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Microsoft Windows Technology

Windows 8 Will Run On All Current PC Hardware 385

Posted by CmdrTaco from the just-a-little-slower dept.
Stoobalou writes "Microsoft exec Tami Reller told attendees at the company's Worldwide Partner Conference 2011 taking place in Los Angeles yesterday that any PC capable of running Windows 7 today would be capable of running Windows 8 when it is released, towards the end of the year."
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Windows 8 Will Run On All Current PC Hardware More

Windows 8 Will Run On All Current PC Hardware

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  • Please, somebody, print this in 2000pt Helvetica and place it on a banner opposite every international MS HQ for at least the next year and preferably until they *actually* release Windows 8.

    Chances are that if you don't, someone will try to backtrack on this before the month is out.

    • Please, somebody, print this in 2000pt Helvetica and place it on a banner opposite every international MS HQ for at least the next year and preferably until they *actually* release Windows 8.

      2000pt papyrus might make them go faster. I understand there are people who have strong feelings about that particular font. Seems like such people whining at the water cooler might speed things along.

      "We at MS are happy to finally release windows 8, a full nine months ahead of schedule. We are also happy to announce that it will work on all current PCs, and does not support the use of certain typesets. NOW CHERYL WILL YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT THAT BANNER AND GODDAMN PAPYRUS!?!?"

  • Windows 8 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dyinobal ( 1427207 ) on Tuesday July 12, 2011 @11:34AM (#36735750)
    I just upgraded from Window XP to WIndows 7 now you want to tell me you're planning windows 8 already with in the year? It's not like windows seven is another vista, it's a solid OS and is remarkably stable, why do I want Windows 8?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jo42 ( 227475 )

      why do I want Windows 8?

      Because Microsoft wants your hard earned shekels, pesos and dinars.

    • Well if you are on a two year lag of upgrades then why are you even asking? Just wait until 2013 and then see if you want to upgrade.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kenja ( 541830 )
      If the add a UAC white list I'll buy it just to stop the annoying pop-ups.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Rinnon ( 1474161 )

        If the add a UAC white list I'll buy it just to stop the annoying pop-ups.

        You know you can just turn off UAC, right? Control Panel > User Accounts > Change User Access Control settings.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kenja ( 541830 )
          UAC is a good thing for security. Its just annoying in its current implementation when compared to how others such as Apple have done it. Turning it off is like disabling anti-virus because it keeps stopping you from downloading that sara-palin-nude.jpg.exe file you want.
        • You know there's a difference between white listing one application, and granting every java applet that your web browser might scroll over administrative access to your entire system right?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Locutus ( 9039 )
      it is not about "why you would _want_ it" it's about why you'll _need_ to upgrade to run any new Microsoft software.

      To answer why Microsoft is releasing yet another OS; it's because they didn't make Vista(yet another MS OS "written from the ground up") very efficient, portable nor scalable so Windows 7 was hacked out to solve the first problem. Hey, it's better than Vista is what I keep hearing regarding its performance. So now there's Linux still running on netbooks but not too much of a threat anymore but

      • To answer why Microsoft is releasing yet another OS; it's because they didn't make Vista(yet another MS OS "written from the ground up") very efficient, portable nor scalable so Windows 7 was hacked out to solve the first problem. Hey, it's better than Vista is what I keep hearing regarding its performance. So now there's Linux still running on netbooks but not too much of a threat anymore but Apple and Google are moving into Windows territory on ARM processors. So, Windows 8 is Windows 7 made portable and supposedly able to yank it apart so it's somewhat scalable. That is if you think a quad core ARM CPU running at 1.5GHz with 2GB of RAM is low end.

        All they did was move background processes from the service manager to the task manager demand loading them as needed. This reduced the memory footprint enough for those people with a marginal amount of RAM to think Windows 7 is a million times better than Vista.

        Finally they scraped off the old sticker, replaced it with "Windows 7" and called it a day.

        The moral of the story there is still quite a lot of low hanging fruit to improve effeciency where there is market incentive.

    • Re:Windows 8 (Score:4, Informative)

      by Skarecrow77 ( 1714214 ) on Tuesday July 12, 2011 @11:58AM (#36736114)

      Traditionally, MS has released a new retail OS every year to two years. the huge gap between XP and Vista was the oddity, not the rule.

      Windows 3.0 was 1990
      3.1 was 1992
      3.11 and NT 3.1 were both in 1993
      NT 3.5 was 1994
      95 was... 1995.
      NT 4.0 was 1996
      98 was 1998
      98se was 1999
      ME and 2000 were both in 2000
      XP was 2001 ...
      Vista was 2006
      Windows 7 was 2009

      seems to me that they're right on schedule for windows 8.

      • Re:Windows 8 (Score:5, Informative)

        by TWX ( 665546 ) on Tuesday July 12, 2011 @12:39PM (#36736874)

        But back then there were two separate product lines:

        Windows 3.0 1990
        Windows 3.1/3.11 1992-1993
        Windows 95 1995
        Windows 98 1998
        Windows ME 2000
        Windows XP 2001
        Windows Vista 2006
        Windows 7 2009

        Windows NT 3.1 1992
        Windows NT 3.5 1994
        Windows NT 4.0 1996
        Windows 2000 2000
        Windows XP 2001
        Windows Vista 2006
        Windows 7 2009

        The other consideration is the relationship between the OSes in these channels. Windows 3.0, 3.1, and 3.11 are substantially similar, and Windows NT 3.1 and 3.5 are as well, sort of blending into 4.0. Windows 95, 98, and ME were also similar enough to be the same product family with incremental changes. Windows 2000 and XP are the same product family. Windows Vista and 7 are the same family.

        I'm probably going to skip 8. I've got too many XP-running computers to upgrade, and Microsoft's three-seat volume packs for home users bring the cost down to between $35 and $50 a PC for Win7 Home Premium (depending on the vendor and any deals at the time) makes it easy to justify buying two or three sets of three, and the benefits in the UI scaling, newer APIs for newer programs, and better multicore support seem worthwhile. It also was eight years from the release of XP to the release of 7, so there's probably been some actual real improvement there, even with the new bugs. 8, coming this quickly on the heels of 7, is probably going to only screw up the UI again, without having any real reason under the hood to compel me to change. I figure if I go to 7, I can probably wait to upgrade OSes until 2017 or so before it becomes a real issue.

    • Re:Windows 8 (Score:5, Funny)

      by toastar ( 573882 ) on Tuesday July 12, 2011 @11:59AM (#36736118)

      I just upgraded from Window XP to WIndows 7 now you want to tell me you're planning windows 8 already with in the year? It's not like windows seven is another vista, it's a solid OS and is remarkably stable, why do I want Windows 8?

      What you've never heard of the every other windows curse? It''s like the star trek movie curse

      Win 2k was great
      Win Me Sucked balls
      Win Xp was pretty good
      Win Vista was smoking crack
      Win 7 is usable

      you might as well not even bother checking out 8

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by zill ( 1690130 )
        Interesting.

        Maybe I should abort my second child and go straight for the third one instead.

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

      by Mia'cova ( 691309 ) on Tuesday July 12, 2011 @12:02PM (#36736174)

      You'll want it for an ARM-based tablet.

    • You're saying you're happy with your product and then asking why you should buy another product?

      Man, they've trained you well.
    • ...means end of 2012. That's a year and half away. Windows 7 is already about two years old.

    • I just upgraded from Window XP to WIndows 7 now you want to tell me you're planning windows 8 already with in the year?

      TFA has incorrectly quoted a different article. They say this:

      Microsoft exec Tami Reller told attendees at the company's Worldwide Partner Conference 2011 taking place in Los Angeles yesterday that any PC capable of running Windows 7 today would be capable of running Windows 8 when it is released, towards the end of the year if Steve Ballmer's ramblings [thinq.co.uk] are to be believed.

      Note the link - it is copied as is from TFA. But if you follow it, it goes to an article titled "Evidence mounts for a Windows 8 release in 2012", and specifically:

      Lewin, corporate vice president for strategic and emerging business development, has suggested a timescale for the Windows 8 launch process - the first version of Windows to support the ARM architecture - that would see the new operating system released towards the end of 2012.

      Lewin spoke at his company's LAUNCH event for start-ups and let slip a few informed guesses as to Microsoft's plans for Windows 8. "If you look at the crystal ball and just say what happened in the past is a reasonable indicator of what our forward looking timelines will be and just speculate," Lewin circuitously explained. "We've made the point about having a developer conference later this year, and then typically we enter a beta phase, and then in 12 months we're in the market. So, let's make that assumption."

      So they're a year off. Even then, of course, it's not an official release date, hence why all the talk about "crystal ball" etc.

    • Well seeing as you seem to wait until an OS is obsolete before upgrading this just means you can wait another 3 years before upgrading to 8!

      Thankfully nobody is holding a gun to your head or depriving you of security updates to force you to upgrade.

  • It's almost like (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jdpars ( 1480913 ) on Tuesday July 12, 2011 @11:37AM (#36735806)
    It's almost like an operating system doesn't need to amp up its requirements with every new release. Once it gets to a certain point, really, there's no need for an increase in necessary resources. Sure, you can make it scale well and perform better, but it really shouldn't be hard to keep the minimum fairly low.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Locutus ( 9039 )
      is that why we're hearing ARM SoC vendors talking about quad core SoC's running at over 1.5Ghz for Windows 8?

      Funny thing is, I was saying what you said in 1996 when the OS/2 Warp was released and for the 3rd time it was faster and more efficient than the previous release. 15 years later and this is a possibility with a version of Windows not yet released and promised to be such? Again, funny that I remember all kinds of promises from Microsoft since the 1990s which were never seen.

      LoB

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      Then why did they explain Windows 7 Starter's lack of ability to change background images as a resource issue?

  • While that is good to know, I'm more interested in the rumor that xbox 360 games may run on Windows 8. Unfortunately, it may include a monthly fee like XBL.

    http://www.insideris.com/more-xbox-360-games-on-windows-8-details/ [insideris.com]

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Kenja ( 541830 )
      This is a bad thing. It stops developers from having a reason to make a PC version of a game.
    • How exactly is Windows 8 going to make emulating a specific triple-core PPC chip and GPU combination any more tractable on x86 hardware?

      Some heavier xbox-tie-in for the generally execrable "Games for Windows Live", and encouraging publishers to make everything available cross platform? Possible. Extension of some sort of "Pay for things that you used to get for free" patch and multiplay service to the PC? Conceivable.

      Play xbox 360 games on an x86? Srsly?

      • If it's a pay service, maybe the main executable is recompiled for x86? You just need the disc for copy-protection? It seems reasonable from a technical perspective. The 360 is around five years old. Modern PCs can smoke it in terms of performance. A recompiled executable is probably enough on any modern gaming rig. The tough part would be building the infrastructure to enable/deploy/integrate it all.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by TWX ( 665546 )

          Yeah, because they went through millions of dollars to develop a proprietary console gaming system whose games specifically can't play on a run-of-the-mill PC and specifically make piracy difficult so that some thirteen year old could start loading the game, let it download all of the components it needs to run, then pull the plug and boot into another OS to copy the game files down...

          I don't think they'll have any interest in changing how their gaming consoles work or how their system for the consoles work

      • I guess anything electronic inside a beige box (well, black nowadays) is magic, and the people who make it are wizards. They can do it!

  • I remember these announcements for XP and previous generations of Windows. It would run, all right. It would take 20 minutes to boot and the run like a diseased snail.

  • But ... (Score:2)

    by rlp ( 11898 )

    How WELL will it run Windows 8? Microsoft always adds new bloat... um ... features to their OS's in each new release. So it will run in existing machines, but will it be usable?

    • you mean like the huge speed loss going from vista to windows 7?
      oh... wait...

    • If they are targeting ARM chips, the fastest of which are around 1GHz.. then i would guess they probably spent a large amount of effort optimizing and getting rid of bloat... Tablets are limited by CPU speed and battery.

  • Already? (Score:3)

    by gubers33 ( 1302099 ) on Tuesday July 12, 2011 @11:39AM (#36735848)
    They are not going to get many businesses jumping on board quickly, many companies are just upgrading from XP to Windows 7 while many are still running XP. Trying to rush a new release will just cause another Vista disaster.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ledow ( 319597 )

      And XP still has three more years of Extended Support. Way to kill Windows 7 off early, Microsoft!

  • ...nobody has yet found a PC capable of running Windows 7 today.

    (I upgraded from XP last month. I upgraded the PC at the same time, to what sounded like quite a fast machine. But Win7 destroyed that advantage. How I wish I didn't need proprietary packages - then I'd switch everything to Linux and shout less at my computer)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Amouth ( 879122 )

      Windows 7 is quite smooth - and is not that much of a resource hog - yes it uses more than XP but i've found it does more with what it takes..

      now Vista on the other hand.. that is crap

    • Gotta say, you're doing something wrong. Windows 7 runs fine on anything remotely resembling new hardware. It's not going to run on the earliest XP era hardware, but anything from say 2005-2006 on seems to be fine (you want at least a gig and half to two gigs of RAM, but that's both cheap and trivial to upgrade). I love a good MS bash as much as the next guys, but they did OK with Windows 7. It would have been better if Vista had been as capable, but they got 7 more or less right. There's stuff to comp

    • I did measurements of XP vs. Windows 7 for my last employer. We did our builds of both on Lenovo T400, T61, and Dell D620 laptops. In every single one, Windows 7 was dramatically faster. Both boot time, and once the system was running. The T400 is about 3 years old now, and the D620 is probably about 4? so perhaps you need an objective measure.. The improved caching algorithms are very good, but lead to lots of co-workers that feel their power users complaining that all their ram is used up (thats the p

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by puto ( 533470 )
      Really? I am typing this in a core2duo 1.8 with two gigs of ram bought in 2007. It originally ran XP, then vista, but pulled Vista cause it was a a dog, and then two years ago put a win 7 service candidate on it, and it still runs well. It smoked vista and xp. September 2009 without a reinstall. I have a thinkpad laptop running win 7 64, got it in jan 2010, no reinstall. sounds like you do not know how to admin a system.

  • Can or Will? (Score:3)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Tuesday July 12, 2011 @11:43AM (#36735888)

    Windows 8 will run on my PC over my dead body!

  • What about 32 Bit Systems? (Score:3)

    by rtobyr ( 846578 ) <toby&richards,net> on Tuesday July 12, 2011 @11:43AM (#36735890) Homepage
    Didn't Microsoft say that Windows Server 2008 (without "R2") was the last 32 bit OS that they'd make? It's likely that the vast majority of Windows 7 Home/Business edition users have a CPU that can handle 64 bits, but what about all those people running Windows 7 Starter on netbooks that can't do 64 bit? It seems to me that they need to come out and say whether there will be a 32 bit version of Windows 8 or not.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Amouth ( 879122 )

      you would be surprised - alot of the Atom cpu's are 64-bit .. but they just released them with 32bit os's..

      all but your true bottom end Atom's are 64bit.. and most of the bottom ends stuck to xp..

      also i don't count "Starter Edition" as win 7.. it was a mistake they should never have done.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        you would be surprised - alot of the Atom cpu's are 64-bit .. but they just released them with 32bit os's..

        Considering that the Atom chipsets typically don't support more than 2GB of RAM, running 64bit isn't a terribly useful proposition - you get the advantage of slightly more speed (because of increased registers) but that's about it. You lose out on caches when pointer lengths double (Windows - they have pointers everywhere).

        Sure an Atom can run 64-bit code, but it's probably just as happy running a 32-b

        • Considering that the Atom chipsets typically don't support more than 2GB of RAM, running 64bit isn't a terribly useful proposition - you get the advantage of slightly more speed (because of increased registers) but that's about it. You lose out on caches when pointer lengths double (Windows - they have pointers everywhere).

          Sure an Atom can run 64-bit code, but it's probably just as happy running a 32-bit OS since the benefits of the slightly increased performance are washed out because of limited RAM and cache.

          The low memory limits for atom were lifted a while ago. The only atom I own has 4GB ram and runs 64-bit linux.

    • Didn't Microsoft say that Windows Server 2008 (without "R2") was the last 32 bit OS that they'd make?

      No, not really, given that 2008 was released before Win7, and Win7 has a 32-bit version.

      What was said is that 2008 is the last 32-bit server OS in the line.

  • But... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SwedishChef ( 69313 ) <craig AT networkessentials DOT net> on Tuesday July 12, 2011 @11:44AM (#36735898) Homepage Journal

    You won't be able to find anything until you either take a certification course or spend hours clicking on buttons searching for the simple commands you used to be able to find instantly.

    Bwhahahaha!

  • How about make it run well on on all hardware capable of running XP SP3? You may not get the fancy display bells and whistles (Aero), but the core APIs and should still be the same. This would actually get a lot of people to upgrade. I don't expect fancy display features to work on old hardware, but it would be nice since I have a perfectly good windows machine that I am not going to upgrade since it does what I want for a windows box but would like the added security updates of a more modern OS.

    • How about make it run well on on all hardware capable of running XP SP3? You may not get the fancy display bells and whistles (Aero), but the core APIs and should still be the same. This would actually get a lot of people to upgrade. I don't expect fancy display features to work on old hardware, but it would be nice since I have a perfectly good windows machine that I am not going to upgrade since it does what I want for a windows box but would like the added security updates of a more modern OS.

      If you have at least 2 GB of RAM, 7 already runs better than XP on the same system.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bengie ( 1121981 )

      They're current gutting the core API to clean it up. Lots of new and better API is being added. New APIs are geared towards threading and all that fun new stuff to keep performance scaling with cores.

  • Not quite accurate (Score:2, Interesting)

    by hawguy ( 1600213 )

    The article title is not quite accurate:

    Windows 8 Will Run On All Current PC Hardware

    Then it goes on to say

    any PC capable of running Windows 7 today would be capable of running Windows 8

    I have a lot of PC's in regular use that run XP quite happily but won't run Win7. I guess the next OS for that hardware will be Xubuntu.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Aladrin ( 926209 )

      There's a disconnect on the word 'current'. For many people, 'current' means 'recent' and not just 'still working'.

      • There's a disconnect on the word 'current'. For many people, 'current' means 'recent' and not just 'still working'.

        For Microsoft and any other tech company releasing an OS, 'current' can be read to mean 'available right this very moment from IBM as a mass market product'.

        So 'current' does not include any item you bought before the announcement that is no longer shipping - that would be 'in the past'.

        Less obviously, 'current' also does not include 'niche' products like low-powered factory automation computer

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bengie ( 1121981 )

        I would have to agree. If it can't out-perform an i3 Netbook, it's not recent. Those things are FAST.

        But yes, Linux. I've been waiting a long time for DX11 support, and DX12 is a round the corner. After watching a very information AMD keynote, I have a feeling games will be developed differently over the next decade. Maybe I'll be able to play the newest games with the newest hardware on Linux in 10 years.

    • I'm pretty sure "current" means "currently being sold", not "hasn't died yet".

      I have a 7-year old PC that Windows 7 runs great on. I had to replace the video card at some point, but it was because the video card died (not because it wouldn't run 7). I also have a 10-year old PC that Windows 7 will run on, but the machine runs XP so slowly that I wouldn't want to try it. As a side note, I tried Ubuntu on it, and it ran more slowly than XP, so you may want to stick with XP.

  • I'm sure it will "run" in the sense that it boots up and is functional. But "run" in the sense of running well... who knows. Also what compelling reason is there to upgrade from 7 to 8? The only reason I know most people are using 7 is for the 64 bit support, now that we have that we're good for another couple of years.

  • Dell Won't like that (Score:3)

    by ISoldat53 ( 977164 ) on Tuesday July 12, 2011 @12:05PM (#36736228)
    Dell has made a fortune selling hardware to keep up with the requirements of Windows.
  • Old wine in new bottles.
    • You mean like how wine is kept in barrels to age well and then put in new bottles before being shipped out?
      • No, more like the same wine as last year (and the year before) that has stopped selling very well so they put it in a differently colored bottle with a cool new label and do a new ad campaign to bump up sales.
  • Glory Be! This has to be a first! You don't have to go out and replace all of your computing equipment for a Windows upgrade! Unbelievable! Unprecedented!

    Now all they have to do is explain why anyone would want to spend a couple hundred dollars on it, and tell us whether we still need to replace all of our existing software.

  • Why is that even news? Is Windows some kind of game that needs the newest Nvidia DirectX11 to be playable? Is Windows not some kind of operating system, and as such should have absolute minimum system requirements, so it doesn't steal valuable CPU and GPU cycles from more important things, like the Office program you are using to do your fucking job?

  • so it will still run on 32bit systems? should go 64 bit only.

  • Just before Vista came out, Microsoft said the same thing, and people bought it up because it meant a free Vista upgrade.

    The problem was, the machines that ran it were so low-spec that they really shouldn't be running Vista in the first place and the experience sucked. Horribly.

    So I'd take this with a grain of salt - sure it *can* run Windows 8, but would you want to? Just like Windows 95 would run on a 386 with 4MB of RAM - yes, it did, but ... yes, that's about it.

  • Still running XP SP3, and happily so. Vista, Win7...not a single feature I've seen has been compelling enough to encourage an upgrade. Office 2000...guess what, it writes text documents just as well as Office 2010. Upgrade-itis. It isn't always a good thing. The factory floor is humming along with no crashes. I would like to keep it that way.

  • How about all those "Windows Vista Ready" stickers plastered all over those computers with slow processors and 512mb ram that ran like absolute crap? Lowering the listed system requirements doesn't really make outdated hardware "run" the new software, not the way it was supposed to anyway.

    Then we get into the magical auto disable of Aero. If you have to disable features in an OS to make the thing usable, it didn't meet system specs. Quit the BS.

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