Windows 8

[mr friendly guy]

Windows 8 is rumoured to come out sometime this year. I am interested to think what people think about it, based on what has been advertised, leaked online etc.

My dad keeps on telling me to wait for windows 8 before I get a new desktop (which is already slowing down, and almost 4 years old). For now I have decided to hold off until Windows 8 comes out.

So what do other more computer savvy people think? Is windows 8 going to be that much better than windows 7 from whats been leaked? Is it worth waiting a few months for it?

[Mr Bean]

Windows 8 better know as Windows 7 the Tablet edition holds zero features a typical windows user would need over Windows 7. In time the integration between mobile, tablets and the next Xbox is going to be awesome. Now itms nice but not required for anything. Upgrading from dos to 95the made sense. Upgrading from 95 to 98the made sense. 98 to 2000 made sense for only some but 98 to XP made great sense. We all remeber how poorly XP to Vista went and how smooth XP to Win 7 went. My thinking is Win 8 is another 2000 or another Vista.

[White Haven]

More a 2000 than a Vista. Everything I've seen on it so far more or less indicates that for non-touchscreen desktop users it's more or less a nice little third wheel that won't trip you up (Vista) but won't be terribly useful either.

[mr friendly guy]

What about things like boot time? I have been told its faster than Windows 7. Of course if you get a Lenovo desktop, they have a feature which speeds up the boot time for Windows 7 anyway.

[TronPaul]

From what I can tell there are few to no features that normal non tablet or touchscreen users will want. The Metro UI does not appear to be optimized for a mouse and keyboard setup, but might work nicely with a touchscreen. I'm worried about what other changes might be made to normal UI's (control panel, explorer, etc) and how easy it will be to disable Metro.

The ribbon will become standard in Windows 8. I haven't enjoyed it in the newer versions of Office, hopefully I can disable it.

Multiple backgrounds on different monitors is ok, but unneeded. I would have loved to see multiple desktops that I can switch between like with kde or gnome.

The one interesting feature I'm seeing is the Windows To Go which lets you put windows on a flashdrive. How long have I been able to boot live Linux flashdrives and CDs? Over 10 years? Welcome to the party Windows.

Supposedly repairing Windows installations with Restore or Reset will be easier than a full reinstall. We'll see if I still need to download iso's of Windows 8 to repair PCs where the manufacturer didn't provide them.

Hopefully this comes out this year or next. I'm on MSDN through school so a free copy would be nice.

[Stark]

If people are complaining how minor a technical advance it is, surely that means there's less chance of it being horribly broken. :v If there's no solid date it's a difficult thing to wait for, even if you're not allergic to new things; to me it's very unlikely 7/8 will end up losing you support or whatever.

[Stofsk]

Personally I wouldn't pay it much mind tbh - when I build my new computer I'll be using win7 because I haven't seen any reason thus far to wait for win8.

[Vendetta]

We've got a developer preview copy at work on a touchscreen, and the metro interface works well with it, but trying to use the ordinary desktop with it is teeeerrrrible.

[mr friendly guy]

Well the metro interface apparently can be disabled. So what is like underneath? If not much, the only advantage is a faster boot time. However with a Lenovo system they have a feature to allow faster boot times with Windows 7 anyway. In which case it might not be worth waiting so much for windows 8, but waiting for computer discount sales.

The other advantage I hear is that you don't need to install a driver for USB 3.0 devices. I have recently upgraded my portable hard drive to a USB 3.0 with 3 TB, but it should be able to install a driver into USB 3.0 compatible devices, which my current desktop lacks.

[Laird]

I have been programing apps in the developers version for a few months now, it is Windows 7 with a new UI. Boot times with my SSD enabled laptop is about 9 seconds depending on how fast I type my login.

[Xon]

From what I can tell there are few to no features that normal non tablet or touchscreen users will want.

I'm actually looking forward to a number of significant low-level changes that Win8 will have, which only shine on the desktop and server.

Server & client;

• Built in usb3 support.
• Storage Spaces are WHS driver expander but fixed and for the masses, with a rather reasonable feature set for a version 1.0 product.
• VHD/ISO mount properly handled natively by the OS.
• NTFS improvements means chkdsk is dramatically faster, and will not offline a dozen terrabyte partition for hours to check. It's down to seconds.
• Trim much more baked in, and it actually permits Trim commands emitted by a VM guest to propagate to the storage layer. Same applies to a mounted VHD file.
• New copy/move manager with the ability to queue operations
• Reworked Task Manager with per-process historical statistics (network, disk, cpu memory).
• SMB2.2 supports resumable file copies, with built in multi-channel support. For example, if you have a laptop on wireless with a file copy already occcuring and plug into a wired network with access to the same server, Windows will automaticall start using the wired connection and the wireless in the file copy. If you want to improve lan bandwidth, just connect more ethernet cables and Windows will automatically use them with no additional configuration.

Server only features i'm really looking forward to;

• Native on-disk dedupe, and native in-memory page dedupe, and native over SMB2.1 dedupe.
• Hyper-V v3 has massive improvement.
• ReFS an entirely new checksumming filesystem. To be production ready at launch, designed to integrate and leverage Storage spaces to automatically repair itself (has limits).

[TronPaul]

I had not seen those features, though I didn't look hard for definitive feature lists, just did a few google searches.

NTFS changes would be very nice, one of the things that frustrate me is disk performance on Windows and the lack of LVM's.

I'm still apprehensive of SecureBoot and what that will mean for OEMs and Linux. I tend to get old hardware from people wanting to get rid of it and I throw Linux on it for small servers or extra computers.

I still will be doing the majority of development and messing around with servers on Linux, though these features should make my gaming and everyday Windows experience more enjoyable.

[RogueIce]

So, my question: how 'worth it' will it be to your "average" PC user, ie: the sort of person who doesn't have a fucking clue what any of the stuff in Xon's post means.

But in all seriousness, is there anything that the "average user" would benefit from upgrading to it? Or to put another way: would it be worth it to buy the box or whatever and upgrade over Windows 7, or not enough that you can easily wait until you buy a new computer and have it pre-installed, assuming the Win7 computer next to it doesn't A) meet your needs and B) is cheaper?

[Stofsk]

Just get win7 now if you want to upgrade. Win8 is still some time away, and when it comes out you can get a better picture then whether or not to upgrade to win8.

[Vendetta]

So, my question: how 'worth it' will it be to your "average" PC user, ie: the sort of person who doesn't have a fucking clue what any of the stuff in Xon's post means.

The "average user" will get it anyway because they buy OEM machines with the OS preinstalled.

[aieeegrunt]

Is there anything to the rumors that it will allow a PC to play xbox games?

[Stark]

Is there anything to the rumors that it will allow a PC to play xbox games?

Source?

[TronPaul]

A google search later...
Engadget from Windows 8 Italia

From Windows 8 Kernel

It's no secret that Microsoft is planning on integrating Xbox LIVE into Windows 8, but rumors are now swirling that Xbox 360 games might actually be playable on the next version of Redmond's OS. References to "XBOX_360_SYSTEM_CRASH" have been found in the kernel code -- an odd bit of text to show up in software that's not designed to run on the 360's PowerPC CPU. There are, of course, other, more mundane possibilities -- like the ability to remotely control your console to trigger update and game downloads, or to receive notifications from the machine on your desktop. But, if Microsoft is bringing Xbox titles to the PC, it would only serve to solidify Windows as the platform of choice gamers. Guess we'll just have to wait bated breath to see what Ballmer has to tell us in January.

There is no firm word of the accuracy of the rumor. It could just be garbage code.
EDIT: This is an old article, but on refining my search can still find recent rumor articles in places. It seems questions have been unanswered.

[mr friendly guy]

Just get win7 now if you want to upgrade. Win8 is still some time away, and when it comes out you can get a better picture then whether or not to upgrade to win8.

Well they are supposed to let users trial a beta version in February, so maybe we will get feedback on what its like. However the guys who have advanced copies already said its just windows 7 but for tablets, which isn't so useful when I am buying a desktop.

[Xon]

There really isn't much in the way of low hanging fruit to be added to the OS to make the new version dramatically better.

So, my question: how 'worth it' will it be to your "average" PC user, ie: the sort of person who doesn't have a fucking clue what any of the stuff in Xon's post means.

The built in reformat system & reset OS is also very useful for a software refresh asuming the users docs are stored in the cloud and all the settings automatically sync down. And Microsoft allows your MSN account to be a valid login to Windows and probably automatically links to Microsoft's Skydrive if it's enabled.

The "average" person just need something which has a working web browser. And IE10 is looking to be very good at the 'internet standards' thing. Largely because the HTML5* crap ignored most of the worst w3c practices and did what was much more sensible and the w3c was forced to conceed that xhtml2.0 and the like where never ever going anywhere. That HTML 4 & css 2.x stuff has finally stopped moving like a slithering snake also helps.

*In many ways HTML5 is really just reimplementing common OS features but with the expectation that the people providing the content are assholes & dicks, and thus ensuring they can be safely used. 10-20 years down the track, HTML5 and it's successors will probably replace almost all traditional desktop apps.

Much of that stuff basically boils down to "files are faster", which is pretty boss but is something you may never notice.

The Storage Pool stuff is really quite nice. Add drives, click through a very simple dialog (less error prone than the current disk management interface) and Windows automatically expands the file system over them without any manual fiddling with mount points or moving/copying files around.

[White Haven]

The Storage Pool stuff is really quite nice. Add drives, click through a very simple dialog (less error prone than the current disk management interface) and Windows automatically expands the file system over them without any manual fiddling with mount points or moving/copying files around.

That's actually REALLY funny. Good, but funny. That's precisely what the FIRST version of Home Server had, and was yanked from the SECOND version of Home Server to a universal chorus of 'WTF! Give that back!'

[Beowulf]

The Storage Pool stuff is really quite nice. Add drives, click through a very simple dialog (less error prone than the current disk management interface) and Windows automatically expands the file system over them without any manual fiddling with mount points or moving/copying files around.

That's actually REALLY funny. Good, but funny. That's precisely what the FIRST version of Home Server had, and was yanked from the SECOND version of Home Server to a universal chorus of 'WTF! Give that back!'

Hence my never upgrading from WHSv1. It's a different implementation of the same effect on WS8 though. If WS8 is reasonably cheap, I may upgrade my server to use the new storage pool functionality.

[phongn]

I had not seen those features, though I didn't look hard for definitive feature lists, just did a few google searches.

Just read the Building Windows 8 blog.

I'm still apprehensive of SecureBoot and what that will mean for OEMs and Linux. I tend to get old hardware from people wanting to get rid of it and I throw Linux on it for small servers or extra computers.

AFAIK, Microsoft will require that users be able to interactively add certificates for other operating systems (or just turn the thing off).

[Darth Nostril]

What about things like boot time? I have been told its faster than Windows 7. Of course if you get a Lenovo desktop, they have a feature which speeds up the boot time for Windows 7 anyway.

Well it's not like Win 7 boot time is particularily slow, my ancient Athlon X2 based system boots in about a minute or so and my i7 render beast boots in less than thirty seconds.
Is there really any point in waiting for a new OS just to shave a few seconds off boot time?

[Stofsk]

Considering you can get an SSD to boot your OS in seconds? Nope.