Microsoft: Windows 8 To RTM In August

nk497 writes "Microsoft has confirmed Windows 8 will RTM the first week of August, with general availability in late October. Steve Ballmer suggested Microsoft expected Surface to sell "millions" of the 375m Windows 8 PCs expected to sell in the next year — spending much of the keynote talking about partners' devices. From the article: 'Tami Reller, chief financial officer and chief marketing officer of the Windows and Windows Live division, confirmed the release date at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto today, as she showed off a host of Windows 8 devices created by the software giant's manufacturing partners.'"

Comments

Still delusional

[i kan reed]

Trying to sell a downgrade as the best thing ever is probably not good business sense.

Re:Is this only for tablets

[vlm]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_8

My favorite new security hole is "Instead of typing a password, users can create a four-digit PIN for easy logon to the computer." That and "picture password".

Basically every boot is a hibernate, which has some interesting security implications if you get access to a drive (via removal, or via booting linux/etc off a USB/optical) containing a hibernated image. I'm guessing this is the cover story for UEFI because if you have access to a hibernated image you have the keys to the kingdom so boot control is pretty important.

Icky UEFI to permanently lock linux or anything else out of running on "windows" commodity hardware. I'm sure you'll be able to special order dells with linux compatible bios at an additional cost of only twice the cost of a MS server license.

Integrating restore into the OS for the inevitable post-p0wn restoration.

Other than that, a bunch of UI mistakes, copying some linux-y features like finally being able natively to mount isos and having something like LVM.

Its hard to call it a "new" OS. Shuffle up the UI, Borg in a bunch of previously 3rd party stuff, copy some linux features, band aid on a broken leg security improvements, eh. I'm still using XP for my gaming partition and I'll probably keep on doing so until I find a reason I have to upgrade. Just recently upgraded to SP3 or whatever its called to get GTA4 to work.