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Windows 10 RTM In 6 Weeks
Billly Gates writes: Ars Technica has the scoop on a new build with less flat icons and a confirmation of a mid July release date. While Microsoft is in a hurry to fix the damage done by the Windows 8 versions of its operating system, the next question is, is ready for prime time? On Neowin there's a list of problems already mentioned by MS and its users with this latest release, including Wi-Fi and sound not working without a reboot, and users complaining about tiles and apps not working in the new start menu.
The beta should go on for at least another year.
Linux Mint 13 (Maya) MATE desktop demo
until it's in version 10.2 early next year.
For all non-IT people and most IT people, the only value of open source is in reducing costs. It's basically a race to $0 income where open source software is augmented with closed-source management tools or extra paid services to build other revenue streams.
I'm personally into OSS since almost the start, but from a business perspective Microsoft will continue to do just fine unless they screw up big time in some other way.
This synopsis is in error. The article linked does NOT confirm the release date, only still says it's a rumor.
They would have to say:
"We will sell ALL wine before it's time!"
Borrowed from a Paul Masson Ad from the 70's!
If this prerelease set goes "to market" within the next six months, it will be Windows Me all over again. A performance worst than Windows 8, they might just go down a little more.
Tiles and Apps don't work? Well, that is at least some good news. Hopefully applications and the start menu work, though.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I hadn't seen them laid out so clearly before, but now that I have, all I can say about the original Windows 10 icons (middle row) is oh my god.
Seriously, what happened here? When did we go completely off the rails and let pea-brained designers start throwing this kind of bullshit around, calling it "modern" and "clean". No shit it's clean -- that recycle bin probably took all of 30 seconds to draw with the Line tool. No, faster probably, since they were just pulled out of the Windows 1.0 archives.
I look at those three rows of icons and truly cannot fathom why someone would ever choose (especially) the second or third rows. They're low contrast, simpleton drivel that doesn't even do a good job of representing the objects they're trying to depict. Whoever created them should be fired, along with the manager that approved them.
In fact, Microsoft would be well-served by firing the whole damned "UX" group and replacing this new-age cargo-cult mentality of user interface design with a scientific approach of usability studies and research. You know, that thing they used to do. Let Google and Apple waste their time with that hipster crap if they want to -- normal people and business just want to get shit done and you don't get off on the right foot to do that by making all your icons indistinguishable pale pastel blobs.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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Win ME was awful. Win XP was generally considered serviceable. Vista was a disaster, even had to Microsoft execs complaining about it in public. Win 7 was OK (although no XP). Win 8 is, well, Win 8. The trend was becoming apparent and people expected Win 9 to be acceptable again. So Microsoft decided to skip Win 9 and jump to Win 10 and have a back-to-back disaster with Win 8.
Windows might have a couple of years left but unless they release source code under an open/free license there's no way it will continue to be an option.
The Anonymous Coward also said there was no future for MS Office 365.
LibreOffice for the win.
Linux holds a 1.5% share of the desktop in the Net Applications stats, little changed since the dawn of time.
Win 8/Win 8.1,14%
Desktop Operating System Market Share
Oh please coming from a long time linux and freebsd user.
The costs to fly consultants to fix broken IE specific sites like SAP, java applets that look for XP and crap out on other platforms, wine bugs, lack of AD support for lockdowns, and help desk Temps to sort through the angry users, documents created with Libre office looking funny to potential clients with Office, are pure madness to consider! Don't give me the garbage about how users were supposed to save as .docx with no macros. Many are drooling idiots who will want to reprimand your ass for ca using this etc. Wine config? Yeah good luck with a 1,000 users including HR who have a weird java applet where people don't get paid if an error arises ;-)
I am not saying this as a troll. Linux has it's uses for specialized servers.
But if people wanted to be freed they would have last decade. Windows is reliable now since NT came and gets shit done
http://saveie6.com/
For the Atari ST.
You're just not hipster enough for it.
Most of the SSLVPN software still doesn't work. Cisco AnyConnect SSL, JunOS Pulse, Dell Mobile Connect. There are problems with the functions key on certain units. Windows 10 is as about as usable as Windows 8 at the beginning. A test period should include support for critical applications such as VPN software.
Windows 7 EOLs in 2020. I really hope MS gets their head out of their ass by then and makes a sensible release that doesn't make the user base miserable. We just want the stable productivity back we had on XP/7 please. A lot of us are still working on desktops (and will be in 2020) and, guess what, it is work that we can't do on smartphones.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Genuine question here: I've been using Linux for most things for the past 15 years. For exactly 3 programs I still need Windows, so I run XP in a virtual machine. But I've been warned that the next versions of my progs won't support XP anymore, so I'll have to jump to Win10. Since I don't give a shit about any of the 'advancements' that have occured since then, how can I remove all the gimmicks and simplify the Windows user interface to make it like XP, simply ? Is there some Win10 to XP converter to keep me from trudging through endless options and shitty tweaking downloads ?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Windows is reliable now since NT came and gets shit done
Other than the fact that the system contains legacy code that's chock full of security bugs dating back to the early 1990s. Supporting legacy software is why Microsoft can't change and in the end, it's going to kill them. Other companies that are smaller and more agile will kill Microsoft.
Microsoft sees the writing on the wall, they know that the end is near. You can see that in how they are making apps for the iPhone and Android devices. Things like Office, OneNote, Skype, Outlook, OneDrive, etc. They aren’t making these apps for other platforms just for the sake of making them available, they are making them available because they need to or they’re dead.
The computing industry that we have today is not a Microsoft dominated industry anymore and Microsoft knows it. They sat on their desktop monopoly for too long and the rest of the industry flew past them while they were sleeping.
More and more people are choosing to dump the traditional desktop and go with mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. Most people don't have a need for the traditional desktop anymore, most can get by with an iPad or some other Android-powered tablet.
Windows 8 and by extension Windows 10 is a last ditch effort for Microsoft to hold onto some semblance of relevance in today's post-PC world. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Windows 8 was a flop and by extension Windows 10 will be a flop because nobody wants a Microsoft anything these days. Microsoft and by extension Windows used to be a household name, now it's not. The name on everyone's mind now is Apple with their iPad.
Sounds like they're damned near ready to release Windows 10.
My Surface Pro 3 (so not random OEM PoS) often needs a reboot because its sensors crapped out when the thing woke up from sleep. Wi-Fi is a semi-stable solution that could use some serious polishing. The keyboard frequently gets a key logically stuck, which isn't fixable without a reboot and precludes any productivity (try doing *anything* with CTRL held down and you'll see what I mean).
In all seriousness, I hope they decide to polish first, release later for a change
No, supporting legacy software is why Microsoft is so successful. Nobody wants to buy a new computer or new OS only to find that their programs no longer work. This is the same reason why x86 is pretty much the only game in PC, server and supercomputer CPUs, because they are backward compatible and they are fast.
And good riddance to those people.
Back in the 70s, 80s and most of the 90s, the only people who owned PCs were the technically minded, which includes programmers, engineers, graphics artists, musicians and hobbyists. Sometime around the late 90s and early 00s a huge influx of laymen and noobs jumped on the bandwagon because they wanted access to the internet. Now those same laymen are leaving for consumption devices such as tablets and smartphones while the techies will still have real computers.
Basically, the PC world is returning back to what it once was, which is a positive change.
My company has decided to skip Windows 8.x and go to Windows 10, but they want to start testing and rolling out a few months after the RTM lands. If it's still not pretty solid my life is going to become miserable.
More and more people are choosing to dump the traditional desktop and go with mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones.
And most people don't care if they can get the source to what runs on it. You can't get all the source code to iOS either, so my point still stands. I care, but most people don't care, so it's still a dumb thing to say (AC comment above.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Just b'cos Linux is garbage doesn't mean that a potentially open source Windows has to be. It would still be in Microsoft's control in terms of updates, just like nobody outside Google or Mozilla can update Chromium or FireFox. Advantage of an open source Windows could be that in future, somebody might just choose to stay w/ version 10.x instead of upgrading to 10.y, and decide to maintain that 'fork' themselves in-house, since it's only for in-house use. Doesn't mean that you'll suddenly get non-working drivers, or that nVidia cards will stop working w/ your PCs under Windows. Remember, Open Source != GPL, and Microsoft can use any license, including something they write themselves, to release this.
The computing industry that we have today is not a Microsoft dominated industry anymore and Microsoft knows it. They sat on their desktop monopoly for too long and the rest of the industry flew past them while they were sleeping.
They were not exactly sleeping. They saw the emergence of tablets & phones, and Windows 8 was their attempt at it. It would have been fine, had they not insisted on also forcing it on laptops and thereby forcing laptops to become touch-screen devices. By doing that, they were forced to totally revisit that w/ Windows 10. Had Microsoft left Windows 7 alone, maybe replacing only the kernel, and instead, released Windows 8 just for tablets & Windows Phone 8 just for Phones, they'd probably have had more traction w/ Mobile App vendors. But since they were so busy fixing Windows 8.x on their desktop, both iOS and Android progressed miles ahead of them. I don't see them ever catching up, unless Apple or Google do something really screwy to their own platforms.
I've had some issues upgrading to PC-BSD 10.1.2, but the setup I have currently is fine. Just that I want to update some of my packages, but that comes as a part of the complete system upgrade. Not too enthusiastic about doing a pbi something on the CLI
But one can argue that Microsoft does not fully support legacy software. For instance, I have an Adobe Acrobat 6.x that I had bought. It worked fine under XP, but never even installed under Windows 7. The argument is that one has to upgrade to Acrobat 7 or later, but why would one pay new cash for a software that they've already bought, and which works? Just b'cos the new version of the OS no longer can support it?
Those arguments aside, if Microsoft doesn't support all past software, why is it throwing the kitchen sink at legacy support? In Windows 7, they already had the right idea - Virtual PC and XP Mode. Just extend that here in Windows 10. I never saw the reason for Windows 10 to have a 32 bit version at all. There are a lot of old computers that just won't go to Windows 10 - maybe because their motherboards can't have more than 512MB of memory, maybe because their outdated peripherals manufacturers only maintain but no longer support them, etc. So Microsoft could have made Windows 10 a 64-bit only OS, and then installed on it Virtual PC, w/ free VMs for 8, 7, Vista, XP, 2000, ME, NT 4.0 and 3.5. That way, people w/ legacy needs can be supported in software, while the main OS itself would allow MS to innovate more. And somewhere down the road, they could even include a Windows 10 VM in the package.
Speaking about 32-bit Windows 10, my Winbook has 2GB of RAM and 32GB of flash storage (C:\), and doesn't come in a configuration w/ 64GB. Having a 64-bit only version would have made them support a 64-bit OS, and at the same time, avoid having any upgrade/support issues. Put the minimum requirement at 4GB of RAM, and make the basic OS recognize up to 64TB, so that manufacturers don't put stupid low limits like 32GB. That way, there would also be no question of the OS being able to upgrade from 8.x to 10. I've seen some Winbooks w/ 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage: those will NOT be upgradable to 10. So why have them, particularly when 8 sucks?
I expect the Linux numbers to go down, thanks to the outcry over systemd. Don't be surprised to see FreeBSD/PC-BSD conquer a lot of this market.
Microsoft's problem is that it forgot its core business and somehow thought that Apple and Google were competitors.
Its core business is not and never will be home consumers, yet they have blown billions chasing them while leaving its core business hanging.
It is plain stupidity and envy.
Two failed OS's in a row will not be bode well for their current stock price or their future existence*.
They really need to go back to their core business and leave consumer devices to those with a slightly greater clue.
MS should have sold Azure instead of waste time with Windows 8, Windows Phone, etc.
"Azure in a box" would be a huge hit in the enterprise, ya know MS's actual business.
The only benefit of not selling it is that it helped force MS to open source a few things to get help porting it to Linux since ~20% of Azure customers are running Linux on it.
I am still amazing to me that some businesses are willing to give up some control of their data to a untrustworthy third-party(not just Azure, but any "cloud" provider) to save a few bucks on IT.
*MS won't die obviously, but they are in danger of turning into IBM. Big, slow, bloated and pretty much irrelevant outside certain niches.
if the rumors are true, they're planning to make up for all those free upgrades with a hefty OEM price for new computers (isn't it nice to be able to extract Monopoly rates when you need it). $109 OEM for the home version, $149 for Pro
To the uninitiated:
The New Egg retail price for single copies of Windows 10 in OEM packaging for the "system builder" isn't the dirt cheap wholesale price paid by Dell, HP or Lenovo for the mass-market OEM Windows system install.
APK, will you just give it a rest already. Nobody's going to install your shitty software. The world has moved on. You've already been debated point by point on why your system is worse and you couldn't refute any of the rebuttals made without it sounding like you're sticking your fingers in your ears and chanting "la la la".
Give it up already.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Nope, going by revenue from a few years ago, rough calculations which is why not at 100%.
8% came from entertainment/devices so home
70% from servers and offerings only available to businesses or similar.
20% from windows and windows live so both home and business.
For the past twenty years Microsoft's two major sources of income were Windows and Office. One is an operating system to make the computer go and the other is software to let people do something with it.
Windows is mostly tied to the sales of x86 computers. PC sales peaked in about 2010 and aren't likely to get back to that high point. That doesn't mean Microsoft is doomed. They're doing the smart thing and porting their software to growing platforms.
This means the market for Office can explode. Not only do they keep their position on PCs but can expand it to iOS and Android devices of which there are billions.
Office on iOS and Android means there's a bridge between the Microsoft dominated world of the PC and the mobile world where they have an inferior position. This reinforces their desktop position because Office remains the de facto standard in business, even when their mobile devices don't run Windows.
Microsoft isn't alone here. Adobe, Autodesk, and plenty of other traditional software houses are looking to extend their reach to mobile platforms. Mobile isn't necessarily replacing the traditional desktop but is growing independently.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
If I download it in a two months, do I register it then when I download it to get the free upgrade, or do I actually have to activate it on my PC? I doubt I'll want to install it as I've only been using Win 7 for just over a year, but I might want to download it this year and install it at no cost in about 5 years.
It is amazing at how consistently these frosty piss postings occur. Even if someone were paid to do this, they would not be as reliable as "Anonymous Coward" at producing these posts.
After all of these years, I just HAVE to ask: What is the motivation?
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Referring to this thread where you got put down.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"