Windows 8-Rumors and Announcements

[jacksunny 741]

Here you can post rumors and announcements on Windows 8. Microsoft released a video showing a first look of the new OS. If you haven't already, you can view it here. If you want the Windows 8 start screen now, you can get it here.

  Edited June 4, 2011 by jacksunny  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Fascinating. Looks like they are trying to overtake phones running Android, while keeping their present base. I like the touch screen idea, but there needs to be a proper cleaner to remove all those fingerprint oils.

First question for most of us is: Can it run legacy programs? How well? How easy is it to integrate them into that fancy apps screen?

Next question: What kind of hardware does it need? That kind of graphics will eat both your GPU and at least most of one CPU.

It is very slick, but MS doesn't have release 1.0 reputation for excellence.

[sneakeypete 16]

It can run anything that run's on windows 7, (and vista i assume).

As far as the touch screen aspect goes, you need to cary around a cleaner of some sort with you to use one i've found. Particurally for me, my fingers appear to be extra greasy for some reason. Its neat technology though. My mate recently bought a beefier tablet that actually has a x86 CPU and runs windows 7. Quite a nice peice of equipment, much much more useful than the ifad or anything else of that type currently available since it can run word, excell and has a stylus for writing in them (plus the ability to use a wireless mouse/keyboard and USB when needed). Hopefully this will allow that sort of functionality mainstream tablets.

While i really dont' like the idea of that sort of start screen for my PC, which doesn't have a touch screen and never will have in the foreseeable future, I'm sure that there's heaps of under the hood improvements that'll be nice.

[jacksunny 741]

I'm not sure if I like the Windows Explorer Ribbon though. I prefer to have all my options available right there, without having to go through a bunch of menus to find what I'm looking for. I've always liked the Windows XP explorer more than the seven one.

On another note, this doesn't really involve Windows 8, but it's an interesting form of graffiti: link

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I grew up with Windows 95. All this new stuff looks nice and all but I prefer to work the old fashioned way. I have toyed around with my father's iPad and I own an iPhone but I just prefer a regular windows PC. I only bought Windows 7 in order to fix all the problems my GT5628 had (it came with Windows vista). By the way, do any of you know where I can legally acquire the formerly Windows Vista Ultimate Extra game, Texas Hold 'Em? I copied it to my flash drive from my laptop but I cannot get it to run on my upgraded computers.

[nathanthemayor 1,263]

My dad is not going to get windows 8 for my computer when it comes out, because we will have to upgrade our computers, and he doesn't want to do that.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

My dad is not going to get windows 8 for my computer when it comes out, because we will have to upgrade our computers, and he doesn't want to do that.

You will have to upgrade? Are you running W7? If so, why upgrade?

[Larks2242 251]

My dad is not going to get windows 8 for my computer when it comes out, because we will have to upgrade our computers, and he doesn't want to do that.

You will have to upgrade? Are you running W7? If so, why upgrade?

Cause W8 is new and W7 will be old and in the past?

W7 will end up in the same landfill as XP, Vista, 98 and a half eatten box of pizza in 2 years.

[Alejandro24 575]

That looks more like a media center than a Operating System.

Windows, what to say about it. The first Windows that I used was Win95, then Win98, Win2000, WinME, WinXP, WinVista and Win7 in that order. And I think, the best of OS of Microsoft is Windows XP. Windows 95 isn't bad, but don't works properlly in the actual computers. Windows 7 is nice, but only in the visual, inside it is still Windows Vista. I use WinXP in the desktop computer -besides Linux Mint, the principal OS-, and Windows 7 in my netbook -besides Linux Mint, again-.

I'm runing these two MS Win systems, so I will not update my systems to that Win8 that looks like a media center, also I don't support the desktop computers with touchscreen.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Windows 7 is the completed Longhorn. Windows Vista was a beta Longhorn. Windows 7 is based off the 6.0 version (Vista) so 7 is not a good name. It could be 6.5 (or Longhorn Complete) or 17 (Windows 7 is the 17th PC OS).

The operating systems I used at home were Windows 95, 98, XP, Vista, and 7. My favorites are 95, XP, and 7. I had access to 98, 2000, XP, and 7 at my schools and colleges. Some places had Apple Macintosh computers and iMacs (running snow leopard or OSX). I knew people who owned WindowsME and I was frustrated at how bad it was compared to 98 just from trying to do basic stuff while borrowing/sharing it.

Windows 8 looks like a type of Media Center and lets not forget that Media Center Vista was a resource hog, as demonstrated in this picture:

"Assets" represent required memory to run. Contrast to the official 7-tan (which has proportions more realistic to resource usage),

EDIT: The second picture is larger than I thought it was and I have no clue how to resize it with this newest forum system.

  Edited June 6, 2011 by Ilikeseattle  

[Timmystwin 201]

I actually thought XP was the best operating system...never had any problems with it ever, and it was familiar. The slight change to win7 annoyed me. Also, whats the fascination with touchscreens? Im happy with a mouse and keyboard...

And yes. Media centre noms resources. I accedentally clicked on it with Fallout 3 running. Big mistake.

  Edited June 6, 2011 by Timmystwin  

[Easy Bakes 253]

My dad is not going to get windows 8 for my computer when it comes out, because we will have to upgrade our computers, and he doesn't want to do that.

You will have to upgrade? Are you running W7? If so, why upgrade?

Cause W8 is new and W7 will be old and in the past?

W7 will end up in the same landfill as XP, Vista, 98 and a half eatten box of pizza in 2 years.

I still use XP.

not haveing any problems at all.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Let's see if I can get the history right:

DOS 5 -> Windows (written in, of alll things, PASCAL)

|

V

Oops, switch to C

DOS 6 -> Windows 3.1 (written in C, thank heavens we can do some good stuff now)

|

V

Windows AT (Almost There)

|

V

Windows 95 [simcity 3000, Simcity 4]

|

V

Windows 98 [simcity 4

RH

] -> (side trips to various unsuccessful Windows (ME) on FAT)

|

V

Windows NT (But for servers only)

|

V

Windows 2000 (NT 4.0)

|

V

Windows XP (NT 4.1)

|

Some fooling around with server versions

|

V

Windows Vista (NT 6.0) A beta that should never have seen public release

|

V

Windows 7 (NT 6.1) Not bad, but sitll has a bad case of bloat, and getting worse

}

V

Windows 8 (NT 7.0??) looking like an Apple iPad, and needing yet more expensive hardware. The bloat continues?

While all this was going on, Steve Jobs and Co. took the UNIX RFCs and hacked together the Apple MacIntosh. An O/S with a GUI that has really set the standard, while Microsoft continues to flounder around. So they grab 15% of the market and get rich. Meanwhile ---

Linus Torvalds who was a student at the time, looks at UNIX, decides it is too bloated, and writes his own version from scratch, and publishes it with full copy permissions with the exception that he reserves the right to review new stuff and what will be incorporated under the Linux umbrella. It is command line only. Several implementors leap on this, along with some standards bodies, including the POSIX people who are specifying requirements for a standard interface, and pop-out the X foundation and Xorg to produce an GUI interface. The Linux+our GUI bunch grab another 15% of the market.

Meanwhile, the people at MIT Computer Laboratory who once had a thing called Project MAC that resulted in one successful DOD-certified implementation of their public utility O/S called Multics are probably looking on and feeling avuncular. The original consortium of MIT, GE, Bell Laboratories and DEC were working to make this happen, but only GE produced the necessary hardware. Bell got P.O.'d in there somewhere and pulled out. The Bell Labs skunk works couldn't stand not having their desk side computer service, so they invented UNIX, which, after a long and not so venerable history has now wound up in the hands of Novell. There are two main flavors of UNIX. System V, the official version, and BSD from the University of California, Berkley.

So that's the way things stand, I think.

When I got into this business, I was first involved with the National Cash Register Company as a customer for their 310 and 315 computer systems. At that time, most commercial operating systems consisted of a between job monitor and a magnetics driver stub. The stub stayed in memory while a job ran and provided I/O services for the magnetics only. You wanted anything else like a card reader or a printer, you wrote your own driver.

Imagine my delight when I changed jobs in 1966 to work for GE and discovered that their between job monitors contained drivers for all the peripherals. This was definitely a step up. Since they were participants in Project MAC, they were also benefiting. They had an on-line Time Sharing System (teletypes only), and that may sound primitive, but they also had an on-line banking system that they had produced for Bank of America, and knew where the ball was going to bounce. Besides the lower level machines, they also had the GE600 line which had an operating system which not only multi-tasked but multiprogrammed. It could run up to 64 jobs at once, and one of them could be the Time Sharing System, that could handle hundreds of terminals! This system could have four CPUs, four I/O controllers, and four memory controllers. One version of it took up three floors in one customer's headquarters building. It was a nice system, but compared to today's hardware, it was a Brontosaurus. Now we have herds of Velociraptors.

Then Snow White woke up and produced the first publicly available Personal Computer in 1980, and spoiled the barrel of apples altogether by redirecting the computer marketing game into the PC and Super Computer paths. The seven dwarves were dealt a fatal blow by this, but took a while to realize it. From the Snow White (IBM) and the seven dwarves (GE, NCR, RCA, Honeywell, CDC, Ferranti-Packard, DEC), the number of computer marketing outfits has shrunk quite a bit. A lot of the big boys picked up their bats and left, and a raft full of new PC cloners appeared. I think the winner in all this was Hewlett-Packard who parlayed their Medical Instrument business into a healthy cloned PC business.

[Easy Bakes 253]

And HP rules the office printer world.

some of the ealry 90s high volume printers they produced are still running fine today.

[Barbarossa 51]

.

  Edited September 8, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[Easy Bakes 253]

I do remember using dos 2.1 on my PCjr a long time ago swapping out those big floppy's to save data ever 30 minuets.

I went from 95 to 2000 to XP. not switching untill new hardware required the change.

all were very stable for a long time.

seems you have to avoid at all costs every other version of windows.

I was just looking at a popular science article from 1984 about the IBM PCjr

what was wierd was every picture showed a person using the machine

but there were no cables hooking anything up!

  Edited June 6, 2011 by Easy Bakes  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Not quite sure where this conversation is and where it is going. Seems to be more about what we know, as opposed to what be coming down the pipe.

I have used 3.1 (home), 95(home & work), 98SE (home), ME (home), NT (work), XP(home & work), Vista (home), and 7(work). The best have been 95, NT, XP, and 7. Ms only seems to be reliable every 6-7 years - all other released OSs should be ignored.

Barbarossa

I just wanted to get the background available for everyone. And those are just the highlights. There were many "little" versions of Windows that I chose to just skip over as side issues.

I wonder if they are finally going to scrap NTFS? That pile of junk has caused more grief to unaware users than a major virus. It is time for them to adopt a proper file system on the order of the UNIX fuse system. It doesn't checkerboard, and cleans itself up on the fly. The one disadvantage is that it doesn't use write-through unless you force it, but there is a command to flush all your buffers if you want. I suppose there is an option to force write-through so that any write goes immediately to disk instead of being delayed until convenient.

Fancy GUIs notwithstanding, what you want from an operating system is safety. It you want something saved, it damned well better be on the disk if you have a power fail. Without a lot of response time penalty, I don't know of anyone who does this well. The best thing that could be built into hardware would be a short term battery backup so that the O/S could get a signal that the system is going down in, say, five seconds. That's plenty of time to get things out to the disks and to get an orderly shutdown done. You could handle a power bump by delaying the signal for a couple of seconds. Wouldn't have to be much of a battery to accomplish this and save the price of a separate power holdup system.

If I have to use a Microsoft-based machine, give me DOS 6.0 or Windows XP right now. Never really had any problems with either. Windows 7 I have never run, and now probably never will. Windows 8, when it comes out, had damned well better be fully tested no matter what promises the marketing guys are making. I hate software that is forced out the door by advertising mavens who never even had to use it. It is a lesson that EA has yet to learn.

[jacksunny 741]

Not quite sure where this conversation is and where it is going. Seems to be more about what we know, as opposed to what be coming down the pipe.

Nothing has been announced recently. That's why.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Windows XP is one of my favorite operating systems. It was similar to 95 and 98 (the operating systems I used most before XP was released) and I loved the programs that ran on it. Windows Vista is to Windows XP as WindowsME is to Windows 2000. Windows 7 64 bit works wonders compared to anything else and it can do anything in 2-3 ways. My only complaint is that the start menu now links to "Documents" which includes all files in My Documents, public Documents, etc. If you have a lot of folders in My Documents and you think that the library called Documents is My Documents, then you can seriously mess up many programs.

[Alejandro24 575]

Nice OS history, A Noony Moose. I still like WinXP, is just the best actual OS of Microsoft. I'm a Linux user, so Linux Mint is the best OS for me.

What I want in Win8? Simple, an OS more better than the others, without too much requeriments and only a few versions of it -Home, Premium, Ultimate, why we need the others, specially the starter?-; a productive and versatile one, no a media center like the video.

@Ilikeseattle: nice photos, but I think this is more realistic:

Curiously, I'm Unix

[hym 358]

Nice OS history, A Noony Moose. I still like WinXP, is just the best actual OS of Microsoft. I'm a Linux user, so Linux Mint is the best OS for me.

If you want the best OS Microsoft has ever written, you probably have to give the honor to the OS written for the original Xbox. Ran on 2MB of RAM, was stable, and handled video games with hardware demands well beyond the 733Mhz CPU and 64MB of RAM that the original Xbox came equipped with.

What I want in Win8? Simple, an OS more better than the others...

What do you define as "better"? To some, an OS that looks and functions like Apple's OS'es would be the best way to go, while I would absolutely rail against such a move. (BTW, for those who think that Apple has set the standard of what makes good UI design, it is the opinion of many computer reviewers that the Windows 7 taskbar was an embarrassment to Apple as Microsoft took Apple's concept and outdid them at it.)

...without too much requeriments...

With more features comes more hardware requirements. The other question is how much do you want to pay for this OS? MS can rewrite the Windows code to be less bloated, but it's going to cost significant money that will get passed on to you.

...and only a few versions of it...

What is wrong with there being multiple versions of the same OS? We offer multiple versions of quite a few other computer products to make it possible for people to get what they need without paying more for the features they will never use. Why not provide operating systems with feature sets broken down so people don't have to pay for features they won't ever use? For example, Windows 7 Ultimate costs more money than Windows 7 Professional, and the only two main features it provides over Professional is BitLocker (which I don't use) and support for 34 languages I can't even read. Why should I be forced to pay for those features?

[Alejandro24 575]

If you want the best OS Microsoft has ever written, you probably have to give the honor to the OS written for the original Xbox. Ran on 2MB of RAM, was stable, and handled video games with hardware demands well beyond the 733Mhz CPU and 64MB of RAM that the original Xbox came equipped with.

It is comfortable to read that, but It is a game center, not a computer. I preffer a computer instead a Xbox, Wii or PSP.

What do you define as "better"? To some, an OS that looks and functions like Apple's OS'es would be the best way to go, while I would absolutely rail against such a move. (BTW, for those who think that Apple has set the standard of what makes good UI design, it is the opinion of many computer reviewers that the Windows 7 taskbar was an embarrassment to Apple as Microsoft took Apple's concept and outdid them at it.)

"Better" is a seriously OS -like Win95 and WinXP-, not a play of being an OS -like WinVista or WinME-. What does it mean? An OS coming from a company that don't think that the people are comercial objects, they are people with a need and they are disposed to pay for it. One of the principal failures of many commercial products are that reason: they think that the people are commercial objects, nothing more, so they do products only to win money... or try to fit the users to their products.

With more features comes more hardware requirements. The other question is how much do you want to pay for this OS? MS can rewrite the Windows code to be less bloated, but it's going to cost significant money that will get passed on to you.

Not necessary more features equals more hardware requirements, take a look at the Unix systems, many desktops -Gnome, KDE, Xcfe- and the system requeriments don't change too much between versions, despiste the features of the system increase constantly.

What is wrong with there being multiple versions of the same OS? We offer multiple versions of quite a few other computer products to make it possible for people to get what they need without paying more for the features they will never use. Why not provide operating systems with feature sets broken down so people don't have to pay for features they won't ever use? For example, Windows 7 Ultimate costs more money than Windows 7 Professional, and the only two main features it provides over Professional is BitLocker (which I don't use) and support for 34 languages I can't even read. Why should I be forced to pay for those features?

I'm not against the multiple versions, but lets to see the versions of Win7:

• Starter
  
• Home Basic
  
• Home Premium
  
• Professional
  
• Enterprise
  
• Ultimate
  
• N Edition
  

Starter could be usefull, but ironicaly consume more resources than the Ultimate edition. Home Basic and Home Premium can be merged in one edition, Professional and Enterprise too and the Ultimate is for advanced users. N Edition is something superfluous, the same as Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate but without Windows Media Player, thats a joke.

Is not more profitable 3 versions only: Home, Professional and Ultimate? Why there must be too many versiosn without too much differences between them instead to have less versions but with deep differences?

[Easy Bakes 253]

Wait what? Windows Media Player is not included with W7 Ultimate?

I thought WMP was a free download for any version of windows?

[Alejandro24 575]

Wait what? Windows Media Player is not included with W7 Ultimate?

I thought WMP was a free download for any version of windows?

Yes, WMP is a free download for any version of Windows. Win7 Ultimate has WMP, but the N Edition -the same as Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate but without WMP- don't have It.

[Easy Bakes 253]

So the media player is built in?

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Windows 7 seems to be the best OS for desktops (and laptops) without touch capability.

Windows 8 looks like it would be best suited to touch screen devices like tablets and touch tables.

By the way, I chose the pictures that are the least offensive and most appropriate for children.

  Edited June 7, 2011 by Ilikeseattle  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

There is altogether too much built in to Windows. The whole works would be smaller and faster if you could customize it at install time, then call the other stuff you wanted off the install (applications?) disk at need. You could then have as many "canned" versions as you want simply by including an appropriate applications installation script that ran at the end of the install.

Of course this means no more incestuous special deals for applications like Office and Internet Explorer as they would be totally optional. I strongly believe the job of the operating system is to optimally run the hardware. It is the job of the applications programmer to make an efficiently running application without depending on fix ups in the operating system to save you from yourself. If they did this, maybe they could get free of that goat, NTFS, and get themselves a file system that wouldn't bog down without letting the user know what has happened.

Only geeks like me truly understand what a multi-extent set of files can do to your disk accesses. When I was teaching operating systems, Windows NT included, I made sure that all my students were aware of how much moolah they could make decongesting PCs that were operated under normal abuse by most users. One of my health professionals asked me the other day what I would charge for this, and I said lunch would do. If I was working in this game, I think I'd charge something like $50 per hour to sit and watch while disk cleanup and defragger ran. This is equivalent to watching paint dry. Unethical, but lots of people do it.

[hym 358]

It is comfortable to read that, but It is a game center, not a computer. I preffer a computer instead a Xbox, Wii or PSP.

From a user standpoint, the Xbox was just a game console. From a developer standpoint, the Xbox was a full fledged computer. Let's not forget that Microsoft developed the Xbox using hardware that Intel and Nvidia developed for the PC market with the intention that Windows would be the OS it was supporting. In other words, in OS world, the Xbox OS is just as much a "real" OS as Windows or Linux.

"Better" is a seriously OS -like Win95 and WinXP-, not a play of being an OS -like WinVista or WinME-. What does it mean? An OS coming from a company that don't think that the people are comercial objects, they are people with a need and they are disposed to pay for it. One of the principal failures of many commercial products are that reason: they think that the people are commercial objects, nothing more, so they do products only to win money... or try to fit the users to their products.

It's interesting that Windows 95 and XP keep getting mentioned as the best OSes Microsoft has ever written. Windows 98 was significantly more stable than 95 was, and there are reliability studies to back that up. And good old XP is the most security flaw riddled OS Microsoft has ever written.

Let's also not forget that when XP was first released, it suffered from significant hardware support problems of its own. Everything from optical drives to hard drives to graphics cards didn't work with the new OS. Sounds kind of like Vista, doesn't it?

I'm not against the multiple versions, but lets to see the versions of Win7:

• Starter
  
• Home Basic
  
• Home Premium
  
• Professional
  
• Enterprise
  
• Ultimate
  
• N Edition
  

Starter could be usefull, but ironicaly consume more resources than the Ultimate edition. Home Basic and Home Premium can be merged in one edition, Professional and Enterprise too and the Ultimate is for advanced users. N Edition is something superfluous, the same as Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate but without Windows Media Player, thats a joke.

Is not more profitable 3 versions only: Home, Professional and Ultimate? Why there must be too many versiosn without too much differences between them instead to have less versions but with deep differences?

Let's consider the various versions of Windows 7 one-by-one:

• Starter: Was originally intended to help combat OS piracy and provide a cheap OS for developing countries to use that would be reasonably compatible with the rest of the modern world.
  
• Home Basic: Intended for people who want Windows 7 but don't want to pay for the Aero features or didn't want to upgrade their computer to handle it.
  
• Home Premium: Meant for your typical home user.
  
• Professional: Intended for professional environments such as small businesses. Offers features that businesses want, but cutting out "fluff" features that businesses don't care about but couldn't be excluded from home versions.
  
• Enterprise: Intended for large corporate environments. The nature of licensing and IT management for these companies is different enough that Professional is too simplistic for them, and if Microsoft tried to move all the small businesses to Enterprise, most of them would become mired in the complexity of managing it.
  
• Ultimate: For home users who want all the powers of Enterprise.
  
• N Edition: Blame the EU for this one as it was created as a direct response to the EU's antitrust ruling against Microsoft. Microsoft never wanted to create this edition, but the EU made them do it.
  

[jacksunny 741]

Microsoft is reportedly considering their own branded Windows 8 tablet. The tablet would attack the iPad market share. source

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Microsoft is nothing if not a glutton for punishment. I suppose they have to keep that horde in Redmond fed. If they would quit chasing after fads and other people's markets, they might have some time to consider producing a decent operating system that was capable of properly maintaining itself without intervention by the user. A new file system would probably save their bacon, but a little dose of careful thought about what should really be in the operating system kernel might fix a lot of their troubles.

With the kind of ring structure you can set up now, it wouldn't be hard to reduce the kernel to only running the processors and fielding interrupts and faults in ring-0, which should be bullet proof. The rest could be in rings 1 to 3 with ring 1 having the driver privileges for proven drivers only, ring 2 for add-on drivers from outside software houses, and ring 3 as the user ring. This kind of ring structure would give them Multics-like security, and a slight addition of ACLs, could produce a secure system (should be optional) that would get DOD approval. A slight addition to the hardware of an associative memory would make this security work at hardware speeds. This is nothing new. It has been around since 1965 at least.

Good hardware these days allows full VM segmentation, so a change of text format for executables would be a good idea. Having to construct page and segment tables from scratch on loads could go away if the text format was proper. Of course they'd still have to be able to load older texts, but they should also warn that this would be phased out in, say three releases of the new environment. This would eventually either put paid to all old windows/DOS .exe's or force all the developers, including EA, to recompile into the new format. Three releases would probably take ten years, so that's enough lead time.

Depending on how one felt about it, the file system could reside in ring 2 or ring 3. Since it is a critical application, I'd consider rings 2 and 3, where only the critical sections were in ring 2. (yes, you can split programs across rings if ou have that privilege). The fs-cleanup daemon could easily live in ring 3. One of Microsoft's problems is too many privileged programs.

The ultra-cumbersome and overused Registry needs to be replaced or become history. Ordinary programs should not be allowed to use it for a scratch pad as they are not often well behaved enough to clean up after themselves. If you are confined to ring 3, you can read the Registry but not write on it. And you can't get into any lower ring if you are just an application. This includes any browsers, word processors, or anything that doesn't have to do with operating the hardware. Maybe the whole file system should be in ring 3. It is only an application and this would make it easy to change to a different file system.