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Was just going to suggest this, works really well limiting apps, quotaing time and limiting content. It is actually a really well thought out tool: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29231

Needs a modern OS though so Vista or 7.

Actually, there's just a licensing/SKU restriction. You can hack the kernel to get access to more, if your chipset and drivers support it - I did it just to make use of all 4GB I have installed. This makes sense when you consider that MS offered 32-bit versions of Windows Server 2008 that went up to 64Gb.

Hint: They do, in the same way as Google is "selling information", that is by targeted ads.

They just make much less on it then Google does.

You misunderstood. I was not referring to pixel perfect positioning, but rather pixel perfect bitmaps (icons and such).

From a technical standpoint, WP application framework (which is Silverlight, with XAML for markup language) is well designed to enable scaling and flexible UI layouts.

Instead of guessing which text they "would use", why not go and read the text that Windows Store actually uses? Let me quote the important parts:

g. License to Customer for Metro style apps. You, not Microsoft, will license the right to install and use each app to customers. You may provide a license agreement to the customer for your app. That license agreement or other terms that govern a customer’s use of your app (including any privacy policy), or a link to them, must be delivered to Microsoft for publication via the product description materials you provide to Microsoft. If you do not provide such materials, then the Standard Application License Terms, attached as Exhibit A, will apply between you and customers of your app. If you provide your own license agreement, your license must, at a minimum, (a) permit the customer to download and run the app on up to five Windows 8 enabled devices that are associated with that customer’s Microsoft account, without payment of any additional fees to you (from either Microsoft or customer), (b) include "disclaimer of warranty" and "limitation on and exclusion of remedies and damages" sections that are at least as protective as Exhibit A and (c) disclaim any support services from Microsoft and the customer’s device manufacturer and network operator (if applicable). Your license terms must also not conflict with the Standard Application License Terms, in any way, except if you include FOSS, your license terms may conflict with the limitations set forth in Section 3 of those Terms, but only to the extent required by the FOSS that you use. "FOSS" means any software licensed under an Open Source Initiative Approved License.

And here's Section 3, which may be overridden by the provisions of any open source license recognized as such by OSI:

3. SCOPE OF LICENSE. The application is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the application. Application developer reserves all other rights. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the application only as expressly permitted in this agreement. You may not
work around any technical limitations in the application;
reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the application, except and only to the extent that applicable law expressly permits, despite this limitation;
make more copies of the application than specified in this agreement or allowed by applicable law, despite this limitation;
publish or otherwise make the application available for others to copy; or
rent, lease or lend the application.

I'm pretty sure(99.99%) that installing to windows rt devices will need you to sign up for a developer cert(100 bucks a year or just lie that you're a new company and get it for free after emailing someone)

You don't need to pay anything, the developer license is free. You only need to pay that $100 to publish to the store.

on win8 pro(x86) you got essentially root anyways so I don't see them doing much to limit installation there.

For Metro, the limits are the same on x86 as on ARM. And, yeah, you can probably easily circumvent that, since, as you rightly note, you have full control over the system there anyway.

You don't need to be a developer, you just need a developer license - getting which is about as hard as entering your Live ID info and clicking "OK". The only problem is that you have to do that every month to extend it to keep the apps running.

VB6 installs fine as long as you run it as an admin.

Never noticed the slow dragging thing, but then I must admit, I don't use the gui form editor, never really have after initial layout, I find that GUI designers are far more trouble than they are worth and make my RCS logs look ugly.

- Microsoft broke ADO's COM interface in Win7sp1 last year. http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/windowsgeneraldevelopmentissues/thread/3a4ce946-effa-4f77-98a6-34f11c6b5a13 [microsoft.com] When you try to run a program that's early bound to ADO and been compiled on a Win 7 machine, and then install it on an older 32bit OS, all your ADO calls will throw automation errors. We worked around it by compiling the VB code on XP machines before moving to our dev servers. There's no problem compiling on an older machine and running it on a new machine though. This is only a problem if you're early bound to ADO though.

Having had to deal with that very issue ... You doing it wrong.

Microsoft RARELY breaks things if you did it as documented, which you were not. This one is certainly not the first one where this has happened, and its certainly not the first time I've had to fix some's code that 'Microsoft broke'.

- Compiling a COM object will automatically register it to the location you compiled it. This might not be possible with UAC on. Haven't tried it with UAC on, but regsvr32.exe won't run properly with UAC on, so I'm assuming VB can't register anything either.

I'm fairly certain it doesn't work in any version of visual studio on Win 6 kernels. I haven't used VS2k10 so it may for it, but automatic registration is extremely against what UAC is there to stop so it makes complete sense for it to not work. Thats one of those 'development requires a unique environment' thing, and its certainly not the only thing. You run your developer account with debugging rights don't you? Another non-standard setting.

You can of course, manually register and turn off auto registration, or run as an admin in which case it works perfectly other than you have to run as an admin. If you're going to use a feature that is directly incompatible with another feature, something has to give.

According to their page it has "Office Home & Student 2013 RT Preview " - so it remains to be seen if they actually put a full fledged version of Office on it or if it some subset of the full suite.

Office Home & Student is an existing edition of Office, you can look up what it can and can't do today - it's not like the ARM version would be any different (why would it, if it's the same code?).

I hope it's a decent device; competition is good, it's just I think that they may wind up with more than a tablet but less than a PC that really doesn't catch on with either buying group.

Well, the ARM thingy seems to be very much a tablet by all important metrics (weight, size, battery life, touch-oriented UI), so I don't see why it wouldn't deliver on that count at least. As something beyond a tablet, it's somewhat underwhelming, I agree. I expect that most people who expect to be using it in docked mode a lot would probably go for Intel just to run their existing software.

The better question here is, what does this offer that other announced Win8 tablet/laptop hybrids don't? Asus line-up looks more interesting to me, and then there's Samsung, Acer, Toshiba and Lenovo.

Then again, no-one has posted prices so far, so perhaps competition will primarily be in that space.

I looked at the web site, and I thought it _was_ an Apple announcement.

That is the metro aesthetic that Microsoft has been using in many of their web properties since the Zune HD. See: zune, kinect xbox Windows 8 bing microsoft.com

block out the Microsoft logos and it would be hard to tell the difference between that and an Apple page.

It's easy to tell the difference. Apple is still big on fake reflections, shadows, gradients, bevels, faux 3D effects like paper curling, point of view icons, etc. Metro eschews these elements in favor of bold colors, lots of white space, and simple flat iconography.

I looked at the web site, and I thought it _was_ an Apple announcement.

That is the metro aesthetic that Microsoft has been using in many of their web properties since the Zune HD. See: zune, kinect xbox Windows 8 bing microsoft.com

block out the Microsoft logos and it would be hard to tell the difference between that and an Apple page.

It's easy to tell the difference. Apple is still big on fake reflections, shadows, gradients, bevels, faux 3D effects like paper curling, point of view icons, etc. Metro eschews these elements in favor of bold colors, lots of white space, and simple flat iconography.

The x86 version is 42Wh as well

Isn't "Surface" the name of their SDK for both devices and Windows 7 computers that's been available since 2009?

Also, is this just like the Courier or will we one day actually see these devices like the Zune?

Pronounce it "SURF-ASS" then, from the sounds of it you could use it as a surfboard anyway.

Late to the party and with a half-cocked solution of Windows on TWO plaftorms (ARM & x86) this is sure to sow confusion .. but that's the Microsoft way, right? Honestly, they got this whole thing WRONG years ago with tablets running XP (I have one, slow only begins to describe it, quirky and hard to work with) So why put a desktop/laptop OS on a tablet AGAIN? Ah, so when it conks out you can still use it as a boogie board.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/presskits/windows/videogallery2b.aspx

I plan to get one of these to use all day with OneNote.

Microsoft is blending the device for viewing and for creating.

Yeah, if only you could get OneNote on the iPad, huh?

The most striking thing about the linked Microsoft launch site http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en/us/about.aspx is that it is almost completely free of Microsoft logos or brand style. Could be a brochure from an OEM. Startling.

Actually at first glance I thought it was kind of neat.

Then I thought about actually using it and it strikes me as ergonomically FUBAR.

It has a floppy "hinge", so it doesn't turn this into a laptop. You really can't use it in your lap, as you are reliant on having a table/desk and using the kickstand to support the screen, while the floppy cover just lies there.
http://www.microsoft.com/global/surface/en/us/publishingimages/new/gallery_2_large.jpg

Asus solves the keyboard much better with the Transformer Tablets that acutally make it into a mini-laptop:

http://netbooksreview.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/asus_transformer_release_date_price.jpg

The floppy keyboard cover is long on gimmick, short on substance.

They can't even align bolts properly.

Don't forget about this marvelous quote on the web site: Images are design renderings and not photographs...

Of course there was a functional tablet on the video, but it may be yet another prototype that would be forgotten like the Courier.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/presskits/windows/videogallery2b.aspx

I plan to get one of these to use all day with OneNote.

Microsoft is blending the device for viewing and for creating.

Isn't "Surface" the name of their SDK for both devices and Windows 7 computers that's been available since 2009?

Also, is this just like the Courier or will we one day actually see these devices like the Zune?

I agree with you that a touch screen won't work. Though Apple is switching people from mice to laptop style trackpads ( http://www.apple.com/magictrackpad/ ) more like a laptop configuration even for desktop users. And as a laptop & tablet & iPhone user I agree I use keyboard / mouse for my desktop I don't want to touch the screen. Heck I use ( http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us/p/natural-ergonomic-keyboard-4000 ) when I use windows so I can touch the mouse less, much less wanting to touch the screen. The only place I've seen touch screen work well is where people are always choosing from a list of items, like a restaurant order / register and even there they would probably be faster typing.

On the other hand, exclude all that. The rest of the list above (i.e. vector graphics...) make sense.

As for Office on Arm you are basically talking about totally forking their product lines with an Arm: OS, office suite... The problem with that from Microsoft's perspective is keeping things in sync. Your point about different upgrade cycles for phones and computers being a great example of the problem.

No, .NET apps use .NET controls not Win32 controls, which is quite independent from the underlying OS or architecture. On the Win32/64 platform, the .NET controls may indeed use Win32 controls, but the .NET app doesn't need to know or care about that. So long as the .NET control is implemented the same on both platforms, any .NET app that uses it will be portable with no code changes required.

It would be pretty tricky having something like, say, Control.Handle -documented as "An IntPtr that contains the window handle (HWND) of the control - portable outside of Win32.

In practice, .NET apps for Metro use a whole new API for UI (and many other things) that is specific to Metro, and is not compatible (even on source code level, much less binary) with any existing desktop .NET APIs - though it's most closely resembling Silverlight.

No, .NET apps use .NET controls not Win32 controls, which is quite independent from the underlying OS or architecture. On the Win32/64 platform, the .NET controls may indeed use Win32 controls, but the .NET app doesn't need to know or care about that. So long as the .NET control is implemented the same on both platforms, any .NET app that uses it will be portable with no code changes required.

It would be pretty tricky having something like, say, Control.Handle -documented as "An IntPtr that contains the window handle (HWND) of the control - portable outside of Win32.

In practice, .NET apps for Metro use a whole new API for UI (and many other things) that is specific to Metro, and is not compatible (even on source code level, much less binary) with any existing desktop .NET APIs - though it's most closely resembling Silverlight.

Obvious by my confusion with the command-line, I wasn't even aware there was an approved specification for .NET's VM (or any Microsoft product, for that matter). But regardless of whether it's standardized for all to use or not, the article focuses on Microsoft.

Ironically, "CIL" is actually the term for .NET bytecode that comes from the Ecma standard. The .NET-specific one - and the one that's used far more often (hence why a lot of people reading your article are likely to be confused) is "MSIL".

But that's hardly of importance. Your article is subpar for several other reasons. To point out a few:

"HTML5 Metro interface" - HTML5 and Metro are orthogonal. You can write Metro apps in HTML5, yes, but you're not required to - .NET managed code, and pure native code calling WinRT directly, are other, first-class alternatives for Metro.

"If Microsoft does not port the .NET runtime to Windows 8 on ARM, allowing apps compiled from C#/VB/C++ to CIL to execute on either supported hardware platform" - a silly question. .NET already is on Windows 8 on ARM. That's what all Metro apps written in managed languages use. If you install VS 2012 RC, you can see over a hundred managed Metro samples...

"trying to shift their developers’ focus to HTML5 Metro apps with Windows Phone compatibility" - there's no compatibility between Windows Phone and Windows 8 so far. Most certainly, HTML5 would be the worst choice there, since there's no good way to write HTML5 apps for Windows Phone 7.x as of today. Whether it'll be different for WP8 is currently unknown.

"Microsoft may have something with making every part of their programming API HTML5-based" - more confusion between Metro and HTML5. Metro APIs are not actually HTML5-based - they are exposed via WinRT (Windows Runtime), which is a standardized native ABI that is further development of COM. This ABI is then projected to a higher-level API that is specific to every target language/framework - there's a high-level native C++ projection known as C++/CX, then there's the .NET projection, and finally the JavaScript projection. The latter is actually the most restricted of the three, though it's partly compensated by intrinsic HTML5 features (like canvas, IndexedDB etc).

"And, of course, Java is long-dead and more than likely will not be ported to the new Windows 8 for ARM OS" - it's not more than likely, it's outright impossible to port Oracle JVM to Win8/ARM. First of all, it does not allow third-party desktop (Win32) apps at all, and JVM is currently decidedly a desktop app. As for Metro, its sandbox (app container) is deliberately designed to restrict the ability to generate code at runtime - in particular, there's no way to allocate a block of memory that has both write and execute permissions, or change them after the fact. This means no JIT (other than the one in .NET and JS). So any Java implementation would have to be either a bytecode interpreter (slow!), or a native compiler, which precludes a straightforward port.

"It is unclear as of now whether genuine native apps written in C++ calling the Win32 API will be supported on Windows 8 for ARM" - it is not at all unclear. If the native app calls a

Obvious by my confusion with the command-line, I wasn't even aware there was an approved specification for .NET's VM (or any Microsoft product, for that matter). But regardless of whether it's standardized for all to use or not, the article focuses on Microsoft.

Ironically, "CIL" is actually the term for .NET bytecode that comes from the Ecma standard. The .NET-specific one - and the one that's used far more often (hence why a lot of people reading your article are likely to be confused) is "MSIL".

But that's hardly of importance. Your article is subpar for several other reasons. To point out a few:

"HTML5 Metro interface" - HTML5 and Metro are orthogonal. You can write Metro apps in HTML5, yes, but you're not required to - .NET managed code, and pure native code calling WinRT directly, are other, first-class alternatives for Metro.

"If Microsoft does not port the .NET runtime to Windows 8 on ARM, allowing apps compiled from C#/VB/C++ to CIL to execute on either supported hardware platform" - a silly question. .NET already is on Windows 8 on ARM. That's what all Metro apps written in managed languages use. If you install VS 2012 RC, you can see over a hundred managed Metro samples...

"trying to shift their developers’ focus to HTML5 Metro apps with Windows Phone compatibility" - there's no compatibility between Windows Phone and Windows 8 so far. Most certainly, HTML5 would be the worst choice there, since there's no good way to write HTML5 apps for Windows Phone 7.x as of today. Whether it'll be different for WP8 is currently unknown.

"Microsoft may have something with making every part of their programming API HTML5-based" - more confusion between Metro and HTML5. Metro APIs are not actually HTML5-based - they are exposed via WinRT (Windows Runtime), which is a standardized native ABI that is further development of COM. This ABI is then projected to a higher-level API that is specific to every target language/framework - there's a high-level native C++ projection known as C++/CX, then there's the .NET projection, and finally the JavaScript projection. The latter is actually the most restricted of the three, though it's partly compensated by intrinsic HTML5 features (like canvas, IndexedDB etc).

"And, of course, Java is long-dead and more than likely will not be ported to the new Windows 8 for ARM OS" - it's not more than likely, it's outright impossible to port Oracle JVM to Win8/ARM. First of all, it does not allow third-party desktop (Win32) apps at all, and JVM is currently decidedly a desktop app. As for Metro, its sandbox (app container) is deliberately designed to restrict the ability to generate code at runtime - in particular, there's no way to allocate a block of memory that has both write and execute permissions, or change them after the fact. This means no JIT (other than the one in .NET and JS). So any Java implementation would have to be either a bytecode interpreter (slow!), or a native compiler, which precludes a straightforward port.

"It is unclear as of now whether genuine native apps written in C++ calling the Win32 API will be supported on Windows 8 for ARM" - it is not at all unclear. If the native app calls a

Obvious by my confusion with the command-line, I wasn't even aware there was an approved specification for .NET's VM (or any Microsoft product, for that matter). But regardless of whether it's standardized for all to use or not, the article focuses on Microsoft.

Ironically, "CIL" is actually the term for .NET bytecode that comes from the Ecma standard. The .NET-specific one - and the one that's used far more often (hence why a lot of people reading your article are likely to be confused) is "MSIL".

But that's hardly of importance. Your article is subpar for several other reasons. To point out a few:

"HTML5 Metro interface" - HTML5 and Metro are orthogonal. You can write Metro apps in HTML5, yes, but you're not required to - .NET managed code, and pure native code calling WinRT directly, are other, first-class alternatives for Metro.

"If Microsoft does not port the .NET runtime to Windows 8 on ARM, allowing apps compiled from C#/VB/C++ to CIL to execute on either supported hardware platform" - a silly question. .NET already is on Windows 8 on ARM. That's what all Metro apps written in managed languages use. If you install VS 2012 RC, you can see over a hundred managed Metro samples...

"trying to shift their developers’ focus to HTML5 Metro apps with Windows Phone compatibility" - there's no compatibility between Windows Phone and Windows 8 so far. Most certainly, HTML5 would be the worst choice there, since there's no good way to write HTML5 apps for Windows Phone 7.x as of today. Whether it'll be different for WP8 is currently unknown.

"Microsoft may have something with making every part of their programming API HTML5-based" - more confusion between Metro and HTML5. Metro APIs are not actually HTML5-based - they are exposed via WinRT (Windows Runtime), which is a standardized native ABI that is further development of COM. This ABI is then projected to a higher-level API that is specific to every target language/framework - there's a high-level native C++ projection known as C++/CX, then there's the .NET projection, and finally the JavaScript projection. The latter is actually the most restricted of the three, though it's partly compensated by intrinsic HTML5 features (like canvas, IndexedDB etc).

"And, of course, Java is long-dead and more than likely will not be ported to the new Windows 8 for ARM OS" - it's not more than likely, it's outright impossible to port Oracle JVM to Win8/ARM. First of all, it does not allow third-party desktop (Win32) apps at all, and JVM is currently decidedly a desktop app. As for Metro, its sandbox (app container) is deliberately designed to restrict the ability to generate code at runtime - in particular, there's no way to allocate a block of memory that has both write and execute permissions, or change them after the fact. This means no JIT (other than the one in .NET and JS). So any Java implementation would have to be either a bytecode interpreter (slow!), or a native compiler, which precludes a straightforward port.

"It is unclear as of now whether genuine native apps written in C++ calling the Win32 API will be supported on Windows 8 for ARM" - it is not at all unclear. If the native app calls a

Obvious by my confusion with the command-line, I wasn't even aware there was an approved specification for .NET's VM (or any Microsoft product, for that matter). But regardless of whether it's standardized for all to use or not, the article focuses on Microsoft.

Ironically, "CIL" is actually the term for .NET bytecode that comes from the Ecma standard. The .NET-specific one - and the one that's used far more often (hence why a lot of people reading your article are likely to be confused) is "MSIL".

But that's hardly of importance. Your article is subpar for several other reasons. To point out a few:

"HTML5 Metro interface" - HTML5 and Metro are orthogonal. You can write Metro apps in HTML5, yes, but you're not required to - .NET managed code, and pure native code calling WinRT directly, are other, first-class alternatives for Metro.

"If Microsoft does not port the .NET runtime to Windows 8 on ARM, allowing apps compiled from C#/VB/C++ to CIL to execute on either supported hardware platform" - a silly question. .NET already is on Windows 8 on ARM. That's what all Metro apps written in managed languages use. If you install VS 2012 RC, you can see over a hundred managed Metro samples...

"trying to shift their developers’ focus to HTML5 Metro apps with Windows Phone compatibility" - there's no compatibility between Windows Phone and Windows 8 so far. Most certainly, HTML5 would be the worst choice there, since there's no good way to write HTML5 apps for Windows Phone 7.x as of today. Whether it'll be different for WP8 is currently unknown.

"Microsoft may have something with making every part of their programming API HTML5-based" - more confusion between Metro and HTML5. Metro APIs are not actually HTML5-based - they are exposed via WinRT (Windows Runtime), which is a standardized native ABI that is further development of COM. This ABI is then projected to a higher-level API that is specific to every target language/framework - there's a high-level native C++ projection known as C++/CX, then there's the .NET projection, and finally the JavaScript projection. The latter is actually the most restricted of the three, though it's partly compensated by intrinsic HTML5 features (like canvas, IndexedDB etc).

"And, of course, Java is long-dead and more than likely will not be ported to the new Windows 8 for ARM OS" - it's not more than likely, it's outright impossible to port Oracle JVM to Win8/ARM. First of all, it does not allow third-party desktop (Win32) apps at all, and JVM is currently decidedly a desktop app. As for Metro, its sandbox (app container) is deliberately designed to restrict the ability to generate code at runtime - in particular, there's no way to allocate a block of memory that has both write and execute permissions, or change them after the fact. This means no JIT (other than the one in .NET and JS). So any Java implementation would have to be either a bytecode interpreter (slow!), or a native compiler, which precludes a straightforward port.

"It is unclear as of now whether genuine native apps written in C++ calling the Win32 API will be supported on Windows 8 for ARM" - it is not at all unclear. If the native app calls a

"There are 30 million active Xbox Live accounts, which must make them a great deal of pure profit."

Go to http://www.microsoft.com/investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Earnings/PressReleaseAndWebcast/fy12/Q2/default.aspx Here you can look at their financial statements for the last few years. Check the line item that shows the Operating income for the Entertainment and Devices Division on the statments going back to 2004. I put together a table:
2004 (1,220)
2005 (391)
2006 (1,284)
2007 (1,892)
2008 497
2009 169
2010 618
2011 1,324
At the end of fiscal year 2011, the entertainment and devices division was still about $2.2 billion in the hole. Now the first two quarters of 2012 were good( a total of $880 million) but look here: http://www.microsoft.com/investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Earnings/PressReleaseAndWebcast/FY12/Q3/default.aspx They lost $229 million this past quarter. That means they are still about $1.5 billion in the hole on this little Xbox venture. And with their Online services consistently losing money( in the billions), they better hope Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8 are huge this year.

"There are 30 million active Xbox Live accounts, which must make them a great deal of pure profit."

Go to http://www.microsoft.com/investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Earnings/PressReleaseAndWebcast/fy12/Q2/default.aspx Here you can look at their financial statements for the last few years. Check the line item that shows the Operating income for the Entertainment and Devices Division on the statments going back to 2004. I put together a table:
2004 (1,220)
2005 (391)
2006 (1,284)
2007 (1,892)
2008 497
2009 169
2010 618
2011 1,324
At the end of fiscal year 2011, the entertainment and devices division was still about $2.2 billion in the hole. Now the first two quarters of 2012 were good( a total of $880 million) but look here: http://www.microsoft.com/investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Earnings/PressReleaseAndWebcast/FY12/Q3/default.aspx They lost $229 million this past quarter. That means they are still about $1.5 billion in the hole on this little Xbox venture. And with their Online services consistently losing money( in the billions), they better hope Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8 are huge this year.

The summary says "some 64-bit operation systems", but MS12-042 mentions 32-bit XP. 64-Bit XP and Vista is apparently not affected.

What you say? 64-Bit XP and Vista? Fabrications! Nonsense! We deny any knowledge of said products.

Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf
Director Public Relations
Microsoft.

The summary says "some 64-bit operation systems", but MS12-042 mentions 32-bit XP. 64-Bit XP and Vista is apparently not affected.

Microsoft actively shares source code with many governments, not just the US. India even has copies. Not to mention nearly every large University has access and most large enterprises. I've directly worked for three separate commercial companies that had Microsoft source (I do driver development). It's not that hard to get, just expensive and a lot of NDAs to sign.

Microsoft Shared Source

You don't need a big gun to get the MS source code. It isn't some big fucking secret like all the ./ers seem to think. It isn't GPL, but plenty of institutions have copies. Basically any government that uses Windows does, huge surprise there. Also a lot of research universities. One such university I know that has it is ASU. Then there are copies in the hands of partners for better debugging/integration of their products.

Just because the source isn't on Sourceforge, doesn't mean it is some massive secret. A bit of Google would get you http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sharedsource/default.aspx which is MS's page on their source sharing.

Every major government around the world ALREADY has access to Windows source code. Starting in 2001, when Microsoft's security started being a major focus, they began a program to grant access to the code to interested parties.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sharedsource/government-security-program.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sharedsource/

Every major government around the world ALREADY has access to Windows source code. Starting in 2001, when Microsoft's security started being a major focus, they began a program to grant access to the code to interested parties.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sharedsource/government-security-program.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sharedsource/

Not exactly, but there is an emulator application in the Windows Phone SDK you can download.

IE 10: Better HTML 5 support - not much else - who cares? Everyone that uses the default browser by default because they don't want to deal with downloading and installing new stuff. And everyone that will be using Metro by default (most likely)

And those people probably aren't going to upgrade to Windows 8 to get better HTML support. Is downloading Chrome really that hard? My Mom did it and she can barely work a DVD player.

Sign in with MS Account: Who cares? Is anyone gonna use this? Heck yeah; SSO is good! (Live lets you create an account with your primary email as the username, so very convenient for lots of folks.

That's great, but does anyone actually use Live (or whatever they are going to call it now) ?

Picture Password and PIN Login: Picture pass is kinda cool, but PIN login? Really?this will be *REALLY* useful on tablets. Think of trying to login on a train with a touch keypad.

Sure - that much easier to crack. Fantastic.

Ribbon in Windows Explorer: Holy cow no thank you.I think, and my experience supporting others supports this, that the ribbon has helped a lot of people navigate Office much easier. So it follows that it will make improvements on the Explorer side. We'll agree to disagree here.

Really? I don't know of a single Office user who said "Boy, I'm glad they changed everything over to the ribbon. Now I get to learn where everything is again!" It's even more frustrating when you have to keep switching back and forth, because you have to support both.

Refresh and Reset Recovery - How about making it so you don't need recovery in the first place? How is this better than a decent backup system? This thing is going to be pushed hard on tablets. Wouldn't it be convenient to factory reset your Windows tablet just like you can on your iPad or Android tablet?

If anyone is going to purchase and use a Windows tablet, you might have a point. I'd rather just have a more stable OS and fault-tolerant filesystem. I still bluescreen and loose files every now and then on my 7 box. I've never lost a file on my Linux/LVM/ext4 servers. Heck, I've never lost a file on my janky MythTV box built from spare parts that operates 24/7, running MythBuntu and LVM/XFS.

Native USB 3 - This shouldn't be a Windows 8 "feature," this should be in a service pack for Vista and Seven Good chance it will be; remember USB1.1 support for Windows 98? Rolled back to 95 via OSR2 update.

Right, so you're saying it's not really a reason to upgrade to 8. We agree, then :)

New Windows Task Manager - Yawn You obviously haven't supported Windows enough to know how much of an improvement it is. (Yes, third-party tools do it better. It's still good for the improvements to be native.)

No, it's better for the improvements to be as good as their own 3rd party utilities:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/sysinternals/bb896653

XBox Live integration - I don't think anyone will care about this - are they thinking about competing with steam? Good luck. You do know how popular XBox live is, right?

On the X-Box, yeah. I don't know a single gamer clambering for Live on their PC. Besides which, are they really going to make you upgrade your OS for this? They couldn't just offer it as a download?

Family Safety - Wasn't this included with Windows Live? Yawn
Antivirus in Windows Defender - In other words, they are just including MSE. Which is awesome since people can stop paying McAfee/Symantec for their bloated products and not have to worry (as much) about making sure everything is up to date.

*Microsoft Security Essentials* You don't have to pay Symantec or McAfee now. They are just bundling their own free software with Windows 8. I can get that now on 7 (AND Vista, AND XP for that matter.) So, again, not a reason to upgrade.

NoteTab Pro - Because unlike MS Word, he can use bright yellow text against a dark blue background

You can change the background color and text color in Word - this is a total non-issue you brought up.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/change-background-colors-images-or-text-in-a-document-HP005233746.aspx
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint-help/change-the-color-of-text-HA010338280.aspx?CTT=1

NoteTab Pro - Because unlike MS Word, he can use bright yellow text against a dark blue background

You can change the background color and text color in Word - this is a total non-issue you brought up.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/change-background-colors-images-or-text-in-a-document-HP005233746.aspx
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint-help/change-the-color-of-text-HA010338280.aspx?CTT=1

Let me guess: you've never heard of AppLocker, which can be set to disallow running executables from removable media or from folders writable by non-administrators. It's been part of Windows (under the name Software Restriction Policies) since Windows XP.

To be really fair to microsoft, IE4 was the best browser of its time, by such a wide margin it just annihilated the competition for about 5 years. IE3 was also about equivalent to Netscape 3 if a little inferior.

Not true. They forced installation by tying it to everything possible. It came with all Microsft apps, of course, but they also tied comctl32.dll to it so if you wanted to use new GUI controls in your app you ended up having to install Internet Explorer in the end user's machine as a requirement of your app. eg. I remember installing Autocad and being forced to install IE at the same time.

Reff: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/hh298349(v=vs.85).aspx

See how many versions of the dll have "Internet Explorer" associated with them.

Since then, it's been downhill, and then catch up. Still not there yet, but thing actually do improve.

They didn't upgrade IE for about ten years. Their OS monopoly, dirty tricks (above) and OEM license deals meant they didn't need to make any effort to get it onto machines. It was pretty hard to avoid it, and impossible for OEMs to install anything else by default.

Microsoft provides Virtual PC images for a range of IE + Windows versions to test your website with.

Check it out at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11575

"It'll be a huge boost to Apple's proprietary equivalent,"

Only for people already using Apple products.

How long did it take for Microsoft to convert Skype to be a far less attractive product? A few months, longer than usual. Will Skype become the Zune, the Vista, the Bing, the Ballmer of communication software?

It must be MISERABLE to work at Microsoft, where the most important management rule is to be mediocre. Someone on Skype recently said he had been a POM, Prisoner of Microsoft, until his new job.

We need an open source version of Skype.

BTW if you think I am kidding:

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en/us/default.aspx

A boon for board gamers at least...

Torrents of Windows disks should never ever be trusted, and if you disagree with me, then I think you are only shooting yourself in the foot when you 'drive your Windows', in terms of actual security.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;841290 Had to replace a library of MS software after a hardware failure and a corrupt backup. Obtained via torrent and all passed checksum.

I tried looking for Control Panel -> Appearance and Personalization -> Display -> Make text and other items larger or smaller on my Macbook Air, but I couldn't find them anywhere.

As you've seen, packet-based data transfer is what defines a packet-switching network. But—to confuse the issue a bit—referring to a packet-switching network is a little like referring to tail-wagging canines as dogs. Sure, they're dogs. But any given dog can also be a collie or a German shepherd or a poodle. Similarly, a packet-switching network might be, for example, an X.25 network, a frame relay network, an ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) network, an SMDS (Switched Multimegabit Data Service), and so on.

Not having to fight with Windows all the time is worth every penny. I spent 3 hours yesterday at a friend's house trying to figure out why her laptop is so slow to start up and why it eats battery. It's a rogue Windows internal process that runs at startup and takes 20 minutes at full CPU to stop for a few minutes and then randomly start again. I tried various things to try and stop it but nothing made a difference.

If it was mscorsvw.exe or ngen.exe, it's by design.

Retarded design, mind you, but by design. It recompiles a bunch of .NET stuff "in the background", and the folks at Microsoft decided that it would be the best user experience to have the controlling process wait until it thinks the machine is idle before going to work.

For Joe Sixpack, who doesn't even know what the LED with the picture of the cylinder next to it means, that's probably the right design decision.

For Joe Techie, infuckingfuriating. Walk away from machine, come back, see HDD light flashing, hear disk thrashing, CPU fan at full blast, suspect malware. Jump onto machine, launch task manager to see what's eating all the CPU, and *poof*, Windows is "smart enough" to know there's a user at the console, and the recompilation processes immediately shut themselves down. Thereby making me even more suspicious. So I fired up procmon and filemon from SysInternals... and because the system was never idle, it never went into thrashy-recompile-mode. Until I got bored and turned the monitoring tools off. Whereupon, thrash, thrash, thrash. Thereby making me even more more suspicious...

Go ahead and use a post-VB6 version of .NET (VS2003/2005).

I do that daily.

Dead slow IDE, no editing of the code while running

Edit and continue has been there for VB.NET since VS2005.

the result would often be a slow as hell application, that used a memory footprint of 3-5x the VB equivalent.

As I had already noted, VB.NET apps are uniformly faster than VB apps, because .NET JIT is better optimizing than VB6 compiler. If you really want it, I could do some benchmarking.

. I generally consider compilers like VB6 (and Clipper and some Cobol compilers) as "fake compilers" - they rely on an extensive API usually made in C/C++, and their work is to generate the glue code between the API functions. So, while your application logic usually translated to a series of call statements, the functions called run at native speed, and in complex algorithms, they run laps around early .NET implementations.

That's precisely the reason why they are slow, actually. A call statement itself is relatively slow compared to, say, just adding two numbers together directly. Yet a function call is precisely what VB will do in many circumstances. .NET JIT, on the other hand, compiles directly to native code, without an added layer of call indirection.

Because if I'm not mistaken you are talking about OO languages and Basic is a procedural language? At its core basic is frankly so simple and VB6 in particular is so simple for doing this one task that the thing practically builds itself. I've never bothered with .NET but i can tell you just from looking at the code that its language is a LOT more complex.

VB6 was also object-oriented - it had classes and stuff. It didn't have certain features, like inheritance, so you had to do with interfaces + aggregation + delegation (and people did). You certainly couldn't avoid OO when writing even the most basic VB6 programs, though. Every form would be an object to begin with.

If you "never bothered with .NET", then I frankly don't see how you can make a judgement there. It lets you write complex code, for sure, much more complex than VB6 ever did, but it doesn't force you to write that kind of code. Especially not VB.NET, and especially not since 2005 or so where there was a concerted push to make things easier still, like adding "My" - with that change, e.g. forms could be operated in exact same way as in VB6, with automatically created instances.

frankly VB was laid out so simple in its flow you could probably hack together a GUI with a dozen inputs for a DB without having to type more than 40 actual words, just letting the drop down intellisense fill in the blanks with the very logically named functions.

See, again, you're judging something you haven't seen. In .NET with WinForms, you can literally hack together a GUI with inputs from DB without writing a single line of code - it's all wizards and drag and drop. Connect to database (wizard), then drag and drop that connection to a blank form and bam - there's your GUI, an editable grid of data with navigation, everything completely wired up.

As a side note, I do have a basis for comparison because I used VB6 a fair bit back in the day - it was what I started my career on back in 2000 (as in, not the first language I learned, but the first that earned me money). It was a decent thing for what it was, but I don't feel it to be superior to .NET in any way. The big problem with .NET early on was that attempt by Microsoft to get VB developers to learn the "real thing", meaning fully fledged OOP etc, even if the tech didn't really require knowing it to be used efficiently, at least not to any bigger extent than the original VB. I think that's where VB.NET reputation as a vastly more complicated language and framework comes from.