For anyone wanting to try Windows 8, here you go. With or without developer tools

Windows 8 Preview Available for Download Tonight

 

-looks at his Windows 7 pc-

I. JUST. Friggin'. Bought. This.

 

I should be getting the beta in about a month or two. I'll wait.

 

Tempting....so tempting. But I just did a reinstallation of 7... (new hardware) Grr...

 

Trust me, you're well off with your new pc and you don't want Windows 8.

 

I'll be keeping a keen eye on this one, I really want to test out the new Windows, see what its like  

 

^ This. WTF is with MS lately? They keep putting out new Operating Systems every year now. I know 7 is what Vista was supposed to be, but wtf is with windows 8 all of a sudden?





Also for the record, Vista sucks. My mom has it on her PC and it's slow as balls. Maybe I'll Windows 8 on her PC.

 

Windows 95 - 1995
Windows 98 - 1998
Windows 98 Second Edition - 1999
Windows 2000 - 2000
Windows Me - 2000
Windows XP - 2001
Windows Vista - early 2007
Windows 7 - 2009
Windows 8 - 2012

I'm not seeing how Windows releases are annual occurrences - if anything they've really slowed down since the busy 1995-2000 period.

 

This is exactly me.


Also I have realized that I think I am just sick and tired of Microsoft software by now. Want a new operating system? 200 bucks. Want to save money and do an update? Better have that disc and CD key from 5 years ago. Want a better version of a software you already have? Better pony up a hilarious amount of money.

 

Back when I had a Sony Vaio Computer, I enjoyed XP. But as soon as we upgraded it to Vista, the computer started to suck. Vista ate a lot of memory and slowed down the computer tremendously.

 

Vista was the new ME. Well, not that bad, it actually worked, but when it was initially released, it had a few bugs and glitches, but it's major flaw was it's memory leak problems and it was initially VERY resource hungry. A couple service packs later and it's a decent OS, however Win 7 is superior by far.

As for Win 8, I'm not liking what I'm seeing. I mean, I'm sure it performs fine, but aesthetically speaking it doesn't appeal to me. I'm sure this interface is perfect for tablets and phones, but for a computer? it's too far of a departure from what I'm used to to use it.

 

Ironcially, at a time when they way people interact with computers and information has been changing quicker then at almost any other time in the past.

The desktop doesen't look like much of a departure to me beyond the new Start and i'll be amazed if there isn't an option for a conventional menu by the time it goes final.

 

Well, 95 to ME are pretty much the same OS. Precious little software _required_ ME. 2000 is a parallel business line product, yet 1996's NT4 is excluded from your list. Then XP is a little different. Vista is really different. 7 is really different. 8 is really different (from iOS-like screenshots I've seen).

And support, if anybody has noticed, has been steadily dropping backward compatibility. There was a time that you could take for granted that software/hardware would work in later versions of Windows. I had exactly one device that I bought for 3.1 but couldn't get working in 2000/NT (never tried it in XP+). With 7, I really got a taste of what Apple users put up with every 3-4 years. Nags me about SQL Server 2000 (Enterprise Manager snap-in also crashes), dropped support for ASPI (scanner interface), etc.

Now with 8 being 64-bit only, we'll have to dump everything with 16-bit code and forget DOS anything. Not a big deal to people who just throw away and re-buy every 3 years but not everyone can, or wants to, do that.

 

OK, I don't get this. People are doing alot of the same stuff today that they did 15 years ago. Desktop publishing, adjusting accounts, shopping, reading news, chatting. All that's really changing is either trivial (let's rearrange the desktop just because) or backend (let's drop this working standard and start all over just because). In my opinion, computer usability is getting worse instead of better. They're becoming like an appliance, a black box with a handful of approved uses, and God help you if you fall out of lockstep.

 

That a 2 way road though, too. By NOT including all of the legacy hooks and comparability with the Windows 9x versions, it 1) streamlines the OS A LOT, and 2) also closes A LOT of vulnerabilities.

..Who said Win8 is x64 only? It's most definitely not... I have a 32 bit Dev Copy right now... And you're not losing any more DOS support than you lost with Vista, AFAIK. Realistically, there's no marketable reason to support DOS except for niche and specialty markets. It's a loss-proposition to include in a mass-release OS.

 

There's a LOT more interoperability just in the last 5 years of PC development... changes are to support social networking that wasn't even DREAMT of 15 years go... wi-fi standards... security... online banking... syncing with vehicles and cellular devices... I'm starting to wonder if you actually very little understanding of technology and PC use, or are just trolling... :scratches head:

 

Keep in mind that Vista was delayed several years while they attempted to (among other things) create a new file system, gave up, and nearly started again from scratch. MSFT's roadmap has always aimed for new OS releases every 2-3 years. Part of the problems with people adopting to Vista/7 are that they had to stick with XP for longer than they were supposed to.

Don't know about you, but shopping, chatting, music, video, etc . were either difficult or impossible to do anything useful with until the Win98 era. Sure, there's a lot of tasks that are still the same thing they were 30 years ago, but the way we store and process data is almost entirely different in this decade. There are far more things people are doing with computers that they didn't do even 10 years ago, much less 15 or 20 years ago. Consider that the flat folder exploring interface built into Win 3.1 and Win95 still works great for a lot of files, but isn't particularly useful for metadata that you find in pictures, music, and video files. If you still want to use the 3.1-style methods then can certainly do so, but it's more time consuming and inefficient than some of the newer options made possible by backend changes. I'll take indexed searching, sorting by metadata, integrated previews, etc. and all the other neato things that come have come about in the last 10 years.

Er, maybe if you're an Apple user   Developers have far more options and more freedom for applications now than they ever did. Windows 8's architecture actually makes it a lot easier for applications to share data and operations, which gives applications a lot more flexibility and efficiency. I don't care if I can't customize every single setting in an application - if the interface sucks then I uninstall it and pick another app from the thousands available

 

Everything I read up until just now said Microsoft was dropping 32-bit support.

 

Hmm, I never saw those reports. well, rest assured, it does, in fact, have a 32 bit architecture, as well as x64, and ARM.

 

No thanks, I'll keep my Windows 7.