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A citation would be helpful for I've never seen, nor heard of such a comment. In fact actually the opposite. We're also talking directly about the tablet not necessarily the PC/Laptop form factors anyway and Win 8 is well suited for the mobile space. Getting Microsoft into a mobile form factor capable of doing not just the traditional ancillary office work but the "meat and potatoes" as well, especially with out need for purpose written mobile apps will answer the headaches of nearly every CTO/CIO when it comes to delivering "acceptable" mobile solutions to office staff.

98 and ME never mattered to "home users", but NT did? What planet were you on in the late 90s and early 00s?

The Windows Team did once make an announcement as to why it is 7, it makes about as much sense as your reasoning, but at least it is straight from the people who made it: http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/archive/b/windowsvista/archive/2008/10/14/why-7.aspx

To summarize:
1. Windows 1.x
2. Windows 2.x
3. Windows 3.x, NT 3.x
4. Windows 9x/ME, Windows NT 4.x
5. Windows 2000 (NT 5.0), Windows XP (NT 5.1)
6. Windows Vista (NT 6.0)
7. Windows 7 (NT 6.1)

It's only labeled internally as 6.1 for compatibility reasons. There's an article that I can't find that explains it better but this one comes close http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/archive/b/windowsvista/archive/2008/10/13/introducing-windows-7.aspx

Windows 8 Pro for $39.99

Microsoft has already announced that Windows 8 Pro will cost $40 until the end of January 2013 - and it includes the ability to burn your own backup DVD/USB stick.

Sure, Microsoft is open in the areas of application software and web services.

So long as you are using .Net on Windows.

Well the .Net part is obviously false, you don't need to use .Net (never heard of COM have you). And the web services part is false because you don't need .Net or Windows to consume web services.

Here's an example, the Skydrive API which can be utilized across just about any application and platform, also here is neat article on using gSOAP to call WCF services from Linux in C++, these examples categorically prove that you have no idea what you're talking about, you can post anti-microsoft posts all you want but it won't change the fact that you're just ignorant or trolling.

It is backwards compatible.

Though, to be honest, not that it matters much with the current rather sorrowful state of WP7 app market...

Silverlight and XNA will be supported on WP8.

I know. Windows 8 will be $40.

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2012/07/09/upcoming-windows-milestones-shared-with-partners-at-wpc.aspx/

Looks like you're the one spinning the story. The Microsoft blog post linked is from March 18 2012.

http://windowsteamblog.com/ie/b/ie/archive/2012/03/18/understanding-browser-usage-share-data.aspx

When was the last time you checked? 1. 3 years ago? http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/windowsphone/archive/2011/06/07/new-skydrive-features-coming-in-mango.aspx

It's only recently (Nov. 2010) that hotmail even had the option of using SSL:

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2010/11/09/hotmail-security-improves-with-full-session-https-encryption.aspx

And SSL still isn't the default option for hotmail.

Gmail at least had the option for SSL for many many years, and google made SSL the default a few years back (after they got hacked by the Chinese).

For some reason a lot of sites seem to miss it. There are four versions, Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, Windows 8 Enterprise and Windows RT. http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2012/04/16/announcing-the-windows-8-editions.aspx

It's pretty hilariously bad.

Well, at least MS is being honest with their branding. Check out the new W8 flag - http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2012/02/17/redesigning-the-windows-logo.aspx.

Compare it to this one - http://move.shetland.org/images/shetland-flag-thumb.jpg.

That's right, they've chosen the Shetland Islands flag for their Shetland pony OS...

@FedcourtJunkie :"Koh just held both tablets above her head, one in each hand, asked Samsung lawyers to identify which was which. Took them a while to do so.."

Again it's not about icons, it's about icons specifically made to resemble iOS icons. It's not about a rounded square device, it's about a device that's made specifically to resemble Apple's style, etc. All those elements together create a copycat that makes it hard to distinguish from the competing product. Compare this to a competitor done right, as much as I hate to admit it, the Windows phones. They have a distinct style of their own, they don't need to rely on copying someone else's.

Actually that is an xml error...
This is a story with a timeline of their logos though:
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2010/01/06/a-short-history-of-hotmail.aspx

Internet explorder 9 who really gives a sh!7 about the big blue E anyway

Web developers who want to make sure that their web site or web application runs on 30 percent of desktops.

Actually, MSE is also available for small business use (up to 10 users)

Source: Windows Team Blog

It comes from Microsoft, but the cell provider can delay it. So far, only a few specific models are delayed (at least in the US).

That leaves the timetable up to Microsoft for most users; however, Microsoft is deliberately delaying it for everybody. If you get it early, great, but you can't count on the update being available to you until a month after the "release date". And even if you get an update notification on the phone it will still sometimes refuse to update. I've tried three different desktops—no joy.

I've shown you a way to repeatably falsify the claim that it buffers all writes - what could possibly be more authoritative?
If the map doesn't match the terrain, it is usually safe tp assume that the terrain is correct.

Anyhow, if you believe authority more than your own eyes (i.e. are religious), this might help you.
Important part:
"Windows ReadyBoost will use the flash drive to create a copy of virtual memory"
(Emphasis mine.)

I.e. normal disk writes will not go through ReadyBoost at all, like with a hybrid disk solution.

Mod: Retarded Coward. Windows 7 was basically done two years ago. You expect that Microsoft isn't always working on the next OS?

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/archive/2011/03/30/a-year-later-the-windows-phone-7-numbers-that-matter.aspx

I don't know how this compares to iPhone and Android, but 1.5 million SDK downloads, 36k developers, and 13k apps is impressive for a 6 month old platform that, by Slashdot's account, has 4 users.

That's great!. But considering symbian had about 10% market share last time I checked (and going down), MS some 2% maybe? then it's great someone is downloading all that!. Now, they need people to buy their phones, and that's were the hard part comes. Even old nokia users (such as myself) see nokia-wp as something to stay away from, and people already on other platforms don't feel as going back to WP (even more Samsung or HTC). So, the actual question is, what's the market they're after?

I don't know how this compares to iPhone and Android, but 1.5 million SDK downloads, 36k developers, and 13k apps is impressive for a 6 month old platform that, by Slashdot's account, has 4 users.

Not only do all security updates go to all users' systems, but non-genuine Windows systems are able to install service packs, update rollups, and important reliability and application compatibility updates. In addition, the users of non-genuine Windows systems can also upgrade a lot of the other software on their computer. For example Internet Explorer 8 has numerous security- oriented features and improvements, and it is available to all users.

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/windowssecurity/archive/2009/04/27/who-gets-windows-security-updates.aspx

What? You can't understand that OSX has had more TOTAL vulnerabilities than Windows7,

What? You can't understand that "OS X" corresponds not to "Windows 7", but to the entire Windows NT series, and that the equivalent of "Windows 7" would be something like "OS X Snow Leopard"? And that the only reason that, 2003-2008, Windows 7 had zero vulnerabilities was that, 2003-2008, Windows 7 didn't, err, umm, exist as a product, as it was released to manufacturing in the middle of 2009? (BTW, is it just me, or is "windowsteamblog.com" continuing in the grand tradition of "expertsexchange.com"? Why is steam condensed on your window worthy of an entire blog? :-))

Unfortunately, Secunia neither offers a page for the Windows NT family as a whole, nor for individual releases of Mac OS X (although they do offer pages for individual releases of iOS!), so there's no way to compare, for example, Windows 7 and OS X Snow Leopard, but if, for example, we compare Windows 7 and OS X statistics in 2010 (that being the only year in which both Windows 7 and OS X Snow Leopard were available for the entire year), we have 47 advisories for Windows 7, 20 of which are critical, and 6 of which, 4 non-critical, are unpatched, and 12 vulnerabilities for Snow Leopard, 8 of which are critical, and 2 of which, both non-critical, are unpatched. Statistics for 2009, where they were both available for approximately the same amount of time, and for 2011, where they are available for exactly the same amount of time, are left as an exercise for the reader.

Then again, if Windows 7 in its entirety has more lines of code than Snow Leopard in its entirety, that might just be a case of "the same number of vulnerabilities per line of code, or fewer vulnerabilities per line of code, but they have more lines of code", so it's not clear that, even once you compare particular OS versions, rather than comparing a particular version of one OS to all versions of another OS, you necessarily have an easy way for fanboys or foeboys of one particular OS to validly beat up another OS or defend a particular OS.

You've got a bunch of things wrong there.

First of all, it was announced by Microsoft a while ago that IE9 will natively support WebM if the codec is installed in the OS. So this isn't a new development on Google's side - at least on IE side, it looks like this was planned in advance, and all the necessary hooks are there. It's not going to be a hack like Chrome Frame.

Regarding Flash, Adobe has also announced that it will support WebM.

Developers should pay close attention to how Microsoft ... react to this

Already did, a while ago.

Something tells me that MS and Apple (and especially, Apple) will do all they can to break the plugin's functionality.

Did you miss the part where MS had already announced that IE9 will handle WebM just fine provided the codec is installed, a few months ago?

In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video as well as VP8 video when the user has installed a VP8 codec on Windows.

It's about as clear as it gets. It also dodges any patent issues nicely as far as MS is concerned (if MPEG LA wants to sue Google, they are given a clear line of fire since Google is the one making and distributing the codec).

They do support both, they have publicly stated that WebM video will play if the codec is installed in Windows.
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2010/05/19/another-follow-up-on-html5-video-in-ie9.aspx

They just posted this today.

.... fucked up live mesh

What I count as fucking up Live Mesh is the neutering it received between beta and "Oh Christ, we'll rename Live Sync 'Live Mesh' because people like the name. It's not that they like the product - oh no" - as the outcry when it was announced proves.

Was it Ozzie who did decided to cripple a fantastic product, and turn it into the steaming pile Live Mesh 2011 is? I'm honestly curious - I'd love to know who had the vision to create the original MOE.

This is why you should realize that "You" != "Most people"
Stop making wide-arching statements about what you think the rest of the world is doing when you are basing it solely on yourself.

This is what you should have done instead - namely actually do some research before talking out your ass:

Here's an old article that discusses how in Q4 2008, 25% of Vista sales were 64bit.
Also note that "Windows 7 is expected to be Microsoft's last native 32-bit version - Server 2008 R2 has already moved to 64-bit only".

Also, here we have stats indicating that 46% of Windows 7 PCs are 64bit.

Nowhere. But right now it's the most widely adopted and implemented (pretty much everyone but Firefox either does or is planning to support it). Until there is an alternative that all the major browsers support, Firefox is going to continue to lag behind. WebM is promising. But without MS onboard, it's going nowhere.

Really, there are two options:

      1. MS chooses to adopt WebM. This is not unreasonable, especially as it starts to get rolled out more across the web. Part of MS's reluctance is probably due to the novelty of the technology.
      2. MS doesn't ever adopt WebM. In that case, a FOSS plugin to IE will certainly end up being made (probably by Google, a la Chrome Frame) that adds WebM support, and any sites that use WebM will direct IE users to that plugin.

Either way, I don't see MS's explicit WebM support as a serious hurdle.

Microsoft has already stated that IE9 will support VP8, but will not be bundling the codec with the OS or browser. I would think this would include WebM as well.

Even Microsoft learned this lesson;

That brings us to Windows Vista, which is 6.0. So we see Windows 7 as our next logical significant release and 7th in the family of Windows releases.

We learned a lot about using 5.1 for XP and how that helped developers with version checking for API compatibility. We also had the lesson reinforced when we applied the version number in the Windows Vista code as Windows 6.0-- that changing basic version numbers can cause application compatibility issues.

That was back in 2008.

You can't buy XP after the first Service Pack for Windows 7 comes out. No new XP licenses period for anyone. Need a new staff member, welcome to a mixed environment.

Microsoft have changed that policy:

To support our customers' "unprecedented move" to migrate their PC environment to Windows 7, we have decided to extend downgrade rights to Windows XP Professional beyond the previously planned end date at Windows 7 SP1. This will help maintain consistency for downgrade rights throughout the Windows 7 lifecycle. As a result, the OEM versions of Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate will continue to include downgrade rights to the similar versions of Windows Vista or Windows XP Professional. Going forward, businesses can continue to purchase new PCs and utilize end user downgrade rights to Windows XP or Windows Vista until they are ready to use Windows 7. Enabling such rights throughout the Windows 7 lifecycle will make it easier for customers as they plan deployments to Windows 7.

Agreed. Windows Live Photo Gallery does exactly everything you asked for and a new version with a bunch of improvements is coming out pretty soon: http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2010/06/02/preview-of-the-new-windows-live-essentials.aspx

Basically anything beside Microsoft

...and now also Microsoft.

It doesn't really matter if it is free of hidden patents: Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Internet Explorer 9 have all announced support.

Some journalists, bloggers and Twitter users appear to have misconceptions regarding the way Microsoft Internet Explorer will support WebM.

It's certainly very positive for Internet Explorer users that they can play WebM video/audio provided that they have a codec (meaning, a plug-in) installed. That's what the Windows Team blog states as a technical requirement.

However, that just means flexibility for MSIE users and isn't a major breakthrough for WebM/VP8. Internet Explorer has always allowed plug-ins and I don't even know if it's ever tried to block one. So this isn't the same kind of endorsement of WebM/VP8 as if Internet Explorer came with WebM support on board. If that happened, it would also mean that there aren't any remaining concerns over patent issues. But that's not what has happened.

Keep in mind that you can also view H.264 with Firefox if you have a plug-in. The net effect of the whole HTML 5 video situation is that plug-ins will continue to play a role.

Read the blog post. Needless to say, this is astounding.

Do you mean to say that Microsoft is now going to force developers to publish through its app store and nothing else?

Yes.

I did not know that. Citation needed please.

You must have not tracked WP7 announcements closely, then. It was announced explicitly on MIX'10 (when WP7 was unveiled), and here is the post on the official blog covering the details.

This is the correct link.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but...

ENSURING HIGH QUALITY PRODUCTS

In addition to designing what the Marketplace is and how it works, we’ve also focused on what users expect of the content they find and have built and operate a certification process that every application and game goes through to meet these customer expectations.

Customers reasonably expect the applications and games they find:
- install and run correctly,
- use device resources efficiently
- are not malware compromising their identity or that of their friends family and colleagues
transparently ask and inform users what personal information the application is accessing
- are legal to own and use in their country of residence, and
- are of generally good taste excluding pornography, hateful/inflammatory speech, and gratuitous violence.

So cross your fingers for Android.

That sounds somewhat like the Libraries feature in Windows 7.

Um... Dragon Age... EA/Bioware ... I can't play my game unless I log into my EA account to verify that my unlocked content is legal.

That's better?

Windows 7 Starter forcing users wanting a real computing experience to upgrade... limitations like not being able to change your background, sounds, or colors and not even having a media center for playing your own media... really? That's not my idea. I wonder how much extra code they had to put in to disable features inherent to the actual OS.

Yes, no problem.

The fact that OS X has never had a virus or worm (don't know how true this is) doesn't necessary show the platform is secure.

It well know that the scale of market share of Windows VS OS X more than tilts towards Windows. This means, as attacker, Windows is the most profitable to target. Hence we see more exploits.

It's like if I owned one house in Harlem and the other in Luxembourg. The house in Harlem would more than likely being broken into quicker than the on in Luxembourg. This is external to the houses: it's the environment outside of it.

Botnets are not only comprised mostly of Windows machines running IE

Safari has had plenty of bugs (if we are comparing browsers too), and these would have allowed Worms quite easily.

Could you tell me, how many bugs can you find for IE8 that are being *exploited* on Vista or Windows 7? There was one pre-release (in IE8 beta). Keyword is exploited here, because thanks to ASLR, the vulnerabilties that are being found and exploited on XP are notoriously difficult to exploit on Vista/7.

As for the 80% of virues. How about 8 out of 10 tested. And let's not forget this viruses were just put on the system, which usually come by other means (usually browser exploits - which are covered better in Windows Vista/7 with ASLR than Mac).

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowssecurity/archive/2009/11/06/windows-7-vulnerability-claims.aspx

ASLR, as well as many other security initiatives, go a long way to protect Vista/7 users from vulnerabilties within Windows itself and 3rd party products that support it. Mac OS X is one of the few platforms that haven't implemented this.

We learned a lot about using 5.1 for XP and how that helped developers with version checking for API compatibility. We also had the lesson reinforced when we applied the version number in the Windows Vista code as Windows 6.0-- that changing basic version numbers can cause application compatibility issues.

So we decided to ship the Windows 7 code as Windows 6.1 - which is what you will see in the actual version of the product in cmd.exe or computer properties.

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/10/14/why-7.aspx

Vista _has_ a similar architecture:
http://blogs.technet.com/photos/blog_photo_gallery/images/450100/original.aspx

(from http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsvista/articles/450038.aspx )

I.e. mixing and processing is done in userspace.

Such architecture is great, because you can do a lot more tasks sanely in userspace than in kernel.

Oh - if anyone needs to hear it from the horses' mouth itself, see here. To save yourself time, scroll to the bottom of the article and see the update.

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/09/29/the-windows-7-logo-program.aspx

You should tell their Senior Director with the Windows Product Strategy Group that he was lying when he said that.