Windows 8 preview

[WaTaGuMp]

Isn't that was screen protectors are for ? :$

Pfft, you will still have to clean it.

 

[ViRGE]

The only unmanaged applications that should have any difficulty with a simple flag recompile would be any using inline assembler or chip specific instruction sets (SSE, 3DNow!, etc), which shouldn't be terribly many at this point. Anyone that gives a shit will be writing to APIs which wrap these things. Some APIs may need some tweaking because of it, but the apps themselves shouldn't.

And yes, drivers will be an issue... but Microsoft is taking a hard stance on the hardware platform, so there shouldn't be too much under the hood that matters in the end.

In theory, sure. In practice pointer arithmetic in particular causes the damnedest issues if you make any assumptions in your code.

 

[Rangoric]

I have a windows 7 tablet and iPad that I use daily...

You could also have a tablet that:
- Gets infested with viruses and crapware, and requires constant maintenance.

3 Months no issues. Just like my desktop.

- Runs half as fast, weighs twice as much, runs twice as hot, lasts half as long and costs twice as much.

i5 Intel process isn't all that slow at 1.2ghz, and when plugged in it goes 50% faster (or well 1.8ghz). It cost as much as my iPad. Visual Studio flies with ReSharper and dotCover in use, hell I've even working on a WinForms app at the moment on it. And with 4GB of memory, it doesn't crash all the time from being out of memory like my iPad.

-It'll be capable of a lot and not good at any of it.

Well since my iPad sucks for productive things, I'll take running Visual Studio and getting real work done. I'll take being able to pick up a pen (EP121 has a multitouch and pen based screen) and takes notes at a meeting and let it do it's handwriting recognition after (well on the text, since the diagrams won't need it)

Being pen based lets my Fiance get her drawing on, in Photoshop. But I guess a Wacom isn't good at it's job either.

Granted most games would be an issue without a Keyboard and mouse attached (with a pair of USB ports and bluetooth) I've already got a bunch of things for games, and computer games like Dragon Age i want to play on a large high resolution screen as opposed to a tablet screen.

Oh and Chrome sucks on touch screens. But IE9 rocks on it.

-If it's running ARM, forget about backwards compatibility....remind me again why anyone wants this windows 7 based?

AH HA, you are only talking about the ARM version. But then again, since .Net applications are JIT compiled ARM will just be another thing my apps will run on. AnyCpu will really mean AnyCpu.

I don't have a particular problem with their actual touch-UI. It'd be very interesting as its own lightweight alternative to android, iOS or webOS. But running it on top of windows, with all it's weight and baggage...what a joke.

I hope there's a lot more to windows 8 than this.

I love it, every article goes on about how the new UI is awesome and that others should use it.

Then bag it for being on Windows.

So basically if Apple had come up with the UI, the article would go on and on about it then ask why Microsoft hasn't come out with anything similar.

 

[Cogman]

So basically if Apple had come up with the UI, the article would go on and on about it then ask why Microsoft hasn't come out with anything similar.

The UI looks great for a touch screen. On the other hand, it looks like it would get in the way for regular computing activities

 

[BD2003]

I have a windows 7 tablet and iPad that I use daily...


3 Months no issues. Just like my desktop.



i5 Intel process isn't all that slow at 1.2ghz, and when plugged in it goes 50% faster (or well 1.8ghz). It cost as much as my iPad. Visual Studio flies with ReSharper and dotCover in use, hell I've even working on a WinForms app at the moment on it. And with 4GB of memory, it doesn't crash all the time from being out of memory like my iPad.


Well since my iPad sucks for productive things, I'll take running Visual Studio and getting real work done. I'll take being able to pick up a pen (EP121 has a multitouch and pen based screen) and takes notes at a meeting and let it do it's handwriting recognition after (well on the text, since the diagrams won't need it)

Being pen based lets my Fiance get her drawing on, in Photoshop. But I guess a Wacom isn't good at it's job either.

Granted most games would be an issue without a Keyboard and mouse attached (with a pair of USB ports and bluetooth) I've already got a bunch of things for games, and computer games like Dragon Age i want to play on a large high resolution screen as opposed to a tablet screen.

Oh and Chrome sucks on touch screens. But IE9 rocks on it.



AH HA, you are only talking about the ARM version. But then again, since .Net applications are JIT compiled ARM will just be another thing my apps will run on. AnyCpu will really mean AnyCpu.



I love it, every article goes on about how the new UI is awesome and that others should use it.

Then bag it for being on Windows.

So basically if Apple had come up with the UI, the article would go on and on about it then ask why Microsoft hasn't come out with anything similar.

I've got nothing against windows. Ive been a windows user for decades. If apple had decided to make iOS a shell over OSX, and then try to run it on ARM hardware that struggles to render a web page at a reasonable speed, then yes, I would bag it.

Lets not kid ourselves here. Sacrifices are going to need to be made here if this is going to be based on windows. Its going to require more comparatively more hardware and be more expensive, or its going to suffer for it, period. That might mean a more capable system overall in some ways, but it'll be stuff that I dont NEED it to be capable of. This is a fact of computing, you dont get something for nothing.

I have zero interest on running OS X or any OS X apps on my ipad. I wouldnt use them if I could. I find the ipad experience lacking in many ways, but this is not the cure. I dont need it for work, I dont need to type on it, I dont need to draw on it. I need a light, responsive, simple and long lasting device. Software and hardware need to come together. Imagine if when they first demoed the xbox 360, they showed how you can switch to microsoft excel mid game. I bet that would have gone over well.

If they can pull it off, then more power to them. Then theyll have succeeded in finally pushing what theyve failed time and time again. Maybe the time has come where this kind of thing doesnt matter, but I just cant see it. All theyve shown is a widget shell over a full OS, because that was the lazy thing to do. Not impressed.

 

[Cogman]

I've got nothing against windows. Ive been a windows user for decades. If apple had decided to make iOS a shell over OSX, and then try to run it on ARM hardware that struggles to render a web page at a reasonable speed, then yes, I would bag it.

Lets not kid ourselves here. Sacrifices are going to need to be made here if this is going to be based on windows. Its going to require more hardware and be more expensive, period. That might mean a more capable system overall, but it'll be stuff that I dont NEED it to be capable of. It will also means a lack of inexpensive, more mobile-focused hardware.

Umm, you can get a system that runs windows just fine for under 300 bucks. (see, atom based systems). The "It needs more hardware" argument doesn't hold water. Apple charges what, 700, 800 dollars for their Ipad? You can build a decent windows machine for that price.

I have zero interest on running OS X or any OS X apps on my ipad. I wouldnt use them if I could. I find the ipad experience lacking in many ways, but this is not the cure. I dont need it for work, I dont need to type on it, I dont need to draw on it. I need a light, responsive, simple and long lasting device. Software and hardware need to come together. Imagine if when they first demoed the xbox 360, they showed how you can switch to microsoft excel mid game. I bet that would have gone over well.

Excel is a MAJOR business application. I'm pretty sure there is a large group of people that would love having a device that can view business docs conveniently (In fact, that is why iWork exists). Your xbox example is bad.

If they can pull it off, then more power to them. Then theyll have succeeded in finally pushing what theyve failed time and time again. Maybe the time has come where this kind of thing doesnt matter, but I just cant see it. All theyve shown is a widget shell over a full OS, because that was the lazy thing to do. Not impressed.

I personally believe the reason MS has failed at the tablet and mobile market is the fact their interfaces have sucked. That was the major thing the Iphone brought to the market, an interface that was easy and intuitive to use for a phone. MS's interfaces were clunky and limiting coupled with crappy resistive touch screens.

If they aren't bludgeoned to death for being microsoft, I could see this doing very well in the tablet sector.*


*If you don't think that happens, look at what happened with Vista and Windows 7. Windows 7 was not much more than a minor speed improvement and UI tweak, yet people sung praises to how wonderful 7 was and how terrible Vista was.

 

[BD2003]

Umm, you can get a system that runs windows just fine for under 300 bucks. (see, atom based systems). The "It needs more hardware" argument doesn't hold water. Apple charges what, 700, 800 dollars for their Ipad? You can build a decent windows machine for that price.

You cant take certain aspects of this in a vacuum. You need to look at the whole. The windows desktop layer will add 512mb minimum of overhead. It will chew up disk space over time, so either theyll need to really fix windows to make it take up less space.

Taking that into account, can you build one that weighs one pound, lasts ten hours and still performs well, for 500 bucks? Im not sure you can.

Excel is a MAJOR business application. I'm pretty sure there is a large group of people that would love having a device that can view business docs conveniently (In fact, that is why iWork exists). Your xbox example is bad.

But this is UI is absolutely the last thing you'd want in a business environment. You can already view excel docs on an ipad anyway. Dunno how well that works, but MS can easily build a custom excel or excel viewer for a custom tablet OS, that would be a proper fit to the low end hardware.

I personally believe the reason MS has failed at the tablet and mobile market is the fact their interfaces have sucked. That was the major thing the Iphone brought to the market, an interface that was easy and intuitive to use for a phone. MS's interfaces were clunky and limiting coupled with crappy resistive touch screens.

If they aren't bludgeoned to death for being microsoft, I could see this doing very well in the tablet sector.*


*If you don't think that happens, look at what happened with Vista and Windows 7. Windows 7 was not much more than a minor speed improvement and UI tweak, yet people sung praises to how wonderful 7 was and how terrible Vista was.

They werent bashed for being microsoft when Vista came out. They were bashed because the launch was terrible, because they changed so much of the underlying architecture that programs didnt work, drivers and devices didnt work. Even if that was corrected within 6 months, it was such a horrible mess that it left a bad taste in peoples mouths.

People want something that just works. By the time Win 7 came out, it just worked. Apples iOS UI was nice for sure, but it JUST WORKED.

Theyre going about this the most complicated way possible, I dont think its going to just work. They need to nail it from launch or its dead in the water from a consumer perspective, I just cant see it happening this way. If that windows UI in the background causes ANY jankiness, its going to fail.

 

[HeXen]

have a business enviro? use a business designed OS. This demo is shown for the consumer public and their thirst for tablets. Besides, most business's never upgrade every OS release. i know plenty still on XP.

 

[Rangoric]

I've got nothing against windows. Ive been a windows user for decades. If apple had decided to make iOS a shell over OSX, and then try to run it on ARM hardware that struggles to render a web page at a reasonable speed, then yes, I would bag it.

The ARM Processor has an issue rendering Web Pages? So why are you using an iPad?

Or are you "guessing" that windows on ARM would suck at rendering Web Pages? My CPU usage on both my tablet and desktop hover at around 0% while not doing anything. Are you implying that Windows on ARM wouldn't be able to do the same?

Windows has had no ill effect on my rendering of a webpage, in a VERY long time, if ever.

Lets not kid ourselves here. Sacrifices are going to need to be made here if this is going to be based on windows. Its going to require more comparatively more hardware and be more expensive, or its going to suffer for it, period. That might mean a more capable system overall in some ways, but it'll be stuff that I dont NEED it to be capable of. This is a fact of computing, you dont get something for nothing.

Same hardware. That's why there will be an ARM version. An ARM version will need less cruft, and gunk, than the full version. In addition, MS's recent push since Vista has been performance and battery life. And with WP7 and Courier it's been on getting things done.

I'd rather have something that is a bit less capable than a desktop, over one that is just more capable than a phone. Or in other words, I'd rather start from a full file system, ability to install all of my stuff, use a multitude of devices, and develop for it for free, over being good for phone calls.

Although having a battery that is only 3 hours is kinda meh. Since it is a performance beast, I don't mind. I have my iPad/WP7 for the things I would need the long battery for (AIM/Twitter/Email don't effect battery life much on the iPad or Phone, and they can both go all day for me)

I have zero interest on running OS X or any OS X apps on my ipad. I wouldnt use them if I could. I find the ipad experience lacking in many ways, but this is not the cure. I dont need it for work, I dont need to type on it, I dont need to draw on it. I need a light, responsive, simple and long lasting device. Software and hardware need to come together. Imagine if when they first demoed the xbox 360, they showed how you can switch to microsoft excel mid game. I bet that would have gone over well.

To do what? What on earth do you use the iPad for if not work, typing, or drawing? It is CAPABLE of all those things, so I guess you are paying for something you don't need all the capabilities of.
("If Apple does it, it's cool, if Microsoft does it it sucks")

Also with the XBox 360 comment, it would have gone over VERY well. Why buy a PS3 when you can get an XBox 360 that can run all of your COMPUTER GAMES out of the box, in addition to getting work done. It would have been a full on computer replacement for many people. Full browsers, full applications. No need to wait for Netflix/Hulu support.

Great way to pick a straw man. And next time, think of the full implications of what you say.

If they can pull it off, then more power to them. Then theyll have succeeded in finally pushing what theyve failed time and time again. Maybe the time has come where this kind of thing doesnt matter, but I just cant see it. All theyve shown is a widget shell over a full OS, because that was the lazy thing to do. Not impressed.

All the OS of the iPad is, is a scaled up phone OS. That's lazy. I'm not impressed. And you want them to do the unimpressive thing of scaling up the WP7 interface.
("If Apple does it, it's cool, if Microsoft does it it sucks")

The BIGGEST thing people have been complaining about with Windows based tablets is that the UI sucks for it. "It has to be built from the ground up for touch" or other such nonsense.

Now that the UI is the best for it (Apple based sites even say the UI is awesome), and people want that UI for themselves on their own platform. It's something else that is the issue.

And I notice no mention of built from the ground up for touch anymore either. It is now that the apps aren't ready for touch. But I'm of the mind that I'll use the apps I want that aren't touch based, then install new touch based apps if/when they come out. Office and Visual Studio are both good on the tablet, Photoshop is flawless and some games work really well (Fate/Stay Night, and other visual novels) but touch based games would be good to have. It is lacking in games. But that's why I have a PSP/DS/iPad, or a keyboard/mouse to use with it

 

[Rangoric]

You cant take certain aspects of this in a vacuum. You need to look at the whole. The windows desktop layer will add 512mb minimum of overhead. It will chew up disk space over time, so either theyll need to really fix windows to make it take up less space.

Taking that into account, can you build one that weighs one pound, lasts ten hours and still performs well, for 500 bucks? Im not sure you can.

More assumptions. I think I'll wait until there are some samples out there.

But this is UI is absolutely the last thing you'd want in a business environment. You can already view excel docs on an ipad anyway. Dunno how well that works, but MS can easily build a custom excel or excel viewer for a custom tablet OS, that would be a proper fit to the low end hardware.

Why not? Why is the UI not good for a business environment? I'd love to have it at work. Just as the Windows 7 UI is better than the Windows XP UI for working, I see that UI as making it easier to get things done. Also looks easier to use.

And many excel docs won't work on an iPad. My dad has one that I use as a test when there is an app that tries.

They werent bashed for being microsoft when Vista came out. They were bashed because the launch was terrible, because they changed so much of the underlying architecture that programs didnt work, drivers and devices didnt work. Even if that was corrected within 6 months, it was such a horrible mess that it left a bad taste in peoples mouths.

So changing the underlying architechure is bad because it makes old things not work. But FORCING old things to not work is good.
(Guess what I want to say in here)

 

[Cogman]

You cant take certain aspects of this in a vacuum. You need to look at the whole. The windows desktop layer will add 512mb minimum of overhead. It will chew up disk space over time, so either theyll need to really fix windows to make it take up less space.

Taking that into account, can you build one that weighs one pound, lasts ten hours and still performs well, for 500 bucks? Im not sure you can.

Why not? Apple did it. Why is something like this impossible for MS and others to do but possible for Apple to do? BTW, your memory argument is funny. This isn't the year 2000, 512 MB of memory is peanuts. As for battery life, that is where ARM processors come into play. They can easily achieve that battery life.

But this is UI is absolutely the last thing you'd want in a business environment. You can already view excel docs on an ipad anyway. Dunno how well that works, but MS can easily build a custom excel or excel viewer for a custom tablet OS, that would be a proper fit to the low end hardware.

Wait, "This is the last thing you want" and "But you can do this with the Ipad!" seem contradictory to me. So, Ipad is good for business but Windows is not? What if someone wants to be able to run their business applications from both a windows environment on a tablet and a windows environment on a desktop? Can the Ipad do that?

They werent bashed for being microsoft when Vista came out. They were bashed because the launch was terrible, because they changed so much of the underlying architecture that programs didnt work, drivers and devices didnt work. Even if that was corrected within 6 months, it was such a horrible mess that it left a bad taste in peoples mouths.

The fact that Windows 7 was "awesome" and vista was "terrible" is proof enough to me that vista got way to much negative publicity. In fact, a lot of the negative publicity came out BEFORE vista was officially released by many review sites. The funny thing is, many sites tried to do the same thing with Windows 7. The difference was that MS did an open beta with 7. When these review sites started their tie raids on how terrible it was going to be, many people in the beta spoke up and said "actually, that isn't my experience at all."

Vista's main issue has been that of 3rd party drivers. Particularly from nVidia. Yet, it was bashed as being unstable. Many people (myself included) didn't see one single issue with Vista. I heard so much crap wrongly blamed on vista it wasn't even funny (oh, the website is down, must be vista's problem).

People want something that just works. By the time Win 7 came out, it just worked. Apples iOS UI was nice for sure, but it JUST WORKED.

Vista JUST WORKED for many people (myself include). It got tons of negative publicity because it wasn't XP and it was made by Microsoft.

Theyre going about this the most complicated way possible, I dont think its going to just work. They need to nail it from launch or its dead in the water from a consumer perspective, I just cant see it happening this way. If that windows UI in the background causes ANY jankiness, its going to fail.

I agree with most of this statement. They do need to nail the launch. They also need to up their marketing campaign 1000% if they want to break back into the tablet market. I don't think this is the most complicated way possible, in fact, this can be quite a simple way back into the market. At its core, windows can be very streamlined (remember, it dates all the way back to being able to run on 200Mhz processors). I don't see anything preventing MS from continuing the streamlining process. They have a solid, full, working OS, why should they go out and reinvent the wheel?

MS is going to try and distinguish themselves in the tablet market by saying "Hey look, this can do everything your IPad can do plus it can run your regular applications!"

 

[HeXen]

shut up. people just want to hate on it for a variety of reasons. debating such does NOTHING. Accept what MS is going to do regardless and keep your W7 and just stfu!

This is incredibly rude and uncalled for. If you don't like what people are doing in Operating Systems then you may leave, because these people are doing exactly what this forum was put here for. You can be the one to STFU.
-ViRGE

 

[Cogman]

shut up. people just want to hate on it for a variety of reasons. debating such does NOTHING. Accept what MS is going to do regardless and keep your W7 and just stfu!

This is a public forum. The idea behind public forums is that you debate and discuss. This is what we are doing. I'm not trolling him, he isn't trolling me. We are calmly and peacefully discussing a topic.

It isn't pointless. Even if neither of us is convinced of the others point of view, we will both have been presented with new thoughts and ideas we may not have considered beforehand.

It only becomes pointless when one is willfully misleading and trolling, or the conversation breaks down into name calling.

If you really don't want to read about this, then don't. You have the power not to click on this pages link.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Touch is nice for hand devices. But on a 27" screen? I don't want to sit that close to a 27" screen. But I guess people that take orders at McDonalds might like this?

Totally agree with this. This kind of interface is cool on a handheld device and might work on a laptop, but who wants to have to sit so close to a large desktop monitor and get it covered with fingerprints. And what if you want to use a wireless keyboard and mouse from across the room?

It seems like microsoft with the ribbon interface for office and now this is trying to make a computer that you can use without being able to read or type. And perversely, the ribbon interface makes office much more complicated to use than the old menu. I just got a new computer with Win 7 and office 2010. In order to format a page in excel, it takes three clicks to get to the format command which was originally available immediately from the drop down menu.

This interface is kind of like the nerd who wants to be cool and tries too hard. I am not sure that microsoft should try to turn windows into a tablet type interface.

 

[BD2003]

So changing the underlying architechure is bad because it makes old things not work. But FORCING old things to not work is good.
(Guess what I want to say in here)

Yes. Dropping legacy support allows them to move forward. If they made a tablet OS, they only need to consider touch. Now everything in that UI needs to work with touch, keyboard, mouse...why not even add gamepad and remote on top of that, that way they can have an interface that works with everything and is excels at nothing.

Even though iOS is limited in so many ways, its a good fit for the hardware. Its focused. The whole system benefits from that focus, from being forward looking, not backward looking.

I wanted MS to have that same kind of focus, rather than trying to please everyone with every thing in every way.

 

[Modelworks]

I have seen the inner workings of the ARM version. It will not be compatible with the X86 version and it isn't a simple recompile to make your program work for ARM. The process is basically before you ever write any code you have to decide if your program will be running on both platforms. You then have to make allowances for the differences as you code the program. Maybe in a few years it will be just tell the compiler what you want and it will spit out the correct code for each platform but it isn't that way now. Some features are not supported across both API and the programmer for right now needs to know what those are.

You are basically working with two API versions , x86 and ARM, they share some things but not all things. Taking an old program and porting it to ARM I can't imagine doing now as you really are going to have to rewrite the program to make it work. Maybe in the future as the platform matures it can be one API, but I seriously doubt it.

The closest thing on windows I could compare the environment to is RealStudio. http://www.realsoftware.com/realstudio/

You can write code for both platforms but you still have to know what each platform can support. Similar to how real studio allows you to write for win,mac,linux at the same time but there is still differences in the code you have to make for each platform.

ARM isn't going to be a desktop OS anytime soon , mostly tablets , so I can see the ARM windows version being used for that purpose. Mainly as an easy way for developers to support desktops and tablets. Windows doesn't have a lot of legacy tablet based apps so most will be new apps anyway.

 

[HeXen]

It isn't pointless.

like all the other previous OS threads of the past several years right :whiste:
It is pointless, so will all the later W8 threads. Let me sum them all up for you.

"i hate"
"i disagree, let me try to change your preference"
"i still hate"
"well i disagree but i'm going to ramble on and on about why my preference should be your preference"

the end. wow, great discussion that changes nothing...do i need to go back and show links to OS threads so you can see how they ended?

 

[BD2003]

like all the other previous OS threads of the past several years right :whiste:
It is pointless, so will all the later W8 threads. Let me sum them all up for you.

"i hate"
"i disagree, let me try to change your preference"
"i still hate"
"well i disagree but i'm going to ramble on and on about why my preference should be your preference"

the end. wow, great discussion that changes nothing...do i need to go back and show links to OS threads so you can see how they ended?

This is the most pointless post here. It serves zero purpose. If you're not interested in the discussion, or if you're so above it, just go away.

 

[TechAZ]

I actually think the UI shell looks nice for a PC. I want to see MS evolve and set itself apart, and I like the looks of this.

Sounds like I might be in the minority here?

 

[lxskllr]

Sounds like I might be in the minority here?

I'm not digging it from what I've seen, but I don't use touch devices. I'll give it a fair shot if MS gives me a copy for some reason, but I've transitioned over to Linux for the most part.

Imo, the classic computing style with taskbars, and launchers was the perfect setup for a desktop computer. It was around s long because it worked. Everybody's changing crap(Linux included) to make things "newer", and "prettier", but they aren't making things better. It's just different for the sake of being different, and generally at the cost of usability.

 

[Griffinhart]

Why not? Why is the UI not good for a business environment? I'd love to have it at work. Just as the Windows 7 UI is better than the Windows XP UI for working, I see that UI as making it easier to get things done. Also looks easier to use.

On a pure desktop platform, I'm not sure I would like this shell as it is a complete departure of what I am used to, as I use the actual Desktop as workspace.

That said, for a business environment, Windows 8 seems like it would be fantastic. Completely compatible with existing Windows 7 installs. Admins will be able to have the "classic shell" default. While at the same time, they can deploy tablets to the folks that need them using the same apps, security and network policies with a UI that looks to be very attractive, fast and responsive.

This is a much more attractive approach for IT administrators rather than trying to figure out how to incorporate what is basically a consumer based consumption device into a managed corporate IT environment.

If new Tablets can "nail it" with decent hardware and battery life, this is all one huge win IMHO.

Personally, I can't wait for the beta. I'm dying to give it a try on my Asus EP 121 and HP TN2.

 

[yinan]

This new UI sucks and it looks like I will be skipping this version. I do not want an overly simplified UI for my desktop. It is also very ugly looking.

And BTW Vista did suck and was slow and would probably still be slow on my SB with 16GB of RAM and an 8xSSD array.

 

[Cogman]

This new UI sucks and it looks like I will be skipping this version. I do not want an overly simplified UI for my desktop. It is also very ugly looking.

Meh, I wouldn't call it ugly, but I do realize that comes down to personal preference. As for a desktop environment, I don't think I like it for that. It is being built to be a touch environment, that is for sure.

And BTW Vista did suck and was slow and would probably still be slow on my SB with 16GB of RAM and an 8xSSD array.

But let me guess, Win7 was super fast and amazing to work with

 

[Cogman]

On a pure desktop platform, I'm not sure I would like this shell as it is a complete departure of what I am used to, as I use the actual Desktop as workspace.

That said, for a business environment, Windows 8 seems like it would be fantastic. Completely compatible with existing Windows 7 installs. Admins will be able to have the "classic shell" default. While at the same time, they can deploy tablets to the folks that need them using the same apps, security and network policies with a UI that looks to be very attractive, fast and responsive.

This is a much more attractive approach for IT administrators rather than trying to figure out how to incorporate what is basically a consumer based consumption device into a managed corporate IT environment.

If new Tablets can "nail it" with decent hardware and battery life, this is all one huge win IMHO.

Personally, I can't wait for the beta. I'm dying to give it a try on my Asus EP 121 and HP TN2.

Hmm, I guess if software moves fast enough to support it, this would be a good interface for IT folks. It is somewhat similar to the multiple desktop design of most linux desktops.

 

[aceO07]

It looks like it's just an UI application over the real Windows 8. If you look at 3:05 into the video, when he launches MS Excel you can see what looks similar to the Windows 7 desktop.