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

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: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

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?

[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:YASIR

[X0563511]

Fuck Metro, and fuck Windows 8.

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

[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

[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

[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: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.

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...

[dkleinsc]

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

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: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.

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: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?

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: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.

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: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: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

[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.