Another Windows 8 Pre-Beta Surfaces

angry tapir writes "While Microsoft has not announced the release date of its follow-up to Windows 7, an early pre-beta version of Windows 8 (although its official name has not been confirmed) has surfaced on the Internet, the second version to appear within a month. It is the second milestone release that has showed up on the Internet this month. Users of this Windows 8 software have said it features a Ribbon-based user-interface, similar to the one used in recent editions of Microsoft Office. This specific milestone build also has software for a Webcam, a new task manager, a PDF reader and an immersive browser." "Surfacings" like this tell me that Microsoft sees the value in crowdsourced opinion gathering far more than they're sometimes given credit for.

I'm not sure who to feel sorry for...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

A built-in PDF reader, eh? Should I feel sorrier for Adobe's devs, so incompetent that Microsoft felt the need to step in and provide a PDF reader built by grown-ups, or for Microsoft's XPS team, who have so failed to set the world on fire with XPS that Microsoft felt the need to step in and provide a PDF reader?

Re:Shit gets shittier

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I see that you are trying to write an anti-microsoft post. Would you like the Microsoft(r) Social Media Assistant, a Native feature of Genuine IE9, to help you with that?

Immersive

[Nerdfest]

IE 6 was also an 'immersive' browser. It made me want to drown myself.

Genuine Advantage

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA:

"Microsoft declined to verify the authenticity of the milestone release. "

Dang! Genuine Advantage strikes again!

Re:PDF reader?

[davester666]

hahahaha

I swear, 'delete' is the first verb they work on in any scripting language Microsoft implements.

Windows $NEXT_VERSION will floor all comers

[David Gerard]

Guest post by Mary-Jo Enderle

I have seen the future: Windows $NEXT_VERSION Milestone $MOCKUP [newstechnica.com].

I tried it on a low-end laptop with four Core 2 Duo chips and only 8 gig of memory, and trust me: $NEXT_VERSION is shaping up to be one heck of a product.

WordPad and Paint have seen major overhauls to their user interfaces. Forget the freetards and their "distros" full of all sorts of useless shovelware like "FireFox" and "OpenOffice" and, haha, "GIMP"! — the bundled software with Windows $NEXT_VERSION is clear, simple, sparse and to-the-point. The much-loved Ribbon user interface from Office $HATED_VERSION is now part of WordPad and Paint!

The controversial Digital Rights Management system in $CURRENT_VERSION has been worked over, with user-downloadable "tilt bits," which you can configure to your own liking. It'll require every user to supply a blood sample for DNA analysis, and the beta nearly took my finger off, but of course that's only if you want to play premium content. The Blu-Ray of Battlefield Earth was unbelievable on this operating system.

A public beta should be released by the end of this year. There's just no way that Steve "Trains Run On Time" Ballmer will miss the Christmas deadline. The final release should leave the midnight queues on $CURRENT_VERSION release day — the street riots, the water cannons, the rubber bullets — in the shade.

I am so excited about $NEXT_VERSION of Windows. It will go beyond just solving all of the problems with $CURRENT_VERSION, it will be an entirely new paradigm. Forget about security problems, those are all fixed in $NEXT_VERSION. And they're finally ridding themselves of $ANCIENT_LEGACY_STUFF.

Also, there'll be $DATABASE_FILESYSTEM. It'll be awesome!

I wonder how $NEXT_VERSION will compare to $NEXT_NEXT_VERSION.