Windows 8

MyTestAccount

Does anyone know when windows 8 will be officially released

homer911

I dont think even MS knows yet..

Hopefully not before its ready...

livEwirE

I think it's around September/October 2012, the Beta version known as the 'consumer preview' will be out at the end of February:D

Odaise Gaelach

Going by Windows 7 as an example, it had its public beta in January 2009, the public release candidate in May and hit RTM in July. It was released in October of the same year.

So Windows 8 is going to have its public beta at the end of February, which is a little later than Windows 7 but it's not expected to last as long. So I think we can expect it to follow the Windows 7 cycle as well, so maybe a release in October or November of this year?

In the meantime, there's Building Windows 8.

uncle_sam_ie

Under the hood, what will windows 8 bring that you can't get in window 7?

Capt'n Midnight

uncle_sam_ie wrote: »

Under the hood, what will windows 8 bring that you can't get in window 7?

Replacing old bugs with new ones ? :pac:


That really depends on how much has changed.

With windows as a very general rule, if there is a major OS change then wait until 3rd release or 3rd service pack before adopting it. If there is a minor OS change the no point upgrading unless it has some must have feature.


Dos 5.01 = Dos classic. (Dos 4 wasn't released here it was so bad)

Dos 6.0 / 6.2 /6.22

(windows 1.0, windows 2.0)
Windows 3.0 ---> Windows 3.11

NT 3.1/3.5/3.51

Windows 95 / OSR2 / Windows 98

Windows NT4 - wasn't usable until service pack 3

Windows XP / Vista / 7

of course in the past we've all waited for the next great unifying OS
had they released a version of Windows 2000 Home it would have been it.

demanufactured

Theu did..windows Me lol

Overheal

in terms of noteworthy features we're seeing a much, much more touch friendly user interface in response to growth in the All in One PC category, Tablets, and the Windows Phone. They plan to have a uniform User Interface between all of their platforms. This will undoubtedly include the NextBox/Xbox720/whatevs when it is released.

In addition I've seen some tech preview videos that show off that the UI is capable of reading eye-tracking hardware, meaning you can literally control the cursor just based off where you look on the screen.

In terms of everyman usefulness though? Windows 7 has already reached a pretty decent height of what is capable with standard mouse and keyboard user interfaces. Unless you plan on operating something that is touch or has some other weird HCI device you might as well sit pretty. Unless they bring something else radical to the table. In addition, you can expect a few more years of stagnation on Direct X libraries: while they made a flipping deal about Windows Vista/7 supporting DX10, nothing much really came of it. A lot of it had to do with Vista being buggy and the adoption rate being below what was expected, the rest had to do with the gaming consoles hanging on for dear life, and keeping DX9 alive in the process. Meaning that even now not a lot of developers are interested in DX10 or DX11. At best, the new MS console will support DX11. What this means though is assuming PS4 follows the trend, you can expect another 5-10 years of DirectX 11 gaming before anyone ever takes a serious thumb out of their ass to look at DX12, whenever that white-paper ever gets drafted up. So there again, not much point in an OS upgrade yet.

testicle

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

With windows as a very general rule, if there is a major OS change then wait until 3rd release or 3rd service pack before adopting it. If there is a minor OS change the no point upgrading unless it has some must have feature.

So you waited until 2008 to adopt Windows XP then?

Give me strength!!!

Fysh

testicle wrote: »

So you waited until 2008 to adopt Windows XP then?

Give me strength!!!

A lot of big corporates refused to even consider moving from win2k to winxp until sp2, which was a good 3 years after its launch date. I worked for one such crowd whose migration to Xp didn't finish until after Vista's launch date.

Xp and Vista are both examples of Windows releases that weren't worth touching until SP1 hit, and are arguably both examples of releases where SP2 marked the point that they could be reliably used widely without problems (though in Vista's case the ship had sailed at that point).

If you're in a large production environment, you don't want to be dealing with being a betatester for MS. Even MS know this - why else do you think Xp Mode on Win7 exists, if not for all the BigCorp clients who have Special Intranet Gubbins that depends on the browser being IE6 in order to work correctly?

Edited to add:

I know "waiting for sp3" sounds silly now, but bear in mind MS used to release more SPs instead of just launching a new OS every couple of years. IIRC NT4 got 6 service packs (!) And Win2k got 4. Xp has 3 but I'm guessing the goal is to keep Vista and 7 down to 1 or 2, and avoid using SPs to introduce new functionality a la XPSP2 if at all possible.

testicle

Fysh wrote: »

testicle wrote: »

So you waited until 2008 to adopt Windows XP then?

Give me strength!!!

A lot of big corporates refused to even consider moving from win2k to winxp until sp2, which was a good 3 years after its launch date. I worked for one such crowd whose migration to Xp didn't finish until after Vista's launch date.

Xp and Vista are both examples of Windows releases that weren't worth touching until SP1 hit, and are arguably both examples of releases where SP2 marked the point that they could be reliably used widely without problems (though in Vista's case the ship had sailed at that point).

If you're in a large production environment, you don't want to be dealing with being a betatester for MS. Even MS know this - why else do you think Xp Mode on Win7 exists, if not for all the BigCorp clients who have Special Intranet Gubbins that depends on the browser being IE6 in order to work correctly?

That's 2, he mentioned 3... I take it he's still using 2000 on his servers, as a Server OS hasn't had a 3rd Service Pack since?

Fysh

testicle wrote: »

That's 2, he mentioned 3... I take it he's still using 2000 on his servers, as a Server OS hasn't had a 3rd Service Pack since?

I should've included it in the original post, but I edited my previous post to clarify - before NT MS were a lot more SP-happy, so as a rule of thumb SP3 wouldn't be a bad one. These days it's probably more like "wait for SP2 or 3 years from launch", though in a production environment I still say stability wins out over New Shiny every time...

Capt'n Midnight

testicle wrote: »

So you waited until 2008 to adopt Windows XP then?

Give me strength!!!

If you consider XP to be a Fisher Price interface on top of windows 2000 (when they released server 2003 you could turn most of that eye candy that has no business being on a server off)



If Server 2008 is vista
then Server 2008 Service pack two is 7

demanufactured

Server2008 R2 is windows 7 more like

Cuddlesworth

70%/30% split here between Win7 and Vista. Should be 100% Win7 by the end of the year. Although Ireland are the Beta testers for the organisation at large, which is mostly on XP and has plans to skip straight to Win7 over the next three years.

Oddly enough, the migrations were not that bad. I quite enjoyed Vista after we bumped up the ram to 3 gigs on all the machines and it made transition to Win7 nearly faultless. Nobody is looking at Win8 at all. Which is unusual for us.

Overheal

just a tidbit: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

Among PC Gamers (Steam), Windows XP use now falls below 7%

Odaise Gaelach

Overheal wrote: »

just a tidbit: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

Among PC Gamers (Steam), Windows XP use now falls below 7%

I'm not sure where you got that. The stats at http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=pc under "Windows version" have 53.93% for Windows 7, 26.10% for Windows Vista, 19.61% for Windows XP, and 0.35% for other versions of Windows.

AlmightyCushion

Odaise Gaelach wrote: »

I'm not sure where you got that. The stats at http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=pc under "Windows version" have 53.93% for Windows 7, 26.10% for Windows Vista, 19.61% for Windows XP, and 0.35% for other versions of Windows.

It's possible he looked at DX9 and DX8 usage and assumed every one using that is only on XP and that every one with a DX10 and DX11 card is on vista or 7.

Capt'n Midnight

If you look else where you get other stats
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp
2012 Win7 Vista Win2003 WinXP Linux Mac Mobile
January 47.1% 4.7% 0.7% 31.4% 4.9% 9.0% 1.3%

On this table no OS scored higher than XP from September 2003 to July 2011, and for most of that time it scored higher than all other OS's put together.

rolion

F Y I :


Microsoft is holding an event at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona on February 29 to launch the Windows 8 Consumer Preview.
Microsoft officials said last fall that Microsoft planned to deliver a developer preview (which went out in September), a single beta (the Consumer Preview), a Release Candidate and then release Windows 8 to manufacturing.


Also,fresh email:

http://www.mvp.smbnation.com/

Rgds

Nothingbetter2d

uncle_sam_ie wrote: »

Under the hood, what will windows 8 bring that you can't get in window 7?

for a pc user not alot... some better support for newer technology

for a tablet user you will see windows 8 shine to its glory.

windows 7 is not very tablet friendly microsoft realized this and so windows 8 while have touch sensitive menus and gui.

Overheal

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

It's possible he looked at DX9 and DX8 usage and assumed every one using that is only on XP and that every one with a DX10 and DX11 card is on vista or 7.

Plowman

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Overheal

Plowman wrote: »

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I saw that in the Expertzone website but wasn't sure if it had been made public yet. I guess they don't give me a whole load of access to 'insider' information though, really.

aindriu80

it looks like the flag of Finland

Plowman

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Volovo

I like the initial look at Windows 8, especially how it might work on tablets and touchscreens. Are they trying to shift towards a Mac OS type of platform? integration with phone/tablet/pc? Looking forward to it anyway.

Capt'n Midnight

aindriu80 wrote: »

it looks like the flag of Finland

It was a condition of the $1bn deal between Microsoft and Nokia :pac:

Overheal

Plowman wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Doubtful. It's true they do have a lot of contests for their retail partners (like giveaways for office software and ultrabook laptops etc) but I doubt I have access to anything that is ahead of street date.

Crann na Beatha

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Aquila

Aquila wrote: »

What will be the major differences between this and windows 7

Here you go:

http://igyaannext.blogspot.com/2012/02/difference-between-windows-7-and.html