Microsoft gears up for Windows 8 Windows 7 might still not be officially complete. And Microsoft is laying people off. But the company's already gearing up to launch its next operating system: Windows 8. Early job postings indicate at least one focus for Windows 8 will be systems and data management. The company has advertised for developers and testers to …
Why start worrying about another OS now? Vista may not be the shit but is rather nice once you get used to it. Personally I will be switching to Win7 damn near as soon as its available. So why start worrying about another version when the next isnt even released let alone find and fix whatever bugs may be in that because you know damn well that Win8 will be based off Win7. Oh screw it let the flame wars commence.
Are we talking about the same company here? This is the company who insisted we create a live account in order for our company to track our corporate licence counts for office, exchange, sql, etc, and who promptly de-activated the account and erased all the online records for our licence tracking 90 days later.
When we came to add more licences the next year Microsoft just didn't want to know. They didn't see why we had a problem with their corporate licencing service wiping out all online records if you don't log in every 90 days. They couldn't even understand our frustration at the fact that we could re-activate the account, but that they had no way of re-attaching the licence records to it, they just assumed we would happily re-register all the certificates from the originals in the safe...
Clueless, absolutely clueless.
"Microsoft was one of the first to offer free web mail with Hotmail, which it acquired...."
That's an interesting sentence. It almost makes it sound like Microsoft was one of the first to offer free web mail service, when it was actually Hotmail which did so.
By this logic, if I ate the cow, and the cow ate the grass, does that mean that I performed photosynthesis?
How else will they earn any money.
Frankly, unless I get a nasty attack of gadgetitis, caused by the advent of some new hardware that I convince myself that I really absolutely have to have, and that hardware won't run what I use now, I see little need to upgrade beyond Win-SP and Office 97.
New Word processor? Got one, mate, don't need another one. New spreadsheet? My excel is spreading sheets further than I could ever imagine.
So, if even a substantial number of MS's customers think anything like me, MS's income would just dry up.
They have to keep them coming. They have to persuade people that they want them.
The Favourite White Papers block count on this article is three: what I'd like to know is when the Reg will simply forget about the articles, and just shove its favourite white papers down our throat.
Perhaps...
They only do it to annoy,
Because they know it teases...
MSN Web Messenger has been available for a couple of years - this link on archive.org is from August 2007:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070824125445/http://www.ajaxlines.com/ajax/stuff/article/msn_web_messenger.php
And for those of you who need to track your licenses, you can set up a "Live" account with your existing e-mail address. You're not restricted to a hotmail or live.com address.
Why don't you all get a real operating system like Linux.
I've got and iPhone and all Apple fanbois suck
Windoze is the most security hole ridden piece of SHITE the world ha ever seen.
Actually I quite like Vista and have been running it on my custom built PC with twin over-head mother fuckers and braided power supply leads now for 2.36759 years and am yet to encounter any issues whatsoever.
Paris because I'd like to Windows 8 her.
Mines the one with the "I love O/S2" on the back.
Who knows the release could happen in about 2 years. Of course as the release go on, they will get less and less relevant. What is the relevance of W7 anyway? It is just a mish-mash of "features" that Microsoft is pushing on us. Most of these are really unnecessary so we just continue with XP as always.
Then again, if you want releases that ARE relevant, most Linux distributions have two releases a year, not two years between releases.
One of these days we will have "Office 2010 for Linux", then we can all go home!
Woo, with this kind of news it's hard not to love Microsoft and Windows and their perpetual optimism.
Why, just as they leave a trail of rubbish Operating System failures behind them, they are always looking forward to what the next OS will be. It's like they are so brainwashed that they don't realise how awful their products are.
I, for one, welcome our new Windows 8 overlords and their glorious WinFS of doom
Praise be to Ballchin and his goons. Why make quality when you can make quantity!
Thad is right, the reason for this is just to keep the Microsoft Money Machine working. If they were really interested in producing a decent operating system they'd concentrate on making one excellent system rather than trying to resell the same old rubbish with a few minor improvements.
Interesting how this news comes out on the day the next version of Ubuntu is released...
I installed Windows Vista on day one release. I actually built a system just for Windows Vista so i had no problems at all with it. I think its the best OS so far. I will upgrade to Windows 7 as soon as it comes out as well and verson 8 whenever its released sometime in the future. Though upgrades may not offer tons of new features they always offer many new featrues and when it somes to new features i like them ;)>
Like Bucky, I, too, feel that this sentence is so chronically broken that it simply MUST be repaired.
Let's have a go:
"Hotmail was one of the first random acquisitions (with no discernable revenue stream) which Microsoft gobbled up, in the early days of the dot-com boom. Microsoft has continued to fail to capitalise upon it, ever since - probably because there was no genuine business to be had, from such a system. Even now, people only create new hotmail accounts in order to avoid getting spam at their real email addresses. The earlly days of Hotmail, within Microsoft, were a comical litany of failures, prolonged outages and lack of service, while engineers struggled to fulfill Gates' dream of seeing the entire application ported off Solaris (which Bhatia and Smith, being good dot-com boys, had chosen) onto the fledgeling Windows NT. Many, within Windows group, who had been gifted with this thankless task, asked, among themselves, whether $400 million could not have been better spent developing something, in house, rather than watching DOS-Uinx emulators issuing 'parachute deployed' messages, all day long. At one stage, Gates, in his rage, at how slowly the work was progressing, picked up an Enterprise 400 server and threw it out of a window, trailing Cat 5 cables behind it, so that it smashed on the pavement below. Unbeknowns to him, of course, this was part of the live Hotmail service, and it's destruction caused Hotmail to become unavailable, in the Cisco bay area, until a replacement Sun unit could be sourced, installed with the necessary software, and plugged back in to the network. Today, Hotmail continues to shuffle around, stinking, and murmmering about 'brains', while senior Microsoft executives insist that the thing is 'Live'. Bhatia, meanwhile, was last seen touting free, web-based teleconferencing and planing his own personal city (quite where, no one is sure - possibly inside a hollowed out volcano). Smith, meanwhile runs a company which appears to patent things, but which does not have a website (perhaps he doesn't want to get spammed). Quite where the $400 million is, no one knows. Maybe Sir Fred has it?"
Security concerns aside* what can any of the versions of Windows since 2000 do that it can't? Once an OS allows you to plug and play devices (or, at least, load drivers painlessly) and has full control over system resources where else is there to go? Oh, I forgot, you put a ton of crappy effects and annoying dialogues everywhere and use "Widgets".
When will OS makers build an OS that just works as efficiently and securely as possible without the needless crap? Before any Linux users pipe up, desktop Linux seems to have almost got there then buggered off in the direction of KDE4 and whatever crap it is the Gnome team are up to.
Oh, and OSX doesn't count as an OS as a Mac is an appliance built to work with other appliances by the same manufacturer -- nothing wrong with that if it's your thing but the OS makers faced no real challenges.
*I'm _still_ convinced that 90% of security issues are down to user stupidity and the other 10% can generally be dealt with by a re-install (which should be done anyhow if a machine is rooted, regardless of OS).
Sounds an awful lot like what *nix has been doing for years. The more I read about what shit MS is getting up to, the more and more I look at doing a dull swap. All I need is
1) Something "Media Center" like (Myth?)
2) A compatible printer (quite fancy a new Kodak job)
3) VPN support (CheckPoint, pull your bloody finger out!)
Got Jaunty RC installed last night in a VirtualBox image, looks pretty sweet.
as are 7 and vista. The only reason people should replace xp, is if microsoft actually deliver what vista was supposed to be, which is a complete re-write from the ground up. Just because it looks and feels like windows to the user, doesn't mean it has to be anywhere near the same underneath.
Any changes to the API need to be published well ahead of time and, this is the rub, strip out the backwards compatability. Build it as an emulator that is seperate from the main OS, like wow64 is (assuming that is actually seperated from the main OS)
Somehow though I feel they have lost a few of the faithful along the way with the Vista debacle. People disappointed with Vista have sought other pastures and they may well not be back.
I wish you well MS no hard feelings, but the world changed and you didn't! See ya around...
@Antony - ROTFL. Good work.
As regards Windows 8: Call me paranoid, but given that Windows 7 has been rushed out in response to the Vista debacle, is it reasonable to suppose that Windows is, in *fact* just what Windows 7 was *going* to be before they had to rush out another interim release?
Perhaps I could have explained that better. think of it this way:
MS product name | Real world.
Windows Vista = Broken
Windows 7 = Windows Vista v1.1
Windows 8 = Windows 7 (rebadged)
Mine's the one with the Apple on the back.
you know that even with your os of choice that you upgrade versions right, or are you all still using linux kernal 1 or mac os 7?
Oh wait you upgraded to a newer version as well, why did you do that, was it new features or extra security features or anythign else? Because that is the same as the reason for upgrading from xp to vista or 7.
Oh and to the linux people who say that each version should take less resources or the same , there have been many arcticles out there detailing the software/hardware leapfrogging, as software gets more demanding the hardware overtakes it so it runs better, then the software does more because it can so the hardware gets better again. Without this idea the PC market would stagnate as there would be no reason to release new hardware into the market.
i hope to go the general populus doesn't trust most of the commenters here with anything actually important to do with it . i would fear for the world if they do
I can see what that will bring : a whole lot of misunderstandings, lost files and general pain for home users.
What, because you think that Microsoft is going to reserve this "revolutionary" file thingy to business users only ? Nonsense ! It'll be the centerpiece of Windows Number Whatever and everyone will have it regardless of whether or not they actually need it.
Don't forget, this is Microsoft, and Microsoft Knows Better (c) than you what your needs are. Proof ? Just look at Vista and its embedded DRM ! Isn't that a wonderful thing for the end user ? Obviously (says RIAA/MPAA) ! Did any end user actually ask for it ? Of course not ! How could they ? Nobody had ever thought of it before !
Given that the general agreement on Win 8 is that it is already a re-hash of Win 7, itself a spin-off of Vista based on XP with added DRM and fancy bells and whistles, I can't help but shudder when I think of the royal clusterfucks that will happen with a new, untested file system working, I should say laboring, under DRM restrictive processes. Sounds as fun as trying to single-handedly pull an elephant in one direction when the animal wants to go some other way.
I wonder what will happen when this new file system is pulled from the functionality list yet again ?
Win 95, Win 98 ]- a lot of similarities, esp. in terms of UI. 98 fixed a lot of 95's problems, but 95 was the back-end revolution.
Win 2K, Win XP ]- again, loads of similarities, with providing the back-end upgrade and XP polishing the UI and fixing the usability problems.
Vista, Win 7]- Extremely similar. Vista pushed the technology forward, with Win 7 providing the more user-friendly product.
I guess this means that Win 8 will have 'issues'. Also, none of the above feature WinFS, and neither will Win 8 (unless the come-up with a fundamentally different FS and brand it WinFS do they don't look like 'tards).
>to the anti ms people here
>you know that even with your os of choice that you upgrade versions right,
Yep, but we don't get shafted for license fees and new hardware every damn time.
> Oh and to the linux people who say that each version should take less resources or the same , there have been many arcticles out there detailing the software/hardware leapfrogging,
So? That's not a good reason for rolling over and accepting it. I don't see why some idiot at MS should make me spend another £500 to increase my hardware just because my XP machine that works fine can't cope with Vista/7/8. They can go F*** themselves.
My personal feelings aside, there's huge downward pressure on power consumption, driven by increasing mobile use, and demand for energy in general. Failing some major revolution in power generation, population control or battery technology, we need tech that does the same for less energy. MS is consistently failing to deliver on this front.
> i hope to go the general populus doesn't trust most of the commenters here with anything actually important to do with it . i would fear for the world if they do
I fear for the world if we listen to MS and their apologists too much.
I actually think this is a good thing for MS - a faster release schedule on major versions has to be a benefit because it means they can react to criticism (and let's face it, Vista IS a bust for them) more quickly. Sadly for them, I think they'll listen to the wrong critics.
For those of you who exclaim yawns of boredom at this news, let me give a brief explanation.
WinFS is an entirely new, ground-up approach to filesystems. BeOS is the only other OS that has ever attempted such a change (as far as I'm aware) but never made any impact due to not actually being finished. I suspect Google have implemented something similar, but it's not available outside of mountain view.
Instead of a flat filesystem, WinFS uses a relational database system that allows for extensible metadata. This is a truly massive change on many levels.
The extensible metadata allows the OS and applications running on it to glean truly intelligent information about the files stored. A movie file will no longer just contain file length, codec, dimensions etc. Year, director cast list can be added.
Being a relational database, querying for searches becomes blindingly fast, hence my Google suspicions. This will have a truly massive impact on the fileserver market, which is clearly why the project is so closely tied to server 2008(9?)
As for exposing the APIs, I heartily agree that if it is to become a success, then MS need to be open enough for developers to take advantage of these new features, but the filesystem is based on SQL, and the extensible metadata is built on XML tech, so there's not exactly going to be a steep learning curve.
as for the peer-to-peer tech, do you realise that MS have already released some pretty groung breaking stuff in XP SP3? Have a look under your add/remove components -> networking services for Peer-to-Peer. It's an API open to developers for use in their applications
Distributed, SERVERLESS peer name resolution!
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/bb726971.aspx
haven't kazaa, limewire et al been working toward this holy grail for some time now?
"The extensible metadata allows the OS and applications running on it to glean truly intelligent information about the files stored. A movie file will no longer just contain file length, codec, dimensions etc. Year, director cast list can be added."
Honestly, who cares about extensible metadata? How does that allow me to do my job more efficiently? Some of us don't really care to input a TON of metadata for every file we generate. I am sure that extensible metadata would allow the DRM that Microsoft decides to embed in every OS to report when you have a file that is not Kosher. Then I guess that they can use some kind of fancy trick to remove it from your computer for you. No thanks MS. I had hopes for Vista, but then you decided that you knew better than I did about what I want (and do not want) on my computer.
All I hear is Cloud computing, offsite storage and the like...
Office 2009, I mean, do you really trust others with your Data ? Are you allowed to ?
I'm not, neither is the rest of my department....
Their vision for the future is flawed but people in the trades are still buying it....whores...
We don't need MORE features, we Need more BUG FIXES....
I know i know, no one will build the one year battery, there's no money in that...
But constantly upgrading to less secure, less personal and more expensive crap
has got to stop sometime....probably when hackers or M$ brings us to our knees when one of them Declares "All you Datas are belong to Us"...be too late then...suckers.
Upgrade?
Yes, of course I'll upgrade! For something that is worth while, but not for a heap of skin-deep changes and bells and whistles that is branded as a new operating system.
I'll upgrade from something that crashes to something that doesn't.
I'll upgrade to something that performs better.
I'll upgrade to something that does more.
So I'll be sticking with XP for quite a while, by the looks of things!
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