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

"showed off a host of Windows 8 devices"

[Trashcan Romeo]

Were journalists allowed to touch any of them this time?

Re:"showed off a host of Windows 8 devices"

[SJHillman]

I hear one of them was given a Surface tablet to use in place of his newspaper. The fly never saw it coming.

Re:"showed off a host of Windows 8 devices"

[recoiledsnake]

Related Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql71toSXNRY

Re:"showed off a host of Windows 8 devices"

[ninjacut]

Its RTM, available for download for all SA, Technet and MSDN subscribers. This is not the Surface tablet

Is this only for tablets

[Anonymous Coward]

Question: is there any reason for PC users to consider this OS, or is it only for tablets?

Re:Is this only for tablets

[Jeng]

Some may say that this is a re-incarnation of Microsoft Me or Microsoft Vista, no, it is much worse than that, this is a re-incarnation of Microsoft Bob.

It does not matter which platform you want to put this OS on, it will suck on all of them.

Re:Is this only for tablets

[Anonymous Coward]

Me and Vista were two very different problems. The former is what happens when you half-heartedly add a few features to a dying OS; the latter is what happens when you try to do quite a bit of under-the-hood engineering and modernisation, give up, start again, and then realise you've sold nothing new for half a decade so put out what you have before you're ready.

8 is what happens when you imagine that Program Manager wasn't sufficiently unsuitable for a modern high-res PC, and instead decide that you're working in CGA in an accessibility mode for people with reduced vision and dexterity.

This is like Acorn, Amiga, etc. in the late '90s - instead of following their strengths in the desktop world, they suddenly rush to the new consumer device - then it was the Set Top Box / Multimedia Thing / etc. A few minutes later, they're all but dead.

Hm, could MS really die out soon on the desktop?

Re:Is this only for tablets

[tripleevenfall]

It's Microsoft's attempt to build a new desktop OS that works well and that people like, but to improve usability in the face of their massive market losses to Apple which are mostly predicated on usability.

It's also an attempt to shortcut their way into the mobile space by adding a mobile UI to their existing product. Their mobile OS is failed on phones, but there's no big competitor to Apple in the tablet space right now, and MSFT hopes they can be that.

Basically, MSFT is years behind in just about every product line they have, but are still following their tried-and-true, packaging up other peoples' ideas with Windows logos, and selling them as innovation.

Re:Is this only for tablets

[chrb]

Citation please? I find it difficult to imagine in what universe Apple would use a half-finished, poorly marketed and mediocre system like Azure for their cloud offerings.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=icloud+azure

Re:Is this only for tablets

[Cute Fuzzy Bunny]

Me and Vista were the SAME problem...that being Microsoft's inability to perform a platform upgrade for windows in less than ~7 years. Sadly the cash flow wants 5 years, so they have to stump some piece of crap out that will bring in the cash.

ME was just 95 with some stuff on it (like 98) because XP wasn't going to be ready early enough to help the cash flow. Vista was basically win7 with some stuff cut off of it so they could get it to market, since 7 was going to take a couple more years to be ready.

Windows 7 is about all I (or anyone) needs for the foreseeable future. In fact XP is enough for many. Windows 8 is just a knee-jerk "lets put a phone interface on a pc" reaction, seems hard to me to use, and doesn't bring any serious features that would help a lot of people, or even a large minority.

So yeah, I'll be lumping it in with ME and Vista. Pointless crap designed to part people with some cash. The one major difference is that I think 7 will have a lot more staying power than XP, and Microsoft is in the same bucket as RIM. Rode the same pony for too damn long.

Update: Release Delayed

[erdos-bacon sandwich]

Microsoft has announced that the release date will be pushed out to Friday, December 21, 2012

What was the point of testing?

[Enderandrew]

1. Windows 8 was well tested by the masses. And I consistently saw the same complaints from most news shops and users.
2. Microsoft is still releasing Windows 8 on time rather than listening to any of the criticism levied during testing.
3. They have slashed the price really low. I do think they heard the criticism and know that consumers don't want Windows 8, but maybe if it is really cheap, people will buy it anyway.

Here's the problem. Why should I pay money to make my OS worse? Microsoft should listen to the criticism from testing and improve their product and then sell it for full price.

And, showing nothing ever changes on /.

[kiwimate]

Four stories after a submission asking if grammar matters any more, we find this gem of a sentence in the summary:

Steve Ballmer suggested Microsoft expected Surface to sell "millions" of the 375m Windows 8 PCs expected to sell in the next year â" spending much of the keynote talking about partners' devices.

Only thing bad about Win8 is Metro

[Aqualung812]

Comparing Win8 to ME or Vista is unfair to Win8.

The really sad part about Win8 is Metro. There is a LOT to like about the underlying OS (password unmask, much better taskmanager, and many other small improvements), and I have no reason to think that the OS itself will be unstable like ME or Vista.

If Microsoft would fix Metro on the desktop (It may be fine for tablets and phones), Win8 would be something I would like. However, as it currently stands, I won't "upgrade" until I have a good, stable way to disable Metro and use the other features of the OS.

Re:Only thing bad about Win8 is Metro

[smash]

The only way to "fix" metro is to kill it with fire. And then you have Windows 7 with a new task manager and IE10. Whoopie fucking doo.

I'm against the grain here, and I'll actually say that Vista was a good operating system. It was hobbled by lack of driver support and people trying to run it on inadequate hardware at the time, but if you run it on anything newer than say 2004 vintage with a couple of gigs of RAM, it is FINE.

I had zero stability problems. Windows 7 is essentially vista with UAC toned down a bit, a fancy UI slapped on top and some tweaks to the scheduler.

Re:Only thing bad about Win8 is Metro

[Billly Gates]

Windows 8 is fucking NICE kernel wise. I am using on a crappy el cheapo laptop with only 2 gigs of ram and a dual 1.6 ghz AMD turon with integrated graphics circa 2007. It boots in 25 seconds!

It is slip, Windows update runs circles around my 3 ghz phenom II desktop with 8 gigs of ram running Windows 7. Even with the buggy bios it sleeps and resumes in half the time my Asus desktop does with Windows 7.

It is even liter than XP on that old laptop. WindowsTOGO makes it possible to use a Windows bootcd like Linux users have done for a decade. Profiles are synched with all your desktop settings on the go and even has some Active Directory features without AD such as having policies and profiles complete with apps uploaded to your mobile device/laptop when you log in with your corporate email address as your login.

If Windows 7 was not a good enough reason for corporations to leave XP, Windows 8 certainly is appealing as sales and mobile people are a pain in the ass to support and lockdown when they are never on the network. ... If it were not for METRO I would predict corps skipping Win 7 and going right for Windows 8. But the gui is very very important for a workstation user as it is what the user interacts with all day. Sigh

Re:Only thing bad about Win8 is Metro

[smash]

Problem is - old hardware is old, and even hardware 5 years old runs Windows 7 well enough. The big cost to any company toying with the idea of Windows 7 will be user re-training, support staff re-training, and compatibility testing all their apps. Exactly the same reasons Windows 7 has found resistance, minus the metro clusterfuck.

Re:Only thing bad about Win8 is Metro

[smash]

Yeah don't get me wrong, I like Win7 a lot better than vista. But when comparing XP to Vista, Vista got a pretty fucking bad wrap. It made important steps in hardware abstraction, user space drivers, better security model, etc. Without vista before it, Windows 7 would have faced all the same compatibility and driver issues by virtue of being first to introduce them.

Re:Only thing bad about Win8 is Metro

[Eponymous Coward]

It seems like Microsoft's plan for Windows is to get rid of windows.

Re:Only thing bad about Win8 is Metro

[mcrbids]

Comparing Vista and Windows 7 performance wise is a joke. I have a respectable quad core AMD system with 3 Gigs of RAM that CRAWLED under Vista but runs very nicely on Win7, changing nothing else.

Yes, there were driver problems, people did run it on inadequate hardware, etc. but it's a clear indicator of where the problem is when the later (typically bigger/slower) versions run faster/better than the previous generation.

Re:Only thing bad about Win8 is Metro

[Hognoxious]

Vista got a pretty fucking bad wrap.

Should have gone for a traditional sandwich.

Plus a few dozen A/Cs doing sarcastic summations

[Viol8]

... of the discussion. You're as predictable as everyone else.

Only the GUI is bad? Well thats ok then

[Viol8]

I mean who uses the GUI to do much work in Windows anyway? Pfffft , cmd.exe is all I need!

Just wait for Win8 SP1

[Teresita]

Having dropped the Start Menu in the initial release, and cluttered the desktop with boring tiles, the first Windows 8 maintenance service pack will replace those tiles with a host of animated sprites. Click on the Pearly "Gates" to access the Cloud. Click on the lie detector sprite to verify your CD has been paid for using the Microsoft Trusted Customer Media Player. Click on the flying chair to register a bug report.