Microsoft: Windows 8 Is 2 Years Away

[VinDSL]

OMG!!! 😱

Source: http://mashable.com/2010/10/24/microsoft-windows-8-2012/

 

[lxskllr]

I may very well be done with Windows by that point. I'm sure I'll download the betas to get familiar with it, but I'll probably be running Linux full time by then.

 

[RebateMonger]

As somebody who has to support this stuff, I hope it takes five years.

 

[WildHorse]

``

 

[lxskllr]

Exactly what I swore a couple of years ago, before the Win7 Pro I'm on now.

Linux-for-prime-time has been a mirage, always ALMOST, but never QUITE there if you demand dead-sure interoperability with clients.

Someday we'll finally all be able to migrate, but over the recent several years, the story has always been, and still is, "almost, not quite, soon!"

I could really do it now, but I can't be arsed to wipe my drive just to change O/Ss. I run Vista on my main box, and Ubuntu on all my secondary computers. When I switch to Ubuntu full time, I'll probably use Win7 with it as a dual boot, for the occasional game. The main game I play has a Linux client, so it would really be for Bioshock3 when it gets released :^D The only program I'd really miss is Foobar2000. I hear it works under wine, but I haven't had luck with it as of yet.

 

[WildHorse]

``

 

[lxskllr]

Cool, thanks for the link :^)

 

[Malak]

I skipped Vista and am quite happy with win7. I expect it to last as long as XP. Microsoft can come out with as many OS's as they like, but it will only hurt them if they keep this pace up. I would expect Win8 to have less migration than Vista did.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Good, just keep Windows 7 running smooth and issue a couple of service pack in the meantime. To tell you the truth, they could go longer than two years, IMO. Windows 7 is a fine OS.

 

[Nothinman]

As somebody who has to support this stuff, I hope it takes five years.

Agreed. It already sucks having to worry about 2 different versions of XP and however many different SKUs there are of Vista and Win7 combined so adding another 6 or so Win8 SKUs will be fucking terrible. And that's ignoring all of the server releases and their different SKUs.

 

[RebateMonger]

I skipped Vista and am quite happy with win7. I expect it to last as long as XP. Microsoft can come out with as many OS's as they like, but it will only hurt them if they keep this pace up. I would expect Win8 to have less migration than Vista did.

As an IT person, I'm beginning to sense a pattern here:

Wait for the second generation of each OS release. i.e.
Windows 2000/Server 2000 - Wait for XP/Server 2003
Windows Vista/Server 2008 - Wait for Win7/Server 2008 R2
Windows 8/Server ???? - Wait for Windows 9/Server ????

 

[Nothinman]

As an IT person, I'm beginning to sense a pattern here:

Wait for the second generation of each OS release. i.e.
Windows 2000/Server 2000 - Wait for XP/Server 2003
Windows Vista/Server 2008 - Wait for Win7/Server 2008 R2
Windows 8/Server ???? - Wait for Windows 9/Server ????

And ironically it only seems to really apply to MS...

 

[Gooberlx2]

2 years sound right. Wasn't the intention to commit to a ~3-year consumer OS release cycle after Vista came out?

 

[biostud]

dx12 will be win8 exclusive.... 😛

 

[Nothinman]

2 years sound right. Wasn't the intention to commit to a ~3-year consumer OS release cycle after Vista came out?

But how often does MS actually follow through with their promises?

 

[Gooberlx2]

But how often does MS actually follow through with their promises?

I dunno, 3 years is around the norm for MS anyway.

With each '-' representing (about) one year:
3.0 --> 3.1 ---> 95 ---> 98 ---> XP -----> Vista ---> Windows 7 ---> Windows 8 (tentatively)

 

[JackMDS]

LOL.

The $100 - $200 on OS (and a new drive to be more flexible) is the main trouble to cry 24/7 for the next two years.

Yeah, make a lot of sense in a culture of people that buy new sneakers for $100 a pair when the old one are still OK.

Get cars for over $50,000 when a $20.000 will get them fine to work and the malls as well.

Spend thousands of $$$ every year on brews that is not healthy for the body.

And so On, and So On. :\ - 🙄


😎

 

[VinDSL]

As an IT person, I'm beginning to sense a pattern here[...]

t's called Planned Obsolescence (Wikipedia).

Planned obsolescence is a policy of deliberately planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete or nonfunctional after a certain period.[...]

Planned obsolescence has potential benefits for a producer because to obtain continuing use of the product the consumer is under pressure to purchase again.[...]

The purpose of planned obsolescence is to hide the real cost per use from the consumer, who will be willing to pay a higher price for the product than if he had been aware of its limited useful life.[...]

The rationale behind the strategy is to generate long-term sales volume by reducing the time between repeat purchases[...]

How to beat the system, as a consumer...

Most proprietary software will ultimately reach an end-of-life point, at which the manufacturer will cease updates and support.

As free software can always be updated and maintained by the end user, the user is not at the sole mercy of a proprietary vendor.

As an IT person, it would *seem* that you win either way. 😉

 

[Nothinman]

The downside is that the end user generally isn't responsible or knowledgeable enough to update and maintain their own software. I'm all about free software, but even free software gets abandoned eventually.

 

[RebateMonger]

t's called Planned Obsolescence (Wikipedia).

I'm far from convinced that it's "planned obsolescence". The world moves on and new software features need to be developed to keep up. Sometimes that requires major changes in the way software works (MS' changing security models, for instance, trying to keep up with malware developers taking advantage of the huge market penetration of Windows).

When major changes are required, it's probably better to do those as major version changes instead of in multiple small pieces, which would require constant changes in all the third-party applications trying to keep up. So I can see major OS updates being required at times.

The problem that OS makers are going to see more and more is that the service life of computers is going to increase. Today's hardware will meet the needs of most users for at least a decade.

MS felt it necessary to continue support for XP for twelve years. How long will it need to support Vista and Win7? Continuing development for software that no longer generates income is a major problem for developers, whether they are developing proprietary or "free" software.

Added:
The "good news" is that there will be more and more computers using older-and-older software. So money could be made doing updates for "obsolescent" software. We may end up with having to pay for updates for our older OSes (like with the Macintosh). Instead of a free Service Pack 3), there may be a charge. Since the numbers of computers are so big, hopefully the update prices would be "reasonable". You get to decide whether to "update" your obsolescent OS or to move on to the latest OS.

The downside is that the end user generally isn't responsible or knowledgeable enough to update and maintain their own software. I'm all about free software, but even free software gets abandoned eventually.

This. As software development gets more complex, user-level software maintenance is going to become tougher. Since most folks need an income to live, there will need to be a fianancial incentive for doing software development and software that doesn't generate income for programmers will be abandoned.

 

[VinDSL]

Wasn't the intention to commit to a ~3-year consumer OS release cycle after Vista came out?

True!

Then again, 3 years seems like a shockingly long time to wait for a major update.

Ubu rolls out a major update every 6 months.

Google Chrome is offering major updates every few weeks...

I'll probably be running Linux full time by then.[...]

I could really do it now, but I can't be arsed to wipe my drive just to change O/Ss.

Arguably, Windows peaked with the release of XP. That was their Crown Jewel.

Hopefully, in these forums, we are past Winders vs Linux & XP vs Vista/7.

I am increasingly enthusiastic about Linux (et al.) Let's leave it at that...

The downside is that the end user generally isn't responsible or knowledgeable enough to update and maintain their own software. I'm all about free software, but even free software gets abandoned eventually.

True & true!

Sorry for being self-reverential, but..

I drive a lowered '98 Honda CiViC with a full '99 Si swap -- 12" sub in the trunk, powered by a 400W Kicker monoblock amp.

It's not in my nature to leave things alone, nor patiently wait for Honda to build a better CiViC. I roll my own...

The same applies to my system rig and choice of OS. 😉

 

[Mem]

True!

Then again, 3 years seems like a shockingly long time to wait for a major update.

Ubu rolls out a major update every 6 months.

Google Chrome is offering major updates every few weeks...

I like how easy and fast it is to upgrade Linux ie Ubuntu,plus its free so they can bring out newer versions when they like with no cost to the consumer unlike Windows,personally I only use Windows for gaming otherwise I would be on Linux period.

Only thing I'm worried about with Microsoft is if they shorten the time/release gap between their newer operating systems can quality control still be at a high level,not to mention how slow some companies release drivers for newer operating systems.

 

[Nothinman]

When major changes are required, it's probably better to do those as major version changes instead of in multiple small pieces, which would require constant changes in all the third-party applications trying to keep up. So I can see major OS updates being required at times.

Sometimes, but I'd say a lot less than MS wants to admit. For instance, I'm sure they could've supported DX11 on XP if they really wanted.

This. As software development gets more complex, user-level software maintenance is going to become tougher. Since most folks need an income to live, there will need to be a fianancial incentive for doing software development and software that doesn't generate income for programmers will be abandoned.

Except that software development is getting simpler. Sure the people writing the compilers, VMs, etc behind things like .Net/Mono, Java, etc are having their jobs get more complex but the higher level languages and tools are getting simpler. A GUI app that would take months to develop in Win32 takes days in C# and that's only going to get better.

But in any case, free software has a better chance of staying around longer because anyone with the right skill sets can pick up the code and maintain it. Where as with closed software once a company abandons a product or goes under it's essentially dead. Occasionally free alternatives pop up to replace them, but they'll never be 100% feature/bug compatible.

Ubu rolls out a major update every 6 months.

Google Chrome is offering major updates every few weeks...

Ubuntu doesn't actually develop 90% of the software in their distro, they just package it up and integrate it. And no corporate entity would go for a 6mo update cycle, which is why they actually support them longer than that and have LTS releases.

And Chrome isn't anywhere near a valid comparison, it's a single app compared to a whole OS.

Arguably, Windows peaked with the release of XP. That was their Crown Jewel.

There's little to no argument that Win7 isn't better than XP in every way.

I drive a lowered '98 Honda CiViC with a full '99 Si swap -- 12" sub in the trunk, with a 400W Kicker monoblock amp.

It's not in my nature to leave things alone, nor patiently wait for Honda to build a better CiViC. I roll my own...

The same applies to my system rig and choice of OS.

And taht's fine if you want to support yourself as well, but that doesn't apply to 99% of the population.

 

[sourceninja]

Exactly what I swore a couple of years ago, before the Win7 Pro I'm on now.

Linux-for-prime-time has been a mirage, always ALMOST, but never QUITE there if you demand dead-sure interoperability with clients.

Someday we'll finally all be able to migrate, but over the recent several years, the story has always been, and still is, "almost, not quite, soon!"

I switched to OSX from linux around the time of Vista because I agreed with you. I never looked back. However, recent events in the apple world have made me look again at windows 7 and linux. I have found that both win7 and ubuntu make great desktops and can do anything I need to do with my computer.

In fact I liked Ubuntu 10.10 so much I'm really thinking about replacing OSX on my notebook with Ubuntu!

 

[lxskllr]

True!

Then again, 3 years seems like a shockingly long time to wait for a major update.

Ubu rolls out a major update every 6 months.

It shows :^D

Ubuntu's had some sketchy releases, and I think the 6 month cycle is too quick. Things get rushed, and stuff gets pushed out the door half assed. I'd like to see them take a route similar to Debian. Keep the LTS releases at 2 year increments, but make the main release annual, and add an unstable branch where people who wish to can have a rolling release. That would get more eyes testing things, and you won't end up having core functionality screwed for the final release.

It doesn't make Linux look good when something that worked 6 months previous breaks. They should concentrate on keeping things functional, and worry about the pretty crap second. No one needs a new O/S every 6 months, and the people that do like testing, would like the newest available. Not something that'll be immediately outdated a month after release.