Gut-Check Time For Windows 8, Microsoft 516
theodp writes "GeekWire reports that, for better or worse, the upcoming week is shaping up as one of the most pivotal in Microsoft's history, as the software giant makes its pitch for Windows 8 at two important conferences. First, Microsoft will be huddling with hardware and software developers beginning Tuesday at its sold-out BUILD conference ('BUILD will show you that Windows 8 changes everything'), where it's rumored that Samsung will unveil a Windows 8 tablet. And on Wednesday, CEO Steve Ballmer and other execs will be holding the company's annual Financial Analyst Meeting, which was delayed from its traditional summer date to allow the company to put its Windows 8 strategy in context for Wall Street. So, are we about to finally see the realization of Microsoft's vision for Information at Your Fingertips (Part 2), which Bill Gates introduced with a hokey video at Comdex 1994?"
Re:Tablets, Phones, and what's wrong with XP or wi (Score:3, Interesting)
But even on normal computer side, Windows 8 seems to improve many things over 7, which already is really good OS.
Re:Planned obsolescence treadmill accelerating (Score:4, Interesting)
Windows 7: 2009
Windows Vista: 2006
Seems they've taken three years release cycle, which is a really long time compared to Linux distros and Mac OS X. It's better than the time after XP anyway, which really started to feel like an outdated OS, by security standards and features too.
I'm using XP on modern hardware and it screams. I don't feel the need for "modern" UI features that are nothing more than eye candy. The only reason I can see for moving to Win7 is SSD support (and additional RAM with 64 bit). Win 8? Haven't seen anything about it yet that looks interesting.
But to tell the truth, even with my "outdated" Velociraptor and Q8300, with XP 32 bit, this is a super fast and efficient machine. I'm not a gamer, nor am I into video on my PC. So I'll gladly trade a fancier UI for raw speed and stability.
My boot times could be a little faster, but I only boot up once a day. And app load times are less than 5 sec. even for Photoshop. Why would I care if they could be 1 or 2 sec?
And security may be important for the clueless, but I'm a careful surfer and haven't had a virus for years.
I'll only update when hardware requirements force me to -- that is, when my current machine breaks down. Or, when a vital piece of software forces the upgrade.
Re:Tablets, Phones, and what's wrong with XP or wi (Score:5, Interesting)
The desktop PC Is a dying platform.
No, it's not. The form a personal computer takes may change slightly, but it's not going anywhere. I think you'll just find an atrix/bionic or EEE Transformer style computing experience coming, where your phone/tablet becomes your computer, and when you bring it home you just plug it into a docking bay with a good ole fashioned keyboard and large LCD screen. and maybe even a mouse, cause there's no way that you're going to want to play quake 6 with touchscreen. That's mid-to-long term though. in the short term, nothing portable is powerful enough to replace a real desktop for real computing work. sending an email or reading a pdf is not the kind of work I'm talking about either.
The average person is increasingly moving to smartphones an iPads to get away from the viruses, driver problems, malware, and other crap that infests Windows desktops.
smartphones already have viruses and malware. try again. most phones even ship with bloatware already.
It's too late for MS. To paraphrase B5, the avalanch has started, and it's too late for the pebbles to vote. The world had a few decades of Wintel, and it doesn't want to have more.
You writing this on your iphone? or are you man (or woman) enough to admit you've got an x86 cpu on/under the desk?
lot's of corporate uses is just rolling out 7 with (Score:3, Interesting)
lot's of corporate uses is just rolling out 7 with lot's of stuff still stuck on xp due to software / old ie and maybe even some old hardware.
Now windows 8 new UI may be a big show stopper and likely have alot of software not work with it.
Re:Tablets, Phones, and what's wrong with XP or wi (Score:4, Interesting)
The desktop IS dying, and has been for years.
Emphasis mine. But this should be your first clue. What's taking them so long to roll over and die? Desktops are moving into a very real niche market. The guy who needs a server but not a rack. The guy who crunches a lot of numbers. The guy who needs lots of hard drives in a RAID array. The scientist who needs to plug in custom hardware. The gamer who needs to keep up with the video card upgrade cycle (which is much faster than the CPU cycle). Becoming niche is not the same as dying.
Re:Keep Selling Windows 7 (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure what hardware you're using windows 7 on... but Windows 7 on my 3 year old Desktop PC is a hell of a lot more responsive and snappier than Android 2.2 on my 2 year old phone.
Android 2.3 on my 1 year old tablet is better, but still not as good as the desktop.
I love me some Android, but consistently instant-reponse it is not.
Re:Yes, but don't abandon Windows 8... (Score:5, Interesting)
Strangely, Linux gave up the "one size fits all" and runs nicely as a desktop O/S on my Fedora Core laptop, and as nicely as a mobile O/S on my Android Moto Droid2 Phone. There is very little software that works on both platforms, they are effectively completely different Operating Systems.
Software engineers like the number 1. Unifying a whole suite of problems into a single framework feels better at a gut level, it just seems right. And even though Microsoft has been trying for almost 20 years to get this unified approach to work and has failed repeatedly, they'll keep trying because they are software engineers of the modest type - the type arrogant enough to think they have all the right answers but not quite smart enough to figure out how nor that it's a bad idea.