $40.00(USD), when it releases?
Me thinks you might have missed a "2" that came just before those other Numbers.
Or did Microsoft suddenly realize the best way to kill off Piracy was not to lock down our PCs (not like that's gonna stop 'em anyway), but to offer there Warez for a reasonable price for Once.
Or does this $40.00(USD), just get you the Basic "N" Version?
Re: So let's get this straight
The $40 is a fee to downgrade your current Windows version to 8.
I don't think they have announced what a new licence will cost.
Re: So let's get this straight
Me thinks you might have missed a "2" that came just before those other Numbers.
***
No, MS know this is going to be a really hard sell which is vital to their future, they are pricing it according to their need to make sure people start using it.
Re: So let's get this straight
It's an early adopter offer (although the end date is currently undefined). You get Windows 8 Pro for $39.99 and you can also download the Windows Media Center for free too.
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2012/07/02/upgrade-to-windows-8-pro-for-39-99.aspx
Re: So let's get this straight
"The $40 is a fee to downgrade your current Windows version to 8."
That's how I understand it, and that gets you the full version, multiple languages and all. If you find Metro acceptable it could be a good way to turn those XP Home or Windows 7 Home Premium systems into Pro versions.
Re: So let's get this straight
@Malcolm 1
"It's an early adopter offer (although the end date is currently undefined)"
From the url you gave:
"If you prefer to shop at a local store, a packaged DVD version of the upgrade to Windows 8 Pro will be available for $69.99 during this promotion.
This upgrade promotion for Windows 8 Pro both online and at retail runs through January 31st, 2013."
The DVD version is good news for those without decent broadband (or those who don't have the right flavour of credit card for that matter). Apple's "download only" policy for Mountain Lion has upset quite a few folks who live out in the sticks.
I'm ready for Metro! ! !
Just ordered a new laptop over the weekend. *Without* the Metro upgrade coupon.
After some experimenting with Metro, I will freely admit, that if I considered a tablet to be anything more than a toy (to ME, that's all it would be, your mileage may vary) I'd find Metro to be as acceptable as an iPad or an Android-based tablet. It's fine for that.
is it shit or is it good? is it shit or is it good?
Major consumer releases:
Windows 3.1 = good
Windows 95 = shit
Windows 98 = good
Windows Me = shit
Windows XP = good
Windows Vista = shit
Windows 7 = good
Windows 8 = ...
I think I'll follow the pattern and wait for Windows 9.
Re: is it shit or is it good? is it shit or is it good?
Correction:
Windows 3.1 = good
>> Windows 3.11 Better
Windows 95 = shit
>> Windows 95 OSR Better
Windows 98 = good
>> Windows 98 SE Better
Windows Me = shit
Windows XP = good
Windows Vista = shit
>> Windows Vista SP1 Better
Windows 7 = good
Windows 8 = Really Windows 7 with touch support, Better
Re: is it shit or is it good? is it shit or is it good?
Sorry, lost me at 'touch support'.
Re: is it shit or is it good? is it shit or is it good?
Me, I'm looking forward to watching all those corporates get their touch support and proceed to swipe their monitors right off the desk.
Re: is it shit or is it good? is it shit or is it good?
Interestingly, if you look at the internal version numbers:
3
3.1 / 3.11
NT 3.51
4 (aka Windows 95)
NT 4
4.1 (aka Windows 98)
4.9 (aka Windows ME)
NT 5 (aka Win 2k)
5.1 (aka XP - as MS had merged the consumer and business ends, they ditched the NT prefix)
6 (aka Vista)
6.1 (until the marketing department told them to up it to 7 to match the box number)
8
I guess 9 will be called 9 internally, although it wouldn't surprise me if early versions are 8.1.
I expect what happens is that deadlines are set by the marketing department, who also like as many new features (and bloat!) as possible; consequently MS don't allocate enough time for testing / ironing out bugs (IIRC they once released a statement saying that 2k on release had 36,000 "unresolved issues" - a mixture of bugs and unimplemented feature requests).
It'll be interesting to see how many businesses snap up 8 on release, or whether they'll adopt the usual strategy of waiting for SP 1. Although having said that, there was a joke (based on truth?) in NT 4 days that a significant portion of each service pack was fixing bugs introduced in the previous service pack.
Re: is it shit or is it good? is it shit or is it good?
Windows 8 = Really Windows 7 crippled to look like a phone. Steaming pool of diarrhoea
@mittfh
If you look at the version number that Windows 8 puts in the IE10 User Agent string then you will find that it's 6.2, not 7 or 8! I have never come across Windows 7 with an internal version number of 7 - where did you find that? I suspect Windows 9 will have an internal number of 6.3 - looks like MS are adding the digits together to get the 'public' number!
Windows 2000
Shit, your scheme has been blown away.
I also remember the hate for XP and the Teletubbies references. Still, the love came and stayed ;-)
Re: hate for XP and the Teletubbies references
I hated the XP teletubbies appearance, but at least they let you change back to 'classic' look.
With win8 they have gone out of their way to stop you, the useless bar stewards!
Mind you, Ubuntu's Unity is well on its way as the Linux moment of pulling defeat from the jaws of victory, think of all those XP users who would find Gnome 2 quite usable? Ooops, we screwed that one.
Re: hate for XP and the Teletubbies references
A few points;
Gnome 3 (Shell) is primarily responsible for the snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory, Unity is just an unsatisfactory response to Gnome 3.
If you or your floundering gang XP refugees want Gnome 2 then go straight to Linux Mint MATE edition.
If you want the underlying Gnome 3 framework without the Gnome Shell idiocy then Linux Mint Cinnamon edition is made for you.
Re: is it shit or is it good? is it shit or is it good?
Oh god not this tired, old "good version, bad version" horseshit again. I doubt any of the people parroting this rubbish even used the versions they're talking about. 3.1 and earlier is basically just a GUI for DOS; 95, 98 and Me were all more or less all as shit as each other; XP was utter shit when it first came out for the same reasons as Vista (buggy as fuck, incompatible software/hardware, bad drivers), possibly even moreso, except everyone forgot this since it was around forever; and Windows 7 is just a polished Vista.
Re: Windows 2000
Doesn't count since it's pre business/consumer merge. The versions listed is actually correct as far as chronological order of consumer versions goes. It's still wrong in the simplistic judgements it makes though, obviously.
Re: is it shit or is it good? is it shit or is it good?
"6.1 (until the marketing department told them to up it to 7 to match the box number)"
Was Windows 7 not numbered 6.1 rather than 7 because it was thought changing the major version number would break compatibility with some third party software, and that MS did not want people to have problems like that after the issues that were reported with Vista?
Re: Windows 2000
"[WIndows 2000] Doesn't count since it's pre business/consumer merge. The versions listed is actually correct as far as chronological order of consumer versions goes."
From a business user point off view it does count.
Many of us managed to avoid the 98/SE/ME hassles by going straight from Win3.11/Win95 to NT 4.0.
Re: is it shit or is it good? is it shit or is it good?
>>Windows 8 = Really Windows 7 crippled to look like a phone. Steaming pool of diarrhoea
Don't let the facts get in the way of all those funny jokes Tom, they're hilarious.
Re: is it shit or is it good? is it shit or is it good?
" I doubt any of the people parroting this rubbish even used the versions they're talking about. 3.1 and earlier is basically just a GUI for DOS; 95, 98 and Me were all more or less all as shit as each other"
As someone who has been using since DOS3.3, you're talking junk. 95/98/ME have big differences and ME is definitely inferior. Wasn't 98 crap until SE came out, at which point it was the best pre-XP version?
Re: Windows 2000
I think you need to re-read what I said, specifically the part about how he listed the consumer versions and therefore omitted 2000 (as well as all the rest of the NT lineage prior to XP). In any case the alternating good/bad theory is nonsense, but if you're going to insist on going on about it then you should at least stick to either the consumer or business line rather than trying to sandwich in both somehow.
Re: is it shit or is it good? is it shit or is it good?
Sigh. My point is that the good/bad thing needs to die already. Yes, 98 SE was the better of the 9x line, and Me was slightly worse, etc. but overall they were all basically the same compared to the difference between 98 SE and XP, or XP and Vista. In the same way 7 is basically the same as Vista, except no-one really takes that onboard because they compared the experience of Vista with hardware and drivers not really ready for it, along with an overhauled kernel compared to Windows 7 coming out years later when drivers and hardware had caught up and the bugs ironed out. If you compared Vista SP2 onwards with 7, then there's not a huge deal between them. Similarly XP started out shit and ended up good, but everyone awful memories means they actually mean XP SP2 onwards when comparing it to other versions of Windows.
Re: @mittfh
/me runs Help -> About from Control Panel on his work computer (Win 7 Enterprise)... ooh, so it is 6.1 internally!
Sorry, mea culpa.
I run Linux at home and thought (from evidently badly remembered reviews of Win 7 when it first came out) that MS Marketing gurus had persuaded their engineers to change the internal version number to 7.
Alternatively...
If your favourite distro supports it, try Xfce. You can still install and use Gedit and Nautilus if you want to (although it'll look better if you choose a Gtk3 theme, otherwise Gtk3 apps such as Gedit and Nautilus will look naff). Some distros even make it relatively painless to disable Pulse and go back to plain old ALSA.
MS can afford to sell this OS cheap.
And no not because most of us here think its a bit lacking in a few areas.
But because they aim to make 30% on all the apps they are hoping folks will buy through Metro land.
This is the first OS that MS can make money from the customer all the way through the life of the OS.
I'm wondering what their projected revenue per Windows 8 user is? Probably a bit more then the usual £70 OEM copy gypsy like myself.
Re: MS can afford to sell this OS cheap.
"Lacking a bit"? Do explain. Seriously, I'd like to know because I'm confused as to how the majority of the planet is running businesses using Windows with more than an acceptable track record for simply getting the job done.
Re: MS can afford to sell this OS cheap.
Because like you and most others have totally missed the point about what Windows 8 is all about.
Its not about getting rid of the Start button. Its not about all the UI changes.
Its all about pushing folks to buy Metro Apps. The changes are just to push folks into Metro land. There they will buy all the fart apps they so desire, cos if Android and Apple App Stores are anything to go by, people love to buy crap. MS wants in on that big time.
MS knows full well that Windows 8 is not going to be the corporate OS of choice. It's mainly going to be domestic. So they get the Metro infrastructure incorporated into employees homes and media devices and that then gains acceptance into the corporate field through familiarity and ubiquity for Windows 9 (basically Windows 8 Corporate edition).
Windows 9 may not even have a 'desktop'.
Re: MS can afford to sell this OS cheap.
> Windows 9 may not even have a 'desktop'.
I see what you did there.
I hope as well as apps...
...they sell porn too - they could call it - Metro-Sexual - boom boom!
I'll get me coat, I can hear booing or is it groans...
Its all about pushing folks to buy Metro Apps.
No it really isn't. That is a fringe benefit.
From the horses mouth, we're overcharging by 11% on office, so we can pay big margins to resellers to force it down our throats. Thanks I'll stick with Libre, how many new bells & whistles does an office suite need? Office 15 just an excuse for a file format change?
Well it sounds like v15 is the first version to get some major new features for years... lots of swanky online collaboration stuff mainly. Which might actually be useful, with remote working getting more prevalent.
sadomasochists only need apply
That Japanese video was right. It seems some american businessmen will pay to be kicked in the bollocks
Surface apps
This seems like a fair price for the OS and is after all what they should have charged for Windows 7 upgrades from vista, but I am more interested in how they will price office and other applications from now on.
Apple and Google have set many peoples expectations when it comes to app pricing on tablets - free, 69p or 4.99 for something very special. How much will Office for Surface Pro cost (not the RT version) ? What about other developers - Are they going to charge a tablet price or a desktop price - given their programs can be installed on both?
Re: Surface apps
Loads of professional apps cost £10+, in fact cost is basically proportional to app-complexity / size-of-userbase.
Re: Surface apps
There are some that are over £20 sure, but that is far from the average. Take Winzip ( I know there are free alternatives) as an example. The base price is £25. You couldn't get away with that in any app store, but if they released a cheaper version for a Windows 8 pro tablet, they would not be able to prevent that being installed on the Desktop and totally undercut themselves. Yet how can any developer realistically offer a Windows 8 RT version at one price and another Windows 8 version at another price? I will watch with interest.
The end of October?
I guess it's going to be as Ghoulish as my first thoughts, then.
JAN 2013
so, Apple will be selling another bazillion iPads Xmas 2012 with no competition...
utter
Windows 8 - what is it?
Writing as someone with an intimate knowledge of operating systems (not just windows), I have 1 pertinent question with respect to Windows8
Are there ANY enhancements/changes to the ACTUAL OS, or is this entire Win8 exercise simply a total WOT over a new interface being thrown into the market?
This is not a troll. I haven't seen one article or comment about the OS itself. The media coverage is ONLY about the UI and UI != OS.
Feel free to direct me to where I should look.
Dweeb
Re: Windows 8 - what is it?
I don't think there is much change the the underlying OS that is major, but it has has some minor improvements. Had there been a no-Metro option I think most commentards here would be less hateful in their comments, probably looking forward to it in fact as an improvement over 7. But sadly they have already tried the preview...
Maybe on a tablet/phone it has a purpose, but on a desktop it sucks. But don't trust me, I don't own a fez.
Re: Windows 8 - what is it?
- They say faster boot time. They don't say if that's on the same hardware.
- Windows to Go. Put windows on a USB key. But it seems that the host computer has to have windows 8 installed so it's more like your profile on a USB key.
- Secure boot. Yes it's for your own good.
See this for a list.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/explore-windows-8.aspx
Most of it is UI stuff, or stuff that already in Win7 but tarted up a bit.
Re: Windows 8 - what is it?
"- Windows to Go. Put windows on a USB key. But it seems that the host computer has to have windows 8 installed so it's more like your profile on a USB key."
Oh, Lordy!!!
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