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Microsoft Releases Windows 8
Orome1 writes "Microsoft today announced the global availability of Windows 8. Beginning Friday, Oct. 26, consumers and businesses worldwide will be able to experience all that Windows 8 has to offer, including a new user interface and a wide range of applications with the grand opening of the Windows Store. Launching at the same time is a new member of the Windows family — Windows RT — designed for ARM-based tablets and available pre-installed on new devices. In addition to Microsoft Office 2013, Windows RT is designed exclusively for apps in the new Windows Store. In addition to the range of new Windows-based devices available, consumers can also upgrade their existing PCs. Through the end of January, consumers currently running PCs with Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 are qualified to download an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for an estimated retail price of US$39.99." Also at Slash Cloud, where Nick Kolakowski writes: "If the operating system and its associated hardware capture the attention (and dollars) of mobile-device users, Microsoft will have successfully expanded the Windows brand to a new and rapidly growing market segment. But if it fails, and Apple and Google continue to rule the mobility space, then Microsoft is left with few alternatives."
Posted using Windows XP Technology
Confession: I'm a Windows/PC user. Win 7 works fine for me. I use it at work. I use it a home. I can run pretty much anything I want on it. It's stable and mostly trouble free for me.
I've yet to see a single compelling reason to move to Windows 8 for desktop/laptop. Maybe it's OK for tablets? I don't know... I use Android and I'm happy with that. Is there *any* "ohhh... gotta have that" feature in Windows 8? Looks like a usability step backwards from Windows 7 to me. Am I missing something?
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
something something linux something something it works for me something something micro$oft tax something something free beer something something
Can I reinstall 7 or does upgrading invalidate my Windows 7 key?
It is a better OS from a technical standpoint. It is faster (Cakewalk found it sped up Sonar X1 in all heavy load cases) and some of the tools like the task manager are much better. However it isn't major.
On the down side its UI is ugly, and the metro stuff is crap. You don't have to use the metro stuff. Start 8 or Classic Shell will get you a real start menu and you can then ignore the tablet crap.
I'm fine with it, I use it at work since Windows support is my profession and I need to be familiar with it and it works well. However it is not a major update. Internally it calls itself Windows NT 6.2, 7 being NT 6.1. It is improved some, uglied up some, and has tablet bits it tries to shove down your throat.
In general I would say don't worry about it. If you've a reason to get it or a system comes with it, it'll work fine. You'll want to get a start menu replacer but it'll be fine after that. However I wouldn't rush out and upgrade. 7 works fine and 8 really does have an ugly UI.
Looks like hardware drivers are being updated for Windows 8 support (WDDM 1.2 / DXGI 1.2 / etc). This means, even if you really want to upgrade, wait at least a few months. All the problems I had (and most people I know) going from XP to 7 were driver related. New driver models = new drivers = buggy drivers = unstable machine = let someone else be the beta tester.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Microsoft could perhaps sway me by making ... an advanced command parser... available for Windows
Wasn't that the entire point of PowerShell? Granted, I've never used it...
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I'll get this in before the hundreds of "omg don't want" posts. Windows 8 is significantly different from previous versions, not just for the interface which takes some initial getting used to (although many, predictably, end up warming to it - http://www.zdnet.com/dont-hate-windows-8-7000006297/).
Nope, this Windows is the first release that presumes/pre-empts that you, the user, will do your computing across multiple devices and that you don't want to have to worry about your data & user experience being tied to any one device.
Want to see it in action? Log into Win8 with an MS account on any machine - your apps, data, settings, everything will magically appear (assuming you've allowed it) even if the machine has never heard of you before (and again, assuming this isn't locked down). Load Office 2013 - again, your files & data appear as if you created them on that very machine, all completely seamlessly. All the apps & social integration stuff also follows you wherever you go - the idea being you wouldn't know you were on a new/different device - again all seamlessly streamed from whatever sources of social networking you have setup. That's huge; it effectively eliminates the concept of local file-systems for user data. Everything is transparently in the cloud and just works, as it should be. This is the first Windows to be built from day 0 on this basis.
Now, for people that don't like metro because they don't have touch? The answer is simple - don't use metro-style apps if you don't like them. Your old desktop works just as well (although it doesn't have the same level of cloud syncing) and all the apps you had on Win7 will work just the same way. If a killer game/app comes out in metro-style, guess what, you have the option to run that too. It would be like Mac OS users being able to natively load iOS apps if they wanted - the choice to be able to is good.
Not to mention the benefits for developers having a single & consistent API set to target every form-factor from multi-CPU gaming monster to WinRT/ARM tablet, and that's before we mention WP8 being as it is the same kernel. That's a benefit for users too; pick up any modern MS powered device from Xbox to tablet to desktop PC and the user will be in a familiar UI.
Also, keyboard shortcuts make up for any lack of touch. WinKey + X brings up the power-user menu; WinKey + C brings up the right-swipe bar; there's absolutely loads to help mouse/keyboard users feel at home, but there is a learning curve and from what I've seen from feedback, this is the most objectionable thing. People don't like change; bears have also been know to take dumps in the woods, life goes on.
Are you happy on Win7? Good for you; if you are on Win7 & have no other devices or intention of sharing data on anything but your trusty desktop, then frankly the benefits of Win8 are lesser.. There's a new & vastly improved task manager; Win8 is faster in almost all metrics, and there are some nice desktop GUI enhancements that you'd likely appreciate, however the face of IT is changing to one where it will be rare to have just the one computer, and Windows 8 has that front & center of the design.
One day your average IT worker will find the idea of saving personal data directly to a device actually most amusing I suspect, and the shift in thinking has already started.
There you go; that's my take on the best of Win8. I don't expect many here to appreciate it as I do but there's some real benefits in Win8, despite that being an unpopular opinion in the group-think echo chamber that Slashdot can be sometimes. Now lets return to the flaming.
throw new NoSignatureException();
I'm guessing they'll kill Windows 7 ASAP. That's why I just bought the parts to build a new gaming PC, which should last me until at least Windows 9, if not 10.
Assuming Microsoft is still around by that point.
My assessment of the dev preview is pretty bad. I was doing some consulting for a company, and we had installed windows 8 on a PC there. Me, the IT admin, and another guy who was fairly tech-literate couldn't figure it out due to the unintuititve UI that ends up getting in the way. They have plenty of good ideas that are just poorly implemented.
You're probably already aware of Client Hyper-V, but since you didn't mention it, I'll drop a mention here; not only isn Win8 lighter weight than previous versions (making it a good choice for a host OS), it also includes a seriously excellent hypervisor-based virtualization system.
As for *nix tools, there's things like Cygwin, and even Interix (full POSIX environment running on top of the NT kernel, but not through win32). Sadly, Interix appears to be deprecated; it's still possible to use it in Win8 but it may be gone in Win9. I've been using Interix bash as my primary command line on Windows since 2006. It also offers ssh (both client and server), incidentally (although you have to install them it a Microsoft-funded repository rather than having it in the base install).
As for "advanced command parser", have you looked at Powershell? Included in all recent versions of Windows, and in some ways much more powerful than *nix shells. Commands consume and produce, and pipes pass, objects. These objects are sometimes just strings (especially if you pipe in text), but are often more complex data which are simply presented in text form when the end of the pipe is reached. PS also supports aliases (and comes pre-configured with a bunch of *nix-like ones), command completion, scripting, and so on. Additionally, because it's built on top of .NET, you can actually create .NET objects and invoke methods on them in your scripts, which is handy if you're familiar with the framework. It's basically .NETscript.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
If you think Hyper-V is the same as VirtualBox you know nothing of virtualization. Here's a start.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
Isn't being 'stuck in your ways' the point of continuing to use Windows? I know a good number of people who got unstuck in their ways and moved to OSX about the time Vista came out. Microsoft stands to lose as much as they gain from that thinking. Maybe a new Mac to compliment that iPad you have, rather then a new Surface to compliment the Win8 PC you bought.
It's not that 'Metro' can't be figured out, it's that Metro is a backward step in usability on the desktop. Here is an example I posted on another site...
"You are surfing the web and click to read a PDF file. It opens the 'metro' default PDF viewer which takes up the entire screen (no viewing the webpage and pdf unless you have multi-monitors). When you are done reading the pdf, what do you do now? There is no X. You can use the hot spot in the upper left to go back to the desktop, but the pdf doesn't close. Or you can ALT+F4 which closes the PDF viewer, but now you are at the metro interface not your original webpage so you have to take an extra step of going back to the desktop."
How the defaults work out of the box are very different from what people are used to. Yea, you can install foxit/adobe and default that, but that first impression of suck is going to stick.
Downgrade rights are an end-user right, documented in the Software License Terms that customers accept upon first running Windows software. Note that end user downgrade rights will be available through the sales life cycle of Windows and Windows Server operating systems, which is up to two years after the launch date of a new version. ... Windows 8 Pro includes downgrade rights to: Windows 7 Professional, Windows Vista Business
So if you buy a Windows 8 PC, you can downgrade it to Windows 7 until 2014.
Further, Windows 7 support continues until 2015, with extended support until 2020 (or 10 years after launch, for those counting).
Windows 7 isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
PowerShell gives you full access to .Net and Server 2012 allows every feature of the server to be configurable via powershell. There is nothing you can do with the UI that can't be done with the cli... finally....
...is no longer included in Windows 8.
Earlier this week, I thought I'd upgrade my HTPC to Windows 8. I've been using WMC on W7 now for a couple of years and it has been working great using HDHomeRUn tuners for local broadcast reception and recording/time shifting.
Imagine my surprise. No WMC. It's a paid upgrade. Ok, I'll bite. Where to I upgrade it? Clicky linky. Sorry, the licensing server is not available.
So I said to myself, Self... Let's see what else this WIndows 8 has to offer. This user interface is a total abortion. After fumbling around for an hour and feeling like a fool, I eventually clicked some of the colored boxes on the screen. Not a single thing would launch with the exception of IE9. Reason? My TV is 720 lines of resolution, not 1080. Every stinkin' app said I didn't have the required resolution.
My HTPC is now running Windows 7 again. And will be for a long time to come. It's way too good of a television to discard for a new operating system.
We should start referring to processes which run in the background by their correct technical name... paenguins.
I had the complete opposite of your experience.
You could just hit alt-tab when you're done with the PDF...
That doesn't close the PDF, it's still open in the back ground. Luckily they were smart enough not to do file locking, so you can delete the PDF while its still open in the reader app.
Also, you can close the app after you use the hot spot in the upper left corner by right clicking on it. But it's not obvious, you have go clicking around on things, RTFM, or be told by someone else.