I will be upgrading from Windows 7 on my desktop, and also purchasing a tablet with Windows 8 at a later date. Most customers will get Windows 8 with a new system; more than 450 million people now have Windows 7 since launch, most as OEM versions. Customers who use Windows everyday will likely find value in upgrading to Windows 8, as I do.
There are many welcome improvements across the board, including in desktop mode, startup/boot experience, resource usage, hardware support etc. This is of course is an Apple fan site, so I?m not surprised to see negative reactions to Windows, nor am I surprised to read carefully written articles that paint Microsoft plans and future in the worst light. I was once an Apple fan/user to, but personally I have seen the most innovation from Microsoft in recent years. Microsoft?s approach of sharing information, and getting customers involved in their products from an early stage is excellent, I enjoy reading how products are developed, not just reading predictable marketing rhetoric, labeling products magical, and insanely great.
So far I have found the Start Screen to be better suited for touch; however I'm starting to find I like it with mouse and keyboard (which is improving before beta). As with many others I was initially worried this new start screen would slow down launching tasks etc. But after using the developer preview some time, I have found it has made me faster at launching tasks, and searching than Win7. I also enjoy the new snapped metro apps in combination with full applications. The fact that all the customizations are saved into the cloud is great, when the Beta arrives groupings of applications, and semantic zoom will be enabled, giving a much richer start screen than Win7.
As someone who is power-user, I like the explorer ribbon, especially how it allows hotkeys for everything including floating tooltips which all activate dynamically, and a minimize mode, so you get the best of both worlds, a simplistic interface, with the equivalent of menu's, however more contextual, better layout, more visually rich, with hierarchy and grouping of tools - making explorer much more powerful than Finder in my opinion. There are other small thing some people would never notice, like you can now drag and drop into the breadcrumb hierarchy, the ribbon has many handy tools that used to be buried, now only requiring two clicks, or keyboard shortcuts. The task manager is also completely revamped, which any power user should be happy with. Other features like History Vault, give a more user friendly interface to backup/revert files (though personally I never found it that difficult in Win7), support for native VHD, USB3.0, ISO, zip, massive drives, improved hyper-v is also appealing to desktop users. Microsoft haven?t shown off the Windows Store yet or Xbox Live (something to replace games explorer), so there is still more features coming.
Personally I have been using Microsoft?s free Security Essential product for a couple of years, and had no issues with viruses etc. This will now be baked into Windows 8 as standard, this could have been done ages ago, but as everyone knows Microsoft was a target for anti-trust lawsuits (while ignoring companies like Apple).
Windows 8 is easily a much larger release in terms of features, for both desktop & touch features than any recent version of Mac OSX, so I don?t think Apple fans should dismiss it as being a piece of junk. Because I think most objective reviewers would find the current state of Windows 8 to be ambitious, fresh, full of good ideas, but buggy and incomplete (as a developer preview should be). That said I hope for some improvements before Beta, some of which have already been implemented.
No one can predict whether Windows 8 tablet will sell very well or not. This is largely irrelevant to me, as I?m only interested in a real operating system on a tablet, not a basic stripped down toyshop of apps (which is in fact great for many people, or if that is your primary need for a tablet). So far Microsoft?s strategy is the only one that works for me, and I suspect there will be many others with the same needs. I hope Apple decides to do a variation of iPad with Mac OSX, and then I would consider them as an option in the future.
?There is no way i will downgrade from OSX Lion to a cloner Microsoft bug infested, unsecure, super expensive OS. No thanks.?
Windows 7 has no bugs I have come across, with heavy usage and being a prime suspect to get a virus I have got nothing in the last 4 years (unsecure?). Yeah windows is expensive, but then my overclocked 2600K 4.6GHZ with Nvidia Geforce 580 3GB, is much faster and cheaper than any Mac, with a nice steel case to
When Windows 8 turns into a disaster of epic proportions, it will be the ideal time for Apple to announce OSX going open source, available for both Mac and Windows machines...
You clearly don't understand anything about Apple's business strategy or how they make their profits.
Mobile operating systems will evolve into desktop operating systems and mobile devices outnumber desktops, so that prediction isn't that crazy. Microsoft could lose its consumer desktop OS share rather quickly PCs that formally shipped with Windows start shipping with Android and the iPad continues to cut into PC sales. There's a reason Microsoft is supporting ARM with Windows 8.
Also count me in as one of those not upgrading to Windows 8. I tried it and it's definitely not for me. I'll stick with Windows 7 and OSX on my desktops.
Apple spent years bringing its Pages, Keynote and Numbers apps from iWork and its iMovie and Garage Band apps from the iLife suite to iOS as mobile-optimized, touch based apps. In contrast, Microsoft has only suggested that it is still in the early conceptual stages of contemplating how its flagship Office apps might run in Windows 8's Metro environment.
This "Dilger" guy needs his own "fail whale" meme.
"Dilger" made the assumption "Microsoft was still in the early stages of exploring the concept [of Metro Office]" based on this Ballmer quote he references in his article:
Quote:
"The question is Metro interface for Office. How critical is it to Windows 8 adoption to have software that takes full advantage of Office with Metro?"
The only trouble is that Ballmer never said that!. It was actually part of a question directed toward Ballmer. Unfortunately Dilger's fantastic reading comprehension skills failed to pick that up.
You've got to wonder about the usefulness of anything written by a guy that can't even work out the difference between a question from an investor and the response from the CEO of the company he is suppose to be knowledgeable enough to write about.
Vista got killed by early poor driver implementation by third-parties, and the fact that it got delayed so many times before release, while features were cut. The media then dragged out the perception of bad Vista forever after. Though it was true Vista didn't perform very well at all on super budget systems like cheap netbooks at the time, on any mid range or high end system it worked great.
If you look at the product itself a year after release on a decent system, it was a solid opearting system, with many new features, which modernised the ancient Windows XP, and formed the basis of Windows 7 - albeit missing some finesse, and performance improvements. So Vista wasn't really a nightmware product....like a lot people believe
The tile UX, IMO, works quite well on a phone. The Windows Phone interface is fresh and makes the IOS and Android grid of icons look pretty dull (don't even get me started about the clutter of widgets). But there's something about that sized device that seems to work. I'm not sure that it works for a desktop or even tablet sized environment though.
The thing that drives me batty about Windows and a large part of what sent me to Mac OS is that with Windows you're always fussing. Always tweaking. Always adjusting. With Live Tiles you get, on paper, some really cool abilities. The updates you want. The rotation of pics you want. The latest messages from ALL your FB, Twitter, Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, Friendster, Match.com contacts. Your pictures. Over and over and over again. Your kids. Your friends. Your boss. Your updates. Kind of overwhelming from my perspective. I can't see past the distractions. It boggles my mind that that is going to be initial experience. It's a feature!!
It'll show well but I wonder if the novelty will wear thin soon.
You've got to wonder about the usefulness of anything written by a guy that can't even work out the difference between a question from an investor and the response from the CEO of the company he is suppose to be knowledgeable enough to write about.
LOL. The two most complained about people here: DED and Balmer. Not sure which order.
No one can predict whether Windows 8 tablet will sell very well or not. This is largely irrelevant to me, as I?m only interested in a real operating system on a tablet, not a basic stripped down toyshop of apps (which is in fact great for many people, or if that is your primary need for a tablet).
At this point I think you're relying as much (or more) on Intel to create low power x86 hardware than you are on Microsoft. From memory it's going to be 2013 before we see x86 hardware that can power a PC in the same form factor as an iPad.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cmf2
Also count me in as one of those not upgrading to Windows 8. I tried it and it's definitely not for me.
If you have access to a time machine the least you could have done is bring back some lottery numbers for us!!
At this point I think you're relying as much (or more) on Intel to create low power x86 hardware than you are on Microsoft. From memory it's going to be 2013 before we see x86 hardware that can power a PC in the same form factor as an iPad.
There are already tablets available right now in the same form factor as iPad that are x86 with Windows on them (and for the last ten years in bulkier forms). I have heard Intel is bringing out a new mobile architecture every year. Oak Trail is the lastest available now, I believe the battery lasts 6-8 hours - but if you were rendering from Maya for instance I imagine less : ) . Obviously there is a trade off in battery life for the forseeable future with Windows x86 tablets, which I can live with in order to have a much more feature rich tablet. In any case art tablets like Cintiq need to be plugged into wall anyway.
I will be upgrading from Windows 7 on my desktop, and also purchasing a tablet with Windows 8 at a later date. Most customers will get Windows 8 with a new system; more than 450 million people now have Windows 7 since launch, most as OEM versions. Customers who use Windows everyday will likely find value in upgrading to Windows 8, as I do.
There are many welcome improvements across the board, including in desktop mode, startup/boot experience, resource usage, hardware support etc. This is of course is an Apple fan site, so I?m not surprised to see negative reactions to Windows, nor am I surprised to read carefully written articles that paint Microsoft plans and future in the worst light. I was once an Apple fan/user to, but personally I have seen the most innovation from Microsoft in recent years. Microsoft?s approach of sharing information, and getting customers involved in their products from an early stage is excellent, I enjoy reading how products are developed, not just reading predictable marketing rhetoric, labeling products magical, and insanely great.
So far I have found the Start Screen to be better suited for touch; however I'm starting to find I like it with mouse and keyboard (which is improving before beta). As with many others I was initially worried this new start screen would slow down launching tasks etc. But after using the developer preview some time, I have found it has made me faster at launching tasks, and searching than Win7. I also enjoy the new snapped metro apps in combination with full applications. The fact that all the customizations are saved into the cloud is great, when the Beta arrives groupings of applications, and semantic zoom will be enabled, giving a much richer start screen than Win7.
As someone who is power-user, I like the explorer ribbon, especially how it allows hotkeys for everything including floating tooltips which all activate dynamically, and a minimize mode, so you get the best of both worlds, a simplistic interface, with the equivalent of menu's, however more contextual, better layout, more visually rich, with hierarchy and grouping of tools - making explorer much more powerful than Finder in my opinion. There are other small thing some people would never notice, like you can now drag and drop into the breadcrumb hierarchy, the ribbon has many handy tools that used to be buried, now only requiring two clicks, or keyboard shortcuts. The task manager is also completely revamped, which any power user should be happy with. Other features like History Vault, give a more user friendly interface to backup/revert files (though personally I never found it that difficult in Win7), support for native VHD, USB3.0, ISO, zip, massive drives, improved hyper-v is also appealing to desktop users. Microsoft haven?t shown off the Windows Store yet or Xbox Live (something to replace games explorer), so there is still more features coming.
Personally I have been using Microsoft?s free Security Essential product for a couple of years, and had no issues with viruses etc. This will now be baked into Windows 8 as standard, this could have been done ages ago, but as everyone knows Microsoft was a target for anti-trust lawsuits (while ignoring companies like Apple).
Windows 8 is easily a much larger release in terms of features, for both desktop & touch features than any recent version of Mac OSX, so I don?t think Apple fans should dismiss it as being a piece of junk. Because I think most objective reviewers would find the current state of Windows 8 to be ambitious, fresh, full of good ideas, but buggy and incomplete (as a developer preview should be). That said I hope for some improvements before Beta, some of which have already been implemented.
No one can predict whether Windows 8 tablet will sell very well or not. This is largely irrelevant to me, as I?m only interested in a real operating system on a tablet, not a basic stripped down toyshop of apps (which is in fact great for many people, or if that is your primary need for a tablet). So far Microsoft?s strategy is the only one that works for me, and I suspect there will be many others with the same needs. I hope Apple decides to do a variation of iPad with Mac OSX, and then I would consider them as an option in the future.
?There is no way i will downgrade from OSX Lion to a cloner Microsoft bug infested, unsecure, super expensive OS. No thanks.?
Windows 7 has no bugs I have come across, with heavy usage and being a prime suspect to get a virus I have got nothing in the last 4 years (unsecure?). Yeah windows is expensive, but then my overclocked 2600K 4.6GHZ with Nvidia Geforce 580 3GB, is much faster and cheaper than any Mac, with a nice steel case to
I agree to some extent - tons of useful ideas, but the ribbons have completely ruined the user experience for me. There just isn't enough consistency as to where functionality is placed across applications. This is where Microsoft loses to Apple despite all their other great work.
LOL. The two most complained about people here: DED and Balmer. Not sure which order.
Ballmer and Dilger... like two peas in a pod
The big difference is who they are preaching to.
Ballmer is like a madman on a soapbox preaching his mad ideas to wary businessmen walking past that give him sidelong glances and try get away as quickly as possible.
"Dilger" is like a madman on a soapbox preaching his mad ideas to his own congregation of little mad followers.
Typically someone will respond to my comments, tell me that these type of gaping holes in Dilger logic "don't matter" and that in any case I shouldn't be pointing them out, and then call me a name.
I will be upgrading from Windows 7 on my desktop, and also purchasing a tablet with Windows 8 at a later date. Most customers will get Windows 8 with a new system; more than 450 million people now have Windows 7 since launch, most as OEM versions. Customers who use Windows everyday will likely find value in upgrading to Windows 8, as I do.
There are many welcome improvements across the board, including in desktop mode, startup/boot experience, resource usage, hardware support etc. This is of course is an Apple fan site, so I?m not surprised to see negative reactions to Windows, nor am I surprised to read carefully written articles that paint Microsoft plans and future in the worst light. I was once an Apple fan/user to, but personally I have seen the most innovation from Microsoft in recent years. Microsoft?s approach of sharing information, and getting customers involved in their products from an early stage is excellent, I enjoy reading how products are developed, not just reading predictable marketing rhetoric, labeling products magical, and insanely great.
So far I have found the Start Screen to be better suited for touch; however I'm starting to find I like it with mouse and keyboard (which is improving before beta). As with many others I was initially worried this new start screen would slow down launching tasks etc. But after using the developer preview some time, I have found it has made me faster at launching tasks, and searching than Win7. I also enjoy the new snapped metro apps in combination with full applications. The fact that all the customizations are saved into the cloud is great, when the Beta arrives groupings of applications, and semantic zoom will be enabled, giving a much richer start screen than Win7.
As someone who is power-user, I like the explorer ribbon, especially how it allows hotkeys for everything including floating tooltips which all activate dynamically, and a minimize mode, so you get the best of both worlds, a simplistic interface, with the equivalent of menu's, however more contextual, better layout, more visually rich, with hierarchy and grouping of tools - making explorer much more powerful than Finder in my opinion. There are other small thing some people would never notice, like you can now drag and drop into the breadcrumb hierarchy, the ribbon has many handy tools that used to be buried, now only requiring two clicks, or keyboard shortcuts. The task manager is also completely revamped, which any power user should be happy with. Other features like History Vault, give a more user friendly interface to backup/revert files (though personally I never found it that difficult in Win7), support for native VHD, USB3.0, ISO, zip, massive drives, improved hyper-v is also appealing to desktop users. Microsoft haven?t shown off the Windows Store yet or Xbox Live (something to replace games explorer), so there is still more features coming.
Personally I have been using Microsoft?s free Security Essential product for a couple of years, and had no issues with viruses etc. This will now be baked into Windows 8 as standard, this could have been done ages ago, but as everyone knows Microsoft was a target for anti-trust lawsuits (while ignoring companies like Apple).
Windows 8 is easily a much larger release in terms of features, for both desktop & touch features than any recent version of Mac OSX, so I don?t think Apple fans should dismiss it as being a piece of junk. Because I think most objective reviewers would find the current state of Windows 8 to be ambitious, fresh, full of good ideas, but buggy and incomplete (as a developer preview should be). That said I hope for some improvements before Beta, some of which have already been implemented.
No one can predict whether Windows 8 tablet will sell very well or not. This is largely irrelevant to me, as I?m only interested in a real operating system on a tablet, not a basic stripped down toyshop of apps (which is in fact great for many people, or if that is your primary need for a tablet). So far Microsoft?s strategy is the only one that works for me, and I suspect there will be many others with the same needs. I hope Apple decides to do a variation of iPad with Mac OSX, and then I would consider them as an option in the future.
?There is no way i will downgrade from OSX Lion to a cloner Microsoft bug infested, unsecure, super expensive OS. No thanks.?
Windows 7 has no bugs I have come across, with heavy usage and being a prime suspect to get a virus I have got nothing in the last 4 years (unsecure?). Yeah windows is expensive, but then my overclocked 2600K 4.6GHZ with Nvidia Geforce 580 3GB, is much faster and cheaper than any Mac, with a nice steel case to
I enjoyed reading your reply & I intend to upgrade my desktop to Windows 8 as well. As far as tablets go, I currently enjoy using an iPad 2 but I will keep an eye out on Windows 8 for the tablet and see how well does it.
I agree with most of what you have said except for one thing - that you will get the full Windows 8 experience on a tablet. From my understanding you only get the "full" experience if Windows 8 is running on an x86-based device whereas ARM-based devices will only get the Metro Experience, which means that Windows 8 on a tablet becomes a toy shop of tiles.
Right now Intel's presence on tablets is next to nil & their performance / watt ratio compared to ARM is very poor. Like another poster said before me, it won't be until 2013 that Intel may have a competitive tablet SOC with their Haswell architecture.
Most people simply buy a machine and use the OS it came with until they buy a new machine.
The only question for Windows 8, is will Microsoft create another Vista situation where people are so annoyed that they start demanding Win7 on new machines. This could happen if they don't relent about forcing the Metro start page on desktop users.
Other than that I don't see anything driving a significant number of Win8 upgrades.
On the tablet front. Not much will change, they will have a new Metro UI but there will be negligible software to run on it. You will need an x86 chip to run actual windows software on it and the actual Windows tablets with x86 will still be heavier, more expensive, with shorter battery life in 2012.
From my understanding you only get the "full" experience if Windows 8 is running on an x86-based device whereas ARM-based devices will only get the Metro Experience, which means that Windows 8 on a tablet becomes a toy shop of tiles
What is already confirmed is ARM tablets will not run legacy applications, this has been announced almost a year ago
However the initial plan, and I suspect still the official plan is to still give access to the Windows desktop, with a library of drivers and support for desktop style applications that have been compiled for ARM. These ARM tablets would still give full access to new metro apps, and the desktop would provide a more powerful file management experience, and the potential for larger native desktop apps. In the last week there has been rumors that Microsoft is removing the desktop from ARM Windows 8, in order to provide a direct competitor to iPad.
I have no interest in the ARM tablets, and am looking for a x86 tablet, so I get legacy and metro support.
The next generation Intel mobile architecture comes out just before Windows 8, so battery life should improve again.
ARM tablets are very power efficent, no doubt about that, but x86 are built for speed, so I believe for the tasks I will be doing on the tablet, x86 will supply sufficent processing power
Way to generalise about hundreds of millions of people. Some of them are cutting-edge people and some of them are not - just like with Mac OS.
Are you saying that anything which uses a grid of icons is copying Apple?! Icon-based layouts were around long before Mac OS existed and they'll be around long after it's gone.
Besides, Metro isn't really anything like Launchpad. Launchpad is static icons, where Metro is live tiles. Big difference.
Anyway, most of you are missing the point, which is that Microsoft doesn't really give two hoots if hardly any users buy individual licences of Windows 8. They will make the vast majority of their money from OEMs and enterprises, like they always do. Buyers of OEM PCs buy whatever OS they are given.
Why even be registered here. Or why even use Apple devices or software? If you love Microsoft so much then stay with them. After all Steve was the one who said that Microsoft couldn't make anything original. Maybe you need to stay with Microsoft and leave Apple people alone.
Count me in as one that will be upgrading my PC to Windows 8. This will be the 4th OS this PC has seen(XP, Vista, 7, 8). As long as there is customization of the system color theme, I will be happy.
Since the Developer Preview was not feature complete and lacked metro apps of any substance, using the metro interface much made little sense. Hopefully when the app store is opened(MS event tomorrow to talk about the store) we will get a chance to use the interface as it was intended.
I'm also very interested in a tablet to test Windows 8 on. So if anyone has a HP Slate that they can't stand, I can take it off of their hands.
What is already confirmed is ARM tablets will not run legacy applications, this has been announced almost a year ago
However the initial plan, and I suspect still the official plan is to still give access to the Windows desktop, with a library of drivers and support for desktop style applications that have been compiled for ARM. These ARM tablets would still give full access to new metro apps, and the desktop would provide a more powerful file management experience, and the potential for larger native desktop apps. In the last week there has been rumors that Microsoft is removing the desktop from ARM Windows 8, in order to provide a direct competitor to iPad.
I have no interest in the ARM tablets, and am looking for a x86 tablet, so I get legacy and metro support
My only question is, with ARM so entrenched in the tablet space and racing to improve performance while maintaining low power, what are Intel's chances of being successful in the tablet arena?
Another thing you have to take into account is GPU capability. Intel is not known for their GPU prowess, as their integrated graphics performance has shown. Whereas the current PowerVR 543MP and Rogue processor plus the current ARM Mali GPU push pixels much better than Intel's GPU solutions.
There are already tablets available right now in the same form factor as iPad that are x86 with Windows on them (and for the last ten years in bulkier forms). I have heard Intel is bringing out a new mobile architecture every year. Oak Trail is the lastest available now, I believe the battery lasts 6-8 hours - but if you were rendering from Maya for instance I imagine less : )
I'm not sure the Atom processors have enough grunt to run full desktop applications. Not yet at least.
The way I see it if you want a full desktop on a tablet it's because you want to be able to run full desktop applications - either on the tablet itself or when docked to a keyboard (i.e. something like Office, Photoshop, Visual Studio, VMWare, Eclipse, Adobe CS5 etc)
Those are the kind of applications that aren't going to run well on an Atom processor.
If all you're going to do is more basic kind of stuff like check emails, use the Internet, do some basic documents, run some apps etc then a Metro/ARM tablet is going to work just as well as an x86 tablet with a full desktop.
Even if what you are doing falls on the more advanced side of "basic" (and wouldn't be well suited to an iPad style tablet) like researching for an assignment, looking for a new car to buy or collaborating with team members on a project the share/search contracts and side-by-side apps in Windows 8 will allow you to do that inside the Metro UI as well.
Comments
There are many welcome improvements across the board, including in desktop mode, startup/boot experience, resource usage, hardware support etc. This is of course is an Apple fan site, so I?m not surprised to see negative reactions to Windows, nor am I surprised to read carefully written articles that paint Microsoft plans and future in the worst light. I was once an Apple fan/user to, but personally I have seen the most innovation from Microsoft in recent years. Microsoft?s approach of sharing information, and getting customers involved in their products from an early stage is excellent, I enjoy reading how products are developed, not just reading predictable marketing rhetoric, labeling products magical, and insanely great.
So far I have found the Start Screen to be better suited for touch; however I'm starting to find I like it with mouse and keyboard (which is improving before beta). As with many others I was initially worried this new start screen would slow down launching tasks etc. But after using the developer preview some time, I have found it has made me faster at launching tasks, and searching than Win7. I also enjoy the new snapped metro apps in combination with full applications. The fact that all the customizations are saved into the cloud is great, when the Beta arrives groupings of applications, and semantic zoom will be enabled, giving a much richer start screen than Win7.
As someone who is power-user, I like the explorer ribbon, especially how it allows hotkeys for everything including floating tooltips which all activate dynamically, and a minimize mode, so you get the best of both worlds, a simplistic interface, with the equivalent of menu's, however more contextual, better layout, more visually rich, with hierarchy and grouping of tools - making explorer much more powerful than Finder in my opinion. There are other small thing some people would never notice, like you can now drag and drop into the breadcrumb hierarchy, the ribbon has many handy tools that used to be buried, now only requiring two clicks, or keyboard shortcuts. The task manager is also completely revamped, which any power user should be happy with. Other features like History Vault, give a more user friendly interface to backup/revert files (though personally I never found it that difficult in Win7), support for native VHD, USB3.0, ISO, zip, massive drives, improved hyper-v is also appealing to desktop users. Microsoft haven?t shown off the Windows Store yet or Xbox Live (something to replace games explorer), so there is still more features coming.
Personally I have been using Microsoft?s free Security Essential product for a couple of years, and had no issues with viruses etc. This will now be baked into Windows 8 as standard, this could have been done ages ago, but as everyone knows Microsoft was a target for anti-trust lawsuits (while ignoring companies like Apple).
Windows 8 is easily a much larger release in terms of features, for both desktop & touch features than any recent version of Mac OSX, so I don?t think Apple fans should dismiss it as being a piece of junk. Because I think most objective reviewers would find the current state of Windows 8 to be ambitious, fresh, full of good ideas, but buggy and incomplete (as a developer preview should be). That said I hope for some improvements before Beta, some of which have already been implemented.
No one can predict whether Windows 8 tablet will sell very well or not. This is largely irrelevant to me, as I?m only interested in a real operating system on a tablet, not a basic stripped down toyshop of apps (which is in fact great for many people, or if that is your primary need for a tablet). So far Microsoft?s strategy is the only one that works for me, and I suspect there will be many others with the same needs. I hope Apple decides to do a variation of iPad with Mac OSX, and then I would consider them as an option in the future.
?There is no way i will downgrade from OSX Lion to a cloner Microsoft bug infested, unsecure, super expensive OS. No thanks.?
Windows 7 has no bugs I have come across, with heavy usage and being a prime suspect to get a virus I have got nothing in the last 4 years (unsecure?). Yeah windows is expensive, but then my overclocked 2600K 4.6GHZ with Nvidia Geforce 580 3GB, is much faster and cheaper than any Mac, with a nice steel case to
When Windows 8 turns into a disaster of epic proportions, it will be the ideal time for Apple to announce OSX going open source, available for both Mac and Windows machines...
You clearly don't understand anything about Apple's business strategy or how they make their profits.
Gotta love these analysts.
Mobile operating systems will evolve into desktop operating systems and mobile devices outnumber desktops, so that prediction isn't that crazy. Microsoft could lose its consumer desktop OS share rather quickly PCs that formally shipped with Windows start shipping with Android and the iPad continues to cut into PC sales. There's a reason Microsoft is supporting ARM with Windows 8.
Also count me in as one of those not upgrading to Windows 8. I tried it and it's definitely not for me. I'll stick with Windows 7 and OSX on my desktops.
Apple spent years bringing its Pages, Keynote and Numbers apps from iWork and its iMovie and Garage Band apps from the iLife suite to iOS as mobile-optimized, touch based apps. In contrast, Microsoft has only suggested that it is still in the early conceptual stages of contemplating how its flagship Office apps might run in Windows 8's Metro environment.
This "Dilger" guy needs his own "fail whale" meme.
"Dilger" made the assumption "Microsoft was still in the early stages of exploring the concept [of Metro Office]" based on this Ballmer quote he references in his article:
"The question is Metro interface for Office. How critical is it to Windows 8 adoption to have software that takes full advantage of Office with Metro?"
The only trouble is that Ballmer never said that!. It was actually part of a question directed toward Ballmer. Unfortunately Dilger's fantastic reading comprehension skills failed to pick that up.
You've got to wonder about the usefulness of anything written by a guy that can't even work out the difference between a question from an investor and the response from the CEO of the company he is suppose to be knowledgeable enough to write about.
If you look at the product itself a year after release on a decent system, it was a solid opearting system, with many new features, which modernised the ancient Windows XP, and formed the basis of Windows 7 - albeit missing some finesse, and performance improvements. So Vista wasn't really a nightmware product....like a lot people believe
The thing that drives me batty about Windows and a large part of what sent me to Mac OS is that with Windows you're always fussing. Always tweaking. Always adjusting. With Live Tiles you get, on paper, some really cool abilities. The updates you want. The rotation of pics you want. The latest messages from ALL your FB, Twitter, Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, Friendster, Match.com contacts. Your pictures. Over and over and over again. Your kids. Your friends. Your boss. Your updates. Kind of overwhelming from my perspective. I can't see past the distractions. It boggles my mind that that is going to be initial experience. It's a feature!!
It'll show well but I wonder if the novelty will wear thin soon.
You've got to wonder about the usefulness of anything written by a guy that can't even work out the difference between a question from an investor and the response from the CEO of the company he is suppose to be knowledgeable enough to write about.
LOL. The two most complained about people here: DED and Balmer. Not sure which order.
No one can predict whether Windows 8 tablet will sell very well or not. This is largely irrelevant to me, as I?m only interested in a real operating system on a tablet, not a basic stripped down toyshop of apps (which is in fact great for many people, or if that is your primary need for a tablet).
At this point I think you're relying as much (or more) on Intel to create low power x86 hardware than you are on Microsoft. From memory it's going to be 2013 before we see x86 hardware that can power a PC in the same form factor as an iPad.
Also count me in as one of those not upgrading to Windows 8. I tried it and it's definitely not for me.
If you have access to a time machine the least you could have done is bring back some lottery numbers for us!!
LOL. The two most complained about people here: DED and Balmer. Not sure which order.
Yeah... Objectivity... You pick 'em!
At this point I think you're relying as much (or more) on Intel to create low power x86 hardware than you are on Microsoft. From memory it's going to be 2013 before we see x86 hardware that can power a PC in the same form factor as an iPad.
There are already tablets available right now in the same form factor as iPad that are x86 with Windows on them (and for the last ten years in bulkier forms). I have heard Intel is bringing out a new mobile architecture every year. Oak Trail is the lastest available now, I believe the battery lasts 6-8 hours - but if you were rendering from Maya for instance I imagine less : ) . Obviously there is a trade off in battery life for the forseeable future with Windows x86 tablets, which I can live with in order to have a much more feature rich tablet. In any case art tablets like Cintiq need to be plugged into wall anyway.
I will be upgrading from Windows 7 on my desktop, and also purchasing a tablet with Windows 8 at a later date. Most customers will get Windows 8 with a new system; more than 450 million people now have Windows 7 since launch, most as OEM versions. Customers who use Windows everyday will likely find value in upgrading to Windows 8, as I do.
There are many welcome improvements across the board, including in desktop mode, startup/boot experience, resource usage, hardware support etc. This is of course is an Apple fan site, so I?m not surprised to see negative reactions to Windows, nor am I surprised to read carefully written articles that paint Microsoft plans and future in the worst light. I was once an Apple fan/user to, but personally I have seen the most innovation from Microsoft in recent years. Microsoft?s approach of sharing information, and getting customers involved in their products from an early stage is excellent, I enjoy reading how products are developed, not just reading predictable marketing rhetoric, labeling products magical, and insanely great.
So far I have found the Start Screen to be better suited for touch; however I'm starting to find I like it with mouse and keyboard (which is improving before beta). As with many others I was initially worried this new start screen would slow down launching tasks etc. But after using the developer preview some time, I have found it has made me faster at launching tasks, and searching than Win7. I also enjoy the new snapped metro apps in combination with full applications. The fact that all the customizations are saved into the cloud is great, when the Beta arrives groupings of applications, and semantic zoom will be enabled, giving a much richer start screen than Win7.
As someone who is power-user, I like the explorer ribbon, especially how it allows hotkeys for everything including floating tooltips which all activate dynamically, and a minimize mode, so you get the best of both worlds, a simplistic interface, with the equivalent of menu's, however more contextual, better layout, more visually rich, with hierarchy and grouping of tools - making explorer much more powerful than Finder in my opinion. There are other small thing some people would never notice, like you can now drag and drop into the breadcrumb hierarchy, the ribbon has many handy tools that used to be buried, now only requiring two clicks, or keyboard shortcuts. The task manager is also completely revamped, which any power user should be happy with. Other features like History Vault, give a more user friendly interface to backup/revert files (though personally I never found it that difficult in Win7), support for native VHD, USB3.0, ISO, zip, massive drives, improved hyper-v is also appealing to desktop users. Microsoft haven?t shown off the Windows Store yet or Xbox Live (something to replace games explorer), so there is still more features coming.
Personally I have been using Microsoft?s free Security Essential product for a couple of years, and had no issues with viruses etc. This will now be baked into Windows 8 as standard, this could have been done ages ago, but as everyone knows Microsoft was a target for anti-trust lawsuits (while ignoring companies like Apple).
Windows 8 is easily a much larger release in terms of features, for both desktop & touch features than any recent version of Mac OSX, so I don?t think Apple fans should dismiss it as being a piece of junk. Because I think most objective reviewers would find the current state of Windows 8 to be ambitious, fresh, full of good ideas, but buggy and incomplete (as a developer preview should be). That said I hope for some improvements before Beta, some of which have already been implemented.
No one can predict whether Windows 8 tablet will sell very well or not. This is largely irrelevant to me, as I?m only interested in a real operating system on a tablet, not a basic stripped down toyshop of apps (which is in fact great for many people, or if that is your primary need for a tablet). So far Microsoft?s strategy is the only one that works for me, and I suspect there will be many others with the same needs. I hope Apple decides to do a variation of iPad with Mac OSX, and then I would consider them as an option in the future.
?There is no way i will downgrade from OSX Lion to a cloner Microsoft bug infested, unsecure, super expensive OS. No thanks.?
Windows 7 has no bugs I have come across, with heavy usage and being a prime suspect to get a virus I have got nothing in the last 4 years (unsecure?). Yeah windows is expensive, but then my overclocked 2600K 4.6GHZ with Nvidia Geforce 580 3GB, is much faster and cheaper than any Mac, with a nice steel case to
I agree to some extent - tons of useful ideas, but the ribbons have completely ruined the user experience for me. There just isn't enough consistency as to where functionality is placed across applications. This is where Microsoft loses to Apple despite all their other great work.
LOL. The two most complained about people here: DED and Balmer. Not sure which order.
Ballmer and Dilger... like two peas in a pod
The big difference is who they are preaching to.
Ballmer is like a madman on a soapbox preaching his mad ideas to wary businessmen walking past that give him sidelong glances and try get away as quickly as possible.
"Dilger" is like a madman on a soapbox preaching his mad ideas to his own congregation of little mad followers.
Typically someone will respond to my comments, tell me that these type of gaping holes in Dilger logic "don't matter" and that in any case I shouldn't be pointing them out, and then call me a name.
Dilger's writing reminds me of this guy!
At least both have some comical value I suppose, as long as one remembers to take neither of them seriously.
I will be upgrading from Windows 7 on my desktop, and also purchasing a tablet with Windows 8 at a later date. Most customers will get Windows 8 with a new system; more than 450 million people now have Windows 7 since launch, most as OEM versions. Customers who use Windows everyday will likely find value in upgrading to Windows 8, as I do.
There are many welcome improvements across the board, including in desktop mode, startup/boot experience, resource usage, hardware support etc. This is of course is an Apple fan site, so I?m not surprised to see negative reactions to Windows, nor am I surprised to read carefully written articles that paint Microsoft plans and future in the worst light. I was once an Apple fan/user to, but personally I have seen the most innovation from Microsoft in recent years. Microsoft?s approach of sharing information, and getting customers involved in their products from an early stage is excellent, I enjoy reading how products are developed, not just reading predictable marketing rhetoric, labeling products magical, and insanely great.
So far I have found the Start Screen to be better suited for touch; however I'm starting to find I like it with mouse and keyboard (which is improving before beta). As with many others I was initially worried this new start screen would slow down launching tasks etc. But after using the developer preview some time, I have found it has made me faster at launching tasks, and searching than Win7. I also enjoy the new snapped metro apps in combination with full applications. The fact that all the customizations are saved into the cloud is great, when the Beta arrives groupings of applications, and semantic zoom will be enabled, giving a much richer start screen than Win7.
As someone who is power-user, I like the explorer ribbon, especially how it allows hotkeys for everything including floating tooltips which all activate dynamically, and a minimize mode, so you get the best of both worlds, a simplistic interface, with the equivalent of menu's, however more contextual, better layout, more visually rich, with hierarchy and grouping of tools - making explorer much more powerful than Finder in my opinion. There are other small thing some people would never notice, like you can now drag and drop into the breadcrumb hierarchy, the ribbon has many handy tools that used to be buried, now only requiring two clicks, or keyboard shortcuts. The task manager is also completely revamped, which any power user should be happy with. Other features like History Vault, give a more user friendly interface to backup/revert files (though personally I never found it that difficult in Win7), support for native VHD, USB3.0, ISO, zip, massive drives, improved hyper-v is also appealing to desktop users. Microsoft haven?t shown off the Windows Store yet or Xbox Live (something to replace games explorer), so there is still more features coming.
Personally I have been using Microsoft?s free Security Essential product for a couple of years, and had no issues with viruses etc. This will now be baked into Windows 8 as standard, this could have been done ages ago, but as everyone knows Microsoft was a target for anti-trust lawsuits (while ignoring companies like Apple).
Windows 8 is easily a much larger release in terms of features, for both desktop & touch features than any recent version of Mac OSX, so I don?t think Apple fans should dismiss it as being a piece of junk. Because I think most objective reviewers would find the current state of Windows 8 to be ambitious, fresh, full of good ideas, but buggy and incomplete (as a developer preview should be). That said I hope for some improvements before Beta, some of which have already been implemented.
No one can predict whether Windows 8 tablet will sell very well or not. This is largely irrelevant to me, as I?m only interested in a real operating system on a tablet, not a basic stripped down toyshop of apps (which is in fact great for many people, or if that is your primary need for a tablet). So far Microsoft?s strategy is the only one that works for me, and I suspect there will be many others with the same needs. I hope Apple decides to do a variation of iPad with Mac OSX, and then I would consider them as an option in the future.
?There is no way i will downgrade from OSX Lion to a cloner Microsoft bug infested, unsecure, super expensive OS. No thanks.?
Windows 7 has no bugs I have come across, with heavy usage and being a prime suspect to get a virus I have got nothing in the last 4 years (unsecure?). Yeah windows is expensive, but then my overclocked 2600K 4.6GHZ with Nvidia Geforce 580 3GB, is much faster and cheaper than any Mac, with a nice steel case to
I enjoyed reading your reply & I intend to upgrade my desktop to Windows 8 as well. As far as tablets go, I currently enjoy using an iPad 2 but I will keep an eye out on Windows 8 for the tablet and see how well does it.
I agree with most of what you have said except for one thing - that you will get the full Windows 8 experience on a tablet. From my understanding you only get the "full" experience if Windows 8 is running on an x86-based device whereas ARM-based devices will only get the Metro Experience, which means that Windows 8 on a tablet becomes a toy shop of tiles.
Right now Intel's presence on tablets is next to nil & their performance / watt ratio compared to ARM is very poor. Like another poster said before me, it won't be until 2013 that Intel may have a competitive tablet SOC with their Haswell architecture.
The only question for Windows 8, is will Microsoft create another Vista situation where people are so annoyed that they start demanding Win7 on new machines. This could happen if they don't relent about forcing the Metro start page on desktop users.
Other than that I don't see anything driving a significant number of Win8 upgrades.
On the tablet front. Not much will change, they will have a new Metro UI but there will be negligible software to run on it. You will need an x86 chip to run actual windows software on it and the actual Windows tablets with x86 will still be heavier, more expensive, with shorter battery life in 2012.
From my understanding you only get the "full" experience if Windows 8 is running on an x86-based device whereas ARM-based devices will only get the Metro Experience, which means that Windows 8 on a tablet becomes a toy shop of tiles
What is already confirmed is ARM tablets will not run legacy applications, this has been announced almost a year ago
However the initial plan, and I suspect still the official plan is to still give access to the Windows desktop, with a library of drivers and support for desktop style applications that have been compiled for ARM. These ARM tablets would still give full access to new metro apps, and the desktop would provide a more powerful file management experience, and the potential for larger native desktop apps. In the last week there has been rumors that Microsoft is removing the desktop from ARM Windows 8, in order to provide a direct competitor to iPad.
I have no interest in the ARM tablets, and am looking for a x86 tablet, so I get legacy and metro support.
The next generation Intel mobile architecture comes out just before Windows 8, so battery life should improve again.
ARM tablets are very power efficent, no doubt about that, but x86 are built for speed, so I believe for the tasks I will be doing on the tablet, x86 will supply sufficent processing power
Way to generalise about hundreds of millions of people. Some of them are cutting-edge people and some of them are not - just like with Mac OS.
Are you saying that anything which uses a grid of icons is copying Apple?! Icon-based layouts were around long before Mac OS existed and they'll be around long after it's gone.
Besides, Metro isn't really anything like Launchpad. Launchpad is static icons, where Metro is live tiles. Big difference.
Anyway, most of you are missing the point, which is that Microsoft doesn't really give two hoots if hardly any users buy individual licences of Windows 8. They will make the vast majority of their money from OEMs and enterprises, like they always do. Buyers of OEM PCs buy whatever OS they are given.
Why even be registered here. Or why even use Apple devices or software? If you love Microsoft so much then stay with them. After all Steve was the one who said that Microsoft couldn't make anything original. Maybe you need to stay with Microsoft and leave Apple people alone.
Since the Developer Preview was not feature complete and lacked metro apps of any substance, using the metro interface much made little sense. Hopefully when the app store is opened(MS event tomorrow to talk about the store) we will get a chance to use the interface as it was intended.
I'm also very interested in a tablet to test Windows 8 on. So if anyone has a HP Slate that they can't stand, I can take it off of their hands.
What is already confirmed is ARM tablets will not run legacy applications, this has been announced almost a year ago
However the initial plan, and I suspect still the official plan is to still give access to the Windows desktop, with a library of drivers and support for desktop style applications that have been compiled for ARM. These ARM tablets would still give full access to new metro apps, and the desktop would provide a more powerful file management experience, and the potential for larger native desktop apps. In the last week there has been rumors that Microsoft is removing the desktop from ARM Windows 8, in order to provide a direct competitor to iPad.
I have no interest in the ARM tablets, and am looking for a x86 tablet, so I get legacy and metro support
My only question is, with ARM so entrenched in the tablet space and racing to improve performance while maintaining low power, what are Intel's chances of being successful in the tablet arena?
Another thing you have to take into account is GPU capability. Intel is not known for their GPU prowess, as their integrated graphics performance has shown. Whereas the current PowerVR 543MP and Rogue processor plus the current ARM Mali GPU push pixels much better than Intel's GPU solutions.
There are already tablets available right now in the same form factor as iPad that are x86 with Windows on them (and for the last ten years in bulkier forms). I have heard Intel is bringing out a new mobile architecture every year. Oak Trail is the lastest available now, I believe the battery lasts 6-8 hours - but if you were rendering from Maya for instance I imagine less : )
I'm not sure the Atom processors have enough grunt to run full desktop applications. Not yet at least.
The way I see it if you want a full desktop on a tablet it's because you want to be able to run full desktop applications - either on the tablet itself or when docked to a keyboard (i.e. something like Office, Photoshop, Visual Studio, VMWare, Eclipse, Adobe CS5 etc)
Those are the kind of applications that aren't going to run well on an Atom processor.
If all you're going to do is more basic kind of stuff like check emails, use the Internet, do some basic documents, run some apps etc then a Metro/ARM tablet is going to work just as well as an x86 tablet with a full desktop.
Even if what you are doing falls on the more advanced side of "basic" (and wouldn't be well suited to an iPad style tablet) like researching for an assignment, looking for a new car to buy or collaborating with team members on a project the share/search contracts and side-by-side apps in Windows 8 will allow you to do that inside the Metro UI as well.