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Will Windows 8 Be Ready For Release In 2012?

Posted by Unknown on from the too-little-too-late dept.

MrSeb writes with an excerpt from an Extreme Tech article on the Windows 8 release timeline: "...A Microsoft vice president announced that the Windows 8 beta would begin in late February 2012. The beta will be feature-complete and will allow developers to begin listing their apps in the Store. The timing of the beta is curious, and ultimately quite telling. ... The first public build of Windows 8 ... emerged in mid-September 2011; by the time the beta rolls around, it will have been ruminating for more than five months. If we follow the timeline forward — it took 10 months for Windows 7 to go from beta to public release — then it's possible that Windows 8 might arrive just in time for Black Friday 2012, or perhaps not in 2012 at all. Will its late arrival affect its chances of cutting out a swath of the tablet market from Apple and Android? Or will Windows 8 be different enough that it will do well, no matter when it arrives?" In related news, an anonymous reader notes that IDC predicts Windows 8 will be irrelevant to the traditional PC market.

4 of 504 comments (clear)

  1. Not in 2012 for me by GeneralTurgidson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ill be waiting for SP1. Server 2008 R2 has shown (at least to me) that Microsoft is trying to make server tasks more accessible at the cost of options and tweaking. Instead of having a nice GUI with lots of options, it's a purdy GUI with few options and the rest buried in some power shell syntax. Server 8 doesn't look like its helping their case.

  2. Phone UI Hell by Beelzebud · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Who would have guessed that phones would completely be the thing to mangle and ruin PC user interfaces... It's crazy but I've come full circle to thinking KDE4 might actually be the only sane desktop team left. Unless they're planning on turning it into a tablet/phone UI as well.

  3. Re:Win8 is a non-event by Nimey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You're wrong on Win95. 95 was a revelation when it was released; a much better user interface than 3.1 and preemptive multitasking, and more stable (given good drivers) than 3.1, plus built-in TCP/IP. Sucked that they didn't give OSR2 as a free upgrade (or indeed at all except to OEMs) so that we could have had FAT32 sooner.

    98 sucked when it came out, so you're wrong there as well. 98SE was pretty awesome in its day, though.

    --
    Hail Eris, full of mischief...

    E pluribus sanguinem
  4. Re:Windows 8 by Truekaiser · · Score: 5, Insightful

    so.. in other words. everything a *nix based os has had for years. why do i get the feeling microsoft is like a horse in a race wearing a dunce cap?