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

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!

Ubuntu 12.10

[pak9rabid]

Just in time for Ubuntu 12.10, eh?

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.

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

[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:There'll be waiting lines...

[dkleinsc]

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

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.