Microsoft picks October 26 for Windows 8 launch Mark October 26th down in your diary: that's the day Microsoft has chosen to release Windows 8 into the wild. Windows leader Steve Sinofsky revealed the release date at Microsoft's annual sales meeting today and Redmond quickly emitted an organic, engaging, and convincingly human blog post with the news and the image below to …
Did you think about that before you vomited it onto your keyboard?
If Win8 required UEFI rather than BIOS, do you think that, maybe, they may reduce their install base somewhat?
Also, if MS prevent the installation of other browsers, maybe they'd get into anti-trust suits again?
Critical thinking is dead, it seems.
...of this big, impotent behemoth as we know it today ie the rule of clueless, half-idiotic, pigheaded, arrogant old farts like Ballmer and his ilks (Sinofski, Belfiore etc) is surely coming to an end in a couple of years, thanks God.
W8 will a *bigger* flop than Vista was, it's quite obvious - all one has to do is go online and read the hatred this tacky-broken utter junk called Metro provoked.
Time to disappear, you clueless bald, fat, angry troll and take your shills with you; it's time for the young and smart to take over and get this obese, slow-moving, impotent behemoth up to speed again.
"Calm down dear..."
I wouldn't be too negative - people like you cast the same negative 'it's-certain-to-fail' doom on the ipad, and look what happened to that.
It'll sell, no doubt about that. Will it change the computing world, and catapult MS back to the top of the "must have" heap? God no. The unrelenting slow slide in fortunes will continue unabated.
Vista sucked because of excessive minimum requirements, poor performance and compatibility problems with peripherals because they'd rushed it to market without adequately preparing the ecosystem. Windows 8 is not going to have those problems. It's got a new user interface. Oooh. Get over it. You can either embrace it and possibly like it, or you can take a couple of easy painless steps to work around it and move on.
Windows 7 & 8 still have the same crazy hardware requirements - it's just that those hardware requirements are easily and cheaply available now, and the stuff you buy off the shelf easily exceeds it.
This is not a virtue on MS - it's just the pace of hardware development overtook the minimum requires. And even then, MS are just taking a more "liberal" view on what minimum means. To have an actual real-life useable and unlaggy machine still needs pretty significant hardware.
I agree, it's unfair to compare Vista with Win8.
Doing that is a serious insult to Vista.
I'm using Vista, on a 4-year old PC (assembled in 2008). Vista is Win7 without a fancier taskbar. All other changes are minuscule and cosmetic. Vista = Win7, more or less.
When properly patched up, (Windows Vista SP2+ all Windows Update patches), Vista is a competent and stable OS.
Windows 8 will fail because it is by design a schizophrenic OS, trying to force the desktop user into utilizing a touch-centric UI. Horizontal scrolling and lockscreen? That's madness.
And on the battle of touch-centric devices, Windows (and Windows Phone) 8 devices will fail, simply because Android and Apple have dominated too much and there isn't room for a third major player.
If you have MSFT stocks, it's best if you let go of them now.
Better luck with Windows 9 (coming in 2014?), Microsoft..
"101 days will be required to develop a credible explanation for just how Metro, Windows 8's oft-pondered new interface, will improve the computing experience."
Were still waiting for Apple to explain how MAC OS improves the computing experience!
If you’re still banging on about Apple, you need to start "thinking differently" and stop following the crowd.
I will evaluate the OS on its strengths and reserve judgement, unlike the commentards here, who are oh so clever they already know how Win8 will work, etc.....
And at least Redmond are moving forward, not stuck with the same OLD interface on OSX/iOS (good old 80's wallpaper).
I'm not advocating it, but I will not prejudge. Suppose that makes me a considered consumer and not a follower. (Not that 1/2 of these commentards could comprehend the concept)
At last, a bit of considered opinion amongst all the frothing at the mouth and predictions of doom.
I was listening to a report on the Today program this morning (which was mostly about Nokia but dealt with Microsoft) which described the previews of Windows 8 as a very exciting development and well received. Could they really be talking about the same thing I read about day in day out on Reg message boards?
It never ceases to amaze me the extent to which techies are utterly divorced from the reality of man-in-the-street usage of IT, irrespective of whether that is as consumers in the home or end users in the workplace. A more focused "if it doesn't suit my particular needs then it's rubbish and will fail" you will never see.
The reason Microsoft has been as successful as it has is because it understood early on that the world was not run by techies and targeted its output accordingly. Apple have taken this approach, refined it and targeted a higher end of the market with what is (at basic level) the same approach. Joe Public doesn't care if Apple are stifling innovation because they sue Samsung etc every time they sneeze, most of my users don't even know what OS they have on their computers or on their phones (home or work). It's of no interest to them - they just want to be able to get to Google / Facebook or whatever. If Windows 8 ships on as OEM on new desktops and Joe Public can still find Google and Facebook then he won't care a jot.
I will reserve judgment on Windows 8 until I have actually spent some time using it. If it doesn't work EXACTLY the same way that I work now I might actually think about changing how I work to work better with the new system (just like I did when moving from XP to 7). If one thing has surprised me here, it's not that people are damning Microsoft for doing something differently than before it's the extent to which technically knowledgeable people are sounding just as change averse as their non-technical fellows.
Yes, I heard Today as well and it was quite refreshing to hear someone - who obviously knew what he was talking about and could not be accused of being an MS Shill - talking up Win8. As for:
"It never ceases to amaze me the extent to which techies are utterly divorced from the reality of man-in-the-street usage of IT, irrespective of whether that is as consumers in the home or end users in the workplace"
I think you have it bang on.
Here's a question for you.. Have you tried to remotely log in to a Win8 machine yet?
If, like me you run a high resolution monitor and you attempt to log into a Win8 PC thats connected via an ADSL connection with a 512Kb upload, it is IMPOSSIBLE to use. When it is windowed, Win8's hot corners are impossible to hit and over a remote connection, the start screen with all its glitzy icons is so slow it is completely unusable. Things like the charms bar are simply inaccessible. At least with ANY previous version of Windows, you can turn all the fancy effects off.
Hey, this is going to be great for Windows, and non techies. discovering and finding apps, with or without touch, chromeless gui options.
Brilliant - first thing i normally do is maximize and application windows anyway.
the video/music/game experience will be cool.
we'll be able to put some good stuff together for the management to live in metro gui's, etc. this is great. well done microsoft - you had to do it - no choice. Windows would be dead for sure if you didn't do this.
And, yes, I have used W8 it a lot.
Techs UK
Are you a car driver?
The basic user interface for automobiles coalesced fairly early - drivers from the 1930's or even earlier would have little difficulty adapting to the controls and instrumentation of a modern automobile.
Similarly a near optimum desktop computer UI paradigm was set in the 1980s by Apple.
The UI paradigm for tablets is different - arguably Apple nailed it first again - but it's nothing like the optimum 'power' desktop design!
Say when skateboards came along, car manufacturers had mandated that automobiles could henceforth only be steered using your feet and brakes applied by leaning backwards and clenching your buttocks?
Perhaps if you want to be have the option to drive your car with a flaky interface and it suits you - then brilliant. However why are UI designers (and it's not just MS) abandoning the rest of us?
Oops. Some sort of award required for the analogy FAIL there.
The first mass-produced car, the Ford Model T, set the standard. The fact that at one time 50% of the entire world's cars were Model T's says it all here. In that car, the three pedals are one to switch gear ratios, one to engage reverse and a transmission brake. There is no clutch. Two levers operate the parking brake / neutral selector and the high/low ratio axle. The throttle is operated vis a lever on a quadrant attached to the steering column.
So in actual fact that car UI you are so fond of has undergone a major change. More than once. Go back a bit further and you find tiller steering control with hand operated brakes become rather more common than other mechanisms. Move on a bit and we get automatic transmissions (one fewer pedal), a wealth of parking brake options (hand operated with a variety of detents and positions, foot operated and now switch operated), automated chokeing / enrichment, also ignition advance / retard and more switchgear variations than you can shake a stick at.
Your bloke from the '30s would be rather puzzled by a modern car. How's it supposed to be started without a choke, an advance/retard lever and a starter button to press once you've turned it on with the key? Hang on, starter buttons are making a comeback, so he might be lucky on that one. Then again, if it were an auto he'd be a bit stuffed (Aha! "D" means "Forwards"...........???????).
I'm not sure that's a valid comparison though. The layout of the "user interface" of a car is based in a mechanical 3D environment and is largely related to the physiology of the human user in a seated position facing forward with feet and arms outstretched. This pretty much dictated the starting point of where things need to go.
This simply is not the case with computers. The OS is basically just a flat rectangle in front of the user, the specific layout of things on that rectangle and how you switch between them is not governed by the physiological givens of the human form. The creators of the interface therefore have a lot more freedom to move things around and try different ways of working. Obviously physical interaction with the device is governed by the human form but again the constraints are much less specific than they are for driving a vehicle.
"...a near optimum desktop computer UI paradigm was set in the 1980s by Apple..."
Yeah, when was the last time you used an Apple Lisa or original Mac? I've got one, it's not as good as you remember, some of the concepts were good, but these are all built on organic development going back much further than you may imagine. Most early Apple software had to be run in full screen because of the pitiful screen resolution, and the OS while nice, was a glorified task switcher, which could occasionally overlay windows.
Who says he's talking about the Apple Lisa or original Mac?
Try 'just' a little later and you'll be spot-on. About this time Microsoft decided to copy enough of the UI to make their OS run quite nicely.
I'm not sure which machines you were using - but I was using nice high-resolution greyscale screens a few years before the 90s with tons of windows all over the place.
Or you could stop lining the pockets of these companies whi will inevitably sell you crap that wont outlast its warranty and get a decent PC from an Indie that will last. Just a thought.
For my ten penneth worth. My monitors are on a vesa bracket about 2' from me, so yeah, really suited to using metro and touch. Thats not a disconnect with reality thats just a fact.
I've been following W8 since the first preview release. I'd got frustrated at the change in UI and the user experience when installing it on my PC's. Just like many of the commenters here I'd been prepared to write it off and continue with W7.
Two things have changed my mind.
1) Installing W8 on a Samsung Slate. It doesn't really matter that the install and set up process was almost as painless as installing OS X, but the user experience of W8 on a touch device just works. The metro interface is easy to use for tablet type tasks and there is still the ability to access non-metro applications. I expect that software producers will over time re-target those apps that are appropriate to the metro interface further improving my use of the tablet.
2) I loaned my tablet and a keyboard to a very non-technical friend and after just a couple of minutes walking them through the screen they took to it with no problems. They didn't care about loosing the start menu, they were already comfortable with the idea of scrolling through pages of icons from their smart phone. When using the tablet they had a seamless transition between keyboard, mouse and touch screen and didn't have a bad word to say about it.
As a technically competent person I am getting on with learning how to get the most out of Metro. The step seems much smaller than going from NT to XP.
My "typical user" seems much less resistant to change than I expected and sees W8 as a fusion of their smart phone and PC.
Erm... a UI designed to be used on tablets/touch-screens being nice to use on a touch-screen?
Nooooooo - you don't say?
The problem most of us here have with it is THAT WE AREN'T GOING TO BE USING IT ON TOUCH SCREENS!
(Sorry for the shouting. I just thought you needed to start listening).
If Microsoft have managed to produce a nice interface for using it with touch screens, then great. Brilliant. It'll be a nice change of pace for them to get something right first time.
Metro is not a good interface for a machine which does not have a touch interface. It's that simple.
If the average user gets confused and cross from the change from Xp to Vista/7, or completely lost when changing to the ribbon in Office then they are going to have an absolute ball-ache of a time with Win 8.
@Jason Hall
"The problem most of us here have with it is THAT WE AREN'T GOING TO BE USING IT ON TOUCH SCREENS!"
I fired up the preview version of Server 2012 the other day. When I loaded a CD I got the expected first time around Autorun dialogue (isn't it time they dropped that?).
That dialogue suggested that I "Tap here" to get more information.
WTF, a touch screen on a server?
P..S. Yes, I know the recommendation is to run Server 2012 in a headless configuration, but I've gpt to find my way around the whole thing if I'm going to support it.
ME was the ugly child in-between Win98 and WinXP, as Vista was between WinXP and Windows7
I can't help thinking the same fate awaits Windows 8.
We're still seeing a significant market share for windows XP - mostly in business.
Windows 7 is a worthy successor - and currently (depending who you believe) enjoying about 50% market share.
We all know what Windows 8 is about - it's microsofts "late to the party" attempt to turn around the disaster they've had with mobile/touch devices and interfaces.
They are forcing it into the Desktop paradigm where I'm fairly certain, it'll get a resounding thumbs-down by IT across the planet - many of whom are still to upgrade to Windows 7.
That leaves it with tablets, phones, touch screen laptops and the poor individuals who purchase new desktop PC's with it installed.
Microsoft are so far behind the curve on mobile, they haven't a hope in hell of catching up.
There's nothing cool about Microsoft, there never was.
If your not cool, your not going to appeal to the market that uses touch interface mobile devices, regardless of how good your product is.
Windows 8 is DOA.
The new download from Steam complete with animation and sound effects of Metro (aka Bob 2) dieing some most horrible deaths while at the same time removing and replacing the interface with one of the older themes. Have lots of different entertaining ways to kill the Bob 2 interface with extreme prejudiced.
OH and have the email addresses of those responsible for this travesty available so that you can e-mail them just n what ways you have killed the Metro interface so far and just how much you hate it.
Years ago, I worked for a company that did stuff for the MOD and when we went to Windows 2000 from NT they still insisted all electronic media was readable by Windows 3.1, which they had locked down the way THEY wanted. I wonder if they have got NT secure enough yet? (Anon, for obvious reasons)
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