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Windows 8 Release Preview Now Available To Download
MrSeb writes "Microsoft has announced the immediate availability of Windows 8 Release Preview. Unfortunately there isn't a Consumer Preview > Release Preview upgrade path — you'll have to format and perform a clean installation. After downloading the ISO, simply burn Windows 8 RP onto a USB stick or DVD, reboot, and follow the (exceedingly quick and easy) installer. Alternatively, if you don't want to format a partition, ExtremeTech has a guide on virtualizing Windows 8 with VirtualBox. After a lot of fluster on the Building Windows 8 blog, the Release Preview is actually surprisingly similar to the Consumer Preview. Despite being promised a new, flat, Desktop/Explorer UI, Aero is still the default theme in Windows 8 RP. The tutorial that will introduce new users to the brave new Start buttonless Windows 8 world is also missing. Major features that did make the cut are improved multi-monitor support — it's now easier to hit the hot corners on a multi-monitor setup, and Metro apps can be moved between displays — and the Metro version of IE10 now has a built-in Flash plug-in. There will be no further pre-releases of Windows 8: the next build will be the RTM."
I'm going to buy 10 retail copies of Windows 7 so that I'll have plenty for any future needs.
That'll show Microsoft they can't jerk me around.
Sadly Linux won't take over anything (at least not now). Think Longhorn revolt followed by the success of W7. You gotta take a shot in the dark sometimes and if this turns out to be a ton of crap, they'll listen and go back to what's right. That's generally been the way MS has done things.
I mean, seriously? Starting stuff from the stupid Start screen?
It was so much better back in the day when you started stuff from the shutdown menu.
Of course Microsoft will still get the massive number of automatic installs due to their lock on OEMs and corporations locked into Microsoft tech, but for every single person I know Microsoft has become a non-entity in their lives.
Over the past few years it has rapidly become cellphones and tablets. No one goes home after work to sit in front of their computer checking their email and webbrowsing. They do that all day long now on their Android phones and tablets or iPhones and iPads. Ten years ago I would hear all the time about what computer someone was planning on buying or what they were doing with their computer. Now it is all about what Android or Apple cellphone or tablet to buy. And in the rare occasion someone actually does talk about buying a new computer it is almost universally a Mac to replace their old Windows machine.
I think a lot of people are missing a few really smart choices it would appear Microsoft is intentionally making. First, they realize that corporate customers like their long term anchor software. They have done that with Windows 7 as the successor to XP as frequently mentioned. Second I think they are going to a release plan of Experiment followed by a Refinement release.
Consider first that Microsoft supports too many customers with too diverse of requirements to be doing miniscule yearly feature releases as with OSX and Linux. OSX can because they have fixed hardware to support and a vastly smaller software library. Linux can because the community doesn't have anywhere near the hardware support of Windows and software is not binary compatible a requires recompilation.
Faced with this issue, it only makes sense that Microsoft will release an OS filled with experimentation to find out what users and customers do a don't like and then make the next version the refinement, enhancement, and trimming of those features. Vista was full of UI experiments which were great ideas but only marginally implemented or just didn't flow easily. I couldn't stand Vista and only used it a few hours before going back to XP. I know I am by far not in a minority in having this experience. Windows 7 was taking all those features and fixing them, making them flow and interact together and getting rid of the development cruft. Windows 7 is great for many users, myself included.
Windows 8 is filled with great ideas. It's filled with original ideas and people are complaining. Sure, Metro came from WP7 development, but nobody else considered using the metaphors for desktop use or how to adapt them. Again the number one complaint is incompleteness or not enough UI interoperability with the manners in which users have become acclimated. If Microsoft continues the pattern, then sure, some consumers will be forced to be guinea pigs with Windows 8, especially if the Windows tablet market takes off appreciably. In the same stroke, Windows 9 could easily come as the refinement stage where it all makes better sense.
Who cares if Windows 8 is a dog. Vista was a dog and it led directly to 7. Give some credit to a company that could sit on it's old style of business like IBM in the late 70's, but instead challenges itself with products which can fail and are interesting and different.
Linux by comparison has no consistent desktop metaphors. You have to test drive at least 3 different distros before you are sure which one will work. The only nearly consistent interfaces are the ones released at the same time as XP in stripped down distros. Unity is not bad, but it's just not for me. The more recent release is really getting there though. It's great experimentation in a different direction for fusing the desktop, laptop, and tablet UI segments.
OSX is the opposite of where Linux and Windows have been experimenting. There is an extreme lack of interesting change since 2001 and only very small incremental refinements. Oooh, we just got a notification system, but really it's the one from our phones because we couldn't stand the thought of using a functional desktop one like in Windows 7 or Linux. You could actually load identical machines with OSX from 10 years ago and the latest Mountain Lion side by side and the average user wouldn't notice that they were different. If you think I am full of it, check this out: http://macgateway.com/featured-articles/a-decade-of-mac-os-x-a-retrospective/
You know what would be funny?
Let's assume (okay, state) that Windows 8 is a direct, reactionary response to the iPad and the whole "Post PC" thing.
What if Apple did it as a fake-out? What if, say, they pushed on tablets, but knew it would only go so far, yet pronounced that it would be the end-all, be-all? Microsoft spends all this time and treasure in a panicked reaction, turning their monster ship around to sail towards the mobile UI, overreacts (well, they already did IMHO), and commits irreversibly to the Metro UI thing. Once Windows 8 has been out for awhile, Tim Cook mounts the stage at the next Apple event, and proclaims that from here on in OSX would be sold retail for use on select Dell/HP/Lenovo OEM models, at reasonable prices. Furthermore, let's say that Apple would (from its rather massive war chest) pay OEMs more than Microsoft pays (at a ratio of 2:1 or perhaps 3:1) in "co-marketing" money in order to promote OSX over Windows.
Any takers on how big of a brick Steve Ballmer would shit out at the news? As an alternate bet, how much time do you think it would take him to call those OEMs with dire threats?
(I know - impossible, etc etc... but now with Jobs gone, maybe not so impossible? It would certainly liven up the OS wars a bit, and would be fun to watch. As a bonus, I could stop having to bother with the PITA efforts I usually expend in hackintoshing each new machine I get...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Yeah, they sure did go out n their own with Zune. And with the WinPhone7. And with Windows, itself. Boy! That Window imaging model introduced with Vista, what a brilliant departure from Quartz!
I think the use of touch and gestures that was an original in MS labs really schooled Apple on how to make a human interface work - after years of "struggling in the dark" over at Infinite Loop.
Microsoft's pioneering work on App stores is also not to be overlooked.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
You wanna see how REAL people deal with Win 8? Well here you go and as a retailer that set up a Win 8 CP for customers to try I can say that is pretty typical...the only difference I saw was more frustration and cursing.
I'm sure Win 8 is GREAT for cell phones and tablets, along with touch screen PCs...the problem is that is less than 5% of MSFT's market. in fact if you take out POS and Kiosks last numbers I saw had touch enabled X86 units at less than 2% of the market.
So you take a giant shit on 95% of the market.,...for 5% of the market and around 2% of the touch screen X86 units because POS and Kiosks run their own custom software. yep, no chance of a flop at all here. BTW Win 8 DID help my business, i had a lot of folks that were sitting on the fence buy Win 7! Thanks MSFT! Oh and thanks again for the year and a half of extra money as I get paid to wipe it off like i did Vista, that was a GREAT time for me, Thanks MSFT!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.