Microsoft: Windows 8 To RTM In August 343
nk497 writes "Microsoft has confirmed Windows 8 will RTM the first week of August, with general availability in late October. Steve Ballmer suggested Microsoft expected Surface to sell "millions" of the 375m Windows 8 PCs expected to sell in the next year — spending much of the keynote talking about partners' devices. From the article: 'Tami Reller, chief financial officer and chief marketing officer of the Windows and Windows Live division, confirmed the release date at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto today, as she showed off a host of Windows 8 devices created by the software giant's manufacturing partners.'"
"showed off a host of Windows 8 devices" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is this only for tablets (Score:5, Insightful)
Some may say that this is a re-incarnation of Microsoft Me or Microsoft Vista, no, it is much worse than that, this is a re-incarnation of Microsoft Bob.
It does not matter which platform you want to put this OS on, it will suck on all of them.
What was the point of testing? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Windows 8 was well tested by the masses. And I consistently saw the same complaints from most news shops and users.
2. Microsoft is still releasing Windows 8 on time rather than listening to any of the criticism levied during testing.
3. They have slashed the price really low. I do think they heard the criticism and know that consumers don't want Windows 8, but maybe if it is really cheap, people will buy it anyway.
Here's the problem. Why should I pay money to make my OS worse? Microsoft should listen to the criticism from testing and improve their product and then sell it for full price.
Re:Only thing bad about Win8 is Metro (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way to "fix" metro is to kill it with fire. And then you have Windows 7 with a new task manager and IE10. Whoopie fucking doo.
I'm against the grain here, and I'll actually say that Vista was a good operating system. It was hobbled by lack of driver support and people trying to run it on inadequate hardware at the time, but if you run it on anything newer than say 2004 vintage with a couple of gigs of RAM, it is FINE.
I had zero stability problems. Windows 7 is essentially vista with UAC toned down a bit, a fancy UI slapped on top and some tweaks to the scheduler.
Re:Only thing bad about Win8 is Metro (Score:5, Insightful)
Metro is Ballmer's fault (Score:4, Insightful)
Ballmer is a clueless prick, and he doesn't care about providing good products so much as he cares about playing political games with Microsoft employees. Plus, he's an egomaniac, who refuses to believe that MS ever does anything wrong.
Metro is the result of a few "powerful" interests at MS protecting their collective asses. It's easier for them to just shove Metro out there, and then start pointing fingers when everyone hates it, than it is to risk the wrath of idiot managers like Ballmer and his cronies.
Ballmer needs to be replaced if MS wants to be relevant in the future.
Re:gave up waiting for year of the linux desktop (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree, but they don't do cheap. Give it a couple of years though and the ipad will take care of that. No, the tablet won't evolve itself so much, more that the apps that normal people actually want to use will. Grandma and Grandpa want to do their banking, shopping, organise their photos / videos, talk to their kids and read things on the internet. A tablet will do all that and more.
People/apps just haven't caught up yet - the vast majority of end users who want a cheap laptop would actually be better served by a locked-down (as in, secure) tablet, they just don't know it yet.
Sure, there's a niche of tech savvy users who want more for less money, but that market segment isn't statistically significant, imho.
Re:Only thing bad about Win8 is Metro (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems like Microsoft's plan for Windows is to get rid of windows.
Re:Only thing bad about Win8 is Metro (Score:4, Insightful)
And I don't even think that Metro is bad. It seems like it could be ok for tablets. The problem is the Microsoft seems intent on forcing desktop users to use it.
Windows 8 would be greatly improved if they just brought the start menu back and made Metro completely optional for desktop users.
Obsessed with novelty, unconcerned with users (Score:4, Insightful)
The Windows 8 UI is atrocious and probably will kill Microsoft, as well as Microsofts announcements they are going to screw over users from upgrading from older versions of Windows by deleting their settings. I think people would have to be insane to consider upgrading to Windows 8 considering the UI is unuseable and a disaster and so on. Microsoft is really committing suicide with this and is basically telling its users "fuck you" and deterring users who would actually buy an upgrade.
I would like to say Linux is a better choice, but Ubuntu has the same problems with its atrocious Unity interface. Yes, it can be disabled, but that sort of misses the point that Ubuntu is supposed to be user friendly, most users when encountering Unity will just give up on Linux right away as this is what they will think Linux is like, its those first impressions.
The start menu and task bar model "just works", is easy to use, makes sense, etc. It is clear, it is simple, it is not too obtrusive, it is categorized and easy to find things and so on. There are just things which you cannot improve on, where things have gotten to such a point of perfection that messing with it can only make it worse. I think start menu and task bar is such a point of perfection and trying to mess with it invariably makes things worse. Both Microsoft and Ubuntu appear obsessed with novelty, for change for the sake of change, which is very bad design motivation. They are more concerned with trying to be edgy than they are about being concerned with what the users need.
Re:Is this only for tablets (Score:5, Insightful)
Citation please? I find it difficult to imagine in what universe Apple would use a half-finished, poorly marketed and mediocre system like Azure for their cloud offerings.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=icloud+azure [lmgtfy.com]
Re:Only thing bad about Win8 is Metro (Score:5, Insightful)
Comparing Vista and Windows 7 performance wise is a joke. I have a respectable quad core AMD system with 3 Gigs of RAM that CRAWLED under Vista but runs very nicely on Win7, changing nothing else.
Yes, there were driver problems, people did run it on inadequate hardware, etc. but it's a clear indicator of where the problem is when the later (typically bigger/slower) versions run faster/better than the previous generation.
Re:Is this only for tablets (Score:5, Insightful)
Me and Vista were the SAME problem...that being Microsoft's inability to perform a platform upgrade for windows in less than ~7 years. Sadly the cash flow wants 5 years, so they have to stump some piece of crap out that will bring in the cash.
ME was just 95 with some stuff on it (like 98) because XP wasn't going to be ready early enough to help the cash flow. Vista was basically win7 with some stuff cut off of it so they could get it to market, since 7 was going to take a couple more years to be ready.
Windows 7 is about all I (or anyone) needs for the foreseeable future. In fact XP is enough for many. Windows 8 is just a knee-jerk "lets put a phone interface on a pc" reaction, seems hard to me to use, and doesn't bring any serious features that would help a lot of people, or even a large minority.
So yeah, I'll be lumping it in with ME and Vista. Pointless crap designed to part people with some cash. The one major difference is that I think 7 will have a lot more staying power than XP, and Microsoft is in the same bucket as RIM. Rode the same pony for too damn long.