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: »

This post has been deleted.

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

This post has been deleted.

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

Capt'n Midnight

Aquila wrote: »

What will be the major differences between this and windows 7

it's developer preview so you can try it out, but don't consider it stable enough for a production system till the release alpha, beta, gold and possibly the first service pack

the preview will not be upgradable, you will have to wipe and install a clean build when the preview expires

microsoft have said it's faster that the previous version of windows, but they always have said that , and the speed differences that test was 37 seconds over 10 minutes, but 25 seconds of that was boot time so day to day use the difference in speed is too small to notice ( figure about 10%-15% difference before you'd see it and that's if you are looking for it)

The UI is different, great if you can choose, not great if you are forced to use one you don't like.

They are developing for ARM, which is a nice touch, but don't forget that unless the apps run in Java or something they will only be available for that platform if the vendors make a version for it. Anyone remember WindowsCE and apps coming in three versions, but not the one your PDA had ?

No Idea of what changes they will bring to the EULA , but that only matters if you buy the retail version.

No must have new technology, improvements in the UI Vs. changes in the UI so swings and roundabouts but some of us get dizzy. For the tablet interface it will probably be half way between android and ipad in cost and usability. Ditto for their apps store, developers target apple first because their customers pay more, even still microsoft will have to shift a lot of ARM tablets before they match android numbers (perhaps ARM will be binary compatible with windows , if not there are going to be a lot of dissapointments, and even it is compatible the performance will need to be there too).

I can't see microsoft launching an ipad or iphone killer, they might get volume but will they be able to command the same profit margins ?


One very nice feature that could be a killer app would be in licensing, they could allow you to have a seemless conection between your desktop/laptop/tablet where they synch with each other , including applications and licenses. But it would have to be seemless, just sharing contacts and documents has been around since most of the target audience got their first computer.

At the end of the day 95% of people will get the OS preinstalled on a device when they buy it. Only the other 5% will have a choice.

phill106

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

One very nice feature that could be a killer app would be in licensing, they could allow you to have a seemless conection between your desktop/laptop/tablet where they synch with each other , including applications and licenses. But it would have to be seemless, just sharing contacts and documents has been around since most of the target audience got their first computer.

It makes sense too. If i buy an app for my windows desktop, I think I should be able to run it legally on one device of each type (Desktop/Laptop/Tablet/Phone). After all, you would only be using it on one device at a time.

Fysh

phill106 wrote: »

It makes sense too. If i buy an app for my windows desktop, I think I should be able to run it legally on one device of each type (Desktop/Laptop/Tablet/Phone). After all, you would only be using it on one device at a time.

There's no guarantee that you won't be using them concurrently, though. It's not like you're talking about having a dualboot setup where it's logically impossible to run both instances concurrently, you're talking about different hardware. Without an always-on centralised licensing system, how would MS be able to ensure that you're not running it at the same time on all four devices? Or, more pertinently, that you don't have four devices tethered to your account but used by other people as well?

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea but there are implementation issues to address - even if the way they address it is to say "licences for desktop apps come with a complimentary licence for the tablet/phone versions".

(Personally I'd much prefer them to set up a repository system so that keeping a machine patched and up to date doesn't require a third-party package like Secunia's PSI, but I doubt it'll happen...)