The Three Flavors of Windows 8

First time accepted submitter Kelerei writes "Windows 8 has been confirmed as the official name for the next x86/x64 version of Windows, which will be released in two editions: a home edition (simply named 'Windows 8') featuring an updated Windows Explorer, Task Manager, improved multi-monitor support and 'the ability to switch languages on the fly,' while a professional edition ('Windows 8 Pro') adds features for businesses and technical professionals such as encryption, virtualization and domain connectivity. Windows Media Center will not be included in the Pro edition and will be available separately as part of a 'media pack' add-on. A third edition, branded as 'Windows RT,' will be available for ARM-based systems."

Comments

Re:Can't wait!!!

[bmo]

Oh look, a shill post in the first message.

You're supposed to wait a bit so as to not be so obvious. /tip

--
BMO

Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[Anonymous Coward]

With all the boss features... PC management and deployment, advanced security, virtualization, mobility scenarios and so on

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/mobile/official-microsoft-names-windows-8-for-intel-windows-rt-for-arm-015185.php

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[DJRumpy]

Really wish MS would stop with all of the micromanaged 'versions' of Windows. It adds complexity where none is needed. A home user doesn't need those features but it doesn't hurt to include them. A business user probably doesn't need media center features but again it doesn't hurt to include them. I don't know what their 'game' is here as I don't see a profit motive for splitting up all of these offerings. Are they seriously hoping someone will buy two different versions to get everything they need?

Also, what's with the X86/X64 offerings? Any decent OS should allow you to just boot into the proper kernel. Requiring a dedicated install to switch between x86/x64 is just stupid not to put too fine a point on it.

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[colinrichardday]

I don't see a profit motive for splitting up all of these offerings. Are they seriously hoping someone will buy two different versions to get everything they need?

Ever hear of price discrimination? The different versions are not identical, but close enough. Microsoft expects businesses to pay more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[Archangel Michael]

I'm wondering why they include x86 at all for WINTEL platform. Why not just say "we think that x86 computers cannot run Win8 acceptably so we are removing this as an option to prevent people from even trying" But then again, they think they can get it to run acceptably on ARM so ...

Windows 8 should be Balmer's last failure.

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[Sarten-X]

Are they seriously hoping someone will buy two different versions to get everything they need?

Yup. One license included by the OEM on the cheap machines the small business orders, then another license (and fee) for the version with the features the business actually needs.

Also, what's with the X86/X64 offerings?

My understanding is that the x64 version also runs the Windows-On-Windows system, which provides the backwards-compatibility for 32-bit software. That means a different registry structure, different drivers, different libraries... A separate installation seems to be the easy way.

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[0123456]

Some Atoms are still 32-bit, aren't they?

Also, if you want to run old 16-bit apps you still need 32-bit Windows or some kind of emulator.

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[NatasRevol]

Because WinRT doesn't have Active Directory, Remote Desktop or Windows Media Player.

Do they really think tablets et al really don't need GPO? or the ability to play media?

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[archen]

Really wish MS would stop with all of the micromanaged 'versions' of Windows. It adds complexity where none is needed. .

The burden of complexity isn't placed on the user anyway. If users order a computer, they get it with whatever is installed. Businesses either don't need active directory and order whatever anyway, or would have an IT person order them. It's in Microsofts best interest to have at least two versions. A less expensive home version to encourage people to keep using windows, and a more expensive business version to milk more money from businesses who will probably never escape Microsoft office/exchange/whatever anyway.

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[SuricouRaven]

"A home user doesn't need those features but it doesn't hurt to include them."

Doesn't hurt the user, does hurt microsoft. If they included those features in home edition, who would want to buy the more expensive professional edition? It's called price discrimination: The business technique of making sure every customer pays as close as possible to what they are willing to pay, even if customers are willing to pay different amounts.

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that any business of decent size will probably do volume licensing, under which MS could dictate which version they would license ( no 'home' versions licensed for business use, etc).

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[nine-times]

I'm still hoping the "Professional "version will do away with Metro. Metro seems fine for tablets, but for office workers sitting at a desk, I think it's going to be a headache.

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[jawtheshark]

All currently sold netbook/nettop Atoms are 64-bit. Yes, you can get 32-bit embedded Atoms. See here. Click on the 32-bit filter. You'll notice all models starting with E, those are embedded ones. Ignore them. N270 and N280 are from 2008 and I don't think you can get those anymore. The ones starting with Z are, like the E series, thought for non-PC platforms.

Those starting with N are for "notebooks" (netbooks, whatever the name du jour), those starting D are for "desktops" (nettops...) 64-bit all of them (except for the above noted N270 abd N280)

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[Anonymous Coward]

Win8 Metro does not run on $(NETBOOK) for which most Atom users would be using.

Oh you can see the screen, except you can't do anything because the screen resolution is to small.

Which also happens to be the standard M$ and Intel set for those underpowered machines.

-- sf

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[shutdown -p now]

It has the ability to play media - there's a Metro app for that. It's just not WMP.

It does have an RDP client (two, even - a classic desktop one, and a new Metro one). It doesn't have an RDP server, though. Same as Win7 Home.

It doesn't have GPO, but it does have other means of limiting what the device can do.

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[NatasRevol]

In other words, lots of stuff doesn't work like Windows.

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[shutdown -p now]

It's mostly the same restrictions as on Vista/7 Home (with respect to GPO and RDP). You have probably always used Pro/Enterprise/Ultimate, so you didn't notice that.

The only real difference here is the lack of WMP.

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[CrispyZorro]

Ever hear of price discrimination? The different versions are not identical, but close enough. Microsoft expects businesses to pay more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination

I don't think that Microsoft expects businesses to pay more so much as they expect home users not to pay.

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[Patch86]

I don't know what their 'game' is here as I don't see a profit motive for splitting up all of these offerings. Are they seriously hoping someone will buy two different versions to get everything they need?

Windows 7 HomePremium costs £110.
Windows 7 Professional costs £156.
Windows 7 Ultimate costs £170.

There's your profit motive. You sell intentionally crippled versions for less than the real version.

I remember trying to do some password protecting/encryption for some folders on Windows 7 Home Premium. After trying for 30 minutes, I googled it. Apparently that feature isn't available to Home Premium users; if I want to do that, I'll need to spring £100 for the upgrade package.

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[NatasRevol]

So it's ok that tablets can't be used in an AD environment?

With no option to upgrade to a 'fuller' version?

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[shutdown -p now]

Tablets can be used in an "AD environment", just not a full-featured domain members (then again, if you use iPads today, they're not domain members, either).

By the way, if you really want a tablet to behave exactly as a domain-joined PC, that's also possible - you just need an Intel tablet; those things run full-featured Win8. To be honest, other than (presumably) price, I don't know why anyone would care about Windows on ARM, given that you can't install third-party desktop apps on it. ARM used to be much better for battery life, but it's no longer true since Intel released Medfield.

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[godefroi]

It's been a long time since I was "in the know", but it seems to me that the hassle involved in running illegitimate copies of recent versions of Windows was sufficient to make it less common than it was in the past. Pretty much everyone I know is running legitimately licensed copies. There are times in the past when that wasn't the case, for me, at least.

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[godefroi]

Why not just say "we think that x86 computers cannot run Win8 acceptably so we are removing this as an option to prevent people from even trying"

Probably because they don't think that. I haven't tried, myself, but the general feeling I've gotten from those I've talked to who HAVE run it is that it runs as well or better than 7 did on the same hardware.

No reason to reduce your potential market arbitrarily. I wouldn't expect x86 to last super long, though. Win8 could be the final x86 operating system from Microsoft.

Linux will likely carry it around for decades.

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running legit Win7 at home, but I tested out "the offerings" first.

It's no more difficult than XP, though I believe the latest service pack had a bit of a time-lag before it was accessible to all.

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[Anonymous Coward]

Still, 32bit is so 12 years ago. Time to move on and gain that hard earned xp. EOL

M$ could release 2 flavours, resi and busi. Done. EOL

Exploitation is the name, profit is the game. Sad but true. EOL

Imo OS == x64, busi(server, desktop, postpc)/resi(desktop, postpc); Done. EOL

Any 32bit past os can vm its way btft MJFox stylezorz. EOL

EOF

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[bkcallahan]

Probably get modded as a troll, but it's not really my intention (trust me, you'll know if I'm trolling, rofl) As for the "name du jour" part, it's not that as far as I understand (I may be missing something here, and I have no doubt /. will tell me so!) -- notebooks are bigger, have generally equiv. CPUs to a desktop -- and have some form of CD/DVD/BD drive. Netbooks are much smaller, almost always use a special processor, like the Atom and I can't recall seeing a netbook with a built-in drive. In answer to what you said above, the N stands for netbooks, not notebooks. I only answered this because I honestly believed you may not have been aware of the differences (and chances are, with your comment, you could give a fuck less. Tell l me to fuck off and I won't bother replying, out of courtesy.)

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[jawtheshark]

I'm very aware of the difference, and I agree that what you say a "netbook" is, is indeed a "netbook". My original post had the word "netbook" there, but I changed it. The thing is the "D" category doesn't match. The "D" can only stand for Desktop, but an Atom in a desktop?!? Nope, doesn't match, the word used in the Atom context would be "nettop". That would be an "N" again, so they couldn't use that. So, if "Desktop" is correct, "Netbook" can't be correct as Netbook:Nettop as Notebook:Desktop.

So, yes, I did this on purpose and - I think - I had good reason to do so... It is also why I wrote the "whatever they're called these days" part. It indicated that I had thought about the issue. Contrary to popular belief, some slashdotters do think about what exactly they write. You are of course free to think I'm an idiot and will then accept the criticism.

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 8 should be Balmer's last failure.

Is this "You have failed me for the last time, Admiral Balmer." in James Earl Jones' voice?

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[godefroi]

Maybe it's just me and my family/friend/acquaintance circle. We grew up, and decided to either use something that didn't cost money, or pay the legitimate license fees.

Also, many in my circle nowdays just buys surplus computers from the local uni (for $45-65) and use the licenses that come with them.

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[laurelraven]

If they included those features in home edition, who would want to buy the more expensive professional edition? It's called price discrimination: The business technique of making sure every customer pays as close as possible to what they are willing to pay, even if customers are willing to pay different amounts.

The features that are included in Pro are much more complex than simply saying "it has AD...". Those parts are maintained by an entire separate team, which costs more money. Since they have to pay devs to maintain both Windows itself and the AD components for Pro, but just the Windows parts for Home, it makes since to change extra. They also have to meet higher standards for reliability, and with integrating into the network at a much larger and complex scale in Pro, otherwise business would not buy. I don't think it is price discrimination to charge your customers only for the parts they use, but charge for all the parts they use.

Dammit...why did you have to put me in a position to defend MS?

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[bkcallahan]

I haven't interacted with you enough to judge your idiocy, lol so no worries. No negative criticism with that explanation, either. Your post makes sense, and I accept it as such. And most importantly, none of this will matter much in 5 years, will it?

Re:Don't forget Windows 8 Enterprise....

[jawtheshark]

And most importantly, none of this will matter much in 5 years, will it?

I surely hope so... I'm hoping for Core i7 Atoms by then ;-)

RT Aplenty

[aurashift]

Growing up "RT" was code for "Rock Tit" A.K.A. Stiff Nipples. Although I can't say that the RT name choice gives me any...

Re:RT Aplenty

[Kelerei]

Original submitter here. :)

TFA mentions (and I quote): "the focus for Windows RT is development on the new Windows runtime, or WinRT..." -- so, I'm guessing that that's where the name comes from. I blame lack of caffeine at the time for leaving that out of the submission.

Bit of a bland choice though, in my opinion.

Re:RT Aplenty

[buchner.johannes]

Do you ever watch RT ( http://rt.com/ ) ? [The russian CNN/BBC/Al Jazeera]

Re:RT Aplenty

[19thNervousBreakdown]

No matter how many times I see it, RT is apparently going to imply realtime to me. I have to remind myself it means "Windows API 2.0" every time.

Re:RT Aplenty

[Tasha26]

Maybe it's mean but at first I read 'RT' as being: Windows 'ReTard.'

Re:RT Aplenty

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 8 seems to be a pretty unnecessary product. Even as a paradigm shift it doesn't really benefit anyone. There's no real benefit to moving to the new way of doing things. 30 years of interface enhancement shows us that this isn't necessary. It seems change for the sake of change. The party it really benefits is Microsoft in that it gives them PR potential for the marketers to sell the same product again.

Windows 8 also seems to be a product designed to create more lock in. We all probably would be better off going with some open model where the community decides, just like our elections. Our community decides what they want instead of having the republic of Microsoft of Apple making the decisions. We really are at the point where the consumer should be making the decisions on change rather than a couple companies.

As far as the 3 versions go, well, really, what's the news? What's the big deal? This isn't even newsworthy. We've seen 3 versions (4 versions depending on what news source you read--and none seem consistent) before. It is sort of pointless to try to promote essentially a Win ME or Vista -like edition at this point in time, as most of what I read, new and existing users dislike Win8 at the core level, in fact I've seen essentially universal hate with just a few fanboi outliers in the crowd.

Re:RT Aplenty

[Anonymous Coward]

RT = Renal Trauma (from taking the piss once too often.)

Re:RT Aplenty

[unixisc]

That's precisely what I think - real time. Couldn't they have simply called it Windows Metro, or Metro?

Re:RT Aplenty

[HermMunster]

It's more pig with lipstick and a wool sweater this time. I see it as nothing more than their attempt to create a pet pig for those willing to clean up the shit where ever it may fall.

Are we all really taking Win 8 seriously? At this point shouldn't we all be considering some other alternative? There's so much effort being focused at lock in and their ability control things that we really would be better served looking for something else, be it a Mac, or Linux or something other than an effort to lock us in.

I mean seriously, all of us here are wise enough to understand Microsoft's efforts. Why is it not possible for you all to think out of the box in order to understand that this is the end-of-life for Windows. They can't seem to come up with anything better. Really, they can't come up with anything better than what they call the metro interface? No safe mode? Only full screen apps? One app at a time?

Products like the Mac and Linux will be steamrolling Microsoft in a few years. How can so many people at Microsoft be so blind that they can't see the inevitable brick wall ahead and the steam roller behind? What they never open their eyes or turn their heads?

Re:RT Aplenty

[Anonymous Coward]

Och! Me nipples are hard enough to cut diamonds!

Re:RT Aplenty

[mrbcs]

Still on XP behind a router. Shelf full of cds that serve all my needs. No reason to upgrade. No problems in 10 years.

I will not be buying any new flavour of windows.

Re:RT Aplenty

[Anonymous Coward]

Now it is: Windows Reduced Technology.

Re:RT Aplenty

[Kdansky]

Be happy. I seem to suffer permanent brain damage, because it means "ReTweet" to me.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Robert Zenz]

You've been running Windows 8 on the Desktop? I'm not ranting, I'm interested. What's your setup? What do you do "normally"?

I'm asking because I'm more of the "tiled window manager" and "I want my windows where I want them" type, and I can hardly imagine working with something like Gnome 3, Unity or Metro (hell, I have trouble working with Explorer)...but that doesn't mean that I'm resistant to learning the benefits of those system.

Alleged "no-compromise experience"

[tepples]

From the article: "All editions of Windows 8 offer a no-compromise experience." But from previous articles, we know that Windows RT (formerly Windows on ARM) is licensed under terms that prohibit the manufacturer from allowing a dual boot with Android, Ubuntu, *BSD, or any other operating system. So the closest thing to a no-compromise Windows tablet would probably have to be an Atom tablet.

Re:Alleged "no-compromise experience"

[MickyTheIdiot]

No compromise from the user perspective, the admin perspective, or Microsoft's perspective?

It looks like the attitude is "you'll take metro and like it, luzer."

Re:Alleged "no-compromise experience"

[billcopc]

If it were a no-compromise experience, then they'd release just one goddamned edition of the OS at one price point and let you add/remove feature sets if and when needed.

In other words, just the Pro, thank you. Segmenting an operating system in 2012 is antiquated and moronic. All it does is piss off us techies who are forced to support the substandard "Home" editions.

Re:Alleged "no-compromise experience"

[_LORAX_]

Especially in light of the fact that MS considers such basics as "network backup" as Pro features.

Re:Alleged "no-compromise experience"

[Locutus]

it looks like it because that is their attitude and has been for a couple of decades. It is games like these restrictions regarding selling it with another system which nullifies any truth to the Windows platform being open. Yes, I've had people tell me it is open because of Microsofts API and SDK documentation.

LoB

Re:Alleged "no-compromise experience"

[repetty]

If it were a no-compromise experience, then they'd release just one goddamned edition of the OS at one price point and let you add/remove feature sets if and when needed.

In other words, just the Pro, thank you. Segmenting an operating system in 2012 is antiquated and moronic. All it does is piss off us techies who are forced to support the substandard "Home" editions.

I love you. I do.

You are absolutely right. As with Linux or Mac OS X, the Windows 8 operating system should be unified, not marketed.

--Richard

Tagline: Ballmer must go.

Re:Alleged "no-compromise experience"

[Anonymous Coward]

Robocopy and some scripting to the rescue, unless they took that away as well.

Re:Alleged "no-compromise experience"

[mcavic]

They should have two versions: full and lite. $200 may be okay for a desktop OS, but it's too much for a mobile OS.

Re:Alleged "no-compromise experience"

[forkfail]

"All editions of Windows 8 offer a no-compromise experience."

No, we won't compromise about the start button. Nor the greasy finger interface on a desktop. Nor the AOL look and feel. Nor the inability to have multiple windows open at once.

Sheesh - this stuff almost writes itself.

Re:Alleged "no-compromise experience"

[hobarrera]

As if any sane person would trust a MS product to do their real backups anyway.

Re:Alleged "no-compromise experience"

[davester666]

It's "open" in the sense that it is open for business. As in that when you go to buy a computer, you aren't presented with any other choice...

Re:Alleged "no-compromise experience"

[Anonymous Coward]

Only "pro" users would even consider such a concept as backing up being related to networks. IF normal people back things up, they do so to a different hard drive in the same conputer, OR in the best case an external hard drive plugged through USB (still technically attached to the same computer).

If you do consider network backup an essential tool, then you are not part of Microsoft's definition of a "home user".

Re:Alleged "no-compromise experience"

[tepples]

I assume that by "lite" you're referring to something like Windows 7 Starter, the netbook edition. I'd guess the closest thing to that would be the ARM version that can't emulate x86 and can't dual boot.

Re:Alleged "no-compromise experience"

[equex]

Uh i have a network at home with a dedicated file server..i keep my backups on the file server. why is that a Pro feature ? I can understand that automated backups of multiple servers and important client machines over network to remote sites and such are a 'Pro' feature. But almost everyone i know have more than one computer and a swtich at home.

Re:Alleged "no-compromise experience"

[billcopc]

Well, maybe not a proper switch, but just about anyone with more than one computer has a router.

That said, just a few months ago I hooked up a friend with an 8TB Synology box. They're not quite plug-and-play yet, but it only took a few minutes to walk him through initial configuration. The guy is not a programmer or network admin, he's a "people person" like in Office Space. I call him the meat shield. He deals with clients so I don't have to. If a guy like that is at a point where his family needs a networked file server, then I'd hazard a guess that a lot more people are headed that way.

Re:Alleged "no-compromise experience"

[billcopc]

Well... the price is completely separate issue. I don't see how Windows can be worth $200+ at retail, but I'm not in the business of creating and selling desktop operating systems so I can't speak with authority.

If Windows continues to price itself out of the netbook market, tough tits. We'll use something else. I don't see Apple charging through the nose for its operating system, the real money is in application software. You know, the stuff that actually delivers results, not the bloated foundational blocks said apps are built against.

forgot the fourth flavor, the torrent

[vlm]

Does the fourth flavor, torrent, have pro + the media addon "slipstreamed" in or what?

I'm not about to actually use anything other than XP at home or work anytime soon, but its interesting to know about.

Re:forgot the fourth flavor, the torrent

[Anonymous Coward]

The torrent version also ships with 50% less malware and won't bitch about being non-genuine every five minutes. Count me in.

Re:forgot the fourth flavor, the torrent

[Savage-Rabbit]

Does the fourth flavor, torrent, have pro + the media addon "slipstreamed" in or what?

No, the three original flavors of Windows 8 are codenamed: 'chocolate pudding', 'vanilla ice-cream', and 'strawberry marmalade'. The legendary eight flavor of Windows 8 is so delicious, that most people are deemed unworthy to experience it or even utter it's true name. Thus it was hidden away in a heavily guarded and nuclear-strke proof bunker beneath Microsoft HQ.

Re:forgot the fourth flavor, the torrent

[Megane]

The legendary eightth flavor of Windows 8 is so delicious, that most people are deemed unworthy to experience it or even utter it's true name.

Octarine?

Re:forgot the fourth flavor, the torrent

[Radish03]

I'd be happier without the media center add-on. I'd be using VLC or XBMC anyway.

Re:forgot the fourth flavor, the torrent

[Anonymous Coward]

Burma Shave

Re:forgot the fourth flavor, the torrent

[Anonymous Coward]

Fourth one is "Windows 8 Enterprise"

NOTE: As with previous versions of Windows, we will also have an edition of Windows 8 specifically for those enterprise customers with Software Assurance agreements. Windows 8 Enterprise includes all the features of Windows 8 Pro plus features for IT organization that enable PC management and deployment, advanced security, virtualization, new mobility scenarios, and much more.

Re:forgot the fourth flavor, the torrent

[houghi]

I am soooo jealous. We just moved to Windows7. Horrible is saying it nice. Of all the Windows versions I was forced to work with, I still like Windows 95 best.

At least from how it looks, that at least looked half decent for a work environment.

Re:forgot the fourth flavor, the torrent

[antdude]

What will you do when MS ends its support on Windows XP?

Re:forgot the fourth flavor, the torrent

[Malvineous]

It's interesting, I used to think the same thing but then we switched to Win7 at work. After a few months getting used to its quirks, I have to say it's much nicer than XP. Reading your comment reminded me of when Windows 98 came out and people were saying you'll never get them to stop using DOS.

Re:forgot the fourth flavor, the torrent

[Trogre]

Keep using it.

Was that a serious question?

Re:forgot the fourth flavor, the torrent

[antdude]

Yes. So you will keep using vulnerable Windows XP forever? :)

Re:forgot the fourth flavor, the torrent

[Reziac]

Who'll bother attacking it when everyone else has moved to Win8? ;)

Tho I'm guessing that a tolerably-protected older-Windows is going to be more secure, even with no further updates (after all, it's not like holes magically appear if they don't already exist) than a fresh new Win8 that hasn't had all the holes found and fixed yet, and Win8 may provide new and different holes as well.

Re:forgot the fourth flavor, the torrent

[Anonymous Coward]

Stay off the net you should.

Be a botnet you can.

Much to learn you will.

Re:forgot the fourth flavor, the torrent

[antdude]

W8 sucks. Stick with W7 or another OS. :)

Re:forgot the fourth flavor, the torrent

[Reziac]

Such as, uh, WinXP :D

Yeah, from the screenies and complaints I've seen, sounds like Win8 is meant to be a smartphone that weighs too much to put to your ear :/

Re:forgot the fourth flavor, the torrent

[antdude]

LOL, haha yeah. Crazy MS. I am not getting tablets too. Sheesh.

Re:forgot the fourth flavor, the torrent

[laurelraven]

What will you do when MS ends its support on Windows XP?

Based on past experience, probably complain that Microsoft is trying to force upgrades down people's throats. It's so unethical how they choose not to support every piece of software they wrote until the end of time, you know.

oh, fuck you, MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows Media Center will not be included in the Pro edition and will be available separately as part of a 'media pack' add-on.

So any power user, e.g. worker from home, will have to buy a Pro edition *and* this stupid add-on?

No, I kid, I'll be using one of the student discount packages, and I fully expect the rest of you will either do that or visit your usual supplier.

No, I kid, I'll be sticking with Windows 7 because I'd rather poke my eyes out than have my huge multimonitor setup replaced by a set of tiles every time I want to visit the Start Menu.

Re:oh, fuck you, MS

[LVSlushdat]

No, I kid.. I'll be sticking with Linux.. Just for fun, and so that I can answer questions from friends about the "new thing from Microsoft" I installed the preview in Virtualbox, and geez...what a steaming pile of manure.. I can see having Metro on a tablet, but on a desktop??? Microsoft has indeed jumped the shark. Unfortunantly that "shark" has been jumped quite a bit lately, especially by what used to be my favorite Linux distribution, namely Ubuntu. Their "shark-jump" is called Unity, and it is equally a steaming pile of manure. Apparently Microsoft's insanity is catching.. Canonical/Ubuntu seems to have caught it...

Re:oh, fuck you, MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure who caught it from who... Ubuntu with their unity interface has been out for a while now (netbook 10.04 ...)

No domain connectivity for Home edition...again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why must they purposely cripple certain versions?

Move along, nothing to see here folks.

[Anonymous Coward]

We all know Windows 8 is going to be the next "Terrible Windows".

Windows 9 is where it is at. If they even survive.

Re:Move along, nothing to see here folks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't that the rule for Star Trek films?

Re:Move along, nothing to see here folks.

[Anonymous Coward]

9? I'm running 11 already! Oh wait - we're talking about Windows, not Firefox.

fwiw, FF11 is pretty good, but I'm looking forward to FF12 which gives HTML support to the DOMParser

Re:Move along, nothing to see here folks.

[KlomDark]

You're only running Windows 11? I'm running Windows 98!! ;)

Re:Move along, nothing to see here folks.

[hobarrera]

You're still running firefox 11? That's sooooo mid-march!!

Re:Move along, nothing to see here folks.

[armanox]

Only 98? I've been running Windows 2000 for years!

Re:Move along, nothing to see here folks.

[rwven]

The sad part here is that you posted about FF11, and in my head I instantly retorted that FF13 is out....oops. WTG Mozilla...

Re:Move along, nothing to see here folks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do I now have to say I'm using Windows 2008?

WMC not included?

[Overzeetop]

Hmmm...that will make things interesting. If you're shelling out cash for that 10' interface, and it's a separate install, it's going to have to compete on a more equal footing with all the other media centers that are available. Will this be the beginning of the end of WMC?

Re:WMC not included?

[Anonymous Coward]

It makes sense in a way. They removed the 10' interface, but gave you the 10" interface (Metro) instead...

(Yes, I know you don't hold a tablet 10" away from your face)

Re:WMC not included?

[PerfectionLost]

WMC has been continuously broken for me. In theory it will let me play video/music from my computer to my xbox. In practice it crashes and I don't watch the movie/listen to the music and contemplate building a living room PC.

So while I have been waiting for an update to fix it, I don't anticipate purchasing it as a standalone piece of software...

Re:WMC not included?

[Sfing_ter]

Will this be the beginning of the end of WMC?

Why no, the beginning of the end of WMC is when you use WMC - at that point you realize why the 'Work or Spoon' site ever existed...
XBMC is so much better and ... free. Plus it can be used on almost any platform...

Re:WMC not included?

[CaptSlaq]

Does the XBox 360 see XBMC as an actual media center pc, or is it just a share?

Re:WMC not included?

[CaptSlaq]

Hmmm...that will make things interesting. If you're shelling out cash for that 10' interface, and it's a separate install, it's going to have to compete on a more equal footing with all the other media centers that are available. Will this be the beginning of the end of WMC?

I'm not convinced that it's the beginning of the end: The 360/720 is a major piece in the strategy of "put windows everywhere". Making it easy to get to your own media is too useful to just toss.

That said, MS has often made missteps concerning their market in the past, and there's this idea of "all media should be streamed anyway" that may drive the displacement of the Media Center PC as well. So there's merit to the thought.

Re:WMC not included?

[SuricouRaven]

I just assumed 10" refered to the size of the buttons.

Re:WMC not included?

[HermMunster]

If that's their strategy and if you actually believe they are making it easy for you to get your own media is in line with that, then we can all say "long lived Microsoft" now instead of wasting our time waiting for it.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

What's that you say? Even pr0n looks better?

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Crasoose]

The amount of exclamation marks told me all I needed to know about how I should value this review.

Re:Windows RT?

[Anonymous Coward]

MS really is asking for trouble with this, never mind all the confused retweets.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Completely right. Damn kids need to get off my Ion3, Captain Ion not withstanding.

Re:No domain connectivity for Home edition...again

[tepples]

It costs Microsoft money to maintain "certain versions". What's the use case for a domain on a home network, as opposed to a workgroup?

BUT

[trum4n]

Do you need Pro just to use Dual Processors(not talking cores, talking SOCKETS) like in Win7? Cause i'm really sick of that.

Re:BUT

[Joe U]

How many people have a dual socket system at home and are not considered a computer professional?

Suck it up and deduct the expense from your business taxes.

Re:BUT

[trum4n]

Not a business. Home user. Paid 250$ for a Dual Quad Core Xeon system that is a retired server. It's quite a monster. And i have 10 legit win7 home premium licenses, why should i have to pay more?

Re:BUT

[cmdrbuzz]

How can the licensing know the difference between a "retired" server and an active server?

Thats why you have to pay more to use a "server class" hardware system with a "desktop class" operating system.

Re:BUT

[spauldo]

I've had a few. Yeah, I was a computer professional at the time, but these were systems I had at home. None of them ran Windows, sure, but they could have.

Power users like their computers powerful. I bought the first Tyan dual-proc board for the Athlon MP for my home desktop (which I ran until I replaced it with a dual-core Phenom system years later). Prior to that, I had a couple dual Pentium Pro systems and a dual Pentium II box. I've had a fair share of old Sun equipment with multiple processors as well. This is all home stuff, mind you - I'm not counting equipment I used for business purposes.

I seriously considered an 8-proc Supermicro motherboard when the capacitors died on my Tyan board. I opted out because I couldn't justify the cost of more than a quad-processor system, and multicore processors were making the whole thing pointless anyway.

These days, I just use a laptop and a few servers at home I tinker with. If I were still in my 20s, and had the money, I'd probably be typing this on that 8-socket Supermicro right now.

Re:BUT

[jawtheshark]

It has been that way ever since XP. Windows 2000 (Pro, there was only Pro) and Windows NT 4.0 (same remark) both handled Duallies fine. XP: duallies only for Pro customers. I ran an AMD Athlon MP 2400+ system for ages. One of the nicest machines I ever had and what a long life it had. It finally died a few months ago. Won't post...

Re:BUT

[trum4n]

It does not cost microsoft one penny to enable a feature that is already there. It is simply greed.

Re:BUT

[trum4n]

My Dual Xeon is a Supermicro. I also had a Dual Athlon MP Tyan Tiger for many years. Great system.

Re:BUT

[trum4n]

Check for swollen electrolytic capacitors. Easy fix once you find them.

Re:BUT

[jawtheshark]

Checked... Didn't find any, and you know what they say about programmers and soldering irons... ;-)

Re:BUT

[Joe U]

It didn't develop itself.

Just because the feature is in there doesn't mean it didn't cost them time and money to develop and test it.

Re:BUT

[operagost]

They suffer from frequent first and second-degree burns?

Re:BUT

[jawtheshark]

Yes... Exactly that.... It always interested me a lot, but I damage myself whenever trying. My dad can do it, so if I have anything to do with soldering irons, I ask him. Hopefully he lives for a long long time...

Continuing to split versions?

[SuperKendall]

I just cannot fathom why at this point that Microsoft still does not grasp how important security is.

Nothing makes this more clear than withholding advanced encryption features or even virtualization from the general consumer version.

This continued split of versions at this point is just absurd, and confusing to the market. You'd think by now Microsoft would learn to simplify - I guess not. Must be nice being a monopoly that scores of companies have no choice but to ship whatever you put out.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[Anonymous Coward]

At least they've trimmed down the number of versions... for now.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[Black Parrot]

I just cannot fathom why at this point that Microsoft still does not grasp how important security is.

Nothing makes this more clear than withholding advanced encryption features or even virtualization from the general consumer version.

They're in the business of making money, not providing important services.

This continued split of versions at this point is just absurd, and confusing to the market. You'd think by now Microsoft would learn to simplify - I guess not. Must be nice being a monopoly that scores of companies have no choice but to ship whatever you put out.

Back in the day, "only one version" was one of their arguments against using Linux.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just cannot fathom why at this point that Microsoft still does not grasp how important security is.

No, Microsoft understands perfectly well how important security is

It's the consumer who doesn't. Or they don't care.

Microsoft just sees a market for an OS with stripped down security features, so they provide.

If there aren't enough people buying that version, they'll releasing that version and make all the features baseline.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's what MBAs were taught to do... Slice and dice the market so they can extract maximum pounds of flesh from each.

But yeah, my initial reaction was "why does Microsoft think that home users don't need encryption or virtualization?".

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[colinrichardday]

It's the consumer who doesn't. Or they don't care.

And even if they did care, what could typical consumers do about it?

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually its a business tax. The computers a business buy will come with windows 8 or 8 pro. Since it isn't consistent the shop will just get a bulk license anyways for the pro they actually need for network management.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[samkass]

Must be nice being a monopoly that scores of companies have no choice but to ship whatever you put out.

It's no coincidence that most businesses are still on XP/Server2003. I do not look forward to the day our firm "upgrades". Microsoft's only competitor is their past selves, and they often still can't compete; the only way they know to upgrade you is to eliminate support contracts for older versions of Windows, not provide any additional value. Paying money without getting value is a big suck for the economy...

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[RivenAleem]

I know, it's crazy. What you really want is some sort of Open Source operating system that's modular, whereby you can put together the parts you want.

Or if that's a little too complicated, you could have people who build pre-made packages and distribute them to users based on their needs.

Pity nothing like that exists.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[Chryana]

Either you're trolling or you are vastly overestimating the general public computer abilities. Do you really expect Joe six-pack to setup a virtual machine to run his browser in? Even if he has a knowledgeable friend who sets this up for him, now try to explain to him why he can't apply a wallpaper he downloads or install a game without copying it from the virtual machine to is computer (which, by the way, defeats to large extent the usefulness of the virtual machine in the first place)? As for encryption, I'm not really sure of how it protects a computer from viruses and random malware, but I do know that it makes it much more difficult to recover data in case of hardware failure, sometimes impossible if the encryption depended on some certificate which had to be backed up (which wasn't done, because the user didn't know about it). You can argue that Microsoft should offer a simpler line of products, but I don't think those features are particularly useful in regards to security for the general public.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[Locutus]

because Microsoft has been trying for a couple of decades to establish a Windows based computer as an appliance. An appliance for home users, an appliance for gamers, an appliance for business users, etc. Even though the hardware across all the models is capable of most, if not all, of the features of the other appliance versions of Windows software.

It is only a fraction of the public, the geeks, which understands that the hardware is capable of all these things and it is Microsoft's artificial limitations on the software they package which prevents the use of the hardware features. ie the geeks know what's going on but the public doesn't and businesses think signing licensing agreements with Microsoft is a smart business move.

LoB

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[Spad]

Server 2008 R2 is a massive step forwards from 2003 in pretty much every way, trying to claim that the only reason to upgrade to it is because of MS cutting off support for 2003 suggests to me that you've never used it.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[NewWorldDan]

Apparently you don't work in product development or technical support. First of all, all of the OEMs who build home computers don't want those extra features in the home version. The reason is that a lot of unqualified customers will start experimenting and causing problems. Those features won't be set up or used correctly. And when the problems start, that means more angry customers calling tech support. This is expensive and time consuming for the manufacturer (who is expected to provide the front line support due to the pricing they receive from Microsoft).

Frankly, Microsoft is learning to simplify. Windows 7 came in 6 different versions for the x86 platform. This is 2. It also makes sense. Why should the home users be subsidizing the development of buisness class features that they don't want or need? This really is about as good as we can expect from Microsoft.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Au contraire ... paying money without getting value is the generator of economy (since one cannot use a product for long, they are forced to buy new ones which generates economy).

I think the correct term for such strategies is "planned obsolescence".

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[ajlisows]

We are about halfway between XP/Server2003 and Win7/Server2008 R2. I get pretty bummed out every time I have to deal with the XP/Server 2003 boxes. I can say a lot of bad stuff about Microsoft, but their current operating systems are pretty darn good.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[SuperKendall]

First of all, all of the OEMs who build home computers don't want those extra features in the home version. The reason is that a lot of unqualified customers will start experimenting and causing problems.

Apple seems to manage just fine keeping advanced encryption options around in MacOS.

Frankly, Microsoft is learning to simplify. Windows 7 came in 6 different versions for the x86 platform. This is 2.

It's really three, but begrudgingly I'll admit at least the trend line is in the right direction. It's just so frustrating when they cannot take the final step.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[SuperKendall]

Do you really expect Joe six-pack to setup a virtual machine to run his browser in?

No, but Microsoft could configure it like that. Or a third party application meant to further secure browsing.

Since it does not ship that way it doesn't matter; it's not an option.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[SuperKendall]

They're in the business of making money, not providing important services.

Then they should simplify since Apple shows it does a better job of making money.

Back in the day, "only one version" was one of their arguments against using Linux.

The thing is, there doesn't have to be "just one version" I have nothing against the separate media pack for instance... it's just the separate shipping versions that scream out the inability to focus on anything.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[10101001 10101001]

Either you're trolling or you are vastly overestimating the general public computer abilities. Do you really expect Joe six-pack to setup a separate user account to run his programs? Even if he has a knowledgeable friend who sets this up for him, now try to explain to him why he can't apply a system-wide wallpaper he downloads or install a game without becoming Administrator (which, by the way, defeats to large extent the usefulness of user accounts in the first place)? As for encryption, I'm not really sure of how it protects credit card, tax, etc information if someone steals your laptop or for the general 99% of the time in standard computer use where the data is made unavailable, but I do know that it makes it much more difficult to recover data in case of hardware failure, sometimes impossible if the encryption depended on some certificate because it's really likely that the one or two copies of your certificate are the first things to go; and, as we all know whether or not you backup the certificate is the critical part, not actually backing up the relevant data in question such that data recovery from hardware failure is mostly a moot point.. You can argue that Microsoft should offer a simpler line of products, but I don't think those features are particularly useful in regards to security for the general public; I mean, what have separate user accounts, UAC, browser sandboxing technology (which could be virtual machine based, if one liked), or passwords really done for the general public?

Really, there's a lot of things that have been done and could continue to be done to make a computer not only more secure but also more consistent in what people expect. Clearly MS has demonstrated (ex. with XP Mode, IE's sandbox, and UAC) that it's possible to integrate security, although it's obviously hard to do it seamlessly and still maintain security. Such things are obviously not panaceas, but then security is a process and such things are tools meant to mitigate the risk. Obviously, the other end of it being a process is that Joe six-pack will have to become educated or he'll start to suffer the consequences, although I acknowledge that the point of expecting results--ie, that installing malware and having one's credit card number stolen would be seen as gross neglect--is probably at least a decade away. However, the sooner the tools become available and the sooner they're integrated not only into the OS itself as a standard but also as an expectation by and of the general public, the sooner Joe six-pack will be quite competent to use the tools to his needs. Personally, I see that vision of the future a lot more empowering than to just presume people are somewhat idiots and will stay that way.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, guess what....if you run Autodesk Inventor, and Vista....tough titty. It's either upgrade or downgrade your OS.....

Microsoft isn't the only company doing this kinda crap. I got stories about Symantec and Backup Exec that would make your skin crawl.

Bout tired of all the big boys and their 'complexity' games. Life is complex enough, why in the fuck do they feel the need to make it more complex......

Let's talk about something as simple as a Tiff Viewer. How come, in 2012, I still have to have at least 4 different Tiff Viewer softwares in order to open every imaginable Tiff file we receive? Or how about viewers in general? Autodesk has Design Review, True View, Inventor View....WHY?!?!?!?!? Why isn't there just one stinking viewer?

Or, how about something as simple as "Here, you have a fax option in Windows....however, we aren't going to make it useful enough to connect to Exchange or SQL so you can pull the contacts out....." (yes, some businesses still use fax, even if you offer email, ftp, etc).

The reality is the tech industry has been taken over by corporate overlords that don't care about solving problems. The real techs are gone.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[mcgrew]

Do you really expect Joe six-pack to setup a virtual machine to run his browser in?

Just because joe sixpack can't use a virtual machine is no excuse to not include it. But what's really wrong is not including networking. I bought my daughter a notebook just like mine. Both have Win 7 starter*, and it's afaik impossible to connect the two machines. But I have no problem whatever networking my notebook to the Linux box. I'll just install Linux, screw MS.

And who doesn't have more than one network-capable device these days? It isn't 1995 any more.

* Do they really think I'm going to shell out the price of the whole damned computer for a fully functional OS? They're insane. The only rea

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I can see Microsoft's view on this. Can you imagine if Microsoft shipped all versions of Windows8 with encryption turned by default? How long do you think it would take before the average "home user" was screaming because they forgot the password for the encrypted volume and were staring at an unrecoverable brick? Microsoft would be powerless to help them. Then the lawsuits start.

Now most of us know about TrueCrypt and it's capabilities and that it's free. But the average home user has no idea what it is or how to use it. At what point do people need to be responsible for their own computers and data?

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[bluemonq]

>Then they should simplify since Apple shows it does a better job of making money.

Apple does a better job of making money because they ignore the business market and sell consumer products at high margins; this isn't a criticism of them, but a statement of fact: Apple would never have done a $300 netbook.

You know, Apple has separate two operating systems that share a good deal of code as well: OS X and iOS. Would we even be having this discussion if Metro wasn't in 8/8 Pro and Windows RT was officially called something like Leaf OS?

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really expect Joe six-pack to setup a virtual machine to run his browser in?

The trick is to explain it to him before he starts making real inroads into his six-pack..

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[arbulus]

If they hadn't left XP and IE 6 out in the wild for 6 years before updating it, this would never have happened. Microsoft got complacent and users got complacent. And developers figured it was ok to require IE6 and ActiveX and all that other crap for their mission critical applications and now they're fucked. This is why you should always develop applications with open standards. HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, MYSQL, Python, Perl, CGI are so ubiquitous for a reason: they're awesome. And you can do everything you need to do with those instead of using Microsoft-only languages and protocols. Though IIRC, I think Microsoft intended XP to be this sort of ongoing thing. They weren't going to have new operating systems after that, it was supposed to be an "experience" that you subcribed to for updates and whatnot. And while they took their sweet time figuring that out, people got complacent and decided they never wanted change.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck putting the ARM version on your desktop.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, Win7 is a nice, sensible, and surprisingly fast OS that ought to completely replace XP as soon as possible. Win8 is technically slightly better, with some nice features - and an interface that will be slightly annoying to competent users, and a clusterfuck for those supporting incompetent users.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[Chryana]

I can agree with that, although I have to say that I don't know of any other OS which does this either. But then, Windows appears to be the only OS which really needs this...

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the day, "only one version" was one of their arguments against using Linux.

And before that, OS/2. I can't recall how many times I read that in Infoweek and every other computer magazine. Just goes to show that people do believe everything that they read.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[Chryana]

I am not presuming that people are idiots, please read my post again if you think so. I am just pointing out that
- not everybody is interested in computers all that much (and there is nothing wrong with that, there's lots of things I'm not interested in either), so giving the ability to create virtual machines or encryption is not very helpful for most people
- the features which the OP suggests should be part of the basic Windows installation are not, in their current form, all that useful to increase security. The virtual machine makes it so that the end-user now has to remember to update not only his computer, but also the virtual machines that it runs. Running the browser in a VM will do someone little good if the VM is compromised and he types his credit card number in the browser window which is inside of it. As for encryption, chances are higher that the end-user will suffer some data loss because of it than to avoid getting his computer compromised.

TLDR: Your post is mostly orthogonal to what I wrote. I said that VMs and encryption (in their current form, shipped with Windows) are not useful as security features for most people, and none of what you said answers that, sorry. And I didn't say people are idiots.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[waferbuster]

I don't overestimate the abilities of the general public. I live in Arizona, and my non-technical sister is in Oregon. When she needed a wireless router, I configured one and sent it to her with simple instructions. Just to be safe, I taped over the reset button. lYesterday, she and her husband bought a Kindle, and couldn't get it to connect, even with the SSID and password on a paper taped to the top of the router. So her husband removed the tape and pressed and held the reset button. Which cleared all the router settings. They are shipping the router back to me in Arizona to reconfigure it, but it's a stark reminder that the average consumer is a consumer of technology without any understanding of how it works. And they can cause themselves a lot of problems by randomly pushing buttons.

For a car analogy, the 'average user' is able to fill the gas tank and drive it, but not able to change their own oil or troubleshoot a failing O2 sensor.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[Trogre]

Except ntbackup. Ntbackup can not be used on Server 2008R2 except to restore existing backups. I know, they have this new silly backup system, however it's useless for archival off-site backups.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[Ol Olsoc]

They're in the business of making money, not providing important services.

So you just send their money to them and expect nothing for it? That's making kmoney and providing no service at all!

But yes, there are plenty enough people out there, apparently including Microsoft itself that think that way. Then again, I don't have to send them my money, and don't more people are starting to think the same way. It's not a very good business strategy.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[10101001 10101001]

"Somewhat idiots" is the term I used. And the point still stands. Because you can't think of how "Joe six-pack" will use the tools today and don't have the foresight to see how they'll be used in a decade, you don't see the point of including those tools in the standard version. Well, congratulations, you're arguing the same idea of people sticking to the 9x line instead of the NT because, you know, what use would "Joe six-pack" have with all the power? The answer is obvious today, that layers of security, even if not directly enforced by "Joe six-pack"'s actions, can still have the effect of increasing security. And who knows, maybe "Joe six-pack" will want to use those tools.

It's certainly not limited to absurd examples like using a VM to protect a browser against credit card theft, which is absurd a concept as DRM to prevent piracy--you know, giving the lock *and* the key to the pirate. But, obviously one can run suspect programs in a VM if one choses. One can even run non-suspect programs in a VM precisely to avoid the whole issue of updating, since a VM that blocks network access is reasonably safe so long as the host isn't compromised--at which point, keeping the VM up to date is probably pretty pointless.

Meanwhile, even if you lose data precisely because of the encryption you use, but it's the sort of personal data you have ready access to yourself but don't want others to have ready access to, then losing the data is by far the best fail safe way to go. And odds are good anyways that the data loss won't be localized to your personal data or the encryption key; it'll likely hit everything (the whole HD) or some other random file. I guess, of course, that can vary heavily on if you store all your personal data in one file...but odds are good, again, that the total data is so small, it's likely to be an all or none affair, with or without the encryption.

In any event, just because people don't known their using a security feature doesn't mean they aren't, in much the same way that as much as most people don't spend much time tinkering under the hood of their car, clearly indirectly a lot of people benefit from the fact that there is a hood and many components of a car are relatively accessible. Of course, adding VMs and encryption as standard isn't quite the same thing, but then I'm not exactly sure how better to make a car analogy. :)

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[rwven]

Probably buy a mac...for all the misguided good that would do them these days.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[thejynxed]

You should send them back a router with DD-WRT or similar, with the reset button disabled from within the firmware. Hell, you can even set those routers up so that you can remotely admin them from your home in Arizona and they never have to touch it.

Re:Continuing to split versions?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know that's sarcastic, but if someone ever incorporates really good wine support, easier installation of non-repositoried applications, and a better way to install 3rd party drivers in an out-of-the-box linux distro, I guarantee more people would be jumping ship.

x86

[SJHillman]

The early rumors were that Windows 8 would be x64 only (like Server 2008 R2). From an end-user-with-a-lot-of-32bit-apps perspective, I'm glad to see they're supporting x86. From a sys-admin-who-hates-having-two-architectures-per-print-driver perspective, I can't wait until x86 is dropped altogether.

Re:x86

[Spad]

And how many of those apps will really not run on a 64-bit OS? I've not come across anything in the last couple of years that won't work under 64-bit Windows 7 unless it has a moronic installer check that it doesn't need or is something ancient that needs the 16-bit subsystem to function.

Re:x86

[L4t3r4lu5]

x86_64 only means it won't run on 32bit processors, not that it won't run 32 bit software. There's no way they'd break that much software intentionally.

Re:x86

[SJHillman]

There's a fair bit of 32bit software that won't run on x64 OS, even with compatibility mode.

Re:x86

[Deep Esophagus]

My company has been making accounting/management software for a specialized market niche for over 20 years; now it's all cloud of course but originally it was developed on, and for, x86 PCs running MSDOS only. No GUI, no Windows, no networking [insert "get off my lawn" remarks here]...

The point of all this is, it's 16-bit software and some of our longtime customers are reluctant to embrace the 21st century. WE STILL ALLOW THEM TO USE this ancient program that has not changed at all in over 10 years, although we make it clear that we can't really support them if anything breaks. So far the only thing that has broken is 64-bit versions of Windows don't let you run 16-bit software. Just this week I had to tell a customer to go to a pawn shop or ebay or something and find an older computer he can install XP on rather than try to run the old program on his shiny new desktop system he got to make everything faster.

I did try suggesting he create a VM on the new computer rather than get a whole new computer, but he had no idea what I was talking about and I unfortunately didn't have the time it would take to teach him.

Re:x86

[jbwolfe]

Showing my ignorance... What about virtualization. I've not done any tinkering with this but can one not run XP or even DOS in a virtual machine hosted by a 64 bit OS?

Re:x86

[Roujo]

I believe the original rumors were about Windows 8 dropping the 32-bit runtime altogether, forcing all apps to either update to 64-bit or stop working. A quick search didn't reveal any sources, but it's what I remember hearing before the first official preview came out.

Re:x86

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like a job for DOSBox ...

Re:x86

[Anonymous Coward]

The only ones I have come across have 16 bit installers... Yet have a 32 bit program...

Re:x86

[siride]

In my experience, the only software that doesn't work on x64 is Microsoft dev stuff, mainly in the DB/BI area.

Re:x86

[Anonymous Coward]

It may be worth your time to setup a setup package that does dosbox?

Re:x86

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you give some examples?

I'm not saying that you're wrong, but I simply haven't yet encountered a 32bit program that wouldn't work in Windows 7 64bit. Maybe I'm just lucky..

(Some must be "run as administrator", but that's a different story.)

Re:x86

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had some luck running ancient dos FoxPro apps via DosBox, might be an option

Re:x86

[Anonymous Coward]

If he has Windows 7 pro or enterprise he has access to XP Mode. 32-bit XP will run your old Windows 3.1 apps perfectly fine.

Re:x86

[Bengie]

Vista/7, in x86-64 mode, locks down and enforces certain guidelines that MS has been telling devels for the past decade, like which files you can modify and which registry settings you can view/change/etc.

32bit apps that break under 64bit Vista/7 are almost entirely poorly programmed.

Re:x86

[shutdown -p now]

Registry and FS virtualization (intercepting things like attempts to write to HKLM or Program Files, and redirecting them to per-user stores) works just as well on Win x64 as it does on x86.

Re:x86

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and yes.

Sent to you from a virtual XP running on Debian

Re:x86

[X-Dopple]

Prayaya v3 won't run at all in 64-bit windows because of PatchGuard

Re:x86

[laurelraven]

Showing my ignorance... What about virtualization. I've not done any tinkering with this but can one not run XP or even DOS in a virtual machine hosted by a 64 bit OS?

This can absolutely be done; since any consumer grade 64 bit processor will run a 32 bit OS just fine, the virtualization software doesn't even need to emulate a 32 bit processor, so it is very easy to do. VirtualBox does everything you should want or need at an end-user lever for small scale virtualization like that...I use it all the time and highly recommend it. Plus, it's free.

Windows 8: The Playskool OS

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been working with Win8 at Intel where I test graphics card drivers. Of all the Windows versions I've ever used (all the way back to v3.1) Windows 8 is the most retarded version I've ever seen! Not only does it hide even more from the user, treating you like you're some mentally-challenged child that has to be kept from hurting yourself, but flat-out stupid things like Safe Mode access being disabled by default! "System Restore" or "System Repair" should NOT be the only option you have when something goes wrong! Yes, you can enable it, but you have to jump through some hoops to do it! Speaking of hoops, you have to jump through a few of those just to get to what in previous versions of Windows were basic system resources, like the Control Panel, My Computer, etc.. Seriously, it's like it's designed for idiot children. At least with Windows 7, I can turn off all the bullshit and make it a functional operating system, but Windows 8, by design, won't let you do enough of that to satisfy me. Is this what computing is coming down to? I may switch everything over to Linux yet.

Re:Windows 8: The Playskool OS

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you're supposed to do everything in PowerHell now.

Re:Windows 8: The Playskool OS

[rock_climbing_guy]

Damn, you're giving me flashbacks to Ubuntu Unity! It couldn't possibly be *that* bad!

Re:Windows 8: The Playskool OS

[Jedi Alec]

So, in a nutshell, it's a worthy successor of ME and Vista?

Windows versions are like Star Trek movies, really. *ducks*

Re:Windows 8: The Playskool OS

[ifrag]

but flat-out stupid things like Safe Mode access being disabled by default! "System Restore" or "System Repair" should NOT be the only option you have when something goes wrong!

I am anxiously awaiting stories about Windows 8 tablets crashing and what users do with the device at that point. I'll be ROFLMAO If it's just permanently bricked (no install media for WinRT according to the blog).

Re:Windows 8: The Playskool OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu Unity, Gnome 3, Windows 8 and Mac OS X Lion (yes, Lion) were all inspired by the same shit : dumb the desktop down to the level of tablet OSes. Most of the new features in Lion just brought it down to iOS level, and the new Spaces sucks huge cocks, and the new airport tool doesn't support ipv6 anymore because who the fuck would need ipv6 right ?

I am SICK of this trend in computing. There isn't a single major player who is not dumbing everything down. The same thing happened to all web browsers who are now parroting Chrome's UI. Firefox, like chrome, now hides the "http" part in the address bar.

The only safe haven is to make your own desktop, through custom configurations of linux wm like WMII

Re:Windows 8: The Playskool OS

[Anonymous Coward]

"Windows 8 is the most retarded version I've ever seen! Not only does it hide even more from the user, treating you like you're some mentally-challenged child that has to be kept from hurting yourself..."

This is exactly what I think about Vista! Recently bought a cheap, used PC and have been using Vista Business for about 2 months now. Every week, I discover something else that is broken or needs "special attention", that worked just fine under XP. I'm tempted to return to XP, or install Debian over VB.

Thanks for the tip - I'll make sure to avoid Windows 8, too.

Re:Windows 8: The Playskool OS

[Nolas]

... Speaking of hoops, you have to jump through a few of those just to get to what in previous versions of Windows were basic system resources, like the Control Panel, My Computer, etc.. Seriously, it's like it's designed for idiot children...

you can access control panel in windows 8 faster than you ever could in any version of windows. Move mouse curson to bottom left corner, and instead of left clicking, RIGHT CLICK. You will be treated to a nice context menu, of witch one of the many option is "control panel". Also the my computer icon has been replaced with the new windows explorer icon. If you click the windows explore icon you get the EXACT same window as if you had opened "my computer". You just have to learn to not be a giant man baby about windows changing things around to notice.

Re:Windows 8: The Playskool OS

[Isaac Remuant]

I am SICK of this trend in computing. There isn't a single major player who is not dumbing everything down. The same thing happened to all web browsers who are now parroting Chrome's UI. Firefox, like chrome, now hides the "http" part in the address bar.

How is hiding the http a bad thing? It's really unnecessary. If you have "https", it will be displayed, else, it won't.

Would you like "www" back as well?

And if you really want it to appear, you can always enable it yourself:

The protocol (http://) has been removed from the URL in the location bar for http:/// pages only. https:/// pages will still have the protocol. This may be confusing to some users. There's also a known bug where if you copy the URL after selecting it from the awesome bar dropdown (but before loading the page) it won't include the http:/// part.

Users can revert to the old behavior by setting browser.urlbar.trimURLs to false in about:config

        type about:config in the Location/URL/Address bar and press the Enter key
        if you see a warning, accept it (promise to be careful)
        Filter = browser.urlbar.trimURLs
        double-click on the pref in the lower panel to toggle it to "false" OR right-click on the pref in the lower panel and choose "Toggle" to toggle it to "false"
        close the about:config tab

This is not a necessary feature and it takes space. So hiding http by default is great for the majority of users.

Re:Windows 8: The Playskool OS

[dumbassnevadan]

Windows 8 GNOME?

Re:Windows 8: The Playskool OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, it's like it's designed for idiot children.

Which is exactly what most computer users are.

Re:Windows 8: The Playskool OS

[Patch86]

It isn't such a problem with GNOME 3 or Unity, seeing as it's trivial to switch to a different Linux desktop. Personally, I'm on XFCE these days (the Xubuntu version looks and feels just like GNOME 2, and is pretty easy to configure).

Although it's a pain for Mac OSX, at least it's in character. Apple have always been about user-friendliness at all costs (or at least have been for a very long time). iOS being their flagship OS these days (in that it's on their bestselling iPads), it was inevitable that OSX was going to head in that direction.

Windows is the killer one really. There's no easy way of changing the desktop environment (as with Linux), and we're all compelled to use it for all sorts of work/play related shenanigans so there's no avoiding it. I could easily not use Linux (I only use it because I like to), but there would be no way for me not to use Windows.

Re:Windows 8: The Playskool OS

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? Control Panel and "My computer" are still there you just get to them from the settings charm when on the desktop. Or as most win7 folks do, you hit the windows key and type 'control panel'.

Re:Windows 8: The Playskool OS

[couchslug]

"Seriously, it's like it's designed for idiot children."

I'm an idiot child, you insensitive clod!

Re:Windows 8: The Playskool OS

[iCEBaLM]

Ever since my colleagues and I booted it up in a VM we've nicknamed it "Fisher-Price OS".

Re:Windows 8: The Playskool OS

[rwven]

My morals and ethics keep me from adopting Apple (after abandoning them a year ago), and I often find myself threatening the same thing.

Every once in a while I actually make the switch. Two weeks later I switch back when I realize that there's a reason the world hasn't switched to linux en masse. There's always a small set of 3-4 applications I regularly use that linux has no decent alternative for....

Re:Windows 8: The Playskool OS

[Anonymous Coward]

AND this is exactly what's wrong with Windows 8: They added a LOT of keyboard / menu shortcuts, but they DON'T TELL YOU where, and since there's no easy to find GUI for them, it makes most people miss those options.

Re:Windows 8: The Playskool OS

[Anonymous Coward]

"Move mouse curson to bottom left corner, and instead of left clicking, RIGHT CLICK."

How intuitive.

Re:Windows 8: The Playskool OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Which of the control panels opens when you use the magic menu that you indicate? Is it the crippled Metro one or the Desktop version (i.e. the one from Win7 that has it all)?

Re:Windows 8: The Playskool OS

[Anonymous Coward]

There really should be a market area for the varying functionality of right click to make sense. Perhaps a system dock of some kind would serve the purpose. I hated when they removed the option for background start bar.

Re:Windows 8: The Playskool OS

[Anonymous Coward]

The control panel within a context menu is convenient, but changing the appearance or placement of a necessary feature such as clicking "my computer" to get to drives can be confusing to business users.

They will likely not have the time to relearn certain aspects of an operating system, therefore a productive employee could become slow and inefficient because of the design change. They may have to be retrained to use that new OS, at which point it costs their employer, decreasing their possible pay in the future, and possibly harming the business as a whole.

Design changes can be useful if introduced smoothly into the minds of the users. Take the iDevices, their touch interface and apps are now common features because Apple introduced each feature slowly and smoothly, without dumping a massive amount of new ideas onto people.

Microsoft will change many things all at once, while they may or may not be good changes, they can overwhelm some users.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Baloroth]

I was going to accuse you of giving a knee-jerk reaction against anyone saying something good about Windows 8, but then I checked OP's post history.

This is literally his only post, so yea, shill.

Windows RT?

[anti-pop-frustration]

Windows RT : as in... Windows Russia Today?

annoying and relearning

[nihaopaul]

It took me 15 minutes to shut the computer down! You just push the power button now.

Re:annoying and relearning

[forkfail]

Explains why they've poured hundred of millions of dollars into file reliability and recovery....

oohh, ohhh, I know this one Mr Kotter!

[Thud457]

ipecac
bile
and
rage

Hi Oakgrove

[earls]

I enjoyed this post on Engadget yesterday.

Re:Hi Oakgrove

[Anonymous Coward]

And it was as true yesterday as it is today. I pity MS' customers when this steaming pile is foisted on them. Everytime I use it, it literally makes me queasy how terrible it is.

Re:Hi Oakgrove

[SuricouRaven]

Still better than Vista.

I am going to hold off

[NEDHead]

Until they turn it up to 11!

Re:I am going to hold off

[Anonymous Coward]

God damn you're gay.

Did MS learn something from Windows 7 "flavours"?

[dryriver]

AFAIK, Windows 7 came in a whopping 6 different "flavours", as well as 32-bit and 64-bit, and it confused the hell out of consumers. (Example: "Should I buy that Dell laptop with Home Edition? Or pay 100 Dollars more for that Samsung notebook with Home Premium? But then there is that bigger Toshiba laptop with Windows Professional. 180 bucks more. But wait, the Dell has X good graphics card, while the Samsung has Y not-so-good graphics card, and the Toshiba has 4 GB memory and 750Gig harddisk, but has a mediocre GFX card.. but the Samsung/Dell doesn't have a BluRay player and only comes in black..." BRAIN EXPLODES. --------- What is the fucking point of doing this to consumers, who often don't understand the differences between the "flavour" when choosing a PC anyway? Its all ONE Operating System to begin with. Why not simply call it "Windows 8", include all the features, and be done with it? Or make a plain "Windows 8" for home users and "Windows 8 Pro" for business/power users. But not 4 - 8 different "flavours". It just screws with people's minds, particularly when shopping for the next PC or laptop.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Black Parrot]

You're supposed to wait a bit so as to not be so obvious.

Yeah, and so your coveted First Post won't go to waste on shilling.

Re:No domain connectivity for Home edition...again

[couchslug]

Product differentiation = tiered profit structure. Makes perfect sense, and those who don't like that can get their Windows from the usual sources.

Windows BTW IS "free" if your time and effort to pirate it, install it then fend off viri and malware is worthless.

Screw that. I'd rather run Linux than Windows, so I do. If an employer chooses to inflict Windows on me, they can pay for it.

Hey, anyone remember...

[Signum Ignitum]

Windows RG? http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/winrg

Re:Hey, anyone remember...

[dryriver]

That's pretty funny... And accurate =)

Ala Carte

[CimmerianX]

So, 3 'flavors' of windows..... but with all the 'extra' little add-ons that need to be purchased/download/applied.

Sounds like Windows ala carte.

This type of nickel and dime bullcrap really gets under my skin and makes it so much harder for anyone in corp to track licensing issues and the like. And don't give me any of that bullcrap how running some in house licensing server makes things better because I'll be forced to tell you what a fuckin you are whn you scroll through a list of 28 different versions of the same app in the licensing report.

Re:Ala Carte

[Anonymous Coward]

This type of nickel and dime bullcrap really gets under my skin and makes it so much harder for anyone in corp to track licensing issues and the like. And don't give me any of that bullcrap how running some in house licensing server makes things better because I'll be forced to tell you what a fuckin you are whn you scroll through a list of 28 different versions of the same app in the licensing report.

So why use windows then? Go for linux. Not only is it free, but also free of licence tracking and similiar internal bureaucracy. No budget needed for installing on more machines. No viruses, less crashing, better uptime, ...

And yes, I know that some apps only runs on windows. That is not in any way an excuse for running the whole company on windows.

Re:Ala Carte

[DKlineburg]

Dare I say I might buy a Mac? I do computer graphics. The windows version of Adobe never has been and never will be as good as the original. Confusing me doesn't make me happy. I'm getting old and don't want to bother tinkering any more with PC's.

Re:Ala Carte

[xystren]

I hear your frustrations, I used to have to keep track of that crap, and it was just infuriating and frustrating. Software inventories were a complete mess, since within the file properties even Microsoft wouldn't be consistent (some times Microsoft, Microsoft (c), Microsoft Corp. (c), or Microsoft Corporation, blah, blah, blah. This was before the licensing services and ironically at the time with SMS software metering (licensing tracking that would only permit x number of software to run) didn't comply with their own licensing terms. This is going back a long while now.

How I long for the days where you just need to copy file to a directory to install a program - and delete the directory to remove it. No shared crap, no entries to registries, nothing that would screw something else up that you couldn't easily get rid of. Nothing worse that having an un-removable update that breaks your software that didn't show up in the testing lab.

Another vote for the get rid of windows ala carte side

Re:Ala Carte

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ahead and buy an Apple, if Adobe on Microsoft isn't good enough for you.

pro + $$$ addon for media center

[sdnoob]

what a crock of shit.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Spad]

While I will admit that the technical underpinnings of Windows 8 and Server 8 are a pretty reasonable improvement over 7/2008 R2, the Metro UI is a big step backwards in terms of desktop usability for all but the most basic users and the way they've included some bits of it - seemingly at random - in the server platform is mystifying to me.

If the whole Metro tiles thing was just a front-end to make it easier for average users to find, organise and launch their applications then I'd be fine with it, but it's not, it's a whole new suite of "apps" in addition to all the existing desktop versions, only without silly things like multitasking included.

Put it this way, as someone who has been using Windows in one form or another for close to 20 years, I really shouldn't have to spend 5 minutes trying to work out where the hell they've moved "Shut Down" to because it's behind a totally un-signposted hotspot at the bottom right of the taskbar and then a non-obvious icon labelled "Settings" and finally the "Power" option under that (Yes, Alt-F4 still works, but that's hardly the point, or useful over a windowed RDP session).

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

BINGO!

I had Metro, task manager, technology, Windows ARM, and Nokia across.

Re:Did MS learn something from Windows 7 "flavours

[Scutter]

The customers I support will continue to buy whatever the cheapest version is and then get pissed at me when I can't join it to their domain.

Can't tell if 32-bit is a separate SKU?

[michaelmalak]

Windows 7 came in a whopping 6 different "flavours", as well as 32-bit and 64-bit

But I couldn't tell from the Windows 8 blog whether 32-bit and 64-bit would be packaged separately or whether the install would automatically detect.

Oh, lookie!

[Alex Belits]

Microsoft is trying to "appropriate" another established term to create an air of legitimacy of their products and imply capabilities that they do not have.

RTOS is a common name for a "Real-Time Operating System", systems that are commonly used on ARM, and, as their name implies, have real-time capabilities that Windows, of any flavor, never had and likely never will. Please note that "RT" was used for this purpose since at least 1973 (RT-11 operating system by DEC).

Let's look back to Microsoft previous efforts on this path. Many years ago they pulled out of nowhere the "Digital Nervous System" advertising slogan, apparently for no purpose other than to create confusion with DNS, Domain Name System. More recently, again, out of nowhere they called one of the descendants of their unholy marriage of OLE and DDE, ".NET", what would be a really stupid name if it wasn't a standard top-leven domain, and sounded somehow related to ".com", a typical term for an Internet-based business. On top of this, Microsoft was extremely persistent in inventing trademarked terms that sound generic -- "Windows", "Word" are actual trademarks, and "MS SQL Server" is constantly mentioned as "SQL Server", even though the former is a Microsoft trademark and the latter is a generic name for a database server using SQL language that covers dozens of Microsoft competitors.

How about a lawsuit from all RTOS developers (including at least two flavors of Linux-based ones)?

Re:Oh, lookie!

[21mhz]

RT can also mean a "runtime", and WinRT is already an established term for the modern set of APIs in Windows 8. But yeah, your theories on their hidden agenda are so much more interesting.

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody fucking thinks it means that except you. RT as in WinRT, in which it stands for "runtime". WinRT being the APIs used to develop Metro applications. And if you're a good example of the sort of person who believes it means "real time", then I don't think there's a risk that you'll accidentally buy Windows 8 for its deceptive "real time" claims.

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Alex Belits]

Misleading terminology is not for people who know what it means, it's for people who heard the term, and would believe that it applied to a Microsoft product.

Re:Oh, lookie!

[KiloByte]

What about "Office Open XML"? If that's not intentionally causing confusion with a competing product, I don't know what is.

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Alex Belits]

I knew, I have missed something!

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahaha oh wow. What a fucking nut case.

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Anonymous Coward]

Classic that MS is so hung up on the past they can't even use same name for the OS when they leave the Intel world. Can you imagine if Linux had a name per processor family?

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Anonymous Coward]

RTOS is a common name for a "Real-Time Operating System", systems that are commonly used on ARM, and, as their name implies, have real-time capabilities that Windows, of any flavor, never had and likely never will.

This is not strictly true -- there are real-time extensions available for Windows (at least for Windows 95), I've seen them used for some CNC controllers. Of course, all the hard real-time stuff for motion control is done on dedicated processors (68xxx, IIRC), but they do have soft realtime capabilities bolted on for monitoring and communicating with that backend.

Still, I agree -- it seems a pointless namespace collision, and while I'm hesitant to blame people for malice in such cases (really, throw any 2- or 3-letter acronym out there, and it hits something), it seems like they do it a lot. OTOH, it's not like anyone shopping for an RTOS is gonna fall for it, and others mostly aren't even aware of the term, so I can't see what their soulless marketeers really hope to gain...

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Viol8]

"WinRT being the APIs used to develop Metro applications"

Oh right, so the x86 version doesn't have these APIs then?

Thanks for playing...

Re:Oh, lookie!

[SuricouRaven]

.NET was originally a lot more than that - it started off as a big initiative to move towards more online services, centered around the .NET passport. The name almost made a little bit of sense then, though not very much. Then everything except the programming API and associated tools proved to be a massive flop.

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Alex Belits]

No. All Mictosoft's "great technologies" are descendants of two: OLE and DDE. .NET was actually supposed to have a single technology using their descendants (SOAP, COM/COM+/DCOM/ActiveX further development), but they kept stuffing it with languages, common runtime, until it became "everything we think, software development ought to be". But its origin is in object management model, not network communications.

Then, of course, they have discovered that "managed code" is just as buggy as the native one, and that their client-server model sucks without OS supporting it with interprocess communications, so now they are doing full reverse back to C++ and trying to bring Stroustrup into their fold, however they won't accept Qt because they can't have full control over it. But that's just Microsoft being Microsoft.

Re:Oh, lookie!

[spauldo]

When I saw it, "realtime" was the first thing I thought of.

About two seconds later I realized it couldn't possibly mean realtime, since Microsoft doesn't make realtime systems. It's not their specialty.

So yeah, more than just that guy thinks "realtime" when they see "RT". It's probably worse for people who actually used RTOS on Acorn systems.

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually one of the things they should have done is revert back to calling Explorer, File Manager... Way back in the failed attempt to convince everyone that the browser and OS were inseparable, it might have made "naming sense".. barely.. but now it is really more a reminder of a shady past, that does nothing more than show that they are stubborn.. You yell across the room "open up explorer" to a room of 50 people, and how many are not going to open up Internet Explorer ?

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Anonymous Coward]

RTOS is a common name for a "Real-Time Operating System", systems that are commonly used on ARM, and, as their name implies, have real-time capabilities that Windows, of any flavor, never had and likely never will.

The Windows/NT line has a modular design and has always allowed another kernel/scheduler to be swapped in just like Linux. Granted, this is for the embedded area, not mainstream consumer or enterprise OSes. However, there are commercial RTOS kernels available for Windows, example: http://www.tenasys.com/products/intime.php

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now go kill all your friends, then yourself. Chances are, they are "viral marketeers" for Microsoft, too.

Just wow...

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Alex Belits]

The Windows/NT line has a modular design

Had. A long time ago.

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow.. are you really as insane as your retarded revisionist un-informed comments make you out to be?

Its hard for anyone to read that and not think that (1) bill gates killed your dog (2) ballmer pissed on his grave (3) you loathe microsoft for no reason (4) you are a moron.

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Isaac Remuant]

As long as they don't suddenly re-brand it "Office Libre XML" it's all good.

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh look, another AntiMS moron, get a life, dude

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh look, a fat, bearded open-source Kool-Aid drinker with a small UID who is frothingly anti-Microsoft. What an absolute shocker. See, the nice thing is that after you die of heart failure, we won't have to read your shitty posts anymore, and the world will have one less LinTard. Hooray!

Re:Oh, lookie!

[ArsonSmith]

Just wait in two more versions they'll have Windows OSX (OS Ten)

Re:Oh, lookie!

[nickscalise]

Also remember that XP was coming out around the same time that Mac OS X debuted, but XP did not have that name until after Apple announced Mac OS X.
I remember reading stories about it and when MS was asked what XP meant, they replied "Experience".

Re:Oh, lookie!

[forkfail]

It's actually just rot-15 of "CE"...

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your are making a fool of yourself. In all their marketing, RT = RunTime. The average user has no idea what a "realtime" OS is and doesn't care.

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are these mythical people who have heard the term "real time," do NOT know what it means, and yet would associate the two letters "RT" with it? And among that presumably small set of people, who would make purchasing decisions based on that misunderstanding? You're FUD'ing.

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as they don't suddenly re-brand it "Office Libre XML" it's all good.

There was no LibreOffice at the time of Office Open XML creation. `Office Open XML` title is meant to confuse you about the false openness of the standard, not the relation to `OpenOffice`.

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Anonymous Coward]

As a long time real-time embedded developer, I support this.

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Trogre]

+5, funny.

You made the exact joke that I was about to make. Well done, sir.

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Alex Belits]

People who HEARD THE ACRONYM but don't know what it means. That is, the majority of people who heard it.

Do you know what PCMCIA is supposed to mean? SCSI? SIP? JPEG? OLED? CMOS? NUMA? Neither does the majority of people who recognize those "words".

Re:Oh, lookie!

[petman]

Wow, strange that:
1. You have a low UID, meaning you're old.
2. Old as you are, you still haven't managed to learn to write proper English. Haven't you learned anything from the grammar Nazis providing advice on Slashdot over the years?

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Alex Belits]

English is not my native language.
Now, what is your excuse for being an idiot?

Re:Oh, lookie!

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, lets bandy together and have: windows, word, and while we are at it, apple all pulled for being regular common words.

Seriously, are all the colours taken? Can I name my business "And"? Any use of the word in a sentence will need a settlement to piece sentences together. Infact, I copyright and trademark the use of all the words not taken in this useless x128 x256 x512 x1024 x2^n bit rant. Abcd efgh ijkl mnop yellow and smelly liquid come soaked door mat roof fridge tile...

Overboard is a term used following a gender call and preceding the toss of a life preserver.

I see lots of tossing going on.

Crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here we go again. I want to run a VM so I have to pay more. But now I also want to have a media center so I take on more $$$. Then, because if I don't like the Ghetto interface, err Metro I'll have to buy a third party app for that.

I'll stick with running Windows XP under a VM under Linux for many years to come. And when support for XP is over I'll just create snapshots before I surf the web and restore afterwards and take my chances with viruses and such. Heck, it's only my employer and your credit cards that are at risk! LOL

Re:Crap.

[Deep Esophagus]

Forget buying a third party app for a better interface; there's plenty of FOSS out there. I installed bblean on my laptop so the Windows7 desktop looks and feels exactly like my Linux desktop which runs fluxbox (a latter-day blackbox). So check out bb4win (bblean), litestep, emerge or just search on those three terms combined to find articles comparing the various desktop alternatives.

Re:Crap.

[Bengie]

Linux already does everything except bleeding edge gaming. Why do you have an XP VM to run under Linux?

Three editions?

[UnknowingFool]

I'm reading elsewhere that there will be four editions with an Enterprise desktop not mentioned in the summary. Also I didn't read anything about tablet for Intel. Is that dead or will the other editions install on tablet.

Four versions

[SirDice]

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

Re:Four versions

[Anonymous Coward]

Pro and Enterprise are the same OS just different licensing......

Re:Four versions

[Missing.Matter]

Actually more like 3 versions where Enterprise is just a different license on Pro. And of those 3 the consumer can only buy 2. Wasn't the complaint on previous version consumer confusion? Seems pretty straightforward to me.

Re:Four versions

[Anonymous Coward]

There are FOUR versions!

Re:Four versions

[SirDice]

Read the blog post I linked, the notes at the bottom (emphasis mine):

NOTE: As with previous versions of Windows, we will also have an edition of Windows 8 specifically for those enterprise customers with Software Assurance agreements. Windows 8 Enterprise includes all the features of Windows 8 Pro plus features for IT organization that enable PC management and deployment, advanced security, virtualization, new mobility scenarios, and much more.

Re:Did MS learn something from Windows 7 "flavours

[The Dancing Panda]

Not sure what your bitching about. Because

Or make a plain "Windows 8" for home users and "Windows 8 Pro" for business/power users.

That's what they did. The third version is for ARM processors, which obviously needs to be different.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Dot.Com.CEO]

Well on the other hand we clearly have Windows playing follow-up to Gnome in terms of usability! Score one for opensource!

Feature : Switch languages on the fly ???

[Anonymous Coward]

What language does the fly use by default? Why do windows users need a fly?

Re:Feature : Switch languages on the fly ???

[lwriemen]

Well ... Windows attracts flies. ;-)

Re:Can't wait!!!

[DrXym]

The Metro UI is a heap of shit on the desktop. It wastes too much space, requires far too much mouse travel, is wholly unsuited to the 100+ program icons that most users would have in a typical start menu. It isn't even discoverable either, being hidden in the corner with no clue its there. It can be fixed but as it stands in the consumer preview it is horrible. It needs a launcher icon (e.g. reinstate the windows logo), multiple selection, sort functionality, zoom in / zoom out, program grouping and more besides. With all that it might stand a chance as a replacement for the Start menu.

They could have 14 versions

[Anonymous Coward]

I always just torrent the Ultimate/Pro version anyway.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[adonoman]

I've tried it out on the desktop, and the metro on desktop thing leaves much to be desired, but they at least left the desktop like it was in windows 7. If you never use the metro apps, the goofy start screen just acts like a giant start menu, even with incremental search. Once you've launched a desktop app, it works like always with the taskbar on the bottom (that they've finally stretched over all the monitors). My biggest complaint is that it's basically like working with two computers - one running metro, and one running windows, and switching back and forth is far from seamless.

How many versions do you see?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are FOUR versions.

"Windows Media Center will not be included in the Pro edition and will be available separately as part of a 'media pack' add-on."

In other words, the "Ultimate" version, but not called "Ultimate".

Re:Windows RT?

[Black Parrot]

Windows RT : as in... Windows Russia Today?

No, it's the "arty" flavor of Windows 8, meant to compete with the Mac.

Sounds familiar

[Quiet_Desperation]

After installation, a glowing hologram of Clippy appears and gives the user three choices.

Red flavor - Destruction. Win8 destroys itself to revert back to the previously installed OS. Network port is permanently disabled.
Blue flavor - Control. Keeps Win8 installed, but presents only a command line interface. Network port is permanently disabled.
Green flavor - Synthesis. Keeps Metro UI as a fancy DOS shell. Network port is permanently disabled.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like MS is partnering with EA.

Tablet vs Computer

[Anonymous Coward]

So Microsoft has declared that an ARM tablet is different from a x86 (if any) based tablet and forces the x86 users to purchase office and device encryption?

Re:Tablet vs Computer

[SuricouRaven]

And requires ARM tablets sold with windows be firmware-locked to boot only windows eight, nothing else. While from a technical perspective x86(/64) and ARM are just two ways of achieving the same thing, from a business perspective ARM is a fresh start... a chance to do all the things that would be seen as outragious on x86,

Still running XP where I work...

[tekrat]

I work for a major fortune 500. We're locked into XP at the moment, and from the looks of things, I see no reason that this is going to change anytime within the next 5 or 6 years. We have significant investment under XP, and all of our current in-house applications are written and tuned for XP.

And with more than half of our development now happening "offshore", it's a good bet we'll be staying with XP -- because our developers use XP. With a company this size, a rollout of Win-8 would cost many billions of dollars, plus a few billion in training costs alone!

Has any *major* corporation invested in Win-7 or even have a plan to roll out Win-8? I think MS is trying to compete in an area they don't belong, and is cutting off their nose to spite their face, so to speak, by snubbing their big corporate clients in favor of a tablet computing fad.

Re:Still running XP where I work...

[MickyTheIdiot]

It's for reasons like this that "will corporations use it?" isn't the gold standard when it comes to technology.

If you are running your systems like they will *never* change then you haven't learned something along the way. I'm a little sympathetic, but not that much. Computer technology changes because it's supposed to.

Re:Still running XP where I work...

[sandytaru]

We've warned our clients that we're no longing putting in any XP systems, and by 2014 when MS cuts off XP, we plan to have replaced every XP system in the field. That said, we'll probably be standardized on Win7 for a decade.

Re:Still running XP where I work...

[who_stole_my_kidneys]

It sounds as if your company has a poorly run IT department. To lock your self into an OS that has been posted numerous times the support would end for it is down right asinine. Even though your not the only company that has done this, its just poor planning, and poor budgeting on IT's part. You could pay for the extra support, but why? have them invest in competent employees and see the profits rise. As far as windows 8 goes, we have no plans to upgrade to it, however windows 9 is already being discussed as a replacement.

Re:Still running XP where I work...

[daid303]

We (1500 people) have almost all been switched to Win7 now. We have a few WinXP machines around for testing and a few tools that don't run on Win7.

We did skip Vista (and our software never supported Vista), and will most likely will skip Win8.

Re:Still running XP where I work...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm. Well, Microsoft claims that they're going to drop XP like a hot potato two years from now (April 2014), so assuming that comes to pass, you'd better have some VERY VERY GOOD network access control in place or you're going to get majorally pwned. You probably still will anyway.

I'd rethink that strategy. Even if MS does extend support for XP again, which I very much doubt, you can bet they're already making sure new computers won't run it nicely. Look at all their work with EFI and requiring signed binaries.

But if you really do work for a Fortune 500, this will take care of itself - as running unsupported software is a big huge no-no in the SOX world.

Re:Still running XP where I work...

[lwriemen]

It sounds as if your company has a poorly run IT department.

Poorly run IT departments is why Windows exists in business environments.

Re:Still running XP where I work...

[Viol8]

"Computer technology changes because it's supposed to."

Technology does, however despite the best efforts of marketdroids to convince people otherwise, software isn't technology. Software changes simply to keep programmers in jobs. There's nothing from a coders point of view (proper win32/MFC coders, not .NET monkeys) that Win8 can do that XP can't.

Re:Still running XP where I work...

[Cro Magnon]

My workplace is still XP. I've heard that we'll eventually go to Win7. I figure, after W7, we'll probably upgrade to Win12, probably when everyone else is using Win14.

Re:Still running XP where I work...

[CompMD]

I'm at a large aerospace and consumer electronics company with ~10,000 employees. We have moved just about everyone over to Windows 7.

Re:Still running XP where I work...

[Bengie]

And with more than half of our development now happening "offshore"

a rollout of Win-8 would cost many billions of dollars

Such is the price you pay when you outsource. Reduce up-front costs for much higher long term tech debt.

all of our current in-house applications are written and tuned for XP

Sounds like the devels were taking advantage of XP quirks. Your .Net apps should transparently run between XP/Vista/7/8, if you have competent programmers.

Not saying your business case isn't valid, just saying your company won't upgrade to Win7/8/etc because of lousy management and programming.

Re:Still running XP where I work...

[Bengie]

Been using Win7 for about 2 years. Been programming in .Net4 for about 1.5 years, upgrading to Win2k8R2 for our servers in the next 6months-1year, and looking into SQL2012 for after the R2 upgrade.

Licensing costs aren't an issue as administration dwarfs any other cost outside of the datacenter hardware. Keeping up-to-date keeps us nimble and lets us use newer tech, which reduces datacenter costs more than the cost of upgrading the licensing.

Re:Still running XP where I work...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try working in state government. My department is getting new PCs late this year or early next year (the last round was 2006). And guess what, they're going to have XP on them. Not that I mind a heck of alot, but I'm supposed to somehow support clowns in another department who've had Windows 7 for a year and went to IE9 a few weeks ago and can't stop poking holes in the dyke.

Re:Still running XP where I work...

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep telling yourself that, bub.

Re:Still running XP where I work...

[painandgreed]

It sounds as if your company has a poorly run IT department.

How much would you like to bet that the people who make the decisions and control the budgets are not in the IT department?

Re:Still running XP where I work...

[Anonymous Coward]

soo.. according to you, ms should stop developing os and go home because your company wont upgrade? I feel sorry for you having to work with decade old tools every day.

Re:Still running XP where I work...

[Billly Gates]

I have made some money this past year contracting company upgrades from XP to Win 7. Yes companies are upgrading and seeing money by investing to stay ahead. Not saving the most to stay behind and sit on cas like yours.

Its not expensive if you are large relatively speaking in terms of revenue. It cost only a few million for 1000 systems. Unseen costs like downtime and 10 minute startup times for 10 year old systems went away. Users were thrilled though some didnt like IE 9 and aero so much.

The plc machines with IE 6 and 98 were dmzed into its own subnet. Easy fix.

Billions my ass. Your company lacks leadership and is run by bean counters who are pennywise but dollar dumb. Those numbers sound made up by someone who doest see constant malware slow performance and other issues of a crumbling infrastructure. By 2014 vs, office, win server 2012, sql server and html 5 websites will not run in your enterprise.

No more Chewy Ranch??!

[Immerial]

They got rid of my favorite flavor! http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/02/02

On a serious note- I hope they really manage to keep it to just these 3 versions. It should help with their with support and dev costs too (not to mention us folks in the field). Surprised they didn't didn't do this with 7.

Re:No more Chewy Ranch??!

[Isaac Remuant]

Yeah, I fear not knowing how to differentiate these:

Windows Enterprise
Windows Ultimate
Windows Ultimate with Sugar on Top.
Windows Extreme & Beyond

Talk to the Brundle

[tekrat]

Brundlefly/telepod synthesis started....

Re:Can't wait!!!

[leonardluen]

and yet the normal Windows user will still have never heard of Gnome, nor will they care when you tell them about it.

1999 Called.

[Anonymous Coward]

Must be nice being a monopoly that scores of companies have no choice but to ship whatever you put out.

Monopoly? It's 2012 not 1999, dude.

Looking at that gadgets around my house, Apple has more share of my computing than any single company. Google/Android/Linux is a close second. MS is in 3rd. And that includes desktops and laptops. And I bet most folks are in the same boat. The whole MS is a Monopoly isn't true anymore - even in the corporate world..

Also, I do wish MS would get rid of the 'Home' and 'Pro' on their products and go back to the 'Desktop' and 'Server' names. I hate it when I go a Microcenter or somewhere and they insist on selling some of their machines with only the 'Pro' version on it - like the "Pro" version is somehow better than the "home" version. There's nothing I hate more than waiting for a computer to boot for several minutes up because the system has got to start shit I don't need not want. And when you turn them off in services, it screws up shit you do need.

I think it's because we consumers have been brainwashed into thinking "Pro" versions are somehow better than "consumer" versions; which is true in regards to outdoor power equipment - mostly.

So, people get the "Pro" version and wonder why their computer takes so damn long to boot. So, when they surf the web, they'll just go to the "instant" on Apple product, or in my case, my xubuntu machine which boots up in 30 seconds as opposed to my XP Pro box that takes a good 5 minutes before I can do anything with it.

Re:1999 Called.

[i_ate_god]

MS Office and Windows are monopolies.

Just because alternatives exist, doesn't mean they are not monopolies.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Korin43]

The idea is basically that if you want to use something like your browser, email, an IDE, etc., there's no reason to have multiple windows up, since they'll just distract you from what you're doing. Windows 7 and GNOME 3 (and possible others) have quick gestures for putting two windows on half of the screen each, but the idea is that generally you don't need more than that (although it would be nice if they had a way to handle it), and most things can just be left in a random place in the background (IMs, email, whatever you're not doing at this moment).

It's sort of the same idea as the Dark Room text editor (fullscreen, no toolbar, no styling) -- they're less options, but you'll focus better without them.

Fine Print

[DontBlameCanada]

Use of this product may cause:
- bloating
- sluggish behavior
- loss of memory
- sudden fits of aggression and/or rage
- a prolonged feeling of regret and/or disappointment leading to depression

Re:Fine Print

[who_stole_my_kidneys]

Did you install Ubuntu?

Re:Fine Print

[Requiem18th]

Please Microsoft, keep making more and more free Linux features premium on Windows.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[jrumney]

The idea is basically that if you want to use something like your browser, email, an IDE, etc., there's no reason to have multiple windows up,

Yeah, what sort of software developer would ever need to look up documentation or consult an email while they were coding?

Re:Did MS learn something from Windows 7 "flavours

[colinrichardday]

As little as I care for Microsoft, is it their fault that computer manufacturers include different hardware?

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Robert Zenz]

Okay, I don't get it, can someone translate that for me?

Re:Windows RT?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's short for Windows 8 Road & Track..

Re:Windows RT?

[NatasRevol]

I'm wondering if anyone has tried out WinRT and really didn't miss WMP, Active Directory or Remote Desktop.

Why Not Just Have....

[Anonymous Coward]

An option when you install Windows 8 to either choose "Metro look" or "Classic Windows", would make life a lot easier, normally I am the first to queue up for a new operating system but Metro has put me right off and after using Windows for the last 16 years having to find the start menu hasn't made it much fun to use so think I will be skipping Windows 8 on this occasion.

Need one more flavor...

[jbwolfe]

...one that puts the start button back in place. So far, Ive seen nothing to drag me away from the current version. Windows 8 feels dumbed down- do I really need the metro interface on a desktop? If not give me a start button.

Re:Need one more flavor...

[roc97007]

Agree. I already have a start button. Why would I pay $150 to give it up?

By now, everyone knows the drill

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Wait for the odd-numbered version of Windows

2. Then wait for Microsoft to ship SP2

3. Then wait until your current desktop or laptop fails, or your department gets some unexpected hardware reqs

4. Then buy a Mac :)

Re:Did MS learn something from Windows 7 "flavours

[xystren]

This has been one of my complaints also. Why are there so many flavours? Nothing worse that having a home version and needing to make a policy change... they don't include the policy editor, and trying to find the registry entry is virtually impossible. ARRGH.

I just tell people now, purchase "Professional" or better, and if it has the word "home" in it, don't buy it unless you want a configuration nightmare.

Back in the Windows NT 3.51/4.0 days, it used to be "NT Workstation", and "NT Server" and I tell you it was nice. Very little confusion. Windows 2000 it switched from "Workstation" to "Professional" and there were 3 different Server versions - which did make sense, but that was the beginning of the end. For IT professionals, the three different versions wasn't that difficult to determine what your requirements were.

Apparently, the workstation to professional was a marketing decision. Professional to the "Home" and "Professional" again a marking term. They wanted to get away from the term workstation as they felt people would get confused with the "NeXT Workstation" or other various flavours of the term workstation; hence, enter "Professional" with windows 2000 (probably my favorite windows OS, I hated giving that one up and didn't till about 2 or 3 years ago), but marketing came at it again, and "Professional" scared off the home/non-business users... Enter flavour "Home" and it just continues to decent in the cesspool of more and more different names.

Amazing what happens when you let marking drive the design of an operating system. I wonder if they realize how much damage it does? Any piece of software that has the word "live" in it - I just naturally tend to shudder and shy away from, even if it is a non-Microsoft product (WTF?!?!?!?)

Reminds me of the old joke of the new MS operating system that was going to come out - a combination of the best of Window NT, Windows CE and Windows ME... Called "Windows CEMENT" - an OS that was hard as a rock, and dumb as a brick. Google it, I'm sure it's out there somewhere.

But, yeah, Microsoft, get rid of the multi-flavour OS. Make it something simple - go back to Workstation/Server, or Professional/Server... Or how about just "Windows [version]" and "Window [version] Server" and forget the rest of the 97million different flavours.

Bad, Worse, and Worst

[coinreturn]

Those are the flavors.

Re:Bad, Worse, and Worst

[roc97007]

Pointless, expensive, expensive and pointless.

Re:Windows RT?

[StikyPad]

I figured it was the successor to Windows RG.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[SuricouRaven]

It's actually quite simple. Microsoft realises how important tablets and touchscreen-only devices are going to be in future - the success of the iPad took everyone by surprise, and smartphones are just too lucrative by sheer numbers to pass up. But the traditional windows interface was made for keyboard and mouse. It's great at keyboard and mouse, but just try pressing a minimise button with your big fat finger. Microsoft was left with two options: Either go with very different interfaces on their desktop and touchscreen lines (Which in turn poses problems for application porting, and would doubtless be opposed by Marketing for making it difficult to maintain a consistant user experience and brand identity), or modify the desktop interface to reflect the needs of the touchscreen user, even if that means making things a little less optimal for the keyboard-and-mouse users. Microsoft chose the latter. Metro tries to be an interface for traditional or touchscreen use, and by trying to be both it manages to excel at neither - but the alternative option could have been even worse from a business perspective, by making it impossible to use Microsoft's established strength in the desktop sector to launch it into the tablet and smartphone where competitors already dominate.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[phantomfive]

Let's be honest though, the Start Menu isn't all that great either. It's basically everything jammed into a single menu, often haphazardly. Sometimes you have to right-click on things to get what you want (right-click on my computer) or change settings to even get things to appear there at all. The fact that the start-menu is so messy that it needs a search is just face-palm bad. I have adapted to the start menu, and I use it to do what I want, but it is definitely a learned concept, and not something natural and good.

My point is that even though Metro may indeed be bad, people will get used to it and someday may start saying how much better it is than whatever comes next.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[mcavic]

there's no reason to have multiple windows up, since they'll just distract you from what you're doing

Not necessarily. If you have a big monitor, and you have your email up along with another app, it could prevent distraction if you can just glance over to see what your new message is. Same with IM windows, etc. Personally, I focus on one window at a time because my eyes are sensitive and I have a relatively small monitor. I'm just saying that a desktop OS shouldn't make that decision for you. A mobile OS, yes.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[wed128]

I actually like the window management on Gnome 3. I miss the compiz grid feature, but gnome 3 is the first window manager that I actually use the "virtual desktop" feature...I use two monitors, and Gnome 3 only does the virtual desktop thing on one of them. that leaves the other for e-mail and IM windows that i want to keep visible all the time.

I've used unity and metro (in the consumer preview), and found them lacking. I think we've reached a point where we have so much choice, It doesn't really bother me that the Desktop paradigm is being experimented upon.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[jareth-0205]

and yet the normal Windows user will still have never heard of Gnome, nor will they care when you tell them about it.

...and then the average dissatisfied user can remain in their mire if they don't care about better things...

Re:Windows RT?

[mcavic]

So you think there are people who would just stop using Remote Desktop because their new OS doesn't have it?

I'm sticking with Windows 2000

[Anonymous Coward]

After windows 7, we get windows 8 which is why I am sticking with windows 2000
It's 1992 releases later into the future and comes in a blue box ;)

Re:Can't wait!!!

[forkfail]

but you'll focus better without them.

Glad that MS knows exactly how I'll focus, and what will make me focus better. Looking forward to coding on my giant monitor with no distractions from documentation, other code snippets, test windows and the other tools that I use on a day to day basis.

In fact, I'm shocked. Shocked! That I've ever been able to get any work done during my entire career, what with all those other windows cluttering up my workspace.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[leonardluen]

These are the users you need to persuade if you ever want linux to become popular. These users are the majority, They just want their computer to work, like a toaster. They don't care about how the innards work nor do they want to learn about it. ...and these users will NEVER install their own operating system, they will be stuck with whatever was delivered with the computer no matter how much it frustrates them.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[forkfail]

Metro is about MS making a homogenous look and feel across all possible platforms, and thus, having to go to the least common denominator (cell phone interfaces) for all of them.

It's about attempting to leverage their PC market share to make a push into the tablet and cell markets.

Once you realize this, the rest follows naturally.

Nice and clean!

[jones_supa]

Let me be the first to say that this version smorgasbord actually looks sane. One Joe Sixpack edition, one enterprise edition, and the ARM variety. I still don't like Metro, but regarding this part we're all good.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[houstonbofh]

You are so behind the curve in Windows. In Linux, we have been pissing off power users trying to turn their desktop into a phone for a long time now! Catch up, Micro$oft!

Gnome in win32? EW!!!

[Teunis]

This sounds as terrible as gnome3 or unity. Where are these screwy ideas coming from?

Re:Can't wait!!!

[UnknowingFool]

You mean you don't have all the APIs tattooed on your arm? I call that a lack of commitment. ;P

Re:Can't wait!!!

[ifrag]

The fact that the start-menu is so messy that it needs a search is just face-palm bad.

I found the search feature to be the best thing added to the start menu since it was added to Windows. It actually made the damn thing usable again. I don't even bother navigating the menus now, I just type in the name of whatever I want and there it is (well not even the full name, usually a few letters is plenty). The really unfortunate part is it took so long to add this feature, because it would have made it functional from day 1. Even back in Win95 the start menu became cluttered (but at least in 95 it was an alphabetized clutter by default).

I was WAY off!

[sharkey]

I was expecting Nutty, Corny and Green Apple Splatters.

Ehi, IBM!

[funi]

Get your lawyers ready! RT was already taken... in the 80s: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=867 (strange beast, BTW)

Re:Can't wait!!!

[houstonbofh]

I understand you logic, but a lot of us is pissed off at developers that want to turn our multi-thousand dollar dual monitor setup into a phone. Hence why you see so much buzz over a fork of the old system, like Mate. You think it was hard to get folks off XP before? Wait till this comes out!

Re:Can't wait!!!

[forkfail]

Here's the fundamental problem.

The start menu may be flawed in some ways, but it is the evolution of years of interface feedback.

Metro is not an evolutionary jump. It is Microsoft, for what I perceive as more marketing and business reasons than usability reasons, attempting to force a misguided UI on PC users. I'd note that the Win 8 interface is probably great for tablets and cell phones; however, for the very reasons that it is, it is awful for a PC.

And it's way more than the start menu. It's the distance one has to move the mouse (to "invisible icons" in the corners). It's the mandatory whole screen paradigm. It's the AOL look and feel. It's the snapping smart corners that are great on a touch screen - but not so much with a mouse. It's the assumption that people want their desktop screen to be touch - and deal with everything from greasy fingerprints to bad posture to having to have their monitor within arms reach to issues of how to deal with a 40 or even 50 inch monitor.

As noted previously, as far as I can tell, Metro is a business driven attempt to leverage their PC market in order to further their tablet and cell phone interests by making a homogeneous platform for all. This makes the interface known on all to anyone who uses one, while encouraging software development across all. However, by making the only tool they provide, it does make is pretty hard to drive screws.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[houstonbofh]

My point is that even though Metro may indeed be bad, people will get used to it and someday may start saying how much better it is than whatever comes next.

Funny kind of progress...

Re:Can't wait!!!

[nine-times]

If you never use the metro apps, the goofy start screen just acts like a giant start menu, even with incremental search

Yes, but with the huge disadvantage that it's annoying to access. Instead of being a button on the screen, it's a full screen waste of space. Accessing it with a mouse is generally unreliable in my experience-- you have to hover your cursor near the edge of the screen, and it often doesn't actually pop up when you do that.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Nemyst]

I'll say this: if it weren't for Metro I would unquestionably recommend Windows 8 as an upgrade to Windows 7 and especially Vista/XP. The UI's generally clean, they've updated many of the things that needed updating (like the task manager or the file transfer dialog) and boot times are improved.

However, the forced inclusion of Metro through their "start screen" idea is flawed at best, a deal-breaker at worst. No, it's not utterly unusable, as some people might say, but it is a lot less convenient than the start menu. It's a needless downgrade from something which took less space, less mouse movement, fewer clicks and especially which fit with the aesthetic of the rest of the OS better. As it is there's a fairly jarring jump between the appearance of the desktop and the Metro tiles, making it feel like you're running two different OS. If the start screen let me use Windows programs more efficiently, it would've been good (and it's entirely possible to make it do so, Microsoft just didn't do it). As it is, programs take way too much space for no reason, getting access to things takes too many clicks, many traditional features are locked behind a "pretty" UI and it generally feels a bit schizophrenic.

However, my biggest gripe isn't actually the start screen, it's the "Charms". Whereas the bottom-left corner opens up the start screen, the right border opens up the charms panel, which has things like wifi strength and such; that much is good. However, in order to do the extremely unusual action of shutting down or hibernating the computer, you have to go into Settings, then Shutdown, all of which AFTER having opened the Charms menu. How's that for intuitive?

Make the start screen more efficient and put a prominent power button in there and I'll be a lot warmer to the OS. As it is Windows 7 still does the job well enough to stop me from moving on. Oh and, the fact they've shoved Metro in Windows Server 8 (even with the "desktop experience" pack disabled) is utterly insane.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Ol Olsoc]

The idea is basically that if you want to use something like your browser, email, an IDE, etc., there's no reason to have multiple windows up, since they'll just distract you from what you're doing.

But if we take our Ritalin it shouldn't be too bad. Seriously, I've never once heard a complaint about someone being distracted because they had more than one window open. Indeed, if a person has problems with multiple application windows, I can't imagine their travails with a browser and all those links and tabs and stuff.

Re:Did MS learn something from Windows 7 "flavours

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Do you know something about ARM processors the rest of us don't?

The only "obvious" reason is to squeeze more money out of their customers.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[DrXym]

The start menu is okay. I wouldn't call it great but it's mature, compact, provides the functionality users expect and is designed to work properly with a mouse and keyboard. I would expect nothing less from whatever replaces it.

I have no issues with radical UI changes. I'm one of the few people (it seems) with positive things to say about GNOME 3. But I think GNOME got a lot of things right that Microsoft screwed up in their consumer preview. e.g. in GNOME 3 even if you don't know you can mouse into the top corner, there is a big prominent label marked "Activities" that you can click on instead. It's discoverable in other words. In Metro there is nothing obvious at all to tell you the corner does anything. Even if you discover it does something it still requires a second click to actually activate and there is no reason for this. And if you miss the corner, e.g. by slightly jogging the mouse on that second click you can find yourself launching Internet Explorer because the icon is too close to the corner.

Metro is just replete with annoyances like this that only show up with a mouse or on a large screen. I'm sure MS will fix the worst of them but I wonder how many will remain. Windows 8 is meant to be out this year and I wonder if it's already in feature freeze. If the consumer preview is representative of the final product I think it will royally suck on the desktop. It'll probably be fine on a tablet with fingers and gestures but that's cold comfort to people who don't use a tablet.

Re:Windows RT?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm holding out for Windows SE/RT. I hear that's the one with the 440 Six Pack.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[n30na]

It's too bad i can't mod things "ironic"

Re:No domain connectivity for Home edition...again

[Anonymous Coward]

It's virii, because singular is virius.

Re:Windows RT?

[NatasRevol]

WinRT hosts can't be RDP'd to. See TFA.

So, yeah, they'll have to stop using it.

Mass adoption is antithetical to general computing

[Tenebrousedge]

When have you ever heard a linux proponent say they want it to become popular? I think the most I'd ever hope for would be that those who want to use it find it useful. That sort of goes against the whole 'computing appliance' idea; that trend is actively harmful to general purpose computing. Also, 'freedom to choose; includes the choice to use a buggy, virus-laden OS, and good riddance to that entire category of user, in my opinion. Increased corporate sponsorship is one thing, but the only thing that Joe Average does is complain about how things should work.

Linux users: post if you actually want linux to see widespread adoption in the home market. Also note whether you think that this could happen without linux becoming a walled garden.

Re:Windows RT?

[Barsteward]

no... Windows Rubbish Tech

Re:No domain connectivity for Home edition...again

[Anonymous Coward]

Single sign-on to NAS storage and other computers in the household? Seriously, as a slashdot reader you're really expected to know this...

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Ol Olsoc]

Put it this way, as someone who has been using Windows in one form or another for close to 20 years, I really shouldn't have to spend 5 minutes trying to work out where the hell they've moved "Shut Down" to because it's behind a totally un-signposted hotspot at the bottom right of the taskbar and then a non-obvious icon labelled "Settings" and finally the "Power" option under that (Yes, Alt-F4 still works, but that's hardly the point, or useful over a windowed RDP session).

You nailed it! When I tried the preview, I was in awe of the unneeded junk that just got in the way. The incredibly stupid lift screen just to log in, and I actually had to go to the web to figure out how to shut the thing down. Nothing I found actually added functionality - it was just different for the sake of being different.

And the dreaded ribbon has now encroached into the folders.

I fear that Microsoft might be playing a dangerous game here. By trying to make all our computers into giant smartphones in operation, they are really giving people an incentive to explore other options for computing.

I've been using both Mac and Windows for a long time, and have to note that a person who used a Mac back in the early days would be able to sit down with Lion and figure out how to use it. I'd like to see a Windows 3.1 user try their hand at W8. Anyhow, not to say one is superior, but it's really nice to not have to re-learn how to operate the computer - especially when there is no advantage.

Re:Windows RT?

[forkfail]

Wish it was for ReTro - as in, the Windows 7 interface. Which, despite some flaws, seems to me to be extremely usable - one of their best offerings ever.

Re:Windows RT?

[The Archon V2.0]

I guess after the Windows CEMeNT joke they've been trying to pick letter combos that won't easily form words. First XP and now RT. I'm waiting for Windows ZQ Ultimate 128 bit.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[mcgrew]

I got a chuckle out of that, thank you. I never did like Gnome (I prefer KDE).

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Missing.Matter]

Make the start screen more efficient

You might be interested in this blog post, which tries to address concerns that the new start screen is less efficient. For example, you complain about things being further away and larger, but according to Fitts law, this exact combination maintains the efficiency of the menu, and if fact the math works out so that it's more efficient for a higher number of items. Further, the shape and grouping capability of the new start screen, which is only possible because it's a screen instead of a menu, make it possible to take advantage of different types of memory recall like spatial memory. After using the new start screen for a while, I find it much more useful than the start menu.

Re:Windows RT?

[mcavic]

Understandable, but I mean RDP isn't a nicety. You either need it or you don't. If you're using RT on a phone or tablet, then you probably don't. If you're using it on another kind of embedded device, you might.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Korin43]

It is possible to easily have two windows, one filling each side of the screen. I use this all the time when I'm programming.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Korin43]

I'm just saying that a desktop OS shouldn't make that decision for you. A mobile OS, yes.

That's why you choose your OS. You want one that works your way, I want one that works my way. The OP was wondering what the benefits are, and the benefit is a lack of distraction. Whether you want your OS to do that isn't the point.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[mcgrew]

OK, I'll bite. What does it offer that Linux doesn't? What does it offer that Win 7 doesn't?

Can I install security updates without rebooting like I can with Linux? If I reboot, will it come up with everything I had open be open like it was when I shut it down like Linus does? Will it play streamed videos on a ten year old computer with 750 megs of memory like kubuntu 11.10 will? Can I use a bluetooth dongle without installing software and drives like Linux can and Win 7 can't? Is networking brain-dead simple like Linux has been for years, or is it the same pain in the ass networking has previously been in Windows?

Does it follow established standards like Linux does, or does it still use its own proprietary "standards" like it always has?

How big is the learning curve from Win 7 to Metro?

Why should I buy this product? Your ad doesn't sway me, Mr. Ballmer.

Encryption is "professional"

[hobarrera]

Only "professional" has encryption? So non-professional users don't mind strangers getting acces to 100% of their PC if they loose it/some gets physical acces to it etc?

No private photos, personal email, anything?

Really, I don't understand how you could even consider a not-fully-encrypted OS in 2012.

Re:Encryption is "professional"

[bacon.frankfurter]

That's the way it's always been. Presumably, ever since that whole thing where Phil Zimmermann was subjected to a federal criminal investigation for distributing PGP and allegedly attempting commiting the crime of "munitions export without a license", one might believe that they are hedging their bets on the seeminglt ever-tentative legality of encryption. One might also entertain the idea that this is the fallout of that whole pesky anti-trust case, and that the behavior is to avoid the perception of anti-competitive practices, and prod end-users toward exploring free market alternatives to baked-in encryption. One might further point to the fact that encryption is a value-added feature, and Microsoft has every right to charge more for it, and that it's just good business to do so. Although, honestly, the more likely truth is that they're in bed with the DoD on some level, and have agreed to curiously exclude the encryption feature from the version that will gain the widest adoption, given that it's also the cheapest.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Korin43]

Congratulations on discovering that not everyone works the same way. Why was this voted up?

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea is basically that if you want to use something like your browser, email, an IDE, etc., there's no reason to have multiple windows up,

Yeah, what sort of software developer would ever need to look up documentation or consult an email while they were coding?

What sort of software developer makes up a significant chunk of Windows 8 or Gnome 3's market?

There are window managers written by developers to scratch their itch for a useful window manager -- dozens, in fact.

Then there are ones written for "the rest of you", whether motivated by altruism (Gnome) or profit (Gnome and Windows) -- they're not necessarily suited for people doing serious work with computers, but that's ok, because most people, most of the time, aren't using their PCs for serious biznus.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[hobarrera]

That's just BS designers like to spill all the time. Most PC users *will* have more than one thing visible:

An IRC or IM on one side, where I can glance at what being written/etc.
Some filecopy/transfer or alike on another side.
Some download in progress, or something alike.
Documentation relevant to what I'm doing
Music player?
The *main* window.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[tunapez]

...and then the average dissatisfied user can remain in their mire if they don't care about better things...

You must be new here. Let me explain, self-wallowing and bitching are top past-times here on /.(and in humans, in general). Without the time constraints of hunting, gathering and finding suitable shelter we have found much less useful ways to pass the time. Welcome, please do try harder to bring something less useful to the discussion next time. Thanks.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[phantomfive]

The start menu is okay. I wouldn't call it great but it's mature, compact, provides the functionality users expect and is designed to work properly with a mouse and keyboard.

In other words, you've gotten used to it.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[hobarrera]

What was wrong with expo/desktop-cube/all-the-other-compiz-virtual-desktop-modes?
You just said you use it in Gnome3, but I don't see what was wrong with previous alternatives.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Korin43]

Yes, yes, everyone who works differently than you is wrong.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[FireFury03]

The idea is basically that if you want to use something like your browser, email, an IDE, etc., there's no reason to have multiple windows up, since they'll just distract you from what you're doing.

Multiple windows aren't a distraction for me, they are a requirement. My normal working environment is a large terminal window to develop my code in, another terminal for actually running the code, a third terminal is usually open to examine logs related to testing the code. If I'm working on something web-based I'll also have a browser for testing the code. I need documentation open, which is usually in the form of several browser tabs and maybe an email or 2 open in Thunderbird tabs.

These windows are all related to a single project - the only alternative to having them all on screen at once would be to keep switching between them, whcih would be very distracting and counterproductive (I do have to do this when working on small-screen devices such as my 15.4" laptop, and I find it hard work).

Windows 7 and GNOME 3 (and possible others) have quick gestures for putting two windows on half of the screen each, but the idea is that generally you don't need more than that (although it would be nice if they had a way to handle it), and most things can just be left in a random place in the background (IMs, email, whatever you're not doing at this moment).

I use and like Gnome 3. But I place windows manually and wouldn't want it any other way. My browser is left maximised on my secondary (only 15") monitor, but nothing else ever gets maximised. The only time I've used the "half screen" maximisation feature is when comparing 2 network dumps in 2 separate Wireshark instances - it's handy for this, but I use it so rarely that I really wouldn't miss it.

I've come to the conclusion that having a desktop environment that supports a multitude of devices (from tiny-screen phones all the way up to massive-screen desktops, etc) is a Good Thing, but we have to stop forcing the paradigms of one type of device on another. On my phone, I want my browser maximised pretty much all the time because the screen is small, but on a desktop with a 24" screen I almost never want this. But I don't think there is a hard rule about whether to maximise or window applications: small screen sizes will tend to want most things maximised, big screen sizes will tend to want most things windows, but in all cases there are exceptions. In the middle, there are things like 10" tablets where you're often going to want things maximised, but there are considerable numbers of cases where you don't. For example, I often wouldn't want my instant messager maximised on a tablet (but sometimes I would), whilst I would usually want my browser maximised (but sometimes I wouldn't).

Since it seems to be very fuzzy whether to maximise or window things, I'm not sure what the best approach is for picking defaults. On the one hand, it sounds nice to try and heuristically figure out the probability that the user will want a certain application maximised on a certain sized screen, and therefore either maximise it or window it by default depending on what the calculated probabilities suggest (and give the user the ability to override this, possibly feeding back the user's override decision into the heuristic so it learns). However, on the other hand, this seems to violate the principle of least surprise - I usually like my computer to do predictable things in response to my mouse clicks, which such a system inherently prevents.

I'm in the same boat

[OldGunner]

"I work for a major fortune 500. We're locked into XP at the moment, and from the looks of things, I see no reason that this is going to change anytime within the next 5 or 6 years. We have significant investment under XP, and all of our current in-house applications are written and tuned for XP." I'm in the exact same situation. However, MS has announced the end date for XP support and security updates is now less than two years away... I know they want to kill it off because its continued use negatively impact their income stream. Yet, it is not our fault that ll the follow-on products have seriously sucked (Apologies to Win 7 which sucks less). If only we could force 5 more years of XP support.

Re:Windows RT?

[NatasRevol]

If you're using a tablet in any large business, you'll probably need both AD *and* RDP on it, for mgmt purposes.

WinRT has neither.

If you need neither of those, you'll probably really want WMP.

WinRT doesn't have that either.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[medv4380]

Windows already had a homogeneous look and feel, and if they stopped changing it radically every other version they'd not have to try to change it again to another homogeneous look and feel.

"featuring an updated Windows Explorer"

[Anonymous Coward]

Having had the unfortunate and exasperating experience of helping someone out with their Windows 7 box, all I can say is "can they still make explorer more useless?" (pats trusty Linux box on head and is glad to have given windows up at 2K).

Re:Can't wait!!!

[mcavic]

Except that you don't get a choice if you need to run Windows apps on an up-to-date OS. And if you want a lack of distraction in any OS, all you have to do is close your unnecessary windows. There are things in life that shouldn't require tradeoffs.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Ol Olsoc]

So we just have to like it or else we are stupid?

Why exactly does a desktop have to look the same as a smartphone? Explain why my 27 inch screen has to have the same look as my teeny smartphone screen? I paid good money for the pixels, and I am going to use them

Making a common OS between tablets, smartphones and PC's that has the interface best suited for the device, rather than use the lowest common denominator be the design standard? Windows is already the champion of many many versions.

It's about attempting to leverage their PC market share to make a push into the tablet and cell markets.

It's about attempting to leverage their PC market share to make a push into the tablet and cell markets.

Well, that is likely true. But perhaps a bit premature. The interface turns a lot of people off, and Microsoft's push into the tablet and cell markets hasn't exactly been a success, so I fear that they might be really messing things up. My misadventure with W8 Consumer preview, only confirmed my lack of future with Windows OS products. I was hoping for an improvement on W7, which is a useable system. Instead, I saw a steaming hot mess.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[phantomfive]

Funny kind of progress...

lol yeah, it's clearly not progress, but really, did you expect any different from Microsoft? People will still use it, though.

Microsoft has a very good system set up to respond when their customers know what they want. It is their strong point, they beat IBM at that game, and they are very responsive.

They are not very good at making something customers will want if customers don't know they want it (note: people on slashdot are not generally customers of Microsoft. Business owners and to a lesser degree IT execs are customers of Microsoft). Most customers have no clue what they want in a tablet OS. Which is why Microsoft will do a lousy job building it.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[kirkb]

Yeah, evolution... http://i.imgur.com/avgcv.jpg

Re:Can't wait!!!

[jader3rd]

I was really excited about the heat maps in that blog post, but I've found that they haven't quite executed on that idea entirely. For example, you want to run an app as administrator, once you right click on the app you have to move the mouse all the way to the bottom of the screen to run as admin. There are other little things, but the result is that now I think of all of my in the heat map concept and find that about half of the time Metro follows the heat map, and the other half does exactly the wrong thing.

Windows Releases Split - Stable & Development

[JakFrost]

Microsoft is finally warming up to the the Linux Kernel release version branch split system in terms of purpose and usability.

Windows XP = Stable
Windows Vista = Development/Experimental
Windows 7 = Stable
Windows 8 = Development/Experimental

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Xanny]

Unity has evolved into the OSX Dock with less configuration options. The search menu doesn't cover the screen anymore, so its more like the current gen start menu in windows. I agree with the sentiment, I use XFCE on any distro I actively run, but Unity is great for my grandparents who just need application icons to click.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sleep/Hibernate? What are those? Seriously, the only time I shut my computer down is for Windows Updates to finish. Otherwise it goes to sleep (S5 mode) after I've not been using it for 15 mins (my settings). Woks fine and on my laptop that will be getting Win7, I'm already thinking about going to sleep in 5 mins. Standby worked pretty well under XP but I want the improved battery life that Win7 offers.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Korin43]

Except that you don't get a choice if you need to run Windows apps on an up-to-date OS.

So complain to Microsoft, or get a better OS. If I like hardwood floors and you like carpet, why complain to me because your installer only knows how to install hardwood floors when you could just find a new installer?

And if you want a lack of distraction in any OS, all you have to do is close your unnecessary windows.

Yes, I'm doing it wrong. I'm so stupid. How dare I like a window manager that does something for me?

There are things in life that shouldn't require tradeoffs.

Good luck with that.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Korin43]

I should clarify, the OP asked about the style of DE (Windows 8, GNOME 3, Unity), and I'm answering from a GNOME 3 perspective. I've never used Windows 8.

Reason GP was voted up

[zooblethorpe]

Congratulations on discovering that not everyone works the same way. Why was this voted up?

Maybe because Windows' and Gnome 3's insistence on "one window to rule them all" shows that they haven't made this same discovery?

Cheers,

Re:Reason GP was voted up

[Korin43]

Maybe because Windows' and Gnome 3's insistence on "one window to rule them all" shows that they haven't made this same discovery?

You're missing what I'm saying. Some people like this style of window manager. If you don't like it, use a different window manager that fits what you you like.

It's like with video players. Some people like media centers like XBMC, some people like minimal players like VLC. Are you going to go around complaining to everyone who likes VLC because it's hard to use your remote control, and there's no library, etc., or will you just accept that some people want a library and some people just want a player?

I would never argue that everyone should be forced to use VLC, and I also don't think other people should be forced to use GNOME 3. There are plenty of other desktop environments, and you should use the one you like.

And if you can't choose, that's a problem with your OS, not my DE.

Re:Reason GP was voted up

[forkfail]

So - given that for certain games and software development (yes, I do develop under Windows as well as Linux), what desktop choices, exactly, do I have with Windows 8? Where is the option for the Windows 7 look and feel?

Oh, wait. It doesn't exist.

So, no, I don't have a choice. And given how tightly the desktop is bound to the OS in Windows, I won't. There might be some mods and add ons that I can use, but not from MS, and probably not with the complete blessing of MS.

Re:Reason GP was voted up

[Korin43]

And if you can't choose, that's a problem with your OS, not my DE.

Re:Reason GP was voted up

[forkfail]

So - yeah. This thread is about Windows 8. Which is both an OS and a DE. What point, exactly, are you trying to make?

Re:Reason GP was voted up

[Korin43]

If you read the question I responded to:

I'm asking because I'm more of the "tiled window manager" and "I want my windows where I want them" type, and I can hardly imagine working with something like Gnome 3, Unity or Metro (hell, I have trouble working with Explorer)...but that doesn't mean that I'm resistant to learning the benefits of those system.

I was responding to the question, "What is the benefit of this style of window manager?". I never said anything about whether this should be the default in your OS.

Re:Reason GP was voted up

[forkfail]

When in a hole and caught trolling, it's usually best to stop digging. /tip

Re:Reason GP was voted up

[Korin43]

I'm not trolling. I expressed an honest opinion about window managers, and everyone's attacking me as if I said they should be forced to use it.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Korin43]

Maybe you work this way. Maybe most people work this way. I don't. Having my music and IMs and email in the background does help me focus. Sorry my style of working is "wrong", but I never claimed you should do it.

Seriously, is it that hard to understand that not everyone works the same way?

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Guy Harris]

Yes, yes, everyone who works differently than you is wrong.

Hopefully when this guy said "The idea is basically that if you want to use something like your browser, email, an IDE, etc., there's no reason to have multiple windows up, since they'll just distract you from what you're doing.", he wasn't asserting something similarly bogus along the lines of "everybody who doesn't want to have their IDE be the only window up on the screen is wrong".

Re:Can't wait!!!

[FireFury03]

However, my biggest gripe isn't actually the start screen, it's the "Charms". Whereas the bottom-left corner opens up the start screen, the right border opens up the charms panel, which has things like wifi strength and such; that much is good. However, in order to do the extremely unusual action of shutting down or hibernating the computer, you have to go into Settings, then Shutdown, all of which AFTER having opened the Charms menu. How's that for intuitive?

Gnome 3 has also tried to hide the shutdown option - in this case, you have to push "Alt" to get it to appear in the menu, a key press that you can only discover by experimenting with pushing all the keys to see what happens (there are no visual cues that the "power off" option is hidden or that you should push alt).

Nevermind, I'm sure in both Windows 8 and Gnome, users will find holding down the physical power button to be a much more convenient way of shutting down.

There seems to be a general trend to hide or remove genuinely useful stuff, even though it doesn't really seem to add any complexity by being there. For example, if you want to disable your monitor's power saving in Gnome 3, you probably expect to go into "System Settings -> Screen". And sure enough, there is a "Turn off after:" option with a drop-down menu of various settings such as "30 minutes", "1 hour", etc. But this menu doesn't have a "never" option - why not? This is the logical place to put it, and it doesn't seem to add any complexity to the UI by having it there. As it turns out, the only way to disable monitor power management is to install a third party add-on, which adds an option to a completely different (not quite as intuitive) part of the UI. (Some background: generally, if my monitor is turned on, I want to see it, whether that be because I'm watching a movie or keeping an eye on something that's running on the machine (a download, a big compile, etc.). When I'm away from my computer, I am in the habit of pushing the physical power buttons on the monitors, so power management doesn't actually save me power but does cause me some annoyance).

Re:Can't wait!!!

[clarkn0va]

Now if only OS designers would discover the same thing. It was modded up because the GP is complaining of the lack of choice being thrust upon users, not because he happens to think everyone should do it his way.

Note that Unity and Gnome are no better than MS lately in this regard.

Not that long ago...

[Anonymous Coward]

we were anticipating the arrival of Windows 98. Yep, you read that right, young 'uns, and let me tell you, the story of how Windows lost its 90 is a scary tale indeed!

actually four

[allo]

http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Windows-8-will-be-available-in-four-editions-1541216.html

Re:Can't wait!!!

[FireFury03]

I found the search feature to be the best thing added to the start menu since it was added to Windows. It actually made the damn thing usable again. I don't even bother navigating the menus now, I just type in the name of whatever I want

So, uh, kinda like opening a bash prompt then?

Pass...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should I pay for that in Windows 8 when I can just download Ubuntu 12.04 for free or any Gnome 3 based distro? I just can't see paying for an interface I don't want when the old interface worked just fine. Especially when I run the old interface in "Ancient Interface" mode where I have no aero graphics.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Multiple windows aren't a distraction for me, they are a requirement. My normal working environment is a large terminal window to develop my code in, another terminal for actually running the code, a third terminal is usually open to examine logs related to testing the code. If I'm working on something web-based I'll also have a browser for testing the code. I need documentation open, which is usually in the form of several browser tabs and maybe an email or 2 open in Thunderbird tabs.

"But how would you ever do all on a tablet? You want a tablet. Not because you want a tablet, but because the marketing department says everyone in the UX department loses their jobs if you don't end up with something that looks and feels like a tablet. Here in the UX department, we're great at coming up with an excuse that satisfies the marketing requirement to turn everything into a tablet, with fabricated justifications that are just trendy enough that the UX designers can inflate their resumes with tablet-oriented buzzwords before moving on to the next project. Seriously, what makes you think UX was ever about your experience?" :)

Re:Windows RT?

[kat_skan]

No, it's the "arty" flavor of Windows 8, meant to compete with the Mac.

Oh so that's why Microsoft thought a version of Windows that that has a new and unfamiliar UI and won't run any of the software you have would be a good idea.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Missing.Matter]

I'm wondering exactly in what way you feel MS is imposing a particular workflow on you. If you use Windows 8, you're free to use the desktop just as you always have. In fact, they're expanding and improving multi monitor support.

Re:Windows RT?

[Richard_at_work]

My iPad acts as a wonderful RDP client a lot of the time, and I'm guessing that any ARM based WinRT system is going to be used in the same way as an iPad most of the time...

Re:Can't wait!!!

[TheRaven64]

It might not be a shill. I'd give it the benefit of the doubt and call it a troll, especially with a name like PrivateBill. And, judging by the number of replies, I'd go so far as to call it a successful troll...

Re:Can't wait!!!

[FireFury03]

I'm one of the few people (it seems) with positive things to say about GNOME 3.

Yes, I've heard a lot of negative comments about Gnome 3, but very few of them seem to detail specific things people are finding wrong with it - saying "it's crap" doesn't help anyone improve it unless you can say _why_ you think it's crap.

Personally, I like Gnome 3. On the whole I think they have got it mostly right. There are problems, of course, but you'd expect that. The problems I've found with it are:

1. They have completely removed some useful stuff like the ability to disable the display's power management. There's a nice menu with "Turn monitor off after: 30 minutes, 1 hour, etc." in it, but no "Never" option. I understand decluttering the UI, but this doesn't seem like clutter - this is exactly where I'd expect to find this option, and is no more clutter than the "1 hour" option.

2. The "Power Off" option is hidden until you hold down Alt, yet there is no visual clue that there is a hidden option or that holding down Alt is going to do anything. This seems like a very odd decision - whilst putting a machine to sleep is my usual preference, I frequently do have cause for powering off entirely and it just seems odd to make it hard to find this option. Once you've learnt about it, this isn't a big deal, but it sounds counterproductive for new users and I imagine a lot of less experienced people will simply power off by holding down the power button since there's no obvious other way to do it(!)

3. The launcher buttons violate the principle of least surprise by changing their action depending on whether the application is already running or not. If the application isn't running then they launch a new window. If an application is running they raise *all* of that application's existing windows. I can't think of a situation where I would ever want to raise all 5 terminals I have open at once, but I frequently want to open a new one.

4. Related to (3), clicking Empathy's launcher icon while I have an IM window open just raises that IM window, there's no obvious way of getting the contacts list back (you have to right click the launcher and select "new window" - very counterintuitive since clicking the launcher when there isn't an IM window open gives you the contacts list as you'd expect).

5. The Empathy integration appears to have a bug whereby it sets my status to "unavailable" after I suspend and resume my machine. I have to manually set it to "available" or launch the Empathy contacts list window in order to prompt it to reconnect to my IM accounts.

6. Gnome 3 only supports 3 mouse buttons and a wheel. There is no way to assign my other 2 buttons (which I previously liked to use for "window raise" and "window lower" under Compiz)

Despite all the problems listed above, I still find Gnome 3 to be the best desktop environment I've used, so I'm sticking with it. Gnome 3 also seems to be gearing up for running well on touch-screen tablets *without* crippling the desktop UI in the process, so that's all good.

Big Deal

[bacon.frankfurter]

Which one ships WITHOUT the new Metro interface?

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Korin43]

Now if only OS designers would discover the same thing. It was modded up because the GP is complaining of the lack of choice being thrust upon users, not because he happens to think everyone should do it his way.

Whether Microsoft should force everyone to work this way has nothing to do with what I was saying. I was talking about why people might like this style of window manager.

Note that Unity and Gnome are no better than MS lately in this regard.

Since you're forced to use Unity or GNOME 3. If only there were other desktop environments..

Re:Can't wait!!!

[steveb3210]

More like "Spotlight" in OSX which really was a clone of QuickSilver...

"the ability to switch languages on the fly"

[roc97007]

...because that's a feature everyone has been clamoring for. I can't count the times I've thought to myself "Darn it, I wish I could switch to Berber on the fly".

Re:"the ability to switch languages on the fly"

[shutdown -p now]

It's somewhat misleading, but what it refers to is that for Win7 Home and Pro, you couldn't switch languages at all - if you bought an English edition, that all you'd have in the UI. Ultimate & Enterprise had downloadable language packs; now, these are available for all editions in Win8.

Re:"the ability to switch languages on the fly"

[21mhz]

Finally. Being limited to buying Windows in a selection of two system UI languages because they are the only two sold in your country of residence (UK English apparently provided as a fallback to all foreigners) sucks, even more than being forced to install Windows in the first place.

Re:"the ability to switch languages on the fly"

[roc97007]

Thanks, that actually makes sense. The way it was worded made it sound like the most useless misfeature since the motorized ice cream cone. But really, "on the fly"?

Re:"the ability to switch languages on the fly"

[Alioth]

It's a very useful feature. Mac OSX has had it for a long time now. When I'm typing in Spanish, the spell checker works as Spanish. If I switch to English within the same document, the spell checker automatically switches to English. It's incredibly useful.

Many people (especially in Europe) use more than one language daily. I'd imagine it's reasonably common even in the United States where you have a significant minority of the population being native speakers of languages which are not English, and who likely use their own language as well as English routinely, every day. Windows is very backwards in language support, years behind Linux let alone Mac OSX (on Windows, you can't even switch languages after installation, forget thinking about having it switch languages within the same document!)

Re:"the ability to switch languages on the fly"

[Anonymous Coward]

The lack of that is a real pain when helping someone with Chinese language Windows. Can you install and configure a network or printer driver without the ability to read any of the text, not even the buttons?

Re:"the ability to switch languages on the fly"

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, this is actually a pretty nice feature because it means that *finally* there is one Windows for all languages. Most previous versions were dedicated builds with very different binaries (different string tables compiled in) for all languages plus there was a - different - multilingual UI option that was still another set of binaries where you could actually choose/switch the UI language without reinstalling the whole OS.

Re:"the ability to switch languages on the fly"

[Lord Chaos EOG]

This is a great thing and a great improvement...but a delicious cake with diarrhea excrement all over it still tastes like shit.

Because

[Joe U]

And i have 10 legit win7 home premium licenses, why should i have to pay more?

Because Microsoft took the time to design and develop desktop software that runs on server class architecture. Because they took the time to test the features. Because they took the time to support those features. Do you think designing and adding a second CPU is something that just gets slapped in without any extra work?

You essentially have a professional class workstation, you're going to spend more because it takes more to work with your hardware.

Re:No domain connectivity for Home edition...again

[Lord_Jeremy]

Why do you have to spend extra time fending off malware with a pirated copy? Non-genuine Windows runs Windows Update and Windows Defender just as well as the "genuine" version. Hell I'm running pirated Windows that's recognized as genuine as well as a pirated copy of Nod32 (AV) on my desktop.

To make Metro go away, press LWin

[tepples]

I seem to remember reading that the "greasy finger interface", as you call it, is analogous to the Start menu of Windows 4 through 7. This article claims that one can toggle between it and the desktop by pressing the Windows key, just as one can toggle the Start menu on and off with the Windows key.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Korin43]

Yes, yes, everyone who works differently than you is wrong.

Hopefully when this guy said "The idea is basically that if you want to use something like your browser, email, an IDE, etc., there's no reason to have multiple windows up, since they'll just distract you from what you're doing.", he wasn't asserting something similarly bogus along the lines of "everybody who doesn't want to have their IDE be the only window up on the screen is wrong".

Thanks for the straw man, but that's not what I was saying at all.

What I meant was that they're designed with that assumption (hence the choice of words, "the idea is..."). I agree that this assumption doesn't hold true for everyone.

Windows 7 homegroup

[tepples]

Single sign-on to NAS storage and other computers in the household?

Isn't that what a Windows 7 homegroup is for?

Re:Mass adoption is antithetical to general comput

[leonardluen]

I have no love of Microsoft, but the primary thing keeping me in windows, at home, are games. wine really isn't a viable solution to this. If i could natively game in Linux i would switch overnight. So for me, Linux is currently useless on the desktop. However, it is by far my favorite server OS.

and as long as you don't do anything stupid, it is easy to keep windows malware/virus free. even without regularly running resource hogging antivirus software. The problem is the average user does stupid things.

Windows isn't really what i would call a "walled garden", and they are quite successful in the home market. in fact i would say linux, as it is now, is more of a walled garden simply because there are more limited choices in applications available and less major publishers that create linux applications, both closed and open source.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[forkfail]

Not sure if you're trolling or just ignorant.

You get no real choices about certain things that make some people's work significantly easier.

You get no start button choices. Yes, there might be a mod out there, but MS will provide you with no choice.

You get no choice about hot corners, single apps displayed (no multiple movable windows allowed), or a number of other things.

You've talked about choices elsewhere in this thread - but you consistently miss the point that you. get. none. from. Windows. 8.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[shutdown -p now]

It is also possible to have two Metro apps side by side in Win8, but it's rather limited - it is always at a predefined proportion (something like 1:4), and you cannot resize it - so the only option you have is to decide whether you want the smaller window on the left or on the right. Well, I guess it beats fullscreen-only in iOS or Android...

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Missing.Matter]

The start menu may be flawed in some ways, but it is the evolution of years of interface feedback.

This same feedback is actually the driving force behind the new start screen. This msdn blog post explains that because of the new start bar win Windows 7, the start menu has become somewhat of a relic. In my own experience, I have to agree, as the only time I open the start menu is to search. So why continue to "evolve" something that has pretty much outlived its time. The start menu doesn't need any more evolution.

It's the distance one has to move the mouse (to "invisible icons" in the corners).

These "invisible icons" as you call them, or hot corners as they're commonly known, have infinite size, so according to Fitts's law, the distance you have to move to them has no bearing on the time it takes to target the corner.

It's the mandatory whole screen paradigm.

There is a whole screen paradigm, but it's not mandatory. You're free to use the desktop and open however many apps and windows you want.

It's the AOL look and feel

Not sure what this means but I enjoy the aesthetic, and certainly prefer it to faux textures and gradients/rounded edges/mirrored surfaces/shadows prevalent in every other interface out there.

snapping smart corners that are great on a touch screen - but not so much with a mouse.

For me the mouse analogues to touch features serve just fine.

It's the assumption that people want their desktop screen to be touch

This assumption has never been made; there are plenty of mouse gestures and keyboard shortcuts being designed specifically for keyboard/mouse. In fact, I can get around the interface pretty handily by just using a keyboard.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[shutdown -p now]

Fitts Law is overrated. In the age of 24" monitors, I don't want to swipe the mouse halfway across the desk to hit something.

Pragmatically speaking, I use Metro home screen daily both at work and at home - and every time I do, I am reminded of how much more efficient I was with the Start menu.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[shutdown -p now]

Windows already had a homogeneous look and feel

... which does not work well on tablets and cellphones.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Korin43]

You've talked about choices elsewhere in this thread - but you consistently miss the point that you. get. none. from. Windows. 8.

I'm not talking about whether this should be required. Look at all of my posts. Where's the one where I say, "and that's why everyone should have to use Metro"?

In fact, I'm not talking about Windows at all. This is what I was responding to:

I can hardly imagine working with something like Gnome 3, Unity or Metro

I realize now that I should have quoted that part, but really, even if I was talking about the benefits of Metro, that doesn't imply that I think forcing everyone to use it was a good idea.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

And search is still there on the Start Screen.

Re:Windows RT?

[shutdown -p now]

RDP client is not an issue - it's available. But you can't RDP onto a WinRT tablet.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[FatdogHaiku]

I think Classic Shell is gearing up to work with Win 8...
http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

Re:No domain connectivity for Home edition...again

[couchslug]

"Why do you have to spend extra time fending off malware with a pirated copy?"

I didn't say "extra'. :-)

The burden of malware defense goes with all Windows versions, licit or otherwise.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Missing.Matter]

Honestly I never even use the start menu anymore. All the programs I ever use are pinned on the start bar. I guess the only time I actually open the start menu is to search. This is in line with what MS found through usage statistics gathered from thousands of users; that people just aren't using the start menu anymore. So I have to wonder how many people this change actually affects, and I also imagine the impact is blown out of proportion on sites like slashdot where people A) don't even use windows and B) have some sort of axe to grind against Microsoft.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[StuartHankins]

Having a couple of choices would be beneficial, rather than having users possibly forgo the upgrade to migrate to another system because they dislike the UI. Especially when the UI is the thing that most users interact with most. Especially if there are no other official "editions" or window managers available.

You don't have to get extreme with options, but clearly some people are going to want to see more things on-screen simultaneously than others. Oh well, guess we will have to see how that plays out.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[forkfail]

Except - how many people in a work environment have their data reported? Most competent IT departments don't allow such feedback to be sent.

Which means that the samples were comprised mostly of home users, which are a very different set than the productive business users and developers.

And in fact, most knowledgeable home users would disable the feedback as well as a matter of course.

But - nothing I'm going to say here is going to change Windows 8 at this point. MS has chosen a course, and has committed to it. I'll ride it out, and hope that the following Windows learns. It would follow the pattern of good-bad-good-bad-good-bad that seems to be the norm.

It's only officially interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

... when Parallels has support and I can run the zoo of M$ Partner apps on my Mac

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there are people working on overlapping windows on Android.

Would be kinda entertaining if at some point in future MS released Metro-only version of Windows at the same time as Google releases desktop version of Android.

Re:No domain connectivity for Home edition...again

[Anonymous Coward]

and a carton of cigarettes is also 'free' if you walk into a 7-11 with a pistol, point it at the clerk, and shout, give me a carton of smokes.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Missing.Matter]

Except - how many people in a work environment have their data reported?

Microsoft addressed this exact question in this post, reposted below:

@Andrew wrote: "I'd like to point out that this data you collect is most likely from non-corporate users, you're basing all your statistics around home users and not business users. Most enterprises will turn off the CEIP by default in Group Policy as a security precaution and to prevent chatter from the network."

Andrew, while it’s true that some enterprises choose not to enable the CEIP (Customer Experience Improvement Program, which gives us anonymous, opt-in feedback about how people are using Windows,) we still receive a huge amount of data from this program, including from enterprise customers. In addition, knowing the region, language, edition, and deployment attributes of the product allows us to further refine the data as needed. We often refer to this data as a full "census" (again noting that the data is opt-in and anonymous) as the number of unique data points is magnitudes beyond a "sampling."

In addition to the CEIP program, we have a wide variety of channels to our corporate customers to understand their needs. For example, we collect feedback continuously during direct engagement with customers (such as during on-site visits and in our briefing centers around the world), from advisory council and early-adopter program members, and at public events such as TechEd and //build/. We also work closely with industry analysts (via consultations and their research) and execute a wide range of our own research studies directly. From these interactions, we know the kind of functionality and control that enterprises want over the Start menu and we are definitely taking these into account as we are designing and developing the changes for Windows 8.

When you look at the data, we can see that enterprise customers do, in fact, have some different experiences with their Start menus:
While 81% of home users have the default links like Control Panel, Games, and Documents on right hand-side of the Start menu , fewer than 2% of our enterprise customers have this experience.
Most people have removed some items in this part of the Start menu (with Games and Media Center entry points most often removed).
Enterprise users are launching pinned Start menu apps 68% more often than home users, but the usage of pinned items is still less than 10% of the sessions.

What are we doing with this information?

In general, individual enterprise customers are using Start menus that their administrators have customized. Using this research and our engagement with the enterprise community, we are working on special features that can help address the need for customization in the Start screen. For example, enterprises can remove items like Games and Help & Support from the Start screen. For Windows 8, we support deployment scenarios that include Start screens with a layout of tiles that matches their business group’s needs, allowing for an even greater number of pinned apps to be pre-defined for their users. We also support the managed lockdown of customization of the Start screen so that it is consistent across the corporation. These features have been built especially for our enterprise customers, taking into account the existing functionality that we have provided in the past and the needs that we perceive they will have in the future. And as many know, tech-savvy individuals can use these customizations as well.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

When coding often have multiple items open, from multiple code windows, SQL database, design references, support documentation etc., etc.

Home: just die already

[Anonymous Coward]

Worst. Idea. Ever. It's not like a car, where there's a real cost of adding features like alloy wheels, dual exhaust, a turbo, etc. It's software. The cost of pressing a Pro CD == the cost of pressing a Home CD. If I were in charge of MS I would sooooo KILL the whole "Home" concept. Sheesh. It's such an insult. They should just call it "Windows Crippled".

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Kenshin]

Then call the OS on phones and tablets something other than "Windows", because even though they share a similar codebase, it's not Windows.

Re:Windows Releases Split - Stable & Developme

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, the development model the Linux kernel left years ago in exchange for a better one?

Re:Mass adoption is antithetical to general comput

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux users: post if you actually want linux to see widespread adoption in the home market. Also note whether you think that this could happen without linux becoming a walled garden.

Yes, it would make it a lot easier to get driver/software support. Though honestly, if it ever happens, I'll probably switch to BSD.

And no desktop is currently a walled garden, so of course an OS can be popular.

3 Flavors of Windows 8

[DaKong]

That would be "shitty," "poopy," and "crappy?"

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

After using the new start screen for a while, I find it much more useful than the start menu.

Subtle troll is subtle.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[toriver]

Editor on monitor 1, documentation on monitor 2, etc.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[forkfail]

Maybe you're right. The sales figures will tell in the end, neh? Remember, though, no amount of spin can make a long term impact on what people think about what they consider their tools. Their toys, entertainment, politics, fashion sense, what they think is beautiful - yep. But their tools - no, people know what works.

Personally, I'll keep myself on Win7 as long as possible, and hope that Win9 goes back up to the high standard that Win7 presented.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[interkin3tic]

Shills these days. Back in my day, if you were going to make a pointless first post on slashdot, you did it AC. And we liked it! We loved it! Didn't have to waste time registering just to make a silly shit of a post.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[WaffleMonster]

Honestly I never even use the start menu anymore.

Good for **YOU**

I have to wonder how many people this change actually affects, and I also imagine the impact is blown out of proportion on sites like slashdot where people A) don't even use windows and B) have some sort of axe to grind against Microsoft.

There is no need to question motives of people who think differently than yourself.

If there was only a choice the whole issue would go away. As it stands having the entire screen replaced when the start menu is depressed is viewed as counterproductive to many. Given millions of people are perfectly happy with Win7 and XP expecting Microsoft customers to upgrade only to be annoyed by a constant clash of interface concepts is a hard sell to say the least.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[isorox]

I found the search feature to be the best thing added to the start menu since it was added to Windows. It actually made the damn thing usable again. I don't even bother navigating the menus now, I just type in the name of whatever I want

So, uh, kinda like opening a bash prompt then?

On Linux, I have Alt-Escape mapped to a rxvt/bash window, which I launch everything apart from firefox from (there's a menu at the top)

On my XP VM I use Start-R for a run dialog

On my mac, I only have 5 programs I launch, all in the task bar

Windows 7 brings functionality up to a 10-year old linux desktop. It's getting there, one day I can see a headline like "2016 is the year of the windows desktop", but not quite yet.

Long mode can't run 16-bit code

[DragonHawk]

So far the only thing that has broken is 64-bit versions of Windows don't let you run 16-bit software.

For a change, that's not actually Microsoft's fault. When in "long mode" (the 64-bit mode), x86 compatible CPUs do not support "virtual 8086 mode". So, if you're running a 64-bit OS, it simply can't run a 16-bit process.

Although machine-level virtualization must get around this somehow. Which makes me wonder if that technique -- whatever it is -- couldn't be adapted to a more lightweight way to run a 16-bit process (without requiring a whole 'nother running instance of the OS).

Re:Long mode can't run 16-bit code

[Anonymous Coward]

Wine let's me play 16 bit under 64x, I don't know how.

Re:Long mode can't run 16-bit code

[Alioth]

They could just do what Apple did (Rosetta, so you could run PowerPC apps on x86 Macs without needing another instance of the OS)

Re:Long mode can't run 16-bit code

[DragonHawk]

They could just do what Apple did (Rosetta, so you could run PowerPC apps on x86 Macs without needing another instance of the OS)

That's (pardon the pun) apples to oranges. Rosetta is a software emulation of the PowerPC architecture. x86 virtualization is typically hardware based; it's just a task switch, While they *could* go that route, it's not what I was getting at. :)

"Fan Boy"

[tesdalld]

If you look over my comments you may see i am a "Fan Boy" for windows... But this user interface (UI) sucks so hard. What the hell are they thinking!?! They need to have a tablet OS and a Desktop OS. ARGH, this user interface is full on none usable. #BLDWIN

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Iceykitsune]

what about a workplace which cant/wont spring for multiple monitors?

Re:Did MS learn something from Windows 7 "flavours

[timothyf]

The ARM version is only being sold to OEMs. That, as I understand it, is why its a separate version.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the easiest way to get the Start screen with a mouse or touch, is by going to the RIGHT edge of the screen and then hitting the Start charm.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Missing.Matter]

Good for **YOU**

Me and many other people, according to Microsoft usage statistics. Usage in the start menu has dropped tremendously since the introduction of the start bar. What exactly do you use the start menu for anyway? At its core it's just a box with shortcuts on it. Fast desktop-wide searching has removed my need to ever use the "all programs link" and jump lists have removed the need to ever use the documents links. The only other useful function is pinned apps, and they go on my start bar anyway.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[toriver]

Of course it does! That the iPad sold more in three months than Windows-based tablets had in ten years was just marketing and the reality distortion field in effect. Clearly, Windows Pen Edition was the ultimate in human-computer interaction.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[wed128]

The Gnome 3 "activites screen" is like mac osX expose, but with the virtual desktops blown up to the side. Also, new virtual desktops are created dynamically. I'm not sure why, but it just sort of clicks with me. I've tried other virtual desktop systems (like all the compiz eye-candy) and this is the one that makes the most sense to me.

Basically, I always tended to forget that the cube has other sides, so to speak; whereas Gnome 3 shows me all the other sides whenever i'm switching tasks (on the activities screen). also, I always used gnome-do (and launchy on windows) - that functionality is built right in.

Some people are never happy

[tehlinux]

Windows Vista/7 had too many different versions. Windows 8 will have 3 and the response is, "why doesn't the basic version include xxx!?"

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Missing.Matter]

The sales figures will tell in the end, neh?

True. The same thing was said about Office when they introduced the Ribbon. The consensus on Slashdot was, and still is, that the ribbon is a productivity nightmare, and no one would upgrade from Office 2003. In fact it was seen as the dawn of new age for Open Office, as Slashdot assured that users would switch in droves when confronted with the new UI. Of course at launch, Office 2007 sold twice as many copies as 2003, and sales continue strongly with Office 2010 selling over 200 million licenses to date. In matters concerning how the general public will receive a product, I tend to bet against Slashot's collective opinion (see also: iPod, iPhone, iPad, Linux).

Re:Can't wait!!!

[NeverSuchBefore]

Well, see, they changed the UI a bit and made a few other inconsequential changes. Now spend a couple hundred upgrading to Windows 8!

Re:Mass adoption is antithetical to general comput

[strikethree]

The only reason I ever wanted ANY sort of popularity for Linux is so that hardware manufacturers would either write drivers for their hardware or provide enough information so that someone else could write drivers for their hardware. What use is Linux if it can not speak to any hardware?

strike
(CAPTCHA is breaker... weird)

Re:Did MS learn something from Windows 7 "flavours

[19thNervousBreakdown]

That's a purely marketing consideration though. The GP implied that there's a technical reason.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[aix tom]

Well. That might have worked a few years ago. But these days it's just to painful to have them sandblasted and tattooed anew every few month when Microsoft / Canonical / Gnome / etc.... ditch them for the next great thing. ;-P

Re:Can't wait!!!

[DigiShaman]

Most likely an automated posting bot armed and ready with account to post anything that involves Windows 8 submissions. The bot checks Slashdot every so often waiting to pounce the moment such a story is published.

Just look at the bots submission time vs story submission time. Both say 9:15am. It's fucking obvious. It shouldn't be too difficult to flag these submissions that match behavioral patterns, then leave it up to the community to mod up or down to oblivion.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[sam_paris]

Ok so here my two cents as an engineer currently building a Windows 8 game. I've been using Windows 8 since DP4. I.e. Developer Preview 4. Currently I'm using DP6, which is the latest build since the Consumer Preview (CP) was released. I have gotten used to the Metro interface and use it as an app search and launchpad. Basically I see the whole Windows 8 thing as basically a faster, cleaner, sparklier Windows 7 with a revised Start Menu. It's clear some optimizations have been under the hood to make the OS load faster, run faster, and in generally be more efficient.

As far as the Metro interface goes, it's fine. I use it with both my touchscreen monitor and mouse and keyboard. It doesn't make my day to day job any easier or harder, it's just different. Also, keep in mind that as a primarily back-end dev, I need to use all of the more advanced features of Windows and so far haven't found my experience to be any worse than Win 7. The only bad thing right now is the massive buggy mess that is Visual Studio 11.

Win 8 is basically Win 7 with bells on. You can pin Non-Metro apps to the start screen and the app/settings search is fast. I use the start screen merely through my keyboard. Hit Windows key, start typing app-name, hit enter. That's it. As far as Metro apps go, I don't really use any except the game I'm working on,,, which rocks.. ;)

Re:Did MS learn something from Windows 7 "flavours

[couchslug]

Hand them a list of features so they can be pissed at MSFT and/or themselves instead.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[toddestan]

Windows 7 is supported until 2020, so if you don't like Windows 8 sit it out and hope that Windows 9 is better. Or wait until Windows 10, which will almost certainly be out before Windows 7 is EOL'd. I'm sure a lot of people will do just that.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Trogre]

All I want to know is this: Can you select your available domains from a list, or do you still have to type in DOMAINNAME\USERNAME when logging in to a domain different from the last person who used it?

If you can't do that (as you can't in Vista/7), then there is no way it can replace XP on our student desktops.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[enemorales]

Metro is about MS making a homogenous look and feel across all possible platforms,

I agree with this.

and thus, having to go to the least common denominator (cell phone interfaces) for all of them.

I do not agree with this. I think that cellphones are, now, the "most common" denominator, not the "least" one. There are so many smartphones around, that now people are more used to this kind of interface, so it does make computers more usable if they agree with the paradigm. I also think this is shit for "power users" or "developers", but that is less than 1% of the market, so MS will not care.

Oh, really? U *might* want to watch these

[Anonymous Coward]

"I just cannot fathom why at this point that Microsoft still does not grasp how important security is." - by SuperKendall (25149) on Tuesday April 17, @10:25AM (#39710101)

SuperKendall, nothing against you but... you *MIGHT* want to rescind that just a WEE bit after seeing some of these:

(The person giving them's a pretty respected source & yes, from the sound of what you said? I wager you'll even LIKE them + find them informative...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f151maKyC-M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSeNWvjhBfg

I've developed a newfound respect for that guy after watching them recently in fact, good stuff!

(& yes, I more than "know of him personally", albeit indirectly (i.e. - not like we go have beers together), & via working for the same company in the mid to late 1990's contracting to they for wares we did, & he later attacking a class of wares I had a bit to do with (which I overturned with documentation from MS themselves regarding Exchange Servers & about "dedicate all free RAM to cache" which utterly FAILED on VISTA & had to be 'backed down' quite severely in fact... that was AFTER I corrected a flaw in 1 of his wares by telling him of it, to which he thanked me for in email, & then what/when/where/why via the NtAPI Native call interface)).

Ah, anyhow/anyways, that "all said & aside" & quite the reason for anyone going "WTF? You're saying this about he now after that??"

Yea, I mean it.

See, for example:

I've heard folks here (yes, even on /. believe-it-or-not) state that HE ought to be the next guy to lead MS, & know what?

I am starting to think along those lines myself... why? Ok, a list:

1.) He's got the brains/talent/work-ethic

2.) He has run his own business successfully on a smaller scale

3.) Perhaps most importantly? He's extremely well spoken & has a nice manner too...

AND??

4.) Stupid as it MAY sound to some folks? He's tall (sound stupid? It matters in mgt. from a psychological standpoint)).

* Anyhow, after reading what you wrote? You DO NEED TO SEE THOSE VIDEOS... they're actually good too, in a "geeky kind of way"... made me have a new respect for he (not that I ever didn't respect him, I can't disrespect a person that built a tool as useful as ProcessExplorer).

I say all this because parts of those videos outline a great deal of security architecture in Windows (beyond DEP, ASRL, & more even).

APK

P.S.=> On an off-note? Heh - Dr. Mark Russinovich reminds me of Richard Gere in his expressions quite often (the latter's from my hometown & I used to be a 'big fan' of his films, so I suppose that's good enough to make that statement from a personal perspective)... don't get the wrong idea here either: I am not a "man's- man" so-to-speak either (that's for immature trolls trying to bust my nuts for this).

I don't know about you guys, but - I have trouble @ times "taking orders" from people I don't feel should be in a mgt. position if they haven't done the job (makes for BAD decision making & I've SEEN that happen... it costs jobs usually to offset losses is why)

So - would I listen to he & take his orders? Yes, absolutely, because I respect him (even if I have had 'minor differences' with him over time))

Anyhow - see those vids, & others of his up there on YouTube... most are decent stuff that might lend you a different perspective on what you've stated!

(However - I agree with you though that stripping features out of "lesser versions" or 'watering them down' is bogus, but that's how they're making money - personally? I think MS should charge a BIT MORE, but sell basically "Advanced Server/DataCenter edition" bundled with Office + MS Visual Studio - that's pretty much what Linux does for the most part too! They d

Re:Can't wait!!!

[munwin99]

Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. http://verydemotivational.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/demotivational-posters-history.jpg

Re:Can't wait!!!

[chrismcb]

One thing I dislike about Office 10 is the "outspace" or the file menu. It isn't full screen, but it fills the app. It is big, clunky, and useless. It seems much more difficult to use, and to heavy than the old file menu.
I want to open a new file, not swap out my entire application.
I haven't gotten use to it, and I can't imagine the start menu (err start screen) in win 8 being any better

Someone should create a slick Linux Distro

[Anonymous Coward]

And call it Linux 9. :) It's simple marketing, my dear Watson. As Windows 8 makes its debut, the number 8 becomes associated with the latest and (cough...) greatest... OS. 9 is the next logical step, so the Penguinistas simply beat Redmond to the number 9. Then when they get ready to pinch off yet another version of their so-called "operating system", beat them to that, too.

Call this new initiative "always be 6 months or more ahead of M$." See how *they* like it.

wake me up when...

[pbjones]

the price of the biggest selling OS in the world is also the cheapest, or at a reasonable price.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Robert Zenz]

Thanks for explaining that. Now I understand why I have a problem with that philosophy. I'm the "I want to see everything at one glance, no matter how cluttered up it seems, I know where everything is" type. Thanks.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[DrXym]

Yes I'm used to it but it works and it is not unreasonable to demand that whatever replaces it offers equivalent functionality or provides some better way of doing it. I do not believe Metro does this on a desktop PC. I believe it's a horrible retrograde experience in its current consumer preview incarnation. Hauling the mouse around virtual screens full of icons to accomplish what the start menu does in about 1/8th of the screen and does without hiding your work is not a good experience at all.

I have suggested ways it could be improved and perhaps MS will implement some of them. But the consumer preview is all I have to go on and IMO it is a heap of shit. Metro was designed for fingers and small tablets and the experience on mouse / keyboard with large screens still feels shoehorned in. An afterthought. It has to improve. Maybe it has in the intervening time since the preview came out and if it has I'll revise my opinion when I get to mess around with it again.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[DrXym]

I agree with most of your points. The alt + power off thing is a bit annoying though I suppose you could see it from the perspective that modern machines can save / resume state these days so a full power off is not what most users probably want given it takes longer to restart.

I do not think there are fundamental issues with GNOME 3 though, just a lack of maturity and refinement. I hope as it progresses through 3.4, 3.6 etc. that most of these will disappear and the number of shell extensions will increase to augment the default behaviour where there is an itch to be scratched.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[FireFury03]

The alt + power off thing is a bit annoying though I suppose you could see it from the perspective that modern machines can save / resume state these days so a full power off is not what most users probably want given it takes longer to restart.

I don't really see a problem with hiding it (although I don't actually think there is any point in doing this) so long as there are visual cues to tell you that there's something hidden and how to reveal it. But in its current form, the only way you'll figure out there's something hidden there is by blindly banging all the keys on the keyboard to see what happens.

And yes, I agree that suspending/hibernating is the norm now, but there are still valid reasons to power off. For example, I usually put my laptop to sleep, but when I know it will be left a long time (days) on battery power then this is silly - the battery will be flat the next time I come to use it. I could hibernate it, but this actually takes longer to save/restore the RAM to disk than just shutting down/booting, so unless I have some work-in-progress open that I want to save the state of, I will usually power off completely in this case.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[drsmithy]

Instead of being a button on the screen, it's a full screen waste of space.

Given you would only see it for the purpose of starting another application, how can it be a waste of space ?

Re:Can't wait!!!

[hobarrera]

Seriously, is it that hard to understand that not everyone works the same way?

That's exactly the point!
With windows7's wm, gnome2, mac os x's WM, compiz, or most other popular WMs, you can:
1) have 1 (or 2) windows ocupy the whole screen
2) have 20 windows opupy the whoel screen.

Metro only offers choice 1.

Re:Windows Releases Split - Stable & Developme

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows XP = Stable
Windows Vista = Development/Experimental
Windows 7 = Stable
Windows 8 = Development/Experimental

offcourse being microsoft they have to do it backwards and use even for the development versions

Your life is on your computer

[tepples]

Only "pro" users would even consider such a concept as backing up being related to networks.

Is Carbonite's "your life is on your computer" ad campaign making any headway in changing that?

Offtopic? WTF?

[mcgrew]

I ask questions about Windows 8 in a story titled "the three flavors of windows 8" and it's offtopic? How in the hell is that in any way offtopic? Whoever modded that comment down should never have mod points again.

Please bring the old metamoderation system back!

Now this comment IS offtopic, feel free to mod it as such.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[phantomfive]

It could be worse. They could add bugs and make it monochrome and make the UI even more unintuitive, like VS11. I just used that the first time yesterday. Horrible.

Re:Windows Releases Split - Stable & Developme

[davewoods]

You got modded up as funny. But I think you are serious, and I actually believe that this is how they are doing things.

Well, this is the most logical thing I have seen, it makes sense if you think about it.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

dont you mean "protip"?

pompous fuck.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Im sorry, the success of the tablets took lamens by surprise. I was using my finger nails to dial in on wince because the stylus was part of the issue, seriously. The fingers were all its about imo, and hindsight suffers for it. Compiled in on the crap was m$ shitty implementation for touch devices, |crap|. No one person enjoyed the layers of bs and the piss (poor) tiny gui and crappy updates. M$ touch stagnated for decades, literally.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[randyleepublic]

>> shoved Metro in Windows Server 8

Wait, what? Microsoft still doesn't get it? Look, VMware does a lot of stuff wrong, but there is one thing that they got totally right, and it is so obviously correct that I'm embarrassed that I didn't think of it first: Install the server, (e.g. esxi host or server 8 kernal), on the server hardware with nothing user related but a get started wizard and a command line UI. Then provide a GUI application that runs on a regular Windows desktop and remotely controls the server. Why load all that UI cruft into your server installation - leave it in a Windows desktop where it belongs. Duh!

Where's the "No-tiles" edition of Windows 8?

[Lord Chaos EOG]

Seriously!

Re:Can't wait!!!

[cthulhu11]

Huh? *Yours* is the first post.

Re:Can't wait!!!

[Volguus Zildrohar]

I find the search to be horribly limited and irritating unless you know exactly what you want. It won't find anything except a perfect match (for items that exist but are not on the menu, e.g. regedit), or a perfect prefix match for shortcuts that do exist. The regedit thing is particularly annoying if you type reg like you used to with the run prompt, and instead run reg.exe in an immediately disappearing cmd prompt.

For example, I know I have a VNC client on one machine, but I can't search for "vnc" because it won't find it. I have to know whether I'm using TightVNC, RealVNC, or RunOutOfExamplesVNC and start my search with the right letters.

IMO both Microsoft and Apple screwed this up for fast launching. Quicksilver is the only app I've used that does this well (and I'm sure there are good clones too).