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Windows Blue: Microsoft's Plan To Release a New Version of Windows Every Year
MrSeb writes "Way back in August, three months before the release of Windows 8, we learned about the existence of a project at Microsoft codenamed Blue. At the time it wasn't clear whether this was Windows 9, or some kind of interim update/service pack for Windows 8. Now, if unnamed sources are to be believed, Windows Blue is both of those things: a major update to Windows 8, and also the beginning of a major shift that will result in a major release of Windows every 12 months — just like Apple's OS X. According to these insiders, Blue will roll out mid-2013, and will be very cheap — or possibly even free, to ensure that 'Windows Blue [is] the next OS that everyone installs.' Exact details are still rather vague, but at the very least Blue will make 'UI changes' to Windows 8. The sources also indicate that the Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 SDKs will be merged or standardized, to further simplify the development of cross-platform apps. Perhaps more important, though, is the shift to a 12-month release cadence. Historically, Microsoft has released a major version of Windows every few years, with the intervening periods populated with stability- and security-oriented service packs. Now it seems that Microsoft wants to move to an OS X-like system, where new and exciting features will be added on an annual basis. In turn, Microsoft will drop the price of these releases — probably to around $25, just like OS X."
for Windows users.
We're renaming service packs as major releases now?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Wtf.... microsoft is not mozilla!!
I wonder if they plan metro-style changes every year then
Never mind Blue is the color most associated with IBM
Think that's intentional?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I wanna be like Mike!
Apple = Michael Jordan
Windows 8 = Air Jordans
Microsoft = little kid in the commercial
Lovely... so it'll be like automobiles.
You'll hear about recalls that affect Windows 2015, 2017, and 2018
but luckily, I'm still running Windows 2014
people in 2029 will brag about how they wish they'd bring back "classic Windows 2019, but not that crappy POS Windows 2021 that had the noise problem"
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
Personally, I upgraded to windows 8 specifically because it was so cheap. At only $40, it was a steal compared what they've charged for previous versions of Windows. I'd be happy to pay $25 a year and always have the newest version of Windows.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I feel blue just by hearing that.
So instead of $129 every 4/5 years, it's $25 each year. Yes, we're all being horribly ripped off.
In the Stephen King book The Stand the virus that wiped out most of humanity was part of Project Blue.
Seems almost fitting somehow.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
and allow folks to disable the "tiles" thing
or have a Command Window "charm" that can be used
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
It's true that the desktop does not need this pace of innovation. Some stability is nice - at least a few years.
However, if they are serious about merging the desktop and mobile platforms, they will need to go to a yearly (or more frequent) release schedule. The mobile market is simply moving too fast, and the platforms are becoming more powerful very quickly.
Queue discussion about the wisdom of merging the desktop and mobile platforms...
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
except that it's $200+ to buy in. so no, it's not $25 a year. Just wait until...whoops, you can't do an upgrade from 2013 version to 2014 version, you have to buy new (unless you bought the $250 version). Aka what MS does today and has done for years. Of which, there's really nothing wrong with that - they do whatever they want, but it's not $40.
I find this incredibly stupid because part of the purpose of windows is stability. If it changes every year people are just going to skip versions. They won't keep up the 5-7 year long term release support in a meaningful way if they're changing it every year, most likely.
My first thought was "What color will they paint the screen of death?"
But... it worked so well for Firefox: you know, "Follow that Chrome..."
All the users cheering happily at each new release. ...What? Those aren't cheers? um... Oh.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Personally, I upgraded to windows 8 specifically because it was so cheap.
You'd have to pay me a lot more than $40 to downgrade my Windows PC to 8.
I'd be happy to pay $25 a year and always have the newest version of Windows.
Most Windows user don't pay for Windows; it's hidden in the cost of the PC they buy. Few of them are going to throw Microsoft $25 every year.
Apple can charge $25 because they have made money on the hardware. Hard to see how MS makes sufficient revenue from this, unless they anticipate controlling more of the hardware than they do now.
Coca Cola may have not done this on purpose when they released New Coke, but Microsoft seems to have caught on to the fact that they (Coke) doubled their sales after reintroducing original Coca Cola. Major UI changes..
"Here is Metro, no start menu. Oh wait here's it back. We told you we listen to our customers!"
Microsoft sold 40 million licenses off Windows 8 already - the great success must have messed up their thinking. This success may very well be temporary - corporations will probably hold back way more this time around than even with the Win XP -> Windows 7 transition (which is far from over, XP is the second OS by usage share).
I hope a bit of bitchslapping by the corporations (who won't upgrade to Win 8 for several years) will sober MS up somewhat and make them forget about Windows Blue.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Of all the colors, for Microsoft to pick something associated with blue, after all the blue screens...
then Red, White, Black, Silver, Gold, Platinum, etc.
Gotta catch 'em all!
I use XP in a VM whenever I have to use the one in a thousand windows program so at my present rate of Windows usage I would have to upgrade every second time I use windows. What Microsoft is missing is that most people are using windows out of inertia. Places like Staples and Walmart still sell windows laptops so people buy them. If Apple changed its whole marketing approach tonight and reduced macbooks to $350 the sales of windows machines would plummet. I am not making the Mac vs Windows argument I am saying that people usually don't care; nor am I suggesting that apple drop their prices. Gamers use windows because that is where the games are, not because of some love of windows. If all the PC games moved to BeOS tomorrow then the day after tomorrow most of the gamers would move as well.
So what MS needs to do is to find out what people really want. A good example of them not doing this would be their new tablets. Most people want enough storage to watch lots of video and some for their apps. What people didn't want was all their space taken up with MS Office on the tablet; who the hell is going to do extensive office work on those tablets? As a programmer I want tools to make my life easier. What Microsoft tries to foist upon me are tools that guide me into their suite of products such as office and SQL server. What my mother wants is a machine that is simple (like an iPad) what MS gives her is a machine that is always asking hard questions. What my mother also wants is a machine that she can't easily screw up (like an iPad). What MS give her is a machine that comes pre screwed up by the manufacturer with trialware and allows for third party crap to install itself over and over until, in the case of her browser, she has 7 inches of toolbars and one inch of browsing space.
So until MS starts actually listening to their customers and not their internal marketing departments the only customers they are going to keep are the ones who don't bother leaving them.
most people get Windows when they buy a new PC. So for them, the buy-in cost isn't $200+, it's more like $20 or whatever HP/Dell/Lenovo currently pays Microsoft for a copy.
If Microsoft doesn't change anything important. Apple releases a 'new version' of iOS almost yearly, but what changes? Other than toys, we don not know.
Sure will keep the script kiddies busy validating their tools agains 'new versions'. Security through churn. Interesting concept.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Big companies have got to hate paying the Microsoft tax every couple of years when MS stops supporting an OS. They have to purchase new licenses and often new hardware. Why don't the fortune 1000 get together and turn Ubuntu into something they can all use?
No sigs in BETA. Beta SUCKS.
so we're going to file the discussion in a FIFO stack?
Mark Anthony Collins
... If I had a horse for every time you made me blue, I'd have a house full of horse sh...oes.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
You'll hear about recalls that affect Windows 2015, 2017, and 2018 but luckily, I'm still running Windows 2014
people in 2029 will brag about how they wish they'd bring back "classic Windows 2019, but not that crappy POS Windows 2021 that had the noise problem"
You don't understand Microsoft's logic. Back when they only released an operating system every few years, they included the year in the version. Now that they will be switching to an annual release cycle, they're switching to colors, using the ROYGBIV order, which is why they are starting with blue. You see, Blue comes after 8, which comes after 7, which comes after Vista, which comes after XP, which comes after 2000, which comes after the millennium edition, which comes after 98, etc. They found that people were very confused about Windows 8 following Windows 7. It didn't fit the pattern at all. Hence, they are moving to colors. After ROYGBIV they're moving to Pantone color numbers, in order from Ballmer's least favorite Pantone to his favorite.
Wow, that's quite radical move from Microsoft actually. :)
Last years "Windows Blew" - so let's Blue again...
Quality naming guys!
It's true that the desktop does not need this pace of innovation. Some stability is nice - at least a few years.
Which is why the new low price (disposable) all-in-one and tablet computers are being pushed so hard. Just buy a new computer with the new OS every year...
However, if they are serious about merging the desktop and mobile platforms, they will need to go to a yearly (or more frequent) release schedule. The mobile market is simply moving too fast, and the platforms are becoming more powerful very quickly.
I think that an annual upgrade cycle is something marketing (and partners/vendors/retailers) can work with: Announce the new product line 3rd quarter, release it 4th quarter, giving marketing enough time to build up a demand for the "new thing" in time for the holiday buying season.
Queue discussion about the wisdom of merging the desktop and mobile platforms...
It depends on from what perspective... It sucks right now from a useability standpoint (and a security one), but it is nice from a productivity standpoint (interoperability of applications across multiple platforms is a big deal.)
You raise many good points. I am just starting to think this through...
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
I can't think of a better name for a Windows project than "blue". I think it can only be topped by using its full name: "Blue Screen"
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
MS made this same announcement in '97 when they released win 98. The idea was similar to car model years, and the hope was that people would want to keep up appearances and buy a new model every year just like cars. This failed because of MS's inability to deliver on time, the OS was almost a year late in its release, so they abandoned that idea because it made them look bad. I wonder what will be different about it this time?
Sent from my ENIAC
I would argue that no one would say their desktop/laptop is easier to use than their phone. The desktop moving to a simplified, streamlined experience is preferable to me. I was without a proper computer for about 4 months and I used my ASUS Transformer TF101 as a laptop replacement quite efficiently. Windows 8 is definitely the right directions where the OS recedes into the background.
"I don't want more choice, I just want nicer things!"
-Jennifer Saunders as Edina Monsoon
LOL, cue indeed...
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Is not soon enough... Will Microsoft survive till January 2013 after betting the company on Vista 2.0?
I recall a few years ago now on Slashdot a discussion on the topic "MS doesn't matter any more" - doesn't matter, as in you don't need to use any MS software to run your business and communicate with the outside world. They are of course still a major player in the software arena, but far from as all powerful as they were. There are plenty of alternatives, they are viable, and indeed a key reason for companies to stick to MS is because they are already with MS. New businesses that still have the choice, have an alternative.
That was basically the argument, and mostly I agreed at the time. But it was ahead of time, it was before Android and the iPhone even.
Now it seems to me that MS is really risking becoming just "one of the options". And probably MS feels the same. They took nearly a decade to come with a viable successor to WinXP, and in the meantime both OS-X and various Linux distros made great strides in UI design, general usability, and indeed market share.
They completely lost control over the www - partly thanks to Firefox, Chrome, Safari and the others on the desktop, partly thanks to the proliferation of mobile devices which are pretty much all non-Microsoft devices (Windows Phone is really small compared to Android and iOS).
They will lose control over their Word lock-in, again partly thanks to mobile devices: people do want to view and edit their documents on their tablets, which means some application running on iOS or Android. MS doesn't have such an offering yet. OpenOffice in it's various incarnations is gaining significant ground at least in Europe, and Google Docs is also a major competitor sucking people away from MS Office.
And surely people will start thinking. "Why is my iPad working so much nicer than my desktop? Aren't there alternatives to Windows?" They see Apple's offerings in the stores. "That's nice but out of my budget, any cheaper alternatives?" They may have heard about Linux, about Ubuntu or Red Hat. "Hey, geek friend, how about that Ubuntu thing that I recently heard about? Can I still watch videos on YouTube, and edit some Word documents? Can I try it out a bit?"
Not many people at first, sure, but there are always people curious about what's out there, and nowadays you can see there is more out there than Windows.
MS is definitely feeling the heat of the competition. First they finally picked up development of their web browser, and made great progress there. Then after the debacle of Vista they quickly came with Win7 and now Win8. And now planning a new major release every year, that's going to be interesting. They'll have to start offering intersting features to keep people on their platform, and give people a reason to use Windows and not one of the alternatives. I'm looking forward to it.
That is what I am guessing.
Good time to switch to Linux.
Sounds more like "Blue Balls" to me.
Have gnu, will travel.
By the time you learn enough to do you job of how to deal with all the annoying changes and different bugs .... you get to do it all over again....
Has anyone done a study on how much time/dollars are spent in dealing with such? (learning, bugs, other system hogs/user waits....)
Well its not a bad idea totally it would allow them to introduce wide unpopular interface changes gradually instead of "here it is". But some companies may encounter rolling comparability problems and weird cases in which Feature A is actually Feature B and then becomes Feature C but is not backwards comparable at all. Currently the model is a little more archaic "we build it to good enough" and make it work better after some time and then industry buys into it. But at that point, why not just switch to Apple who has a vastly more stable operating system and is established already? Or Linux and cut the umbilical cord of cost and keep all the same comparability headaches.
Personally I think Microsoft tries way too hard to make each OS a wildly new user experience, when consistency would be more prudent, they rule the workstation wold almost exclusively. We have workstations that are wildly overburdened with security workarounds because Microsoft just wont do it. But they're busy trying to chase the apple model. Just my 2c.
Good leaders run toward problems, bad leaders hide from them.
Its a shame that MS seem to feel they have only one option now... "be like apple".
Half the reason they thrive so well in corporate-enterprise-juganaut land is simply because they aren't apple and dont behave like them. A release every year is going to be an utter nightmare for a decent sized enterprise, but i guess it depends on what "next version" really means. Is it going to just an incremental update similar to what service packs used to be? In which case, the actual OS update will probably less painful, but there will be pain to be had in other places (namely licensing).
I really wouldn't be cheering for this idea if i were in a corporate desktop support role, thats for absolute certain.
Even given the job that i do (which falls into the systems integrator role), it doesn't sound good... whats it going to mean for certification? oh the pain.... then that comes with its own set of licensing nightmares (the SI role).
Still, as a linux-lover, i can only say "i love where apple and MS are taking their OS's because they seem to be working very hard to make linux as attractive as possible".
What if I know better than to put Win 8 on any of my systems? After all, like Win ME and Vista, Win 8 is already disgusting users and seems to be one of those releases that you would be wise to skip. Can I still get a next release if I don't but Win 8, or does the "upgrade" only apply to those who bought Win 8? If so it would be more honest to call it a paid service pack than an upgrade.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I have an nvidia optimus/k1000m on a shiny new thinkpad w530. The kernel-included nouveau and intel drivers work fine. Switching between these without restarting is even theoretically possible with vga_switcheroo (though it apparently doesn't entirely work on the w530 specifically). Using the "optimus" bit is also perfectly possible with bumblebee.
However, even with bumblebee, the drivers are included with the kernel, allowing you to fully use KMS, bootup logos, etc. For full 3D, you can even still rely on the builtin intel drivers and use the proprietary nvidia drivers with bumblebee (or not, if your system allows you to switch fully to discrete mode).
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
They want some thing more stable and they most of the time wait at least for a SP1. Now MS can't go to fast and remove stuff and or cut off old apps.
also windows store only will not work that well and the old licensing systems will have to stay in place.
When did you ever report a bug to microsoft AND GET A RESPONSE?
Linux out of the box detects more hardware easier than windows. And unlike windows, doesn't decide it has to install another USB driver because you moved your mouse to a different USB port before it lets you use it.
MS will tell you that NT is unsupported and you aren't allowed to fix ANYTHING if your USB camera doesn't work: You are now SOL.
And try using your Geforce2 card on your Win7 system.
$40 is indeed a bargain for the newest version of Windows.
The only problem right now is that it's the newest version of Windows.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I heard it was web color numbers. I was really looking forward to Windows #CD853F !
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Can you imagine being a small hardware company in 5 years and you have to do validation: Win7, Win8, Win2013.... with different Service Packs and versions? That's going to be a nightmare.
I'm assuming this is a strategy to push developers to write "Metro" apps and not desktop applications because I'm assuming Metro the validation process is much simpler with "Metro" apps and would guarantee maximum compatibility across multiple versions of Windows.
As a web developer I hate you for reminding me of this horrible truth.
Ie6 users might be only a few percent now days BUT THEY KEEP BLOODY HIRING ME TO DO THEM A WEBSITE oh god kill me
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Yepppp... skipped vista in it's entirety, no plans for windows 8, now think alllll the way back to win 95 and you'll see a startling trend of it only makes sense to upgrade every other OS version. So one can argue, people already skip entire versions of windows.
I was wondering when they'd start packaging service packs as new versions of windows, seems the speculative day has come.
You also don't paid for Ubuntu.
And don't have to wait for Dell or someone to push out special drivers for a specific variant of an OS to get your computer working if you decided to upgrade.
A few years back, you might have found some sympathy, but these days? Just a bit of advice, one professional to another...
You can, in fact, turn down the job.
If I were in a joking mood I would say that the code name 'BLUE' is because the Windows 8 users are 'blue' they need a quick patch, Windows 2013 fast! btw - code BLUE also has a special meaning in the ICU.
More likely Microsoft is just wanting to get a better 'cash infusion' plan since the current arm twisting method via Windows 7 starvation doesn't seem to be working very well. Having yearly 'cash infusions' must be sounding pretty good right about now. The problem is how to get everybody to upgrade, every single year? Maybe they will try expiring the OS license each year. Yup, that aught to do it.
Do you have to get new tin foil every year or is the old stuff better?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
To be fair to Mozilla, they don't charge for their product.
But it still breaks stuff (add-ons) developed for earlier versions.
Does this mean that you have to upgrade each and every year to get the upgrade cost? Can you wait 4 years and still only pay $25 for the latest? Because if not, it doesn't sound much better than what it costs now. Sounds more like a way to charge for service packs.
I'd actually prefer a daily rental model for Windows as I only ever use it anymore for flashing devices, turbo tax or the occasional game.
I find this incredibly stupid because part of the purpose of windows is stability.
Is that a joke, or have you simply never run any other OS? Windows is the least stable of any OS out there. Any hardware fault hoses Window while Linux will chug along without a hiccup. Plus they have a very bad habit of changing everything around with every release so you have to relearn everything. The only way I can tell one version of Windows from another is it's completely different, to the point that I had a laptop in a bar running Linux, and someone asked "which version of Windows is that?" OTOH, if you were used to Mandrake from ten years ago and switched to kubuntu you'd feel right at home. The way to tell the difference between two versions of a linux distro is the latest will be faster and have more features.
And why would anyone upgrade Windows in the first place? I seldom see new features, never see increased speed (except that it seems that way because the registry makes sure it gets slower the more you use it), and you have to figure out where they put stuff. Often it actually loses functionality; I really miss XP's search on my W7 notebook.
The only reason to upgrade Windows is often the newer software won't run on he older OS. I've never had that problem in Linux, and seldom in Windows.
Free Martian Whores!
I recently upgraded my work PC to Win8. I upped the RAM to 8 GB, but the box came with the 32-bit version of Win7. I looked into the cost of buying a copy of Win7 64-bit, compared it to the cost of Win8, and figured, "Someone here has to be first, might as well be the IT guy."
It took me a few days to tweak, but I've figured out how to make the parts that piss me off mostly stay out of my way. I hate The Interface Formerly Known As Metro, including and especially the Start page. But since I've been using Launchy since the XP days, I just installed that and I mostly use Win8 the same way I used Win7.
I hate the flat, two-dimensional look. Under Win7, if the keyboard and mouse are idle long enough for the display to shut off, I still have that half-second grace period to nudge the mouse and not need to punch in the password to unlock it. I hate that the calendar widgets on the lock screen and Start page will only pull calendar info from Microsoft's online calendar instead of the copy of Outlook I've got installed. But most of all, I hate having a pseudo-tablet interface pop up on my dual-screen desktop PC
I've said it before here: 10 years ago Microsoft learned - the hard way - that putting a desktop interface on a phone doesn't work. Now they're learning - the hard way - that the opposite is also true.
Redundancy is good And also good.
Program Manager Syndrome
http://www.cringely.com/2009/02/04/microsoft-has-pms/
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
So in 2099 we can look forward to Windows 95
I think I will wait for the 2102 version
(of course they will have immortality by then...
It all depends if it is a much faster major release turnover or a incredibly slower Tuesday patch.
This sort of disruption is not helpful. And emulating OSX is foolish. Windows sells to a totally different market with totally different needs. I can't tell you how disruptive Windows Vista and Windows 7 were in some corporate networks. The loss of backward compatibility is a serious deal breaker. If MS is going to start messing around with the whole operating system on a fundamental level continuously then why stay with MS at all? It's not in our interest as corporate customers to roll out workstations in this operating system if they have such high maintenance issues. In some cases, we might have to totally recode proprietary company software every year just to keep compatibility with the OS. That is an additional expense we don't need.
Seriously MS... What we wanted from you was Windows XP with fewer bugs, a slightly more polished UI, a couple extra features, and not a lot else. That is our corporate need. These are WORK computers. People do spread sheets on them, modify databases, and check email.
We've resisted moving to linux for a variaty of issues but this sort of behavior makes us think that we're actively not wanted. Fine. Have fun trying to sell your stupid operating system when most of your customers don't use it at work anymore.
As as to the residential user... you'll never compete with Apple at being Apple. If people want macs they'll get macs. A "me-too" strategy is only for marginal buyers. And even the gaming community is turning on you.
This whole thing is a massive mistake. Radical redesigns of the OS are a bad idea. And cutting backward compatibility is lethal.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I think that's exactly what the GP was talking about. Most people never upgrade their OS, they keep using the one the computer came with. Therefore, they're not paying the retail price for the new operating system. This is most people as in your grandparents, not most people as in slashdot readers....
Free Pie! The Pie is Also Evil!
Gives a whole new meaning to Blue Screen of Death.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Pricing is much better and I think this direction is a good one for ms. However I do wonder how this lower price point is effecting windows 8 sales. I noticed the ars article yesterday claiming win8 was doing better than win7 at this time after release. But it is at a quarter the price right?! I guess that doesn't apply for oem copies but still
I'd argue that my phone doesn't have to do as much as my desktop.
How does Windows 8 recede into the background? You now have twice the GUI! It is more, not less, complicated.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I think that an annual upgrade cycle is something marketing (and partners/vendors/retailers) can work with
I think Apple has shown this to be true in the consumer market. My concern (if I were a stockholder) would be the enterprise. I expect they will still have some kind of Ubuntu-style "long term support" version of their OS.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I mean not for nothing, this is all stemming from a *single* source -- the Verge. If they are slightly inaccurate about how they are wording this, or getting some bad information, everybody's running off on a tangent here.
Microsoft has been known to keep compatibility for versions from 100 years ago. That's why they keep offering a 32 bit version of Windows 8, because of legacy 16 bit code. The idea that they'd throw their enterprise customers for a loop like this without having seriously thought it through is well... ridiculous to me. They may have some bad ideas but their core cash cows being sacrificed is really not one of them.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
If Apple is so bad, according to the Apple Haters on this site, why is Microsoft trying so hard to be just like them?
That is it, Ballmer has gone insane. The guy was a clown before but now he has REALLY lost it.
You see, people who pay for updates expect improvements. MS can barely fix an OS in its lifetime, let alone improve it. You bought XP that is what you kept for half a decade and more. USB support was for Windows a fucking major update, not a point update for free as with Linux but something you just didn't get unless you paid for a new release.
And MS, even with payed for, expensive updates barely adds anything worthwhile. What is there in Windows 8 that is worth actually paying for? A tiny articially restricted update to DirectX and a UI nobody wants.
MS already has enough trouble getting people off XP when Windows 8 is out. They want to have people run major incompatible updates each year?
Or is this just another attempt to charge for service packs? Which are NOT upgrades but merely bug fixes packaged together.
MS upgrade path so far has been "you got to buy our latest version because we do our best to make sure new software doesn't work on old windows any more". It has never had to SELL an upgrade on new functionality.
This is going to fracture windows even more badly in different versions because you can be sure MS will do its level best to make only the latest version capable of running software but users will be doing their level best not to upgrade under any circumstance. Except now that dance won't be done every 5 years or so but every year. YAHOO!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Is Microsoft ever going to come up with a plan that doesn't boil down to Apple envy or Google envy?
Any hardware fault hoses Window while Linux will chug along without a hiccup.
Any potentially data-corrupting hardware fault will cuase Windows to stop, and Linux to continue? I'm not sure that's a recommendation for Linux.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I'd be happy to pay $25 a year and always have the newest version of Windows.
And I'm quite happy to pay absolutely nothing and get the latest Ubuntu or Mint or (name the distro you like) twice a year, and choose which ones I care to install. To anticipate an argument: yes it's work to upgrade (although can you say upgrading Windows isn't work too?)... but when I upgrade, I get a good understanding of what's going into my system, how the parts fit together, how I can streamline or improve, etc., and that translates later into regained time in terms of work effectiveness and productivity.
you paid for 64bit window 7 when you had 32bit?
You just needed to download a ISO and REUSE the key on the BOX.
free with windows 8?? now maybe if they can fix some of bad UI in 8 and make metro work better on a desktop then it will be the OS that everyone installs.
Actually, I bought in at $15 :) MS upgrade deal for Windows 8 allowed people to buy in at a very cheap price.
There is even a way to get windows 8 for free now. MS knows what they're doing. They're offering their OS at various prices, even with intentional loop holes to entice pirates to buy in for cheap. MS is doing what people have been suggesting for years, which is provide a lower price, and people will buy legal versions and others will upgrade more frequently.
We cant shit on MS now for doing what we've all hoped they would do for years now.
IE10 is awesome though
So if your cpu faults, linux keeps running? Damn thats amazing technology.
People run windows 24-7 365 days a year without a problem.
This is just FUD being spread around. Windows 8 is better than windows 7, and 7 was highly praised.
I have no idea what microsoft is thinking in trying to combine mobile and PC operating systems.
Blue will make 'UI changes' to Windows 8.
My grandma got pissed when she has to go from Outlook Express to Outlook 2010. She already was having great difficulty doing simple things on her computer. I can't even image her reaction if someone told her that she would have to learn a new interface every 12 months.
Windows 7 certainly did not blow and windows 8 is an improved windows 7 in every way
To say windows 8 is vista 2.0 is ridiculous.
Windows 8 is basically windows 7 with some improvements and a different start menu. (which i like)
If you give fair minded people time to understand windows 8, and show them intended workflow/navigation changes and how it benefits windows, rather than hurts it... I think people will at least agree that Windows 8 makes sense and the ideas are better idea in every way. Where people might have issue is in how complete that experience is at this point. That is a fair comment. But to say Windows 8 is vista 2.0 is unjustified nonsense.
No, and that's my final answer. What a horrible idea. Why doesn't Microsoft stick with one and make it rock solid? Like they did with XP. Doing this will make developers go nuts because they will have to build a new version every time a new version of windows come out. They are just trying to copy Apple's business model and they are doing it WRONG.
When I think Windows, I just think "awesome."
You fail to be impressed because like you said, everyone else does it. The sad part is people only pick on Microsoft when they chose to do it. Its unfair, its ignorant and its typical of Microsoft haters.
There is plenty to criticize all around the technology industry, but Microsoft gets unfairly smashed for everything, even when they do things right. Its a no win scenario for them. Some people just dont want to see Microsoft be successful.
But Vista blew hard enough to cause wind all the way to Windows 11.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
... with new and better bugs? Just what I always wanted - not.
But every 4 to 6 years, Microsoft changes how they name/number their OS releases. By 2021, they will have switched to at least a couple new schemes.
Most would say it always has.
Will Microsoft be using Blue Man Group to market it like Intel did for its Pentiums (3 and 4)?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Where have I heard that before?
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
drivers are not Metro and metro will need side loading as well.
Also metro does not work that well in multi app work flows
If you don't upgrade between versions because you don't care..........
you're not going to just be paying upgrade price, to say the least.
Bring Your Own Device will not tolerate non-enterprise grade support and new technology every year. It's simply too much of a moving target to have any useful application support on for larger companies that want to allow BOYD.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Mojave was Windows Vista Service Pack 1. All its improvements were rolled into Windows 7.
nonsense
Maybe the fact that Microsoft supports OS's for so long is actually the cause of business users getting over invested and entrenched in a dated OS. If they practiced changing os more often perhaps it would get easier?
love is just extroverted narcissism
> Under Win7, if the keyboard and mouse are idle long enough for the display to shut off, I still have that half-second grace period to nudge the mouse and not need to punch in the password to unlock it To be fair I found it takes a full 2 seconds to come out of sleep mode, far faster than the 5-10 it took win7. I'm now happy to leave it go to sleep after 30 mins of inactivity because my monitors take longer to flick back on now than windows!
Stupid slashdot being anti-WYSIWYG....
> Under Win7, if the keyboard and mouse are idle long enough for the display to shut off, I still have that half-second grace period to nudge the mouse and not need to punch in the password to unlock it
To be fair I found it takes a full 2 seconds to come out of sleep mode, far faster than the 5-10 it took win7. I'm now happy to leave it go to sleep after 30 mins of inactivity because my monitors take longer to flick back on now than windows!
Have you noticed that lately MS's broad strategy seems to be 'Do whatever Apple does'?
It wouldn't surprise me if MS's yearly releases are timed to be a few months behind OSX releases to give them time to copy whatever Apple releases.
Ryans Tutorials - A collection of technology tutorials.
I'd assume they are going to train their user base to upgrade regularly. The same way Apple does that now. Stability will be a thing of the past.
But remember every client ships with hypervisor so you can always run old versions of the OS to run apps that are broken.
How did you get it for $15? How do you get it free?
Announced 1985, released 1988.
TCO ever heard of it. M$ did a whole bullshit marketing campaign around Total Cost of Ownership, bullshit in they exaggerated certain parts of it to make buying the software look less important than the other parts. Like training staff in the new software, updating macros and, updating existing data to ensure access. Yearly fucking upgrades in a business environment are you fucking kidding me, what the fuck dingbat shithead in M$ ever thought that would be a good idea in a business environment, unfucking believable.
Apple was not big in business so it could do what ever it liked with upgrading. M$ is forgetting it's base and fucking around with yearly upgrade will cause chaos in the business world. Every four years is band enough one a decade is preferable. The huge number of hassles of data incompatibilities as company after company will be on different upgrade schedules to avoid the reality of TCO a term fucking M$ invented and publicised and now is completely fucking ignoring.
If you want to rent the software then try to rent it, none of gutless bullshit of yearly upgrades.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Still waiting for WinFS
Is it even possible to add unnecessary features to Gnome? How would anyone know?
Having had to deal with OSX on a work level, with a Mac server, I can vouch that that is totally untrue. I would have killed to have had a Windows or Linux machine running the server environment.
"I still have that half-second grace period to nudge the mouse and not need to punch in the password to unlock it." You know you can change when the monitor suspends and set that differently as to when you are prompted for a password? I use Start8 and avoid Metro on my desktop, but it's amazing on my tablet. The problem is that Windows 8 needs to detect when there is no touch input and act accordingly, or let Metro apps run in a Windowed mode. Duh, add an exit, minimize, maximize button to the metro apps. Add a small drop shadow like the Zune desktop application has. Some of this stuff is common sense, and is what is really holding Windows 8 back from being amazing. Hopefully "blue" fixes this.
Using XP costs money for the headaches alone, I don't understand why everyone using Windows doesn't have 7. I can see not using 8, but there is no excuse for not having 7 on all Windows machines. None. XP came out a decade ago.
I assume like OSX there would be virtually no learning curve between updates, it would be kind of like a Service pack, but more repetitive and more focused on experience than security (since Microsoft uses constant updates to handle that.)
MS anounced that they'd make anual releases of Windows by 97, when they were trying to rent it instead of selling. Then, they anounced it again by 2004, and did start to rent it for some companies.
It's an old plan. Never worked because they need 5 years to make a change in Windows that compiles, but they never really quit trying.
Rethinking email
2012 was toward the end of the "PC" era, when the basic software, or "operating system" of our information appliances was still updated frequently so as to make it incompatible with older devices and applications. We did actually pay for the software that did this to us.
The rationale for this was that historically this software was very primitive, and new versions gave important improvements in utility, security and performance. By 2002 however, operating system software had become mature enough that it did not need such radical continuous improvement. It had become stable enough.
In 2012 though the customer's need for this had long passed, software and hardware companies still clung to this old tradition because they needed their old software and hardware to be made obsolete so they could sell the same products to the same customers again.
Sometime around 2010 consumers started becoming wise to this game. The result was a new "mobile" era of information appliances that didn't have this legacy tradition.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Great just do a new non-upgradable install each year.
Yes, it did that from 10.0 to 10.3, when frankly all the bugs were getting fixed and all the things that hadn't made it into the system in the first place were being added. And yes, it did that from 10.7 to 10.8 for some reason. But from 10.3 to 10.7, major releases of OS X came two years apart. Has "ExtremeTech" not heard of "Wikipedia?"
It's safer to say that by and large, major releases of OS X happen every 1-2 years, depending on how long it takes Apple to get them ready. Major versions of Windows have also sometimes come out after only 1 year if Microsoft feels they're ready - Windows XP was released the year after Windows 2000 and Windows Me, remember? - but on the flip side, they ran with Windows XP for five years before releasing Vista, close to three years from Vista to 7, and three years again from 7 to 8.
We all know what happens when Apple ships stuff before it's ready. We just had yet another headline about iOS 6 Maps. Some of us remember iCloud's teething pains. And so on. Rushing releases of Windows is likely to be every bit as unwise. If they really want to take an Apple approach, "every 1-2 years, depending on when they're ready" might be safer.
(If the linked article and the summary here on Slashdot want to talk about an Apple OS that does get a major release every year, there's iOS, of course.)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Need i say anything more?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So I will have the chance to _not_ buy a MS product each year! :D
More fun for me
The $15 upgrade is meant for people who bought Windows PCs between June 2012 and January 2012. I bought my laptop in January 2012 and just lied about the date when I ordered Windows 8. They don't verify if the date is true.
:) I just shelled out the $15 to ensure that I wouldn't have any unforeseen problems with updates down the road.
If you want it for free, well, there are "alternate" methods for that
there is no excuse for not having 7 on all Windows machines
The very second I want to do something and I find myself unable to do that thing because I'm still on windows XP, I'll switch to 7. Hasn't happened yet.
XP came out a decade ago
How is this relevant? Are the Old Software Gnomes going to sneak into my hard drive while I'm asleep and re-arrange all the bits?
Is like saying that vi is user friendly, just that is pretty selective picking friends. In fact, could replace Windows 8 with vi in your phrase and would make more or less the same sense. And a lot of vi users could even agree.
Two of my machines run Windows 7 and one is running Mint. When support ends for Windows 7 I'll have three machines running Mint. MS should have remained MS, but they were so busy trying to keep up with Apple that they lost sight of their true customer base. The people I have the most sympathy for are the ones trying to support Windows in a multi-user environment.
So instead of $129 every 4/5 years, it's $25 each year. Yes, we're all being horribly ripped off.
Believe it or not, my time has value.
Aside from the hour or two it takes to do a proper install, then the day or two wasted trying to get all my must-have apps back up and running... Microsoft seems to have gotten obsessed with the "screw up the GUI as much as possible" across all its products lately. Vista, Metro, the god-awful "ribbons" in office... Each time I need to re-learn how to turn all that bullshit off, which can take weeks of half-productive time to get everything back to a usable state. And usually, you can't turn some of their new garbage off, so bam, stuck with something that doesn't work as well as plain old-school drop-down menus, forever.
So yeah, I would call that a ripoff. I care a hell of a lot more about my time, than I do about the cost of my OS.
The $15 upgrade is meant for people who bought Windows PCs between June 2012 and January 2013.
As an app developer, the most frustrating thing about developing for Windows 8 was that my existing Windows Phone apps didn't just run. In fact my XNA games would need to be rewritten from scratch because XNA isn't supported on Windows 8 like it is on WP8. The task of porting/rewriting those apps/games is so large that I still haven't done it, weeks after release. I don't know when I'll get the time.
You are correct. The business planners are out of their mind at Microsoft. They should have started their own Linux distro a while ago and provide paid support to customers and hardware manufacturers, instead of building annual crap upon the world. Seriously, Microsoft has so many coders who would be much more happy, if they could create for Linux and leave out their dreams, instead of pleasing the management at the top. The same management that talks about synergy, collaboration, team spirit and power naps. What else is more synergistic than the Linux community, where even totally disconnected people are potentially working together on a code that might be cooked into one package by some third person one day. That is the synergy, that the management can only dream about, becasue it will not happen in a closed organization that tries to lock naturally immaterial code in one material building.
~ Best man at your service.
Do it right! They seem to miss that goal A LOT, They did it wrong for years, when they finally decide to change that it doesn't mean they all of a sudden become tthe new stunning example of productivity, it just means they finally decided to stop being horrible at one area and move up to where everyone else is.
Windows Blue: It needed the money...
Lurking in the desert
Plus instead of a few hours (if you are lucky) upgrading every 4 or 5 years, you now have to upgrade every year? Not to mention the time spent testing and replacing application software that you find is not sufficiently compatible with the upgrade.
Even if Microsoft O/S upgrades where not charged for, it would still cost extra in terms of the time involved in upgrading. Costs include not only the cost of labour, but also lost opportunity costs due to that individual not being able to do something productive.
It's Microsoft... they've gone from suck to blew!
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -HLM
I agree with you if you're a user that sticks in desktop land.
If you listen to Microsoft however and go for WinRT/Metro/Modern applications (seriously Microsoft, pick a terminology and stick with it) you're going to be seriously disappointed. On a brand new Ivy Bridge desktop build with an SSD, these simplistic full screen applications actually feel slower than my old HTC Legend Android device. And they're not going to get much better, the heavy restrictions due to sandboxing and multitasking make development of useful applications downright painful.
MS really needed to lead by example here and build Office on WinRT, not Win32, for the Surface. Not necessarily because it would lead to a better Office experience, but simply because they need to prove to developers it's feasible to port complex applications.
The people who care about frequent kernel releases are developers, not end users, and even Linux end users tend to be more technical and interested in the technologies involved (otherwise they'd just use Windows). Some distributions are fairly rapid (like Ubuntu), others are slower (like Debian). The users that prefer a more stable distro can pick a stable distro, those that prefer a rolling release go for that. With Windows however, they're not going to be able to please both types of users, and the users still mostly sticking with older versions are typically Enterprise customers that would take too long to roll out a new release that one or two more releases have gone by during that timeframe even if they were one of the earlier adopting Enterprise customers. Mainstream consumers on the other hand generally don't care that much what version they're running. Windows users who tend to stick to the bleeding edge are relatively few and far between.
yes linux puts out more versions more often but it has a very different user base, development method, and motivation.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
It took me a few days to tweak, but I've figured out how to make the parts that piss me off mostly stay out of my way.
For the tweaking that won't stop, they have medications which can help with the muscle spasms.
(In seriousness, there's absolutely no reason why 'tweaking' should be required to get to a base level of sanity for a professional IT user who's upgrading to the next major version of the same product. NONE. It wasn't acceptable to most people when trying linux for the first time for most of the same people who think W8 is the cat's meow; I don't see any reason why W8 should be considered differently.
Hell, my experience has been that it's an easier move for most people from XP or W7 to KDE than W8. I've now seen two IT people who were singing W8 praises during initial marketing flat out go into a rage after having to use it for a day, swearing it off completely. One of them was what I'd consider a fanboy, and the other one was a genuine 'professional' who was just looking forward to something new and different.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Preface: I love me some Linux and hate replying to A/C's. However, this fanboi shit needs some reality . . . Unix / Linux has been pretty much "hacked" into existence. To claim that there was some sort of collective forethought from a collective herd of strangers is, well, a blog-worthy utopian sentiment. Furthermore, Linux does not have a "blue screen" mainly because there is no central authority to detect / report when something is truly wrong. Sure when the kernel is shitting the bed, you'll get a kernel panic, but that is a 1-second pre-reboot screen dump to the console that only luck would enable you to see. Logging may or may not happen. Uptime is really the only reliable diagnostic. That extends to all platforms. As for you comment on "mission critical" stuff - don't be so naive. In space stuff, mission critical things are done in orthogonal triplicate because you MUST assume that at some point, the hardware / software combination will screw up. With any luck, watchdog timers will reset stuff back to a responsible state before the next "event". No reasonable person would trust their $2 billion space widget / industrial plant to software that was pulled from a CVS repository 15 minutes before implementation. THAT is how you get disasters. Put some skin in the game next time you troll / post while high on ground-up Slackware install floppies.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
All of them.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
I wasn't saying it was a good idea, just that it is what most people DO. And then at the next family event they ambush the only person in the family who actually works with computers at all to fix all of the problems that come up.
Free Pie! The Pie is Also Evil!
So they're doing more work to make the same amount of total money over time and at the same time pissing off all IT departments everywhere by making their job impossible due to compatibility problems? Awesome.
Also, unless they get rid of metro, nobody will buy it. This just means 1 more additional year and release before they get a fucking clue. There goes the Microsoft "every other version sucks" pattern.
Sadly, I do agree :)
40 million licenses. to OEMs. Not "purchased copies by users", or even "sold copies". MS doesn't use real metrics.
Somewhere less than that of actual copies, probably in the realm of 1/4 of the total. Really, please try trolling better. It's also how MS fails at accounting to the public, because they know that internally when OEMs stop buying/start asking for refunds, that profit estimate goes down.
Sometimes I do comment on slashdot at the bar, but not that one. And far from being an Apple fan, the only Apple gear I own is an old G3 someone gave me that I never used (I did like the IIe back in the day). Right now I have a Win7 notebook, a kubuntu tower, and an XP tower (XP since EAC is Windows-only and the alternatives like Audacity lack key features).
Free Martian Whores!
So if your cpu faults, linux keeps running?
Of course not, are you going for +5 funny?
People run windows 24-7 365 days a year without a problem.
Bullshit, every Patch Tuesday requires a reboot. That said, about the only time my W7 notebook gets booted is on Patch Tuesday, I put it in huibernate mode rather than shutting it off as I do my Linux computer, because I don't want to have to reopen all the apps and docs.
Free Martian Whores!
Using XP, I used to hit the three magic keys and type my password. The monitors would come up showing my desktop. This didn't happen under Vista, and occasionally under 7. I'm not really impressed if 8 can do that, having a longer memory than some.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Any potentially data-corrupting hardware fault will cuase Windows to stop, and Linux to continue? I'm not sure that's a recommendation for Linux.
In the two cases I experienced, the first was ten years ago with a machine that dual-booted Mandrake and XP, and its power supply was dying. I thought it was normal Windows bugs making it bluescreen, reboot, and freeze, because the Linux side worked without a problem -- until the power supply died completely. The Windows crashes did corrupt data on occasion -- it didn't stop, it crashed.
The second wasn't flaky hardware per se, but a design flaw in the dual-boot notebook. If it was set to hibernate on battery but shut off on power when the lid was closed, and you closed the lid, then plugged it in before the lights stopped blinking, both OSes were confused; the machine wouldn't power back up without removing the battery. Whichever OS was running would perform disk diagnostics when powered back up, but it finally killed Windows, and the Windows partition's data weren't recoverable, even from Linux. So I reformatted the Windows partition and it was single-boot kubuntu from then until it was stolen.
Free Martian Whores!
Not being an Apple user I'll defer to your experience.
Free Martian Whores!
Most people buy a new PC less often than a car
I'm not sure what kind of cars you've been driving man, but in the past 23 years, I've owned 2 (Both GM). Granted, I am thinking about buying a new one again soon but, I've upgraded my PC a few more times than twice in the same time frame.
Ie6 users might be only a few percent now days BUT THEY KEEP BLOODY HIRING ME TO DO THEM A WEBSITE oh god kill me
ROFL, you know... I think that says something about both your clients and you.
'nuff said.
to switch to a Linux distro fulltime.
http://www.accountkiller.com/en/delete-slashdot-account Stop visiting Slashdot.
Unfortunately, I can't cite any specifics because the firewalls at work block all gaming related stuff. (Gee, I wonder why? ;-) )
Still, it isn't too hard to use your Google-fu to find plenty of copies of the list of games that will be available at launch. The last list that I saw said 50. That was up from 36 two weeks earlier, and 24 two weeks before that.
Valve reps have said on several occasions that many publishers, both large and small, have at least inquired as to the feasibility of porting their games to Linux. Apparently, some number of them have moved beyond simply asking to actively working to make their catalog of games viable on Linux.
Realistically, I think it's safe to say that the initial implementations will be all over the map in terms of code quality because cross platform development is foreign territory for many of these companies. It'll be interesting to see (1) how well they execute, and (2) if they stay the course for the long haul.
Everyone is going to have to look sharp, not as much time to learn before it becomes obsolete.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I'll bet the Linux based offerings are priced far below Office 365. I've seen the prices for the latter and a smattering of the former. Microsoft's prices were much higher. Personally, I think their pricing model is going to come back to bite them.
If M$ is releasing a new iteration of MS Windows every year, then how will this move impact on support for previous releases of MS Windows that were sold with PC hardware sold to consumers within the last 5 years, or disk image builds deployed new into enterprises in the previous 5 years?
I think M$ is building a rod for its own back that it won't be able to sustain.
Aero offloads the UI to the GPU making the system faster
Provided your machine's APU is up to the task. Notably, the GMA 950 wasn't when Windows Vista first came out.
Now people are realizing they don't need a PC as much as before... some people don't need PCs at all!!
Say someone who currently uses a device-that-is-not-a-PC to view works (aka "consume") wants to start creating works as a hobby. How much would it cost for him to a device suitable for creating works?
Microsoft did make a new handheld gaming system. It's called Windows Phone.
For one thing, it costs hundreds of USD more per year to own a device running Windows Phone than to own a Wi-Fi-only Nintendo 3DS or PlayStation Vita. These connect to the Internet through the DSL or cable you're probably already paying for at home and through the Wi-Fi included in your restaurant bill. For another, unlike Nintendo 3DS or PlayStation Vita, devices running Windows Phone lack a directional pad and trigger buttons, and though touch control has its advantages for some types of game, not every video game genre is conducive to play on a flat sheet of glass. For example, how would Mega Man series work?
Greed has its bearings all throughout Microsoft. Linux provides it's Operating systems and support for free and only receive donations to keep the development ongoing. Linux comes preloaded with tools Microsoft wishes it had and wishes it could do what Linux can do. Linux also provides an office program and graphics program and website builder and all kinds of tools for, you guessed it: FREEE. Here is a small list of Free Operating systems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions
I would rather pay $50 every other year and skip the bad releases.
on your own pillow
Worse actually, they gave him a Whipple
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Really, you like tan, do you own a Zune?
this is going to be as stupid as Mozilla's plan to rev a new major release of Firefox every 6 weeks.
It's easy to look at this and say "what a great idea"... but the people who do that are, nearly unanimously in my experience, people who are only responsible for 1 or 2 PC.
When you're responsible for 100 or 500 or 20,000, you come back to me and tell me how many more IT people that's going to require you to hir... oh, wait.
No; this is a *great* idea!!!