Windows 8 Release Date: October 26th

Several readers sent word that Microsoft has selected a release date for Windows 8: October 26th. Steven Sinofsky made the announcement today at the company's annual sales meeting. The new version of the operating system will be sent to manufacturers next month, giving them plenty of time to prepare for general availability.

Comments

YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet Another Skip-It Release.

When XP is no longenr supported, I'll chose between Windows 7 or Ubuntu. No way am I supporting Metro in any way. Get that shit off the PC. If 9 looks promising, maybe I'll take my chances on using unsupported XP until 9 comes out.

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

No one cares, neckbeard. Yarrrr.

Re:YASIR

[Billly Gates]

Shit, people are angry that Office 2013 is not compatible with Exchange 2003.

The catch? It has not been supported or patched in years! Corporations will just use XP until 2019 and get infected over and over again. XP wont die and it will make tech support people rich in years to come after 2014

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

nobody cares about you too....

windows 8 = windows 7 + some nice new features + shit ui...

Re:YASIR

[Agares]

I'm not so sure about Windows 8 myself either. I think I will just see how it goes after the realease and decide whether to get it or Windows 7.

Re:YASIR

[X0563511]

Fuck Metro, and fuck Windows 8.

Re:YASIR

[cpu6502]

It seems odd to hear you say that, because Vista 6.0 was a pile of bugs, but Seven (6.1) is actually quite good. My company did a long jump from XP to Seven, and I would expect most companies to do the same.

Re:YASIR

[Billly Gates]

I wish people would upgrade but most including yourself, my family, and most client sites have no reason to switch from XP.

Equipment, intranet apps, and other things being right now in 2012 only work on XP. People resistant to change and the comments down here show that are average Joes are astounding! My pessimism grows but hell, it might help do support more after 2014 if they keep getting infected. That means more demand which means more money just like what webmasters charge for IE 6 development these days.

Re:YASIR

[phonewebcam]

Wise words indeed.

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

Not supported? Exchange 2003, along with Office 2003 and XP are supported (depending on agreement) and will receive security patches until 8th April 2014. You might want to actually look at MS's Product Support Lifecycle.

Re:YASIR

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Windows 7 is a damn fine windows release.

Windows 8 is better than windows 7. I dont suggest you skip it. Metro is odd yes, but MS is onto something...

Re:YASIR

[cpu6502]

>>>MS is onto something...

Can I have some? I'll just roll it in my ZigZag paper hear and light up.

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow that linked comment makes Slashdot looks like a community of PhD !

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

It's designed for a touch interface. You could make a fucking app...

Re:YASIR

[aahpandasrun]

I'm very skeptical, but I think people should give it a chance at least. There's plenty of radical changes that people balk at that end up catching on.

Re:YASIR

[Anomalyst]

I'll just roll it in my ZigZag paper hear and light up.

What exactly would you hear? do you anticipate auditory hallucinations after inhaling?

Re:YASIR

[Billly Gates]

Check again?

Exchange has not been supported in several years. If you have it at work I hope you do not get infected. Time to upgrade ASAP.

Re:YASIR

[Penguinisto]

Well, I can sum it up the revulsion in one word: Unity.

If you've ever had to use it, you'll know why Metro is (at least IMO) the suck.

Don't screw with my desktop paradigm by simplifying it too damned much - you introduce too much complexity that way.

(and to think - my favorite WM of all time is fluxbox.)

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

He probably suspects that he'll hallucinate that Windows 8 is actually usuable instead of the worthless piece of garbage that it is in real life. NEWS FLASH MS: your users* hate Metro. Your Metro phones don't sell worth a fuck and your metro computers won't either

*Yes I get that the PC OEMs are the real customers thus the "users" terminology.

Re:YASIR

[exomondo]

If the 'success' of Windows Phone is anything to go by they will be channel-stuffing their Surface tablets like there's no tomorrow...i don't see this going well.

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm very skeptical, but I think people should give it a chance at least. There's plenty of radical changes that people balk at that end up catching on.

Um, have you not been paying attention? People have been giving Metro 8 a chance. It was the most downloaded MS Beta ever. It has met almost universal revulsion. Yet they are plugging away in some misguided attempt to compete with the fucking iPad. The GODDAMN IPAD. They are throwing their desktop and corporate users under the bus to chase a fucking skirt. Have those fuckerlords in Redmond never heard the saying "Bros before hoes"? Pathetic.

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, yeah, if I was going to make an "app", I'd make it for a real tablet. It's called the fucking IPAD.

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, this level of retarded must be mainlined...roll up a sleeve, princess.

Re:YASIR

[gweihir]

Win 7 is not "damn fine". It is the first actually acceptable (i.e. mediocre) Windows. Win 8 promises to be worse in a lot of regards, not only the completely borked UI. An what business has an OS anyways to tell the user what GUI to use????

The thing MS is on to, is that they finally started with Win 7 to catch up to the other OSes. Still a decade or so behind, but it used to be worse.

Re:YASIR

[loufoque]

If only Ubuntu hadn't made so many mistakes in the past 4 versions, then probably many would have moved to it

Re:YASIR

[ChunderDownunder]

I wonder if the UEFI unlocking mandate extends to MS' own x86 hardware. The Surface might be a sweet machine to run Linux on! :)

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing MS is on to, is that they finally started with Win 7 to catch up to the other OSes. Still a decade or so behind, but it used to be worse.

In what regard? If it really were a decade behind everything else people would have switched long ago, OSX has only recently become decent and the major Linux distributions changed direction just when they were starting to be usable. Microsoft cannot afford to pay everyone to use their software so what is your explanation for the lack of adoption of a free alternative that is a decade ahead? Maybe some people would stick to Microsoft for legacy reasons for a while, but not 90%+ for around 2 decades.

Re:YASIR

[hairyfeet]

That is one of the few nice things about MSFT, as you can just skip the crap releases completely and hope they come to their senses for the next one, or the one after that.

I actually skipped XP for the most part after finding the RTM version crap so i went from Win2K Pro (great OS that was, light and solid) to XP X64 (another great OS, made for an awesome workstation) and then skipped Vista on my main system for Windows 7 which is quite nice, a little more bloat than XP but the features make up for it and its got a hell of a lot better memory management than Vista.

So just skip win 8, hell skip win 9 too if they don't fire that damned Apple wannabe Ballmer and his pet Sinofsky, win 7 is supported until 2020 so either they'll get their collective heads out of their asses before then or they'll bomb hard enough nobody will care for using Windows anymore anyway, no problem. It isn't like Win 7 is gonna suddenly have all the programs dry up, hell most programs still have XP support and that thing is old as dirt so I'm sure you'll still be able to run anything you want (well except for maybe IE, but who gives a crap about IE anymore?) for years to come and can avoid Win 8 like the tweeting twitting FB shitting social mess of an OS it is.

Re:YASIR

[exomondo]

I wonder if the UEFI unlocking mandate extends to MS' own x86 hardware. The Surface might be a sweet machine to run Linux on! :)

Who knows...if i had to guess i'd say probably not, but then again there are better tablets to run linux on...unless you have some sort of x86 requirement.

Re:YASIR

[Billly Gates]

Win 7 is not "damn fine". It is the first actually acceptable (i.e. mediocre) Windows. Win 8 promises to be worse in a lot of regards, not only the completely borked UI. An what business has an OS anyways to tell the user what GUI to use????

The thing MS is on to, is that they finally started with Win 7 to catch up to the other OSes. Still a decade or so behind, but it used to be worse.

You know XP was a favorite bash of slashdotters. .... then came Vista.

Then all of the sudden it was the best OS ever and people became fanbois and the corps started 10 year release cycles. Funny how a bad product will do that?

Oddly there are XP fanboys today who still wont even switch to Windows 7. If you are stuck with Windows, Windows 7 is ok. Not great and it has its quirks but ok.

Re:YASIR

[ChunderDownunder]

better tablets - such as? One of the few mass marketed android tablets with a keyboard dock is the Asus Transformer. For which I've seen mixed feedback re durability and build quality. Ubuntu porting was from one volunteer NZ hacker.

Battery life may be reduced but going x86 means hardware support may be better e.g. ARM SoC's don't tend to support Xorg well. Plus, being a Windows machine, it should come with plenty of RAM.

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

That is one of the few nice things about MSFT, as you can just skip the crap releases completely and hope they come to their senses for the next one, or the one after that.

It is pretty much the same with Apple too, go on the second release, the first one is always sucky. Cheetah/Puma (sucky), Jaguar(good), Panther(sucky), Tiger(good), Leopard(sucky), Snow Leopard(good), Lion(sucky), so Mountain Lion should be a good one.

Re:YASIR

[exomondo]

Well again it depends on what you want it for, pretty much all the popular linux tablets have keyboard accessories for them. Im sure x86 Surface would be fine hardware but unless you have some specific requirement for it most people would be better off with existing linux tablets.

Re:YASIR

[symbolset]

Except for the keyboard and the TPM chip the Surface is a clone of the Transformer Prime - and the OS was developed for actual Transformer Primes. You can already buy the Transformer Prime and run Linux on it, and you don't want the TPM chip. TPrime has a keyboard option too that has a battery extender and extra ports. Or get the Tranformer Infinity for all that and higher def 1920x1200 as well.

You didn't think they were coding for some new thing of their own design, did you? They don't have the hardware chops for that. They do have the in with Asus to get pre-release Transformer Primes though. Asus should be pretty upset unless they get included in the value chain somewhere.

Why would you wait and pay the extra just to increment Surface sales when you could have the real thing already? You really like that keyboard/cover? It doesn't look all that hot to me.

Re:YASIR

[symbolset]

The Wintel Surface is an inch thick, weighs a bunch more and has a fan and a stylus. The battery life sucks. It's a whole other critter. Everybody knows the fans almost always go out first - especially cat fanciers and dog owners. The stylus thing is self explanatory. No excuse for the battery life. It's just another Wintel tablet and those sell in such great quantity they may as well be handcrafted by guild tablet artisans to customer specification - and priced accordingly.

Re:YASIR

[Doctor_Jest]

Funny thing is about all those Tektronix measurement boxes (o-scopes, signal generators, spectrum analyzers) that run XP. Microsoft wanted to get in on the "ground floor" of that little venture, so they sweetened the deal and got XP on them. Now Microsoft wants to make a graceful exit from the XP world, but you just CANNOT with those devices. They are not ma and pa desktop PCs. Microsoft is going to support XP for longer than it cares to, at least in the O-Scope realm. So much for a "good idea" there, Microsoft. You can't kill an OS on a whim when you're in that market.

Granted, they'll kill it for the rest of us, but it'll take SOME time for the myriad of XP powered boxes to cycle through for upgrades to the OS... they aren't things people just "upgrade" on a whim. :) Getting a "new" o-scope isn't something you do when you're out for beer and ice either... so the "upgrade the hardware" bit wont' fly either. :)

Re:YASIR

[occasional_dabbler]

I struggle to understand the animosity towards Metro. Have any of you spent more than a few minutes trying to learn it? On both the phone and the desktop it works very well. There's a lot more to it than just 'the tiles'. Even on a multiscreen workstation, if you want to keep the traditional desktop you can, it's one click from metro after a reboot and you never have to see Metro again if you don't want to. FFS, MS are, for the first time in ages, shipping interesting, quality products and world+dog is bitching about them...

Re:YASIR

[dbIII]

Of course they are. There is so much third party stuff built around MS Exchange (which is in itself a suite instead of a single application) that people do not want to fuck with a complex environment that is currently working for them.

Re:YASIR

[kheldan]

I have had the dubious pleasure to work with Win8 where I'm currently employed. It sucks ass. I wouldn't use it if gave me a full-featured version for FREE, and paid me to install it, it sucks that bad. If I want Playskool toys on my desktop, I'll stop by Toys R Us and pick some up.

Re:YASIR

[dbIII]

ARM SoC's don't tend to support Xorg well

I think that's because nvidia haven't given much information on the tegra which is the leading graphics hardware on those things at the moment.

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

And he's authoritative because he's on the internet!

Re:YASIR

[slashmydots]

Um...no you won't. They kill basically all sales of Windows 7 the next day. All partners have to return their OEM copies of 7. They're going to reach into your wallet with one hand while shoving Windows 8 down your throat with the other. If I had the money, I'd stockpile more copies of 7 (since I'm not a Microsoft partner)

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course they are. There is so much third party stuff built around MS Exchange (which is in itself a suite instead of a single application) that people do not want to fuck with a complex environment that is currently working for them.

You just made a great argument for a cloud.

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it does not have a fan. It does have venting holes, but no fan.

Re:YASIR

[symbolset]

It's exceedingly rare for me to lay any sort of praise on a Microsoft product at all here on slashdot but it does happen once in a great while; maybe three or six times in the past decade out of over 6,000 posts. It's going to happen here for a moment so if you W/E folks want to save a screenshot of a post to throw back at me later, now is the time. If you're hovering over that overrated mod you might just want to hang back for a wee bit and maybe read all the way through and review my comment history before you decide I'm a Redmond astroturfer. If you're one of my /. fans, you may want to turn your head as it's going to get ugly. Let's pause for a deep breath before we dig in.

In my experience in my labs on diverse hardware the most recent W8 demo publicly released is considerably more performant than W7 in every case - and maybe even better than XP, and credible reports anticipate an even more performant and responsive retail product. Specifically the removal of Aero and related chrome speeds up user interaction. The removal of several background tasks and the streamlining of others add other enhancements. Memory footprint is smaller. I/O operations to boot and log on to the domain are consolidated and reduced. Boot time is thereby reduced to something approaching reasonable even on older hardware. There may be some improved things happening in the scheduler too. It should allow the Enterprise System Architect to, for example, budget about 2x as many VDI clients per CPU core, and 1/3 less RAM per VDI desktop, and reduce the storage IOPs budged by 1/3 as well - though storage IOPs are notoriously oversubscribed for VDI because storage IOPs are expensive as hell. For some installations that's millions of dollars in hardware savings.

But wait! There's more! For normal hardware based desktop and laptop users these improvements also apply, but there's more. There are also broad driver enhancements that impact a vast spectrum of historical hardware - offerring improved I/O, better graphics performance, more reliable and performant interaction even with hardware up to five years old. Driver support goes deeper into history I believe than any Windows version has ever gone before, and broader across more brands. Yes, there will still be legacy devices, including some ancient printers and webcams that came in a white box, that don't have drivers - and if you have legacy devices that aren't supported you're out of luck. But generally not only are modern devices supported - they're supported better than any new version of Windows has ever supported them. If all your hardware is supported the $39 upgrade to W8 from even XP or Vista is a performance improvement that might get you out of buying new gear, giving you the performance boost of a 2-year upgrade - and get you the "Pro" version when you've been plodding along with a "home version" or worse and Media Center as a download too! If that's spare money an SSD and a couple Nexus 7 tablets or a Transformer Infinity or SGS III are all great places to put that money you would otherwise give to HP, Dell, Acer or Lenovo, and then you can have both a performant PC and the Pretty Amazing New Stuff!

For once Microsoft remembered to put some bait on their hook. In short, some Microsoft code geeks got retro and started doing stuff everybody else was doing 5-15 years ago. There's some other stuff in the box too and I'll talk about it in other posts. But for once I'm going to give the Microsoft software engineers some praise and not take it immediately away. They found out how to operate a performance analyzer, how to trim some fat, how many legacy devices to support in an OS revision. They figured out what a waste that UI chrome was. They read up on what a framebuffer is. They figured out that 5,000,000 128-byte I/Os at boot time could and probably should be consolidated somehow. They figured out how to get the fixes for that past their management.

I'm not a fan of the

Re:YASIR

[symbolset]

Wrong. It has a fan.

Re:YASIR

[dbIII]

MS Exchange itself makes a great argument for the google and similar alternatives, even the MS azure stuff if you don't mind having no access to anything every leap day, or whatever stupid obviously avoidable bug crops up next.
Anyway, my point is you don't muck about with tightly integrated environments unless you have to, and there's no real upgrade path but instead a total replacement path once every little bit is available for the new system (eg. once it all works on the new MS server software with the current MS Exchange you move to that).

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool story bro. I'll just give Windows 8 a skip and wait for Windows 9.

Improvements under the hood, though certainly welcome, are not a concern of Joe User, and consequently of no importance to a Microsoft product's success. Metro Windows can be succinctly summed up in one word: schizophrenic. I foresee the 'one Metro UI to rule them all' to backfire very badly.

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, have you not been paying attention? People have been giving Metro 8 a chance. It was the most downloaded MS Beta ever. It has met almost universal revulsion.

The negative critics are always the loudest. More over if you were to put forward a positive opinion of Metro on this site you would be abused, berated and shouted down with cries of "M$ shill!" and the like from foamy-mouthed raging nerds that get angry when someone has an opinion that differs from theirs. The response is that the only people who could possibly have a positive opinion of it are ones that are paid to do so. The fact that it is subjective doesn't enter into it, unless of course MS puts forward objective evidence on a subject, that can then be countered with anecdotal evidence.

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 7 = Windows Vista + a shitty new taskbar

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because I'd much rather have a tablet with a piece of shit ARM based CPU rather than the Core i5 Ivy Bridge in the Surface.

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes if you count Ballmer as a fan ...

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

The Wintel Surface is an inch thick

13.5mm = 0.5 inch

weighs a bunch more

Surface Pro is 903g with keyboard. Transformer Prime weighs 1123g with keyboard.

has a fan

Not confirmed.

a stylus

Because it has a special dual sensor touchscreen that is the best of both world. It has the finger responsiveness of capacitive and the accuracy of resistive. That is a good thing. It means I could actually do real graphics design work on it.

Re:YASIR

[Aereus]

Win2K Pro was a godsend after using Win98 for a few years. To go from something that would randomly bluescreen and couldn't be trusted to run longer than 2-3 days tops, to something that I almost couldn't crash it if I TRIED... was a great feeling. I would hear people claim it "wasn't good for games" but I honestly never had any trouble running anything. In the remote cases where something was unresponsive, the ability to just force-quit and relaunch the Explorer shell without rebooting was great.

Around 2006 I was forced into using XP as the video card driver support for 2K became unreliable, but at least by then the power of PCs was such that you could just beast through the bloat of the OS, so it wasn't as much of a liability as it was when it first came out in 2001.

IMHO Win7 is actually a very respectable OS. It's the first one I bought on my own since building my first Windows box in 1998 (which I got at OEM pricing). I can't see any viable reason to upgrade from Win7 in a desktop environment for the forseeable future. And even if/when I do buy a tablet, it still sounds very immature and worth waiting 1-2 years for them to get the kinks out. Especially with how nice I hear Jelly Bean is for Android tablets.

Any home user with a modern system still clinging to XP is a Luddite IMHO.

Re:YASIR

[jellomizer]

So in other words. "I am mostly a Linux User, however I keep an XP partition just in case." But because I mostly use Linux, I don't want to be bothered installing a new OS.

I have Windows 8 preview installed on my system (a Convertible Tablet) , and I really don't have too many problems with it. Although I wouldn't recommend it, unless you get a multi-touch screen too.

Re:YASIR

[jellomizer]

Ubuntu = Debian + some nice new features + shit ui...

Re:YASIR

[jellomizer]

Well being shortly after the release of Windows 7, Apple stopped the I am a Mac and I am a PC adds. In many parts because Windows 7 was up to par with Mac OS. Just because you hate everything "Microsoft". It doesn't mean that Microsoft is making bad products... Only in your head.

Re:YASIR

[RaceProUK]

Because one-click program launching and two-click access to your most opened files are bad things to have.

Re:YASIR

[RaceProUK]

From MS themselves: http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/default.aspx?sort=PN&alpha=exchange+server&Filter=FilterNO

Exchange 2003 Extended Support ends 8th April 2014.

Re:YASIR

[RaceProUK]

Can you get them in a non-fucking version?

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

x86 Surface is 13.5mm thick, or .53 inches thick. Also I don't see what is self explanatory about having a stylus. You seem to be implying that's a bad thing. For me, that's a selling point. In my opinion, the iPad's lack of a stylus limits its ability to be an excellent note-taking machine.

Re:YASIR

[Anonymous Coward]

Because big, unlabeled pictures that take up a shitload of screen real estate are great things to have

Re:YASIR

[RaceProUK]

Then turn on 'Use small icons' et voila! All the benefits of the Win7 taskbar, in the same space as the XP taskbar.

For the unemployed

[Billly Gates]

Work for an OEM call center, check.

I have a feeling October 27th, the switch will be melting from frustrated users foaming at the mouth with WTF did you do to my computer! Or what I thought this was a laptop not a tablet?

If you can take the abuse I imagine the support centers will be hiring left and right to keep up with demand.

Re:For the unemployed

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately this is only an opportunity for anyone unemployed in the Mumbai metro area.

Conversational English skills recommended but not required for applicants.

Eh, what am I whining about, anyway, at least you can still reach a human being. In a decade or two all phone support will be a voice synthesis robot that still fails the Turing test. Some businesses are doing that already.

Re:For the unemployed

[Anonymous Coward]

Add Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolcata and a dozen more cities where they have replaced the garment making sweatshops with telephone support sweatshops.

Then the scammers will get in on the act. 'For a modest fee Sir we can replace Windows 8 with something a little more usable'. All they's do is "format c:" in the background and walk away with your $29.95 + Tax and $6.99 shipping.

All of my windows upgrades have gone well

[colin_faber]

Years after the release of the product. Mostly around service pack 2 or 3 time frame.

When to buy Windows 7 PC?

[cpu6502]

Will they be clearanced on October 26? Or should I grab one earlier. (When do the computer makers phase-out old models and bring-in new ones? August?)

Re:When to buy Windows 7 PC?

[Billly Gates]

Will they be clearanced on October 26? Or should I grab one earlier. (When do the computer makers phase-out old models and bring-in new ones? August?)

If I were an OEM maker I would have 2 versions of laptops and desktops. Ones with Windows 8 and the other imaged with Windows 7. Dell did this after 6 months when it lost sales due to Vista and offered an XP 64 bit line for home users.

With support calls through the roof and customers freaking out I bet you could make a killing if you offered the Windows 7 at retail as well.

Re:When to buy Windows 7 PC?

[Grishnakh]

Better yet, offer the Win8 models at an inflated price so that the regular-price Win7 models look like a bargain. The inflated price will offset your support costs for the few morons who do buy Win8 and then call to complain.

Re:When to buy Windows 7 PC?

[AngryDeuce]

I worked at CompUSA back when Vista launched (believe it was a January because I remember we had a massive blizzard and the midnight launch was a dismal failure) and in the month or so prior we started rolling out the hardware with it pre-installed so that by launch night we only had a couple models that were still running XP, and they didn't last long as word got around how much Vista sucked. By the time the store had failed and was being liquidated, we had one model that was still running XP.

Of course, depending on the hardware, you could always do like a lot of people did with those Vista machines, and put the old OS on there. There were some headaches with the really early models but within a few months driver support caught up and it wasn't such a big deal...

Re:When to buy Windows 7 PC?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except since you were an OEM maker you would charge extra to eliminate 8 and install 7 like they did with Vista.

Any midnight openings announced?

[dstyle5]

The lines would be huge!!!! Everyone I know who has tried 8, including myself, can't get enough of Metro and those amazing apps! I'm sure in the release version the apps won't blow, right?

Re:Any midnight openings announced?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure everyone will love the new mail client that doesn't work with non-microsoft mail servers.

Re:Any midnight openings announced?

[Billly Gates]

You mean that one that is just IE 10 Metrosized of hotmail.com with no other functionality?

I would not even call that pos an app.

Re:Any midnight openings announced?

[Rhacman]

I know right?!?! I feel so much more productive using applications that are full-screen only and use highly visible 48 point fonts! Plus, the extra large tile interface allows me to select which program I want to run by slamming my forehead into my touchscreen!

Re:Any midnight openings announced?

[DigiShaman]

Nope. There's an actual Jedi technique involved in using Windows 8. I haven't quite figured it out though. I'm thinking of joining the Dark Side (Apple) instead.

Re:Any midnight openings announced?

[Rinikusu]

You know.. I'm going to put Win8 on my aging Fujitsu Lifebook P1620 since I primarily want to use it in "tablet" mode. It looks pretty much perfect, and the metro version of OneNote is supposedly pretty amazing.

But, Win7 will be the OS of choice on my actual desktops.

So, maybe I'll be the only guy that likes it... :)

Re:Any midnight openings announced?

[bryan1945]

You, sir, win comment of the day! I cannot wait to try out your head slamming technique for myself.

Re:Any midnight openings announced?

[donaldm]

You know.. I'm going to put Win8 on my aging Fujitsu Lifebook P1620 since I primarily want to use it in "tablet" mode. It looks pretty much perfect, and the metro version of OneNote is supposedly pretty amazing.

Why pay for Win 8 when I assume you have Win 7 on your P1620 unless you are one of those in the "Green parrot on shoulder brigade" :)

My son's 4 year old HP touch screen laptop which originally ran MS Vista works perfectly under Fedora 17 so why would you want to pay for Windows 8 unless you are going to buy a new PC which in the majority of cases will have Windows 8 by default?

But, Win7 will be the OS of choice on my actual desktops.

So, maybe I'll be the only guy that likes it... :)

It's not mine but then again I have been using Fedora on my laptops (no dual booting) for over four years now and in a professional capacity as well. I have yet to be convinced of anything on a Microsoft OS that can do stuff better than what I can do on my preferred OS with the exception of "Games for Windows", however I have always preferred console games so for me that is a non issue. Of course I could reinstall a legitimate copy of MS Windows 7 if I have some sort of metal breakdown.

Re:Any midnight openings announced?

[KingBenny]

mhm, i'd prefer a customizable version i can strip of anything i don't use, including metro and boots right into my steam client but i have a hunch that won't happen. I wonder when they slap a price tag on it, all i hear about is the upgrade the upgrade, and some kind of re-invented oem version floating around for people who have th audacity to build their own pcs (from parts, not like build-build ofcourse) but no price, no price at all

Ubuntu 12.10

[pak9rabid]

Just in time for Ubuntu 12.10, eh?

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[Kjella]

Just in time for Ubuntu 12.10, eh?

Yeah... Metro vs Unity, fight! And Apple is on their way to iOS X as well. I'll go get the popcorn while I watch from by traditional desktop.

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[tlhIngan]

Yeah... Metro vs Unity, fight! And Apple is on their way to iOS X as well. I'll go get the popcorn while I watch from by traditional desktop.

Funny, Mountain Lion's UI changes a tiny bit, but not much, while Windows and Linux/Ubuntu decide they need a revamp. Though iOS 6 is supposed to be coming out that month as well... Mountain Lion... this month or next.

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[cpu6502]

How come when I tried to install Ubuntu 12 on my laptop, it went khaka? I know my laptop only has 384 megabytes, but ubuntu.com says I only need 256. Maybe the CPU is too slow (P3 at ~700 MHz).

It ran better than Vista but not by much. It also failed to let me install Flash Player or Google Chome. Kept saying something about "missing installation file".

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[cpu6502]

Since OS X is open-source, has anyone attempted to recompile 10.6 or 10.7 to run on PowerPC?

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[Grishnakh]

I hate to say it, but I think this is going to be a very profitable and successful time for Apple. People are going to look at Metro and barf, and start looking for alternatives. Then they'll think, "maybe I'll try out that Linux thing everyone's been talking about", and of course look for the most popular distro which is, of course, Ubuntu. They'll go to the trouble of trying that out somehow, see how awful Unity is, and realize that it's no great alternative to Metro. Then they'll say "screw it, I'll just buy a Mac" and go to the local Apple store and buy an overpriced computer there.

They might also try out Fedora with Gnome3 instead, but the result will be exactly the same.

This could have been a great opportunity for Linux on the desktop, but between Mark Shuttleworth and the Gnome devs, the cause for Linux on the desktop is pretty much lost.

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[Penguinisto]

By now, you might have an easier time replacing the kernel with Darwin.

Then again, probably not.

As a guy who still has a fully functioning dual G5, I'm thinking I'll either run Linux on it, or I'm gonna have a nice little case mod coming up to house my next motherboard...

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes and no. You can still compile Darwin from source and I assume it's in a similar state to what's used in the latest OS X, however the WM, all the apps and pretty much everything that makes OS X isn't OSS.

Be ye trollin'?

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you're really on a roll trolling Linux today. Earlier Debian "sucked ass" and now this. Check this out, if you want a good experience with a modern general purpose distro, you might want to have at least semi-modern hardware to go with it. For P3's there are appropriate distributions like Lubuntu. Those distro's are much more appropriate in your situation. As far as your Flash Player not working, maybe you didn't install it correctly. If an OS complains that an installation file is "missing" that usually means it is.

P.S. And if you want the best experience of all do what 99 percent of the computer using public already do: buy your computer with the OS of your choice already on it.

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[exomondo]

At least LaunchPad is a separate application, you don't have to use it (personally i find it pointless) and that's what the Metro start screen should have been on x86 PCs, an optional thing!

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[Anonymous Coward]

True enough, Gnome sucks. But what's wrong with KDE? Everyone I've introduced to Fedora/KDE has loved it.

KDE isn't perfect yet, to be sure, but the interface is a no-brainer for ex-Windows users.

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[Anonymous Coward]

Certainly Windows 8 will get a million news articles and Ubuntu 12.10 maybe 1000. Could this be a Microsoft attempt to crush any would-be positive press for Canonical, or could they care less?

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[Grishnakh]

KDE is good, I use it myself. And yes, the interface is indeed a no-brainer for (pre-Metro) Windows users.

The problem with KDE is that none of the leading distros feature it in a leading role. Linux is utterly dominated by Ubuntu and Fedora; act like a Windows-only person who knows nothing about Linux and google for "linux" and you'll probably find all kinds of stuff about Ubuntu, with Fedora a distant #2. There are distros that feature KDE, such as Chakra, Linux Mint KDE edition, Kubuntu, and of course SUSE, but someone new to Linux isn't going to see any of those; they'll be lucky if they stumble across SUSE somehow, amid all the Ubuntu stuff everywhere, but the others are hopeless. So, to someone new to Linux, all they're going to see is Unity, and maybe Gnome3, and that's it, and they're going to equate one or both of those with "desktop Linux". They're about as likely to learn about KDE at this point as they are LXDE or Enlightenment.

Heck, I work in a job doing embedded Linux and Android development, and my fellow Linux/Android developers all use Unity, and complain about it, but they use it because "that's what Ubuntu uses" and they want to stick with "the standard". I'm the lone weirdo for using Linux Mint KDE. If professional software engineers working with low-level Linux aren't using KDE, then not many regular users are going to either, and newbies certainly aren't going to. If they even hear about it at all, they'll just consider it "one of those odd things that a small number of highly-skilled people use, and not worth the bother for little ol' me", just like Enlightenment or WindowMaker.

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[tepples]

Yeah... Metro vs Unity, fight!

Just in time for Xubuntu 12.10, eh? That's what I run on my clean PC.

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[cpu6502]

>>>Earlier Debian "sucked ass" and now this

That was a joke. I was teasing the Anon.Coward Troll who claimed Ubuntu was a bug-ridden piece of junk. (Which it isn't...at least not the older 2010 version I use.)

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[Anonymous Coward]

Just run FreeBSD + Xfce4, you'll be happier. And it will have a BSD networking stack unpolluted by ancient weirdness and modern sorcery.

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[armanox]

I've had a few non-Linux* people comment on WindowMaker (and AfterStep), wanting to know why more Linux environments don't use them. I love WM on older systems (P3 usually, or really low RAM), and used KDE on Fedora for a long time (and on Slackware and Gentoo at home). But, like you said, without the love from the major distros, KDE remains in the shadows.

*These were Windows Network Admins, not Joe-user

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[jez9999]

The problem with KDE is that none of the leading distros feature it in a leading role. Linux is utterly dominated by Ubuntu and Fedora; act like a Windows-only person who knows nothing about Linux and google for "linux" and you'll probably find all kinds of stuff about Ubuntu, with Fedora a distant #2. There are distros that feature KDE, such as Chakra, Linux Mint KDE edition, Kubuntu, and of course SUSE, but someone new to Linux isn't going to see any of those; they'll be lucky if they stumble across SUSE somehow, amid all the Ubuntu stuff everywhere, but the others are hopeless.

Seems to me such a person has the wrong idea about how to use Linux. You should really be exploring different window managers, but of course if you come from a Windows background that's a foreign idea to you - which is perhaps why leading distros should make more effort to highlight the choice available. Personally I've settled on XFCE on Debian until or unless I can find something that's more like an incremental improvement on GNOME2.

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[Anonymous Coward]

no...no they they won't. Computer aficionados are so out of touch with the average computer user it makes you look silly

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[Anonymous Coward]

The bigger problem is "you should really be exploring different window managers."
Most users don't want to do that. Attitudes like that is exactly why Linux constantly fails on the home-consumer market. Unless theres someone else there to make all the choices for you, its sometimes a nightmare to get working correctly. (And its not as if Ubuntu hasn't randomly retired somewhat common features in the past, just look at the bluetooth stack they put in a few years ago - crippled was an understatement, and it rendered many setups unusable)

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[scialex]

Seeing as Cannonical is aiming to have Wayland as the default windowing system I doubt that.

Ubuntu 12.04 on the other hand...

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[donaldm]

Since OS X is open-source, has anyone attempted to recompile 10.6 or 10.7 to run on PowerPC?

Since when has any Apple OS been Open Source?

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[donaldm]

How come when I tried to install Ubuntu 12 on my laptop, it went khaka? I know my laptop only has 384 megabytes, but ubuntu.com says I only need 256. Maybe the CPU is too slow (P3 at ~700 MHz).

It ran better than Vista but not by much. It also failed to let me install Flash Player or Google Chome. Kept saying something about "missing installation file".

Amazing a laptop with 384 MB of RAM and what is even more amazing is you could run Vista on it :)

One of my laptops (dual core, 2GB memory and originally had MS Vista) is over four years old and it runs Fedora 17 with KDE as my display manager and I didn't have any issue installing Flash player, Google Chrome and even VLC 2 which plays 10bit codecs. Ok it does run a bit slow if I try to do video editing/translation.

Re:Ubuntu 12.10

[Anonymous Coward]

Consumers will stay with their current hardware/software for as long as they can.

When the time comes to upgrade, they'll ask: "Which hardware/software handles my data and applications that I CURRENTLY have?" ... if they then purchase a system with Windows 8 on it, they will KEEP it, no matter how bad it might look or feel, because they've already given out their money and will not be prepared to give more out to "try their luck" with another system.

The question then becomes; will they end up liking Windows 8 after they get used to the changes - I believe so.

Something's wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

Something's horribly, horribly wrong!
That article linked is actually from today. I don't know what's going on, but someone needs to fix this.

As for Win8, I'll look at the x86 tablets with it, but no chance I'd replace my tower OSes.

cool, means a release party

[Nyder]

and i can get me a free copy of Windows 8 that i can turn around and sell on craigslist, like I did for Windows 7 release.

Re:cool, means a release party

[jimmyfrank]

...and you might be able to make $35.

There'll be waiting lines...

[belgianguy]

...consisting of people who still want to grab a copy of Windows 7 before it's too late.

If rumors are an indication, the last Windows 7 license will be sold on December 21, 2012.

Re:There'll be waiting lines...

[Githaron]

I actually have thought about buying a few copies before they become hard to find.

Re:There'll be waiting lines...

[dkleinsc]

You're forgetting one important fact though: OCT 26 = DEC 22

Re:There'll be waiting lines...

[Anonymous Coward]

THE MAYANS WERE RIGHT!

Re:There'll be waiting lines...

[Billly Gates]

...consisting of people who still want to grab a copy of Windows 7 before it's too late.

If rumors are an indication, the last Windows 7 license will be sold on December 21, 2012.

No way in hell!

Corporations are still mostly on XP and just starting to switch to Windows 7 now. Many other users will freak out and go to small shops to get Windows 7 installed like they did with XP. MS can't cut it off and I bet OEMs if they are smart will have Windows 7 models at retail as well. MS may want to have people shut up and not repeat the situation with XP of last decade but there is a genuine demand for obsolete software now. It works, its well tested, its stable, it doesn't play games of the marketing departments battle of the week (like trying to be iOS).

Re:There'll be waiting lines...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here, let me save you the trouble:

Here, let me save you the trouble.

Re:There'll be waiting lines...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, since all windows license also contain downgrade rights. A W8 license permits a W7, Vista, or XP installation with that licence.

Re:There'll be waiting lines...

[jawtheshark]

Only the professional version. Home versions do not have these downgrade rights.

Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there anyone out there who still cares what MS releases next?
I have not seen anyone using windows for years now.

Re:Yawn

[aahpandasrun]

You're a minority. Like it or not, Windows has 84.41% operating system marketshare. (http://www.netmarketshare.com/os-market-share.aspx?qprid=9). It's by far the most prevalent OS.

Re:Yawn

[lilfields]

I guess you don't have a job then.

Re:Yawn

[SplashMyBandit]

Windows has an 84% *desktop* marketshare. Meanwhile servers, tablets, phones and embedded devices of all kinds run all sorts of operating systems (if they have one), that are mostly not Windows. It turns out that most of computing is actually not on the desktop (eg. servers running the Internet, telephony and corporate environments like banks etc). Of course, because it is invisible and mostly *just works*(TM) people don't know about it - they only know about Windows on their lil' desktop and how it is in their consciousness a lot since it requires so much effort to keep working properly.

Re:Yawn

[gweihir]

And the numbers are unfair. I use Windows for gaming and the occasional Word document. But even at work, I mostly use Linux (Debian). I am sure this is counted as Windows only.

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually that 84% number cited includes Android and iOS. Netmarketshare has Windows at 92% of the desktop market. Either way, the question of "does anyone care" is still obviously a resounding yes. Sure your server admins and embedded systems engineers might not care, but that doesn't mean 92% of consumers and corporations don't.

Re:Yawn

[thegarbz]

That depends on how you define "computing".

If by computing you mean "to determine by calculation" then you're most certainly right.
If you follow the more common meaning of "to use or operate a computer" then you couldn't be more wrong.

Gotta love that English.

8 is not vista

[aahpandasrun]

Windows 8 is not Vista and is not Windows ME. By all accounts so far, performance is the same or better than Windows 7. The problems are with the lack of a start menu, Metro, and the odd windows 3.1-esque flat UI.

Re:8 is not vista

[ericloewe]

True enough, but it doesn't matter if the computer is stable and functioning within normal parameters if you can't actually do anything useful. Of course, it's not *that* bad, but forcing metro on desktops and laptops is absurd.

Re:8 is not vista

[Mashiki]

The performance is better. But it *is* another vista or ME, you can say anything else you want, but when it takes more time to do simple tasks, that you can already complete using the start menu, then you've screwed up your UI design. That's exactly what's happened with the metro UI. I've noticed a very large push recently to try to dissuade this tech blogs, smells like paid astroturfing though.

So really if you're going to use this on a PC, like I'm going to end up having to. Either get used to keyboard shortcuts(if you don't use them already), grab stardock's replacement UI, nuke your PC from orbit(just to be sure) and blame MS, or tell your boss you need a 27" touchscreen monitor. Hey, why not milk it?

Re:8 is not vista

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 8 is not Vista and is not Windows ME. By all accounts so far, performance is the same or better than Windows 7. The problems are with the lack of a start menu, Metro, and the odd windows 3.1-esque flat UI.

Windows 3.11 was a better UI than that Metro garbage.

Re:8 is not vista

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Suddenly we all love the start menu?

I remember when it was laughed at for even being called "The start menu"

MS is on to something. Metro is pretty nice actually. The problem is, the confusion between tablet and desktop. Well will all innovation comes a bit of uncertainty, confusion and "Bah humbug"

Metro is nice, and windows 8 is a a good os, but how will it fit into our idea of a desktop os and will we embrace it? If its truly good, then yes. Its going to be very odd, it might be odd until windows 9. But the technological accomplishments of having a full windows OS on a tablet is pretty impress, considering windows 8 is lighter on resources than 7 WITH a metro ui even.

Will it work? or will it blend?

I'm all for a start menu with more information. Time will tell, people will try it. I suspect many will like it. Power users will either find metro gets in the way, or its not so bad as we thought.

Re:8 is not vista

[Mashiki]

Suddenly we all love the start menu?

I remember when it was laughed at for even being called "The start menu"

Considering the predecessor was "the tile set" and before that we had CLI? Yeah, the start menu was pretty much loved by most unless you needed a CLI, and in which case you could get around pretty easily anyway.

Time will tell, so who knows.

Re:8 is not vista

[Rennt]

Nobody ever hated the start menu. They just hated that it was called the start menu. People forgot about the counter-intuitive nomenclature the first time they used it, because the paradigm makes perfect sense.

Re:8 is not vista

[Agent0013]

Suddenly we all love the start menu?

I remember when it was laughed at for even being called "The start menu"

Perhaps it's like "New Coke"! Make something soo bad that people scream and clamor to get the old one back. And then when you give it to them they are hooked!

Logo updated to reflect Metro impact

[Anonymous Coward]

After much consideration, we felt that the logo should express what Metro means to our products.

Upgrading...no; Surface, hells yeahs

[lilfields]

I have no intention of upgrading my desktops to Windows 8. From everything I've used and read on and about Windows 8, the start menu is a desktop PC disaster...but for touch, holy cow is it beautiful. I will keep my desktops/laptop running Windows 7 and grab a Windows 8 RT Surface. I think Microsoft wants this to be the reaction of most users. The start menu is just to grab developers attention of "hey this is going to be on every PC shipped out until Windows 9 hits, you have huge app exposure now." Those apps run on Windows Phone & Windows RT and the New Xbox...Microsoft then almost overnight has a platform that will be expansive and cross platform putting a fight up against Apple's appstore. Then in Windows 9 they can dial back the Metro start menu, make it more intuitive for the desktop and they suffer no loss. They might even GAIN share thanks to the tablet market. Windows 8 sells as bad as Vista did, big deal, Vista sold millions upon millions of licenses & the PC market is flat...and Windows 7 is the best desktop environment (in my opinion.) This is all about Microsoft flanking Apple in the tablet & phone markets. Nothing more, nothing less. I'll buy a Windows Phone 8, a Surface RT, and keep my desktops on 7. Yet Microsoft still wins.

Re:Upgrading...no; Surface, hells yeahs

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'm going to spend 500 dollars for a gimp Windows RT job when I can spend the same amount and get a retina display iPad with hundreds of thousands of touch optimized apps and games and peripherals coming out the wazoo or save half the money and get a Nexus 7 which is actual portable like a tablet should be and still has a massive touch native ecosystem. Yeah, no. Windows RT is the stupidest shit I have ever seen in my entire life. You get a tablet with no apps that is called Windows but can't run all my old Windows apps. I MIGHT AS WELL GET THE IPAD.

Re:Upgrading...no; Surface, hells yeahs

[antdude]

Why did MS have to make Metro for the desktops that don't have touch screens? Ugh.

Re:Upgrading...no; Surface, hells yeahs

[IAmR007]

As far as tablets go, Metro is only useful for those that use capacitive displays. Anything that uses a stylus is more accurate than a mouse. Capacitive displays are nice for phones and the low end tablets, but for anything for serious use should have something on par with a wacom. I hope Win8 starts making more companies start making high end tablet computers like the Fujitsu convertible tablet series (ie T5010, which I have and love), but Metro still won't be ideal for it

A little too early

[reboot246]

Why not wait until December 21, 2012?

It's a much more fitting date.

May I comment for everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yawnnnn ...... OUCH MY JAW .... that was a jaw breaker.

My Birthday

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if I can get a free copy for my birthday LOL.
Actually, even though my new XPS laptop was purchased after the date, and I can get a
full copy for almost nothing, I plan on skipping Win 8, for not at least. 7 runs just fine.

So will it be a trick or a treat?

[Skapare]

I guess I'll never find out.

I won't be buying...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been running the Windows 8 Release Preview since it was available. I'm not that impressed. I've been in IT for almost 15 years and have tried and used every OS out there. This one feels like a letdown. As savvy as I am with tech, perhaps I'm jaded now that I've "seen it all". The last time I experienced a "wow factor" with an OS was back in 2000 with BeOS. Since then, only BSD and Linux have kept me somewhat excited about tech.

The notion that everyone is enamored or wants an interface resembling a tablet/phone device is nonsense, despite recent successes with the iPad and Android devices. I have always preferred a smallish laptop to anything else and likely always will if they keep the form factor.

Getting back on track... the Metro interface is... awkward. It feels like a suit that doesn't quite fit right no matter how good it looks.

I'm waiting for another BeOS myself. The current paradigm in all it's flavors is boring and leaves little to the imagination. BeOS didn't get any traction because it was ahead of its time. Written from scratch. Beautiful, but alas no "supply train" behind it and no one willing to un-entrench themselselves from the Wintel/Mac world. I can only hope...

Re:I won't be buying...

[gweihir]

I use Linux as primary desktop and Win7 were I cannot avoid it (gaming, the occasional word document). While I consider Linux reasonable (not "good", just adequate for the job, it has its flaws), I am constantly amazed by the level of pain and stupidity that Windows and Office users are willing to endure. Example: The only good way I found to make a Windows backup was with Linux ntfsclone and dd for the boot area. Or the fact that Word and Power-point get more and more dysfunctional from release to release. Recently, I tried to change the language setting for a whole presentation in PowerPoint. Guess what: That is not possible without programing it yourself! How is such a product in any way professional? Or this atrocity they call the "ribbon": Wastes precious vertical screen space, makes you switch around all the time, and it is so space constrained that many important functions are actually not in it! This is really incredible.

My guess is that all these Windows and MS apologists do just not know the alternatives to any reasonable level and for some reason think they are even worse.

Re:I won't be buying...

[Anonymous Coward]

I use linux and windows and generally find linux desktops to be pretty buggy and I find the usability to be pretty bad. Windows 7 isn't great but it isn't bad. As far as backups go there are multiple free backup programs out there. I use EaseUS for example. It does partition/drive backups which it sounds like what you are after.

No argument on ribbon. I am not in office enough to care to be honest.

Given a choice though there is no way I would prefer linux over windows for the desktop (server is a different story).

YMMV

Re:I won't be buying...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wastes precious vertical screen space

The height of the ribbon is roughly equal to menus+toolbar defaults in Libre Office and Office 2003. Depending on your toolbars you can actually end up with more vertical screen space used in those office suits. But if you're really concerned with vertical space, you can minimize the ribbon and bring it back with one click. By contrast, you can't minimize toolbars and bring them all back with one click.

makes you switch around all the time

Switching a ribbon is equivalent to opening a menu in a regular toolbar interface. If you find yourself switching often, consider placing your most used functions in the quick access toolbar or creating a custom ribbon with your most frequently used items. Also remember most common text functions like font face, style, size, color, indent are accessed by highlighting text, so you don't have to go back to the home menu.

so space constrained that many important functions are actually not in it

This complaint contradicts your first complaint which is the ribbon takes up so much space. Which is it: takes up too much space or space constrained? The ribbon is designed to bring more functions within fewer clicks, and if you count them out compared to a default toolbar interface you'll see exactly that. However, if you find you need a function that is not in the ribbon, as of Office 2010 you can completely customize the ribbons or create your own tab, and add that function you need.

Re:I won't be buying...

[armanox]

Have you tried HaikuOS by any chance? BeOS reborn.

Re:I won't be buying...

[gweihir]

Even though you are an AC, I will answer the last point: It is both too large vertically, and it does use this space so badly that many important functions do not fit in. That alone shows the utter stupidity of the concept. The ribbon is different to be different. It is far inferior for any professional work. Maybe MS tested it only on idiots and that is why it is such a gross mismatch to my needs.

And no, LOffice does not waste vertical space this badly. (Maybe I did some optimization here. I don't remember because LOffice actually keeps customizations on updates...)

Re:I won't be buying...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is both too large vertically

If you maximize both default Word 2010 and Libre Office Writer, you'll find the distance from the top of the screen to the top of the page space is exactly the same. If you scroll down in the page the difference is only 26 pixels, which is about half a toolbar tall. Regardless, this argument is all of course predicated on the fact that vertical screen space is precious. With laptops as small as 13" equipped with 1080p resolution displays, I find this argument disengenuous. However, again as I mentioned before if you're really hurting for screen space you can minimize and retrieve the ribbon with one click, which is something you cannot do with libre office.

it does use this space so badly that many important functions do not fit in.

Care to elaborate? Quantify "many" by perhaps providing a list of those that do no fit. In fact, you need to elaborate on how it is so inefficient with space. By my count, there are 197 functions available in in Word 2010 within 2 clicks, contrast to 148 in Libre Office Writer 3.3. Want to add more functions via toolbars? You'll have to use up more space. By contrast, adding more functions to the ribbon maintains the space it already uses.

Finally you seemed to completely gloss over the fact that you can completely customize the ribbon. Remember the old addage, that users use only 20% of the features, but it's a different 20% for every user. What you consider "important functions" are not important to other users, maybe even most users. If you have a function you need, you can add it to the ribbon easily. You can create your own ribbon customized completely to your workflow. You seem to have done this with Libre Office but then won't give Office the same attention, instead opting to claim it's inefficient and only for idiots.

It is far inferior for any professional work.

This is a funny thing to say considering Office 2010 alone has sold 200 million licenses and it's being used by professionals to do their work every day. In my own work I use it for writing book chapers, academic papers, and technical manuals to great effect. I'm much more productive than I was with Word 2003 due to more functions being available in less clicks.

The ribbon is different to be different.

The ribbon was designed with the goal of aiding discoverability of features by bringing more to the foreground instead of burying them in menus and submenus. As I demonstrated about at least with Word this was accomplished. I'm sure if you went through and did the comparison with the various products you'd find the same.

Re:I won't be buying...

[UnknownSoldier]

One killer feature I miss from BeOS is the fact that the window title bar didn't take up the whole honkin window width. It actually looked like a tab. One that was able to slide across the "top" of the window. Proper tabbed windows may have killed the sliding aspect, but damit, I want my screen real estate back !!!

i.e. See how "Home" takes up the minimal amount of space ?
http://betips.net/wp-content/uploads/images/239.window.decor.jpg

Internet Personal Access Device

[tepples]

Um, yeah, if I was going to make an "app", I'd make it for a real tablet. It's called the fucking IPAD.

You mean the Internet Personal Access Device?

MS supporting Linux?

[xs650]

If ever there was an opportunity for next year to be the year of the Linux desktop, this is it. Too bad it won't happen.

Re:MS supporting Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Vista was it., and we saw how that went.

Re:Ubuntu 12.10 Metro vs Unity

[Anonymous Coward]

> Metro vs Unity

The good news about Unity is that you can have a normal menu:

http://www.webupd8.org/2011/06/use-classic-menu-in-unity-classicmenu.html

or just use LXDE, KDE, XFCE or others.

Whereas Microsoft wants Metro to be forced down your throat until you learn to love it.

Not A Single Fuck

[Kenshin]

And not a single fuck was given that day.

Halloween release

[k(wi)r(kipedia)]

Just in time for Ubuntu 12.10, eh?

No, I think Redmond timed it for Halloween. It won't be the first time they'd be releasing something close to that day.

Wait till Windows 8.1

[Taco Cowboy]

Win8, as it is, is not ready

If they really launch it in October, well, I for sure won't want to become a paying guinea pig for M$

I'll wait till Win8.1 comes out, or Win8-SP2, or something like that
 

Re:Wait till Windows 8.1

[rishistar]

Doesn't even have a working Mail app - hard to view this as an upgrade.

Re:Wait till Windows 8.1

[Anonymous Coward]

afaik thats an upgrade from windows 7 that havent even GOT and e-mail app.
And who seriously uses mailapps other then webbased or outlook? Not even mozilla belives in standalone mailapps.

Re:Wait till Windows 8.1

[nitio]

I'll wait Windows 8.11 FOR WORKGROUPS.

Of course Windows 8 is going to be terrible

[funkylovemonkey]

Because it's time for me to upgrade my Windows computer again. I'm planning on doing it sometime at the beginning of next year. Previously, my first windows computer (that I actually owned while in college) came with Windows ME on it. The second computer I bought came with Windows Vista. So I'm just batting one thousand. On both of those computers I ended up shelling out money to upgrade to XP and 7 respectively, and I'm guessing in a couple years I'm going to be grabbing a copy of Windows 9 as well. Unless I can find a cheap copy of Windows 7 to install on my new computer before then.

Haters Gonna Hate

[y86]

Windows 8 looks cool to me. Decreased memory footprint, UI options.... Microsoft Surface. Not sure what you guys are complaining about. Microsoft is offering Windows 7 users an upgrade for $15!!!!!!!!!! I don't recall Apples last Major OS Revision being free.

I understand people here hate Microsoft, but the hate for Windows 8 on this forum is just over the top. It's an OS, it runs software, the price is good for Windows 7 users. If you run XP then you got the 10 years out of your license key.

http://windowsupgradeoffer.com/en-US/Home/ProgramInfo

Re:Haters Gonna Hate

[Anonymous Coward]

Technology is doing what it always does since birth, streamlining into a simple future where everything just works. Watch for the speed bumps and potholes on your journey, we try to fix them but the old farts sometimes escape their lawn and destroy this wonderful road to prosperity while chanting "Year of Linux"

wow

[Anonymous Coward]

The comments here are so retarded. Are you all 12 or something? Windows8 is better than 7. It is faster, uses memory better, uses cores better. Has better SSD support. You're crying so hard over metro? Windows Key + X is your friend.

From these comments I've come to the conclusion that most of you haven't used Win8 for more than 5 minutes. Please shutup and stay on XP. No one cares.

Not sure if you're following along

[symbolset]

I gave all of the Windows' a skip in my personal life. Never once bought one of them for my own use, nor stole it either. Frankly, if you were a Unix admin in 1982 with a graphical Xterm, Windows is still a toy for children. Even back then we were working on cloud, only we called it "grid". On my xterm I could build a dashboard to monitor an arbitrary number of hosts. The aggregate compute of those many hosts now fits in my pocket. Wasn't a big OS/2 fan either.

But these kids at Microsoft, they've at least come closer to honest work than any before them. That's something, right?

Re:Not sure if you're following along

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly, if you were a Unix admin in 1982 with a graphical Xterm, Windows is still a toy for children. Even back then we were working on cloud, only we called it "grid". On my xterm I could build a dashboard to monitor an arbitrary number of hosts.

That's great if all you want to do is monitor and administer computers and systems. Windows is far and away the best operating system for almost any other kind of work.

Re:Not sure if you're following along

[Anonymous Coward]

I gave all of the Windows' a skip in my personal life. Never once bought one of them for my own use, nor stole it either. Frankly, if you were a Unix admin in 1982 with a graphical Xterm, Windows is still a toy for children. Even back then we were working on cloud, only we called it "grid".

Awesome! How does it feel to be probably 60 by now and arguing with younger folks on the interwebz? I'd probably be playing with my grandchildren instead but hey, I guess that's the side effect of having using xterm in 82 right?

Re:Not sure if you're following along

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like he's a nigger or a mexican. Or maybe the worst of both worlds, a mexican-nigger. Needs a beating and a lynching.

FAIL Surface = $800 netbook

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I can tell, the people who buy netbooks are people who can't afford laptops. They get a $300 netbook at Wal-Mart because they can't afford a $500 laptop. So Microsoft has invented the $800 netbook. Surface is going to fail, and fail hard. Who are these people who want a microscopic screen?

AOL from the 1990's called...

[DenaliPrime]

... and it wants its interface back.

Explain Metro to me?

[Brian Kendig]

While we're on the subject of Windows 8, would someone please explain the Metro interface to me, and the lack of a Start menu?

I'm serious. I tried the W8 public beta, and it felt like I had one hand tied behind my back. I don't understand why the Metro tiles are different sizes, or how to resize them. I don't understand why dragging the interface left/right doesn't 'snap' to the next page like an iPad, but instead lets me see the right half of one page and the left half of another. I don't understand why some tiles are static icons and why others update with information. I don't get why apps now run full-screen one-at-a-time - right now (not in W8) I am typing in this Slashdot window while I have another window open to a Google Search of Metro images, and partially behind that I have a chat window and a notepad open; how is the Metro interface supposed to handle all of this? And a large part of the interface seems to involve wide, sweeping motions with the mouse to simulate dragging a finger back and forth across the interface; I hadn't realized how rarely I do motions like this, so it looks like it's time to lower the mouse sensitivity.

Yes, I can get to the old-fashioned Windows desktop, but ... how do I *do* anything there? I have no access to any of my apps from there, so how do I pin them to the task bar in the first place?

I'm willing to embrace the future, but I just don't understand how people are supposed to use this interface on the desktop.

Mayan Calender Release?

[Anonymous Coward]

As predicted by the Mayan Calendar! Perhaps the missing Mayan glyphs will be tiles in metro?!

That's a tempting idea for many...

[davidwr]

Fuck Metro

If I were metrosexual I'm sure I would!

Surface me

[elabs]

I have my money all ready. Just let me know when I can preorder a Surface and take it.