back to article Ballmer bets 'all in' on Phone 8 and Windows

Steve Ballmer is promising Microsoft is "all in" on the Windows 8 system and took to the stage, along with a mystery celebrity, to push the latest version of Microsoft's smartphone operating system at a launch event in San Francisco. "Today we're bringing phones into the Windows Family with Windows Phone 8," he said. "If you' …

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  1. Combat Wombat
    Mushroom

    Someone get the jumbo popcorn !

    This is going to be fucking fantastic !

    I wan to the world + dog pan this OS, and hopefully the sweaty, chair tossing, monkey boy gets shown the door.

    Maybe Google is hiring ?

    1. Shagbag

      I had a Lumia 800

      I tried WinPho 7 and I kinda liked it - until I tried to use it as a temporary storage device. It was shit. Then they announced WinPho8 won't be compatible with WinPho7 handsets. I felt violated.

      If someone wants to give me a WinPho8 I'll gladly test it out. But there's no way I'm going to stump up my own £££s to buy one. Once bitten...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I had a Lumia 800

        It won't run Android or iOS either. The bastards.

      2. JC_

        Re: I had a Lumia 800

        I tried WinPho 7 and I kinda liked it - until I tried to use it as a temporary storage device. It was shit.

        Skydrive? Email? FTP? Dropbox? Or a USB key so you don't need to fuss around with cables and connections?

        It is generous of you to be willing to accept a mobile phone for free.

    2. Ilgaz

      Re: Someone get the jumbo popcorn !

      It is fun until you figure Apple and google will be far more evil and spoiled as they notice they don't have a credible rival that users may switch to.

      Guy actually had to say Skype can be left running... If you used symbian, you could see how pathetic it is.

      Yea, it can run all time...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Someone get the jumbo popcorn !

        Oh, so does his comment mean that Skype's battery suckage on other phones is a "feature" that parent company Microsoft decided should be left in the app?

        Sounds like an updated version of the 'ole Windows undocumented-private-APIs-for-Office and busted-APIs-for-competitors trick.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Someone get the jumbo popcorn !

      Balmer bets company on failed mobile OS with no app support.

      Oh my, this is going to be hilarious.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Steve

      He's as nutty as my Uncle Fester if he actually believes what he says.

      1. Jess

        Re: Uncle Fester

        I knew he reminded me of someone.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Even the presenter of BBC Click rolled his eyes and shook his head after trying out Win 8. Too many flaws, to many compromises in a system that is in effect two operating systems mated together with a bit of double sided sticky tape and a staple. Neither the touch system or the desk top work well and they are unable to play nicely together.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Even" the non-entity presenter of a no-credibility TV show nobody has heard of? Damn, Ballmer needs to be told.

      1. CmdrX3

        Good old BBC Click

        One of the biggest UK Apple adverts... second only to The Gadget Show.

      2. Ilgaz

        Everyone knows click

        Well I bet you are British and hate that BBC license thing but really, BBC click is a very known and respected program worldwide.

        I know it isn't very "deep" stuff but a lot will listen to them.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Everyone knows click

          BBC Click and GadgetShow both have truckloads of free Apple stuff delivered all the time, in exchange for nice things.

          Make me sick that my BBC license fee is going to such a biased voice for hire like Click.

          1. Armando 123

            Re: Everyone knows click

            "Make me sick that my BBC license fee is going to such a biased voice for hire like Click."

            Which is how many American conservatives and libertarians feel about PBS and NPR.

            1. CmdrX3

              Re: Everyone knows click

              PBS gets $100 miliion, is funded out of public taxpayer funds and is basically pennies from the federal budget that American conservatives use as a distraction in order to avoid real cuts.

              The BBC gets $3.5 BILLION, and is funded from a separate annual fee that most households in the country must pay by law regardless of whether they watch BBC or not.

              Now I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that if American conservatives had THAT to whine about instead of Big Bird then we'd never hear the end of O'Reilly, that daft skank Gretchen and the rest of the idiots on Fox news belching their uninformed nonsense and half truths.

              1. Ilgaz

                We are ready to pay, they aren't selling

                If those idiot suits sold annual BBC to global audience who are waiting on line or paying to VPN services just to get iplayer, you would pay far less.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Everyone knows click

          There is precious little coverage of computing tech on TV, so let's be grateful we've got Click!

          I don't like the silly schtick before the opening titles, or the guy's hair gel that's he's way too old for, and my daughter stared aghast at the young lady who does the website 'news' (filmed with a strange blur to make her look more glam?) and said she looked like a skanky prozzie (!) but come on, it's a lot better than the nothing we'd have otherwise!

          Cooking, cooking, chefs, cooking, period costume drama, lousy quiz shows, 'reality' (nothing like it!) TV, over-hyped vacuous 'talent' shows, more cooking, houses, decorating, building, cooking, old films, US sitcoms and endless repeats, but precious little on IT. Take a look at the shelves in the newsagents to determine what hobbies and interests people have, and then compare to what we get on TV. It's pretty pathetic.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Everyone knows click

            > said she looked like a skanky prozzie

            But whilst we all say how bad it is, secretely us men all love that look, don't we?

            I wonder if there's a Winpho8 parallel right there.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Why are you talking about Win8 when this is a Win Phone 8 article? Good to see you know your tech and know the difference!

      1. Tom 38
        Joke

        You've not been following have you! It's all the same!

  3. Captain DaFt

    Psst!

    Don't tell Ballmer that the phrase "all in" is slang for "tired", and what he thinks he's saying may not be what everyone's hearing.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Psst!

      No, he means they're all in the bowl and are only waiting for someone to pull the chain... one can only hope...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Psst!

      Would Balls Deep have been better?

      1. Captain DaFt

        Re: Psst!

        Actualy, I think "on board", would have been a better phrase to get that message across that he was trying to deliver. It would have implied that he actualy thought it was going somewhere.

  4. Giles Jones Gold badge

    I want a SIM free Lumia 920 but can you get one in the UK? can you bollocks.

    The 920 will be the last Nokia phone I buy, not because I won't buy any of their phones again but I believe they won't exist by the time I need another phone.

    Nokia are just like Kodak, failed to adapt and their cash cow shrunk. With Nokia it is the shrinking feature phone income and with Kodak it was the film market. Both failed to adapt to the new world (digital for Kodak and modern smartphones for Nokia).

    The 920 is one of the best phones they have done, but they are just run by complete idiots.

    1. Jess

      Re: their cash cow shrunk

      The reason their cash cow shrunk was because they sent it to the slaughterhouse, after they had applied medicine and it was recovering. And they also sent baby cow there too. (N9)

      1. lauri_hoefs
        Flame

        Re: their cash cow shrunk

        Enough with the brainless Symbian nostalgy already!

        The "medicine" was not working very well, and the system was pretty much as far from recovering as it could ever be. The "baby cow" was still born. Read the Muropaketti article about Meego development puplished here in El Reg, and you might get an idea how the "baby cow" was actually doing.

        Having had to use way too many of Nokia's top of the line phones during the last ten years, I say good riddance, Symbian. Finally Nokia has phones that won't reboot and freeze randomly, and actually have a good selection of well working software available to them!

    2. B4PJS

      Clove will have the 920 SIM free early november :)

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    OMG!

    "Alba said her daughter had managed to post gibberish on her mum's Twitter feed after she gave the tot her iPhone to play with". That's, like, OMG, so serious!

    What's wrong with these people?

    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

      Re: OMG!

      "her daughter had managed to post gibberish" is so amazing, to be as capable as virtually all other Twitter users to post gibberish! Get her a mensa application now!

    2. JC_

      Re: OMG!

      Being able to hand your phone to your daughter/son/niece/friend's kid so they can distract themselves but not do anything annoying isn't a good idea?

      Why not?

      1. Hellcat
        Facepalm

        Re: OMG!

        My wife can do that with her Lumia 800 now. It's called 'flight mode'.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: OMG!

      She did say "emailing my partnerS" plural.

      Got to make sure the ones on hotmail don't know about the ones on gmail, after all...

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "What's wrong with these people?"

      they are shallow, stupid and completely lack a sense of irony or any insight into the human condition.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "claimed that Windows Phone 8 has 46 of the top 50 mobile apps in use today."

    Ha Ha Ha

    A monkey that tells jokes - well poor jokes, whatever next

    1. Tom 35

      Re: "claimed that Windows Phone 8 has 46 of the top 50 mobile apps in use today."

      43 of them are different versions of Angry Birds...

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nice try, but...

    Have a look at this, and compare prices:

    http://googleblog.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/nexus-best-of-google-now-in-three-sizes.html

    I think MS are in trouble.

  8. Linux Rules
    Thumb Down

    No way - not with "Raising the bill" Cingular (aka AT&T, in name only) or partner-with-liars-and-thieves Verizon (aka Comcast lapdog).

    (This comment makes sense to USA consumers.)

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    squee1701

    I have briefly tried Windows 8 - the desktop support guys where I work had a pre-release spin. I'm not trolling but normally, I work from a laptop that I can carry around with me, it has a little webcam, synaptics pad, DVD-RW built in and a pretty standard 1tb hd. This is not an anti Windows 8 troll, just what the implications of doing everything through a tablet have for me; Ubuntu, Gnome - you guys should think about this too.

    Okay, let's say I'm in the office, on a train whatever and I need to do some work for an hour;

    Laptop world:

    1. Open bag and retrieve laptop

    2. Press 'on' button

    3. yay! I'm productive with all the mod cons, including mouse, nice bouncy keyboard, video conferencing etc...

    Tablet world:

    1. Open first bag and retrieve tablet, and the stand I will inevitably need to buy in order to keep a comfortable posture and prevent my arm going numb. Then set the tablet in the stand

    2. Open bag two: Retrieve USB keyboard (I type at around 70 wpm, this will probably drop to around 30-ish or even less on a tablet or annoying rubber fold out thing. Retrieve USB mouse (my work flow requires point and click), retrieve USB DVD Drive - sometimes I need to backup my work etc...

    3. Open bag three: Retrieve external USB hard-drive where my movies, music, images, etc... are stored. Then hope they all work via the USB hub I have purchased. We're probably on about £250 of accessories so far, at least.

    4. Press 'on' button.

    5. Bit of luck and I'm productive.

    That's my 2 cents anyway. I'm not saying everyone will have this problem, but to to recreate the feel and workflow of my current Win 7 laptop (I gave up on Linux thanks to Gnome and Ubuntu).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: squee1701

      Yay, a Windows 8 article for me to write FUD on!

      Wait what? Windows Phone 8? Nevermind, post it anyway and watch those Google-sponsored upvotes roll in!

    2. Richard Plinston

      Re: squee1701

      > 3. Open bag three: Retrieve external USB hard-drive where my movies, music, images, etc... are stored.

      > 5. Bit of luck and I'm productive.

      You seem to be confused: watching movies is not 'productive', listening to music is not 'productive', looking at pictures is not 'productive'.

    3. mark1978

      Re: squee1701

      That's because this isn't what tablets are for, you need to stick with a laptop as that's what works for you and not complain that a tablet isn't like a laptop.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What's with the hobbit

    ...onstage with Alba and Baldmer?

    1. TeraTelnet
      Coat

      Re: What's with the hobbit

      Film tie-in?

      1. Jediben

        Re: What's with the hobbit

        I thought it was Tom Cruise? :)

  11. HCV

    I'm guessing that prior to this event, Jessica Alba thought "curate her content" was a job for her daughter's pediatrician.

  12. zen1

    I, for one...

    Think Balmer is an idiot. I don't see it flying in the business market at all.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I, for one...

      Well, that settles it then.

      Hey, Fortune 500 companies! zen1 thinks Balmer is an idiot. Scrap all PCs immediately.

      I bet they'll get right on that.

      1. Old Handle

        Re: I, for one...

        No, they'll just keep using Windows 7.

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