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Microsoft To Switch Focus To Windows 8 In July 2010 374

An anonymous reader noted a bit from Ars saying Microsoft will be switching internal focus from Windows 7 to Windows 8 in fiscal year 2010. Microsoft's fiscal year starts in July, which is only eight months away. According to Microsoft's roadmaps, the release of Windows 8 is scheduled for 2012."
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Microsoft To Switch Focus To Windows 8 In July 2010

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  • Windows 8.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by headhot ( 137860 ) on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @10:42AM (#30297070) Homepage

    The Ocho!

    • by sdnoob ( 917382 ) on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @10:47AM (#30297136)

      ... my data

      • Re:Windows 8.. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by sopssa ( 1498795 ) * <sopssa@email.com> on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @10:49AM (#30297160) Journal

        A company is planning ahead for their next version. News at 11.

        • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @11:07AM (#30297410)
          You must be new to Slashdot. Here's an overview of how users tend to respond to the more common types of articles posted:

          Windows Article
          • Windows, moar liek WINDOZE!
          • stfu n00b, ms > all
          • Hi, I'm a very enlightened intellectual, and for some inexplicable reason I prefer to troll these boards and post insightful responses to increase my already massive and throbbing store of karma (that's a metaphor, by the way, did you get it?), and here is my humble-but-not-really $0.02 on the subject...

          Apple Article

          • DIAF FANBOIZ!!11
          • Hey os x is better than winsucks because it just workz
          • Hello again, you might remember me and my insightful, faux-humble posts in that Windows article, so you'll know I'm worth a few more karma points by virtue of my username, and if you like what I post feel free to toss in a few more. At any rate, regarding the article...

          Linux Article

          • LINUX RULEZ TEH w0RLD!!11
          • lol, butts.
          • Hey there, me again...I really have nothing to add. Can you give me karma points anyway?

          Any other Article

          • First!
          • I agree with the parent.
          • I know I'm going to be modded down for this, but I'm going to give you my opinion anyway, because clearly if I preface my comment that way, it'll be a REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY PLOY that will entice you into modding me up. WINNAR!
          • How is this news for nerds? Man, I remember back in the day when Slashdot was actually cool.
          • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0 [youtube.com]
        • It is bothersome to read these but I think they are an important revenue stream for either Slashdot or the individual editor who sells them.

          Apple leads the pack here but they seem to do less story buying between releases. The dailies, sometimes twice dailies, they buy in the weeks before an iPhone release make up for it though.

        • Well you didn't see any such stories a month after XP was released, did you?

          Come to think of it, we didn't see anything of the sort until a while after Vista too. I guess this means that MS isn't sitting back this time. It's news in that they've finally returned to the competitors' block.

          • Re:Windows 8.. (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Enderandrew ( 866215 ) <enderandrew@NOsPAM.gmail.com> on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @11:38AM (#30297794) Homepage Journal

            They should have been working on Windows 8 nine months ago, or whever they basically put Windows 7 into freeze. It was over a year ago that they decided certain major features weren't making it into 7.

            The team that develops the OS should be focused on the new version right away.

            Surely Microsoft is a well-run corporation with long term planning. Surely they have a future roadmap of where they want Windows to go over the next 5 years. Surely Vista and 7 were intentional stepping stones along their master plan.

            I can't fathom the possibility that Microsoft has become this un-agile behemoth that no longer innovates, but rather has knee-jerk reactions to the OS market.

            • by jefu ( 53450 )

              They probably were working on Windows 8 when they put Windows 7 into freeze. I suspect they've been working on new ideas and features (and misfeatures) for a couple of years now. But the article says that they'll be focusing more on Windows 8 next year, which gives them time to put out the major Windows 7 fires and plan for the next release.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by AndGodSed ( 968378 )

              While I agree there is a problem. The shorter the release cycle, the more incremental the releases needs to be.

              1. Users won't like having to shell out for a new windows every 6 months to a year.
              2. Vendors won't like needing to re-write drivers for whatever the spread of hardware it is that they still update drivers for every year.

              This means that at shortest a two-year release cycle at least makes sense, it is also about how often I'd expect a user who is serious about his IT to upgrade his notebook/pc.

              The m

    • The Ocho Cinco!

  • 2012 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @10:43AM (#30297078)

    2012 OMG.... Always kinda knew it would be Microsoft to end the world...

  • And? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @10:44AM (#30297098) Homepage

    Hey, I heard that Ubuntu going to be switching focus to 10.x next year as well! STOP TEH PRESSES!!!1!

    Do we actually have anything to talk about regarding Windows 8, or is this just another thread where we trot out all the usual "ZOMG evil Micro$oft abandonware bloated faked figures blah blah blah"? Because that's getting kind of old.

    • by sopssa ( 1498795 ) *

      Exactly. We've seen this same so many times. OMG, companies are planning 3-4 years forwards to ship their next product then. The world is falling.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @10:45AM (#30297106)

    Yeah - you were thinking it.

    • Actually the Mayans were right about 2012. They of course had no clue that the end of the days would be brought upon via BSOD
  • Price Appropriately (Score:5, Interesting)

    by areusche ( 1297613 ) on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @10:48AM (#30297158)
    I feel like I have been spoiled by the solid 6 years of time XP was on the market. I literally remember using XP in 8th grade and running it well up to my sophomore year of college. That is a HUGE amount of time. Microsoft can make huge gains by keeping the price of upgrades cheap. Cheap meaning 30-50$. They will have a happy pirate free user if they did that.
  • by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @10:56AM (#30297272) Homepage Journal

    Is it going to be like the Star Trek movies, where whether it sucks or not depends on whether it's odd or even?

  • If they're concentrating on fixing/improving Windows 7...will they stop?

    If they're not going to stop fixing/improving Windows 7, what's the difference?

  • by Icegryphon ( 715550 ) on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @10:58AM (#30297298)
    Is Read this Article and take some important notes.
    NOTES! [mil-embedded.com]
    bells and whistles do not sell in the real world were work needs to be done.
    People want a system/car/airplane/appliance that works, always. Not part of the time.
    If you want to dick around get a Mac Book Wheel [theonion.com]
  • *ONLY* 8 months? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bsDaemon ( 87307 ) on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @11:32AM (#30297726)
    Wow, the 2010 Fiscal Year is ONLY 8 months away when 2010 is only 4 weeks away? Yeah, better start planning for this massive and abrupt shift... (yeah, I know the difference between a fiscal and a calendar year).

    Seriously, though. Good for them. I think XP was out way too long and while I never really had a problem with it that wouldn't be inherent in any type of Windows (I'm just old enough to have missed out on needing to learn much about DOS, and PowerShell pisses me off by not being tcsh), and I think people got complacent with it. The long run of XP probably had as much to do with Vista fears as early bugs did. I purchased a copy of Vista Ultimate a few months ago, and I had no problems with it at all, other than shitty command line, but I was never really an XP user at home anyway.

    The story yesterday with regards to Win 7 stealing more XP market share than Vista market share, I think backs this up. The XP users who were still hanging on were doing so because of perceived issues with Vista, which may or may not have been valid, so Win 7 is more for them than for anyone currently using Vista by choice. Kicking up the Win 8 cycle should keep interest higher, and hopefully they'll be able to deliver on time (yeah, yeah...), because 2 years plus 8 months is still sort of slow compared to Apple's releases, and like a glacier compared to some of the major Linux distributions or BSDs which are on might tighter release schedules.
  • Will this be anything like the Be Focus Shift [macobserver.com] at all?

  • by JD-1027 ( 726234 ) on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @11:40AM (#30297810)
    There is a minor error in the summary. Next July starts fiscal year 2011. The article actually has it correct...

    The sixth job posting arrived on November 20, 2009, requesting a Sr. Manager, Partner Skills Development - Launch Lead who is to change business focus from Windows 7 to Windows 8 in fiscal year 2011. Microsoft's fiscal year starts in July, which is only eight months away.

  • by TimSSG ( 1068536 ) on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @11:58AM (#30298048)
    Which version will Windows 8 be?

    Windows 7 is Windows version 6.1
    Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600] Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
    Tim S.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by slimjim8094 ( 941042 )

      Depends how much of a service pack it is. XP->Vista made some pretty big kernel changes, enough to justify the version. Vista->7 really didn't change anything much, so it's like a service pack.

      Isn't XP SP2/3 Windows 5.1?

      Essentially, it depends how ambitious they are.

  • Will the eight be tipped on its side to make an infinity symbol?
  • Excellent... this will mark the third major release of Windows that I will never use. Keep 'em coming, Ballmer!
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by maxume ( 22995 )

      Yeah, I'm sure he cries real hard each time he hears about someone who buys his product but does not use it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by nacturation ( 646836 ) *

      I must've missed your posts in other stories, but could you please enumerate the number of major releases of other operating systems that you haven't used? Be sure to cover OS X, the various BSDs and Linuxes, OS/2, BeOS, real-time operating systems, and so on.

  • by Antiocheian ( 859870 ) on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @01:54PM (#30299642) Journal

    I started with a home computer in the 80s. Quite fun but cassettes were slow, so I got a PC with MS DOS 3.3

    I upgraded to DOS 5 because of its memory management. I then installed Windows 3.1 upon DOS 5 because of the truetype fonts and word processing. It made me more productive.

    (I also started using Linux because it allowed me to have a Unix at home without suffering that asshole sysadmin at the university, but this posting is not about Linux)

    I upgraded DOS5+Win3 to Win95OSR because it was more stable and easier to use than 3.1, it had font smoothing, native TCP/IP and it was generally an OS vs DOS and a windowed shell. It made me more productive.

    I skipped Win98 and WinMe because they offered nothing new.

    I started using Win2000 because it was a real OS, much more stable and secure than Win95. It made me more productive.

    I started using XP when nLite matured because I could remove the useless crap and XP is optimized for speed and supports network bridges and, most importantly, cleartype. It made me more productive

    I've tried Vista and 7 but they have not made me more productive. I wonder if Microsoft can change that with 8.

  • Missed something (Score:4, Informative)

    by maugle ( 1369813 ) on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @08:25PM (#30305750)
    Well, I skimmed the replies and found an important point missing, concerning how Windows 8 will be marketed: If Windows 8 is going to be released in 2012, that means that sometime in late 2011, Microsoft will start telling us that Windows 7 is, in fact, dog shit.

    But Windows 8 will solve all those problems, and be faster and more secure!

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