Windows 8 - another MS disaster waiting to happen?

[NeoV]

Anyone else wondering why the hell MS is leaking windows 8 info already?

their focus should be migrating XP users to Windows 7 - which is a fantastic OS - and pushing new stuff on top of Win 7 - not as an entirely new OS.

I will be using Win 7 much like many people hung on to XP - until I'm forced to change.

I think Windows 8 is going to wind up just like Vista - hardly used

 

[Nothinman]

their focus should be migrating XP users to Windows 7 - which is a fantastic OS - and pushing new stuff on top of Win 7 - not as an entirely new OS.

What new stuff? If Win7's current features haven't convinced you to upgrade by now then you won't be convinced until some killer app finally stops working on XP.

I will be using Win 7 much like many people hung on to XP - until I'm forced to change.

Then you're part of the problem, move on now and get it over with already.

 

[HeXen]

Anyone else wondering why the hell MS is leaking windows 8 info already?

their focus should be migrating XP users to Windows 7 - which is a fantastic OS - and pushing new stuff on top of Win 7 - not as an entirely new OS.

I will be using Win 7 much like many people hung on to XP - until I'm forced to change.

I think Windows 8 is going to wind up just like Vista - hardly used

then don't upgrade. What is MS suppose to do? wait until their competitors have completely left them in the dust? Maybe they should have just stuck with DOS 3.1 and been done with it? The new trend is smaller, therefore tablets and small laptops are gonna leave MS far behind if they just stick with Windows 7 and x86 architecture...cause the large desktops arent doing as well as they used to sales wise.

Many apps still work on older versions of Linux and OSX just the same as apps work on XP. Use what you like and leave it be. Tech will always move on without you regardless.

 

[gorobei]

you haven't been paying attention to the tech sector have you?

ms is moving some of its eggs to the mobile market. the pc market isnt going to see any booms in the future. but mobile (phone/slate/ultraportable) is growing rapidly. a big os like vista/7 is fine but still doesnt work that well for non keyboard and mouse inputs. win8 is x86 and arm with emphasis on large buttons/tiles/bars for the touchscreen devices.
announcing 8 now deters the product manufacturers from making their own proprietary os.

 

[postmortemIA]

you haven't been paying attention to the tech sector have you?

ms is moving some of its eggs to the mobile market. the pc market isnt going to see any booms in the future. but mobile (phone/slate/ultraportable) is growing rapidly. a big os like vista/7 is fine but still doesnt work that well for non keyboard and mouse inputs. win8 is x86 and arm with emphasis on large buttons/tiles/bars for the touchscreen devices.
announcing 8 now deters the product manufacturers from making their own proprietary os.

problem is that right now me and billion others have similar or familiar OS at work and at home. What you mentioned about windows 8 features makes it undesirable in business sector. Which will lead to fragmentation between win 8 and other versions. That fragmentation is not good, one of keys of XP success was applicability of good workstation OS to every situastion.

 

[pcunite]

Windows 8 is just to let everyone know that MS gets small, light, tablet, cell phone, etc computing. The fact that they named it 8 is comforting to developers who can see that Win32 is still there underneath. Windows 7 is another 10 year OS like XP was for everyone else.

 

[lxskllr]

problem is that right now me and billion others have similar or familiar OS at work and at home. What you mentioned about windows 8 features makes it undesirable in business sector. Which will lead to fragmentation between win 8 and other versions. That fragmentation is not good, one of keys of XP success was applicability of good workstation OS to every situastion.

All they've shown so far is the new stuff, right? I'm betting it'll be selectable between touchy feely, and traditional style. Having one gui work great for both styles of computing is tough. Ubuntu has done a credible job with Unity, but it still favors touchy feely at the expense of the classic desktop. They can afford to be experimental, whereas MS can't.

 

[WildHorse]

W7 is Windows Vista with a few tweaks which MS ought to have published as updates to Vista.

So now we will have some more GUI changes, which OUGHT to be pushed out as additional Vista updates, but MS hornswaggled people into paying for a whole new OS, W7.

More of what should be free updates, mostly to the GUI, but MS wants us to PAY to buy the essentially same OS AGAIN.

LINUX is the future!!!

 

[Chiefcrowe]

yeah, you know for one they really need to drop the price for the upgrade to ramp up adoption!

 

[yinan]

Win8 will fail, no one I know of that is highly technical sees any reason to upgrade. The UI blows donkeys and looks ugly.

Guess I will have to wait till they fix that with Win9.

 

[ShadowVVL]

yeah if you can play all the new games on xp then no reason for upgrading.


Windows for gaming! Linux for everything else! apple? well apple can go to hell!!!

MS wants us to PAY to buy the essentially same OS AGAIN.

its not just MS but adobe,autodesk and many more company's

only difference is ms is only robbing you of $150-200 as where adobe is robbing you for 1k and autodesk for 3k-5k

 

[FoxFifth]

W7 is Windows Vista with a few tweaks which MS ought to have published as updates to Vista. ...

I'm not technologically literate enough to comment on the accuracy of that but from a marketing standpoint, given Vista's reputation, why would it have made any sense for them to stick with that name and add more updates to it?

 

[Gooberlx2]

Win8 will fail, no one I know of that is highly technical sees any reason to upgrade. The UI blows donkeys and looks ugly.

Guess I will have to wait till they fix that with Win9.

Are you making this statement in regards only to the mobile/touch UI layer? Because the full "Win7 desktop" is still there.

 

[aigomorla]

What new stuff? If Win7's current features haven't convinced you to upgrade by now then you won't be convinced until some killer app finally stops working on XP.

^ this...

some companies do not want to invest in all those licesnse on w7, when they already have XP working fully functional and perfectly fine for operation businesses.

 

[Nothinman]

^ this...

some companies do not want to invest in all those licesnse on w7, when they already have XP working fully functional and perfectly fine for operation businesses.

I wouldn't call XP "perfectly fine" if it has Internet access these days. Before someone comes in screaming that Win7 gets malware too, I know it does, but it's safer than XP by a large margin and it's just a lot nicer to use. I cringe every time I have to work on a Win2K3 server or XP machine now.

XP SP is up to be officially unsupported by MS in 2014, a full 10 years after the release of SP2 and 13 years after the initial release. It's not like people haven't had enough time to plan and execute their migration to Vista or Win7...

 

[Comdrpopnfresh]

I think the additional features said to be in windows 8 will make interoperability and connectivity between different devices with diverse hardware profiles much more functional, better performing, and user-transparent. If it can run on systems designed for mobility and low-power, wouldn't it stand to reason it that it would just as easily run on older or lower-spec'd/resource systems (which are probably the popular mainstay for 'xp or bust' diehards)?
People on those mobile devices are going to expect a level of usability, appearance, and function; so could one also expect a similar user experience on lower-end/old machines? In the case the user experience it'll deliver on mobile devices isn't comparably matched on low-end PCs because those mobile devices being sold outperform the low-end PC hardware (now having dedicated graphics, ssd, dual-core processing, etc), isn't it a sign to move on? That'd be like.... how a modern digital watch or scientific calculator has more processing power than early building-sized computers. I don't see anyone clinging to those...

 

[Munky]

I personally hate the blocky, ugly tiles they insist on using, just like WP7. But if they mange to integrate desktop capabilities with an easy to use touch interface, there will definitely be people who will buy it.

 

[wirednuts]

if win8 runs on a raspberry pi, then watch out!

 

[MrChad]

This has been Microsoft's goal for quite some time. Shorter release cycles should mean fewer drastic changes between releases, which should allow software and hardware vendors to more easily adapt thereby improving stability and public perception.

One of Vista's biggest problems was that there were so many changes from XP that there were major compatibility and stability problems with drivers and software out of the gate. W7 was a much more incremental release and thus enjoyed greater stability early on (which helped improve its image). I'm curious to see how quickly MS will drop support for Vista (and even W7) with these quicker release cycles.

 

[Nothinman]

This has been Microsoft's goal for quite some time. Shorter release cycles should mean fewer drastic changes between releases, which should allow software and hardware vendors to more easily adapt thereby improving stability and public perception.

One of Vista's biggest problems was that there were so many changes from XP that there were major compatibility and stability problems with drivers and software out of the gate. W7 was a much more incremental release and thus enjoyed greater stability early on (which helped improve its image). I'm curious to see how quickly MS will drop support for Vista (and even W7) with these quicker release cycles.

If they start doing more frequent releases they'll have to redo their pricing structure. People are bitching about spending ~$100 every 10 years now, imagine if MS stepped that up to every 3 years? I wish they'd just do periodic installer updates like they do for the server releases, like say have a Win7 R2 that's covered by the same Win7 key you bought originally. Just for the simple fact of including more updated drivers and patches so an install doesn't take 4 f'ing hours of rebooting before you even get to install your apps.

And MS won't be able to drop support on the "pro" SKUs any quicker, getting a medical or government facility to upgrade their clients more often than say 10 years is pretty much impossible. For the home SKUs they could day f' it and move on, but why both pissing off those customers if you're supporting the pro SKUs already anyway?

 

[HeXen]

I personally hate the blocky, ugly tiles they insist on using, just like WP7. But if they mange to integrate desktop capabilities with an easy to use touch interface, there will definitely be people who will buy it.

Have you used it or you just hate things you never tried before? Don't knock something till you try it.

I'm using this, its similar and honestly it works out really well. access to all information and apps is a lot quicker

 

[Texashiker]

Anyone else wondering why the hell MS is leaking windows 8 info already?

If microsoft does not stay in the spotlight, who knows what might happen, maybe companies like dell might turn to linux. Could you just imagine the horror if some linux distribution made the evening news like microsoft does?

I usually skip every other microsoft operating system. Skipped windows me, went from 98 to windows 2000, to XP, to windows 7.

I doubt I will buy another microsoft operating system until windows 9 or windows 10. The only reason I went to windows 7 was to get the new movie maker live so I could edit .mov videos, and to get a 64 bit operating system so I could use more then 4 gigs of memory.

 

[HeXen]

Dell already tried out Linux, twice i think,they customized a version of Ubuntu last time i believe...however, it never really sold very well, even in the midst of the Vista hate years. People in general just did not or will not grasp Linux and instead were wanting Dell to offer XP models, so thats when Dell got into it with MS over continuing to license XP. Once 7 came out, i think the idea of a company like Dell switching isn't likely to happen unless MS never releases another OS or everyone hates W8 in which case they will stick with W7.

 

[Nothinman]

Have you used it or you just hate things you never tried before? Don't knock something till you try it.

I'm using this, its similar and honestly it works out really well. access to all information and apps is a lot quicker

Whatever that is, it looks better than what I've seen of WP7 screenshots. I really dislike the default color scheme MS choose for WP7 and I don't really like the rigid blocks either. I'm obviously biased, but I like the way Android widgets can draw their borders however they like or not at all.

Dell already tried out Linux, twice i think,they customized a version of Ubuntu last time i believe...however, it never really sold very well, even in the midst of the Vista hate years. People in general just did not or will not grasp Linux and instead were wanting Dell to offer XP models, so thats when Dell got into it with MS over continuing to license XP. Once 7 came out, i think the idea of a company like Dell switching isn't likely to happen unless MS never releases another OS or everyone hates W8 in which case they will stick with W7.

They also didn't price it properly, sometimes it even cost more than getting Windows on the thing, they only put it on 1 or 2 SKUs and they were the ultra cheap stuff and I don't think there was any real marketing. Even Linux users end up not getting it that way because you couldn't get Linux on the machines worth buying. Whether that was because of Dell's incompetence, which seems to have no bounds, or pressure from MS, I don't know, but it was definitely setup to fail right from the start.

But Linux is making inroads in the form of Android and no one seems able to stop that. As mobile devices become more and more prolific and capable MS is going to have a harder and harder time convincing people they're still relevant simply because iOS and Android have the mindshare already and even though WP7 is nothing like Windows Mobile 6.x, a lot of people still have a bitter taste in their mouth from that product.

 

[Munky]

Have you used it or you just hate things you never tried before? Don't knock something till you try it.

I'm using this, its similar and honestly it works out really well. access to all information and apps is a lot quicker

Widgets allow easy access to a lot of information. Android and Symbian already have that. However, I don't need huge icons for Steam and Hulu as if my fingers were the size of butter sticks.