http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/ballmer-riskiest-product-bet-by-microsoft-is-the-next-release-of-windows/7786 [zdnet.com]

Microsoft's hold on personal computing is slipping, partly due to their own lack of foresight, and they are in danger of being resigned to the role of "legacy personal computing". To get back on top, they have no choice but to do a hail mary pass at this stage.

I think the main overriding problem is that Microsoft as an organization doesn't know how to do that. They make money by maneuvering, with innovation coming a poor second. Mind you, there are very bright engineers working there, but management has for too many years been the consumer computer equivalent of a water economy (the government that controls the water can rot until it's just a shell, but will not be toppled from within) that they don't know how to act any differently. And so, they try a variation on a past strategy (come out with a product that's more strategic than useful, incidentally screwing their partners in the process) and assume it'll be business as usual. They might be right, but I don't think so.

The riskiest bet Microsoft ever made was selling IBM an operating system before they actually had one to sell. Imagine what would have happened to the fledgling Microsoft had they failed to come up with the product in time.

No, it's not suicide.

If this was 10 years ago, then yes, probably suicide. The Windows ecosystem is so big, and so entrenched with 'new' computers being sold with 2 year old parts in them (not used, just parts fabbed 2 years) as great buys that a single iteration of windows being a clusterfuck isn't the end of the world, because people will still buy the old version, with hardware suited to the old version.

That gives them a chance to change direction after people have had windows 8 for a few months and the torrent of negative feedback ends up as a pie in ballmers face. And then they can change direction to: consistent design. It's not that any of the interfaces in Windows 8 are bad, it's that there are more than one, and things inconsistently shift between them. That's a fundamental design problem on microsofts part, and they'll have to pick something and go with it.

It probably is, correctly guessed, the biggest bet MS has taken so far. They know that the feedback has been by and large negative, and that it's horrible to use, microsoft employees must have parents and putting windows 8 on one of their computers risks getting you disowned it's that bad. But they're releasing it anyway, and it's hugely expensive to make an operating system like Windows 8, so that's certainly risky, and it's risky because they're banking on their ability to not fuck up windows 9, whatever that will be, even if (and likely when) windows 8 is a disaster.

It certainly won't be the biggest bet MS ever takes, but to this point I could be reasonably persuaded it is the riskiest bet they made. All of the other major revisions they've made have been into different market conditions or as a much smaller company.

They have no real tablet share, so they aren't risking losing that.
They have no real smartphone share, so they aren't risking losing that.
They own desktop users body and soul, and there are scant real alternatives where users can go even if they hate it. So I don't see much risk here either.

Worse case, it's another Vista, which they tweak, and continue business as usual.

Already there is Classic Shell to restore the start menu and solve the main Win8 complaint:
http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

Obvious if Win8 was received even worse than Vista, MS could simply issue a patch that does the same and have a soft fallback.

Bottom line, the fixes are easy, and the desktop users are going anywhere else anyway, so minimal risk.

The problem is that Windows 8 DOES offer a lot of enterprise features (SMB 3, Powershell 3, Windows to go, fast boot, secure boot, among others) but most shops will forgo those due to the horror of trying to spring "Modern UI" on their users.

Posting Anon because, well, I'm posting this on an rtm Win 8 machine so you guess why.

The persistent question is "Why did we do this?" It's not faster, not more intuitive, not easier, not really anything more than pretty IF you're using Win 8 on a computer. It is really nice on a small touchscreen device, but that's not the big debate.

What does Win 8 give me on the desktop versus Win 7?
Not really anything except for a terribly ugly fullscreen MEGABIG START MENU with icons that update themselves.
More navigation and less actual work. A lot of extra clicks to find simple crap like control panel settings.
IE 10, which despite what the terribly annoying ads say is still embarrassingly slow compared to Firefox.
And wtf if I just want to work some documents? I have to dig thru even more "Libraries" and "Favorites" and "Desktop > User > Libraries" and "Recent Places" that all point to the same folders and confuse the living hell out of novice users. Putting "tiles" on top of this does not help, it makes it worse.

The straight poop is that "people" (the larger part of the 80/20 pop) do not care about the details of this. They just want to use a browser and email that point to data in the magic cloud, and they want to use word and excel that point to documents they can see/move/copy/delete locally in one or two clicks. Win 7 is a 2- or 3-click UI, so people tend to like it, and get used to the annoyances in trade for being pretty stable. Win 8 is a 4-5-click + dual-personality UI so more likely than not we're f#cked.

I ask folks over on the Win8 team whether they learned anything from the large userbase hit Ubuntu took when they implemented Unity, an UI similar to the Metro^h^h^h^h^hWin8 UI. Most of them don't even know about it, don't look at OSX, never heard of X11 or Gnome, KDE, etc etc. They have no interest; a lot of this crap was thought up in a vacuum, given cursory userlab testing, and whatever looked shiniest and had the most political oomph internally got shoved into this half-baked mess. Don'tCallItMetroBecauseMetroAGSuedUs? Apparently we have as much due diligence to the name as we gave to much of the UI design.

Maybe I'm underestimating the number of Win8/Surface tablets we're going to sell, but I'm putting in a sell order...

No shit. Zune, Kin, Sidekick, rushing the x360 out with a 2 billion dollar flaw...the man is a disaster.

For those that want an unbiased review of what to expect with Win 8 I've run DP, CP, and RP on nearly a half a dozen different machines here at the shop so I'd say that makes me at least qualified to give the review, along with watching my customers look lost and get frustrated on the win 8 CP I've had running on the shop floor, so here goes...

Do you have a little netbook or laptop, preferably 10-12 inches but no bigger than 15? Then you probably only run one app at a time and your screen is low res enough win 8 will look fine. Are you gonna buy this on a tablet or smartphone? then i'm sure it'll work fine there as well. Do you never ever install more than a half dozen programs? Then the new tile UI won't make you want to pull your hair out.

For everyone that doesn't fit that description? RUN, run as fast as you can and grab you a copy of Win 7 NOW, don't wait, get it and hang onto it like a drowning man hanging onto a lifejacket. Because the Tile UI quickly becomes a huge mess when you add programs so soon you end up with this multiple page PITA UI, most of the Tile "apps" and many of the Windows programs themselves are obviously written for low res screens and look like ass on anything 1600x900 or better, the only "advantage" which is faster boot is a lie and a hack (Google "Win 8 hybrid boot" to see what I mean) and in every appreciable way it feels like a boat anchor tied to your productivity. And ZOMFG do NOT open to any depth in control panel, it becomes this giant shotgun tile nightmare o' doom!

The sad part is while the guts are fine in reality...its WinPhone folks, that's ALL it is. Its WinPhone ported to the desktop so MSFT can try to force people to like the Tile UI and get a piece of that appstore iMoney that Apple has been rolling around in, but like everything else Ballmer touches its half assed, obviously designed by committee, its a trainwreck is what it is.

no.. he wants to be the one who got most windows users to get their sw from microsofts sw marketplace. MS has been trying to do that for some 15 years now under different guises(road ahead).

that's what metro is all about - it's not about the UI, it's about how the sw is distributed and what infrastructure it uses, it's about getting sw developers to use ms's push systems, ms's update systems, ms's testing services.. you can already do metrostyle apps in win7 - of course with the exception that if you do that you can actually scale the window as you wish - new os isn't really needed for that. but a new os push to users is needed to get them to sign in to their personal computers with a microsoft account(sure, it's not mandatory but they sure do push users to do it, and sure you can get your apps elsewhere in x86win8, but that's not their aim).

I really wish that BS would DIAF because its such horseshit. i fought with Vista for nearly a year until i took it out back and told it to think about the rabbits while i put it down. Win 7 OTOH worked in alpha, beta, and OOTB and if the rumors are true its because Ballmer was too busy with Zune and left the office guys the fuck alone to gut Vista and build something good without his interference. Major bugs like "network shares disappear and won't work without a reboot" and "media playing kills network speed" were not only fixed but it has better memory management, better GPU acceleration, better UI, better superfetch and readyboost...it really is head and shoulders better than Vista or XP for that matter. Comparing 7 to Vista is like saying WinNT 4 and WinXP are the same.

Now back to Win 8, works on cellphones, works on tablets and small screen netbooks, sucks hairy balls on a large screen. Where MSFT is screwing the pooch is they refuse to see the facts, Fact 1.-PCs aren't going anywhere, but it IS a mature market, Fact 2.- PCs passed good enough and went into insanely overpowered with multicore and huge amounts of RAM, Fact 3.- ARM will never EVER replace X86, its IPCs will never come even close. the latest ARM multicores still get spanked by a first gen Core Duo or Phenom Triple and those are nearly 7 years old. but Fact 4.- PCs last longer than ever so for many they simply won't need to replace until the previous one dies. Fact 5.- There simply hasn't been a "killer app" in years that can stress even a 5 year old multi, even gaming has a hard time stressing these monsters. What program is the average office worker gonna run that won't run perfectly fine on a Phenom I X4 or a C2Q? None.

So what does Ballmer "Herpa derpa I wanna work at Cupertino!" do when faced with the facts? Does he spin off mobile so they can innovate while he continues to refine their desktop and laptop OS to make them an even better value? Nope he pretends its still 1997 and he can use the Windows desktop monopoly, which as i pointed to earlier is a mature market and try to leverage it as they did in the days of IE.

Final verdict on Win 8? It'll sell some tablets and cellphones, especially if the rumor is true and Ballmer is willing to shit another billion down the toilet to sell a WinPad with iPad specs and a Kindle price but they'll still be lucky if they get even 9%. On desktops it'll most likely be another Vista sized turd, with the OEMs demanding (and most likely getting) the right to sell "Win 8 systems" that are just Win 7 with a disposable Win 8 DVD in the bottom of the box, finally Ballmer's douchebaggery will have a good chance of biting MSFT right in the ass when old Gabe releases a Steambox and cuts into one of the few "success stories" at MSFT. Quotes on success because I've yet to see a balance sheet that includes the 2 billion plus writeoff for the RRoD debacle or the R&D costs for the X360 so we can see if they've made a dime yet or not.

I have been in a server room lately. A lot of them actually since I'm a senior systems architect for servers, storage and networking and a repairman for these things, and a consultant on the sales side too. I get a better window into what's going on here than most people because of this perspective, since what's actually going on in server rooms is a dire secret. Just a few days ago I was sitting in a conference room so close to Mordor that it made me uneasy. I could see the Microsoft Redmond campus out the view window, and the issues under discussion were all about Linux servers. They didn't bring up Windows, and we didn't either.

Windows Server is losing share lately in my anecdotal experience, in my area. People are more interested in other options now than they once were. I can confirm that this is the trend for the Northwest US, which is the home of Microsoft. Outside of this realm I would expect the trend to be even more distinct. Excepting Idaho, which seems to buck every trend ever.

Oh geez, I didn't even try the games but XBL? Seriously? To play fucking freecell? if that ain't proof that MSFT couldn't catch a damned clue if it was delivered at the end of a baseball bat to the head i don't know.

I pretty much gave up on any of the built in Tile app crap when i saw how absolutely shitty it looked on my 1600x900 22 inch screen. i mean this isn't even 1080p and it already looks like Win98 16bit color garbage. The ONLY screen where Win 8 actually looked nice? my 12 inch Asus EEE netbook. At 1366x768 it looked nice and since i never run more than one program at a time on a screen that small the "All must be teh fullscreen herpa derpa" stupidity really didn't bug me. On a 1600x900 widescreen? i wanted to pull an elvis on the damned screen.

Oh and for the guy that said "Its my job to customize metro" sincerely fuck off, it is NOT my job, its fucking MSFT'S damned job to make sensible defaults instead of shitting tiles all over the damned screen! WTF do you mean I have to tweak the God damned thing just to keep it from puking all over the screen? Why in the hell should i pay for something that doesn't even work OOTB without me constantly futzing with the damned thing?

With every other Windows OS I didn't have to futz with jack shit and with 7 they FINALLY, thank the FSM, came up with a start menu that would autosort with some damned sense..things I pin at the top, most recently used at the bottom, all easy to reach and sensible. hell I never even had to ever go beyond that initial start screen because everything i needed was just right there.

The deniers can deny all the want but it won't change the truth which is that Win 8 is a CELLPHONE OS, that's what it is, its just another phone OS only jammed onto actual computers without a sensible default to be had. Shouldn't they have enough sense to know that having apps low res and full screen on some 30 inch 1080p is the height of retarded? or that not having a collapsing tree style menu in places like control panel where you have several layers is dumb as shit?

If anything win 8 is a classic example of MSFT's long repeated "ZOMFG somebody is selling something! Quick put out a half ass barely working knockoff, so we can steal some share!" only in this case they are shooting one of the few money makers they have left square in the face to do it, just ignorant. It'll probably sell on low rent netbooks and things with itty bitty screens but on laptops and desktops its deep fried whaleshit.