

Windows 8 Available in October - derpenxyne
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2012/07/09/upcoming-windows-milestones-shared-with-partners-at-wpc.aspx

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danieldk
I have been using the Windows 8 beta on my secondary machine for some weeks.
Initially, I was really a fan of metro, but in the end the context switching
that a single-task environment requires (yes, I know, you can split the
screen) is annoying when doing serious work on a desktop. Taking aside Metro,
Windows 8 is really an incremental upgrade for regular desktop use.

I do believe Metro is great for tablets. As a five-year long OS X user (and
Linux before), I'd seriously consider buying a Surface tablet if they nail
things right: I'd like to be able to use it like an iPad on the road, connect
it to a screen and Bluetooth mouse/keyboard at home/work to use it as a
traditional desktop.

We will see ;).

~~~
barkingtoad
Agreed. Also I think a big chunk of the regular desktop users out there are
going to be nothing but annoyed at the interface, and will do what they can to
avoid Metro. It's been what, 17 years of clicking on "start" (or equivalent)
and picking from a list. A lot of office workers are going to be horrified
when they realize that doesn't work now.

~~~
Mythbusters
the start button is still available but its on the left side now (or on the
keyboard where it has always been) The only difference I see as a desktop user
is a startling experience where the new "start menu" takes up my whole screen
instead of taking lower left corner. Other than that there is nothing that
really annoyed me to the extent of being horrified. What particularly you
think that is horrifying?

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freehunter
If they merely renamed "Start" to "Menu", there'd be a mass of horrified
users. Both power users and casual users hate change, as evidenced by the
amount of both groups still using Windows XP and refusing to upgrade.

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coderdude
Although I have a Windows 7 machine sitting next to me, and while I consider
Ubuntu to be my primary operating system, I still use XP for much of my work.
XP will for a very long time be the OS I most feel at home with. My comfort
zone. It reminds me of back in the day when I was clinging onto Windows 3.11
for dear life -- never wanting to upgrade to Windows 95. Memories.

~~~
dr42
Assuming you're a developer, why would you have clung to 3.1? NT was available
then and was considerably better operating system for development.

I maintain an XP partition for when the corp I work for require mandatory
training (ethics, insider trading, workplace safety etc) but there's no way
I'd ever consider using it over Ubuntu for development. I suppose if you're
coding in python then the underlying os makes little difference, the
abstraction level is so high. Personally even in python missing the unix
toolset is a primary reason to stick to unix-like operating systems. I
couldn't imagine not having sed, awk, grep, vim, wc etc. I am aware of ports
and even the Cygwin environment, but it's just a lot easier to skip the whole
thing.

Speaking as someone who started his career on hp-ux and since then included
probably every major unix distribution both proprietary and open source,
having an intimate knowledge of unix has served me well. Windows has finally
caught up and (despite still getting the path delimiter wrong) is now a robust
and usable operating system. The two worlds have merged, unix added curses,
then x, and now looks as pretty as anything else out there, meanwhile windows
added multitasking (yield didn't count) and ever wider addressing, a native
tcp/ip stack, support for larger drives and so on.

Unlike you I have no good memories of windows 3.11

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nobleach
3.1/3.11 was what was bundled with almost all store bought computers at that
point. Most people weren't out there grabbing up NT 3.51 licenses to do dev
work. There were quite a few OS/2 devs around. The hardware support for NT was
just craptastic. NT 4.0 got a whole lot better.

The thing for many people was, Visual Basic was the entry point. Or Turbo
Pascal in my case. But it was DOS based, so it didn't really matter to have a
real 32bit OS under the hood.

I'm a bit curious why you'd never consider Ubuntu for development. At the end
of the day, it's all the same if you're doing C/C++/Python/Ruby/Node/PHP. Then
again, I've been a Linux fan since Redhat 5.2. (1997ish) I had to use IRIX at
work (Graphics animation stuff for TV) and even though it was "unixy" I rarely
had to fight the typical unix battles. Same for AIX at my next job... dealing
with cell masters and all that crap was an IBM thing, not a unix thing.

~~~
dr42
_I'm a bit curious why you'd never consider Ubuntu for development._

I intended my words to mean the exact opposite of that. Unix for development
gets my vote every day.

Also, dev's don't use store bought computer operating systems, they install
the best one for the job, which back then was NT. OS/2 was good but nobody
else was running it, except Lotus Notes shops.

*edited for typos

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robert_nsu
So this means I can get my hands on Windows 8 in August. However, the more
pressing matter is when I can get my hands on a Surface tablet.

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mariusmg
Been using Win 8 as my main OS (because i'm developing a WinRT app) for about
4 months now and it's great. Eagerly awaiting the RTM build.

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mgkimsal
Been using win8 in a VM for testing and ... it's fine. I'd like to be able to
pay for it, and the 'upgrade price is $40' is a nice step, but really... I'd
just like to be able to pay $40 for it full stop. I'm not 'upgrading' from
anything, and this will mean I've got to shell out $200+ for it if I want to
use it legally.

I do have an old vista ultimate license, but I don't have it installed and
probably won't install it again because I moved VM too many times and the
process for reactivation was annoying. Maybe I'll have to suck it up again?

Given that most people just get Windows installed on a machine, and the mfg
aren't paying more than $50 per license, why can't we have lower retail
prices? $50 for a copy of Windows - I'd have no incentive to pirate. $200+...
??

Will I be able to upgrade to Win8 with a Vista license key? Does anyone know
for sure?

~~~
darrenkopp
It's $40 if you upgrade from release preview as well. So you don't have to buy
anything.

~~~
mgkimsal
Oh wow - that would be nice. That doesn't seem to be how they've run previous
trials, but if it's true, that's great news.

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bsphil
Hope that they're still keeping the Win 8 Pro upgrade deal available until the
end of Jan 2013.

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jobu
Has there been any info/rumors on the release date for Windows Phone 8?

~~~
freehunter
Microsoft has said WP8 will be released around W8, which places it this fall.
HTC has said their first W8 phones will land in October.

[http://www.slashgear.com/htcs-windows-phone-8-lineup-
detaile...](http://www.slashgear.com/htcs-windows-phone-8-lineup-
detailed-21235125/)

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at-fates-hands
I've been using Windows 8 recently and have found no discernible increase in
my work flow. It looks nice and I get comments on it, but I've found using an
app launcher like executor or launchy has all but diminished the usefulness of
Win 8. Of course this is just on my desktop, and will wait to see how the
Surface tablet pans out.

Full disclosure: I've grown to like the metro interface on my WIN7 phone.

~~~
nobleach
Yeah, I've played with the Dev Preview. It wasn't horrible. Although, I
embarrassingly admit, I had NO idea how to 'close' IE after I opened it.

I'm a huge Linux fan, and I use a Mac at home. But much of the development I
do at work is Windows only and I really don't hate "The Squares". I love the
look of the newer WPF applications. Git for Windows is a perfect example. Now
not everything should go this route. But I'm just not willing to jump on the
"MS has crapified everything" bandwagon.

I'll be interested to see the general acceptance factor in all of this.

