Windows Microsoft begins distributing Windows 8 to OEMs

Nor were we (well I) jumping at you, merely giving a point of view

 

We were not jumping on you. We where explaining our views, and try and keep a conversation going, and making it interesting. Remember that they are others that read this threads, so I try to be informative and keep everyone on the same page.

I didn't say I will get Win8 nor anyone here in fact. I am keeping this post updated, to provide variety on this forum other than the usually "Build Advice" "System doesn't' boot", "BSOD", "GPU problem" and "Monitor Advice" thread that we were packed with for several months. Not that I am complaining about those. I always like to help. But, I find it cool to have something different to talk about like express our views on a in development OS. Which feature will make it to the end, which not... the mystery continues....

This forum never had a topic like this. So, just trying something new here.

BTW, I agree with your views. I find Win7 an excellent OS and very secure. Despite jumping at the first official public beta access of it, I am not tiered of it of all. I didn't tweak the UI of anything. The only thing I changed, but I did that since day 1, is the to have the task-bar items like previous Windows, and not grouped (and show file extension)

I know though I'll still get Win8 for at least 1 system, but that is ONLY because I am part of MSDNAA as a student. So while it's free, why not?!

 

Sorry Rich and others.. It's late, or early depending on how you look at it, and I'm a little crabby. I need caffeine or sleep. Not sure which to go for at this point as its gone 6am and I'm wide awake.

Free? Now that's a delicious word! Well yeah I'd have it if it was free lol. I agree W7 is fantastic. I remember people complaining that MS took 5 years (XP) to get out another OS. But to me it seemed about the right length between one and another. Just a shame the next one they released was the sibling of Millennium. Speaking of which, I actually upgraded from 98 to Millennium... As you can imagine I hated MS for a while. Pretty much until I got XP.

 

i think the problem is that left/right scrolling is only on these Logitech mouses, so giving it full support would put other mouse at disadvantage. i only really use it to switch between tabs by assigning keypress to them. don't even see the point in scrolling left/right on webpages.

oh god, please, please no Live integration onto Windows. it's bad enough that we have to live with GFWL on occasional games.

 

When do you think we will see a beta?

 

It's Microsoft that introduce this feature on their own mouses first. Logitech was second. Today, most mouses have it, just not the default OEM provided mouse, and any cheap mouses. It is an optional feature, not a requirement.

I have many problem where left/right scrolling is use often.
A common example, image you edit a picture zoomed-in, you can just move to the left or right easily, without having to de-focus on what you were doing to scroll the bar.

I expect the public beta to be about 6 months before it's release. It's supposed to be out in end 2012... so I guess summer 2012

 

That said, if Microsoft has a PDC this year, it'll likely be around October/November time and will involve an earlyish release of Windows 8 for developers which will do the rounds within half an hour of coming out. That's what happened with 7 and Vista (from what I recall)

Didn't meant to come across so snappy, I just get a bit fed up with the whole 'ain't broke then don't fix try to improve it' nonsense. Apologies

 

By following typical MS patterns, Win 8 should in theory be a pile of poo. I'm going to stick to Win 7 just to be safe!

 

Like Star Trek movies!

 

My office I say office I mean organisation are still on Windows XP for desktop and laptop users, Office 2007 is only just being rolled out to those who need it.

Why?
Because you don't need anything else other than XP in a corporate environment.

 

Yes you do.
1- higher Security.
2- Significantly drop electrical bill.
3- More productive features which allow you everyone to work better.
4- More advance hardware support, allowing you to get more money out of your system by using all it's technology to the fullest.
5- XP has no more mainstream support since 2009
6- More robust environment providing less down time of computers
7- Easier and faster deployment, and updating systems.

Your IT department in your organization are totally retarded.

 

But XP works and does what companys need. Sure W7 is better but upgrading every computer in even a relatively small company is a massive expense. You need to remember it's not just upgrading the OS..its paying for the man hours to do it, and often these are old Dell/HP systems that would need either upgrading or replacing to be able to run W7 smoothly.

 

Most IT in organisations schedule an O/S rollout with a new hardware deployment, I know I have in the past. With an organisation running XP for a while, that means that the hardware can't really take advantage of a lot of the efficiencies of Windows 7 - in some places we are talking REALLY old hardware.

Factoring in a new hardware deployment takes a lot more planning, time, effort and cost than an O/S upgrade. In addition, the testing effort for the old, crapped out and basically crap corporate applications has to be taken into account. This is even before you get on to the subject of third party vendor software, usually as old and crappy as your own.

A lot of the bigger organisations are tied to time-scales dictated by global organisational polices, directives and strategies so local IT can't decide for themselves. It is like turning around the proverbial supertanker. The bigger companies simply pay Microsoft for the extended support as it is cheaper.

Most IT departments would love nothing more than for the organisation to run on modern hardware and software. Sadly, a lot of the time the decision is usually not theirs to make.

 

I see your view. Good points, +rep

Well that would be too bad for them.
Actually, I see that small companies are the most flexible. Yes it is expensive, but upgrading 50 computer or even 90 computers is much easier than several thousands (I am not saying in ALL cases). Usually small companies strive and grow at super fast paste because they are able to adapt to the market and latest technology really fast, especially that such a small company doesn't have, or very little hierarchy system.

But it's not impossible. Colleges (well it depends on the area based on funding by the government and if it public or private) and Universities have no problem, Microsoft and large computer related companies as I am sure Nvidia, AMD, and other have no problem doing. Perhaps not 100% of the computer switch to Win7, but at least a large part of key parts of the company (ie: the employee ordering office supplies doesn't need Win7 as an absolute need, but the engineers and programmers, does).

 

A number of years ago, I did some work for a UK charity with a national staff of 250, scattered across 11 offices in different parts of the UK:

- plan the entire project
- specify the hardware & software (servers, workstations, thin clients & all software licensing)
- put the purchases out to tender
- chose the suppliers
- purchase everything
- built a new, parallel Win2k3 AD environment (old one was NT4)
- set up Exchange (old one was Lotus Notes)
- deployed new firewall
- deployed new proxy (ISA)
- deployed new corporate A/V
- replaced the HP-UX + Oracle CRM system with RedHat Linux solution
- replaced the backup solution
- upgraded the corporate accounting software
- built a deployment solution for the IT guys (Altiris) so they could remotely install to the thin clients
- replaced the BT leased lines with business broadband to all regional office
- moved the website to an external host (it was running out of an office building in North London)
- deployed new workstations, running XP (old was Win 2k), to the new AD & mail environment
- kept a parallel Exchange/Notes environment running so mail & calendars weren't affected
- built a new Citrix environment
- replaced the old NT4 domain controllers in each regional branch with Citrix thin clients (HP boxes with a read only XP embedded O/S on them)
- deployed a new Citrix Secure gateway & SecureID keyfobs for home/flexible workers
- turned off Lotus Notes once all the deployments had completed
- documented it all
- trained the IT staff (all four of them)

This took me almost a year. For a company with only 250 staff, supported by four IT staff excluding DBA & the IT Manager - he didn't do anything (as is always the case ).

There is a lot more too it than simply plonking down a desktop with a new O/S on it.

Apologies for thread hijack...

 

Ok, you have a different approach. Us at work we apply every update as they come, so the only thing needed to upgrade to the latest Windows, is software testing, and hardware compatibility. Computer that are 5 years old are always replaced, and not compatible computers run on lower settings (like Aero disabled), or not upgraded to, but so far it was never the case, as we order our a computer with the "next Windows" in mind, all by being smart about it (ie: not get 2000$ gaming systems)

 

One of the things that needs to be considered when upgrading the desktop O/S is that the supporting infrastructure can actually support it - hence the upgrade I did from an NT4 domain to a Win2k3 AD. The beauty of the work I did is that I got the company to (amazingly) agree that I made all the technology decisions .

I had the advantage of previously working there for 3 years as technical support manager so I knew what worked and what didn't within that same organisation, as well as how it all hung together. It was basically the rip out and replace everything approach that I had warned them about years earlier - if you leave it too long then you have more to replace.

It is a fine balance, whether to incrementally upgrade constantly or hang in there until the big replacement. Money comes in to it a hell of a lot.

Anyway, apologies again to all for the hijack, I'm done now, the single malt is kicking it...

 

I think I'll wait to see what the public beta will show, before I start making any judgements now. To be honest, it'll have to be pretty special to persuade me to move from Win7.

I am more interested in what ARM support for Windows 8 means. Low-cost, energy-efficient ARM-based workstations running Windows? Yes please. Even better if they manage to come up with some sort of compatibility layer for running x86 applications.

Ditto here - except that most of our machines don't even have 1GB RAM, it's either 512MB or 756MB if you're extremely lucky.

I think Fingers66 covered this quite well, but just wanted to add my twopenneth.

I work for Lloyds TSB Insurance, which is part of the Lloyds Banking Group - don't get started about banks! - and we've probably got in the region of around 100,000 employees in Britain across the entire group. If we make the assumption that 60% of the workforce uses a computer, that's 60,000 people using a computer. As you might imagine, the vast majority of our base units are all built to a standard specification; some may be non-standard as parts have to be replaced here and there, and there may well be the odd one or two here and there who use completely different systems (such as the two guys in our Marketing dept. who use Mac Pros). But generally they're all similar spec and they all run WinXP - even the laptops.

It's frustrating as hell from an end-user point of view to have such crappy hardware and an outdated OS, but I don't even want to wrap my head around the logistics of deploying 60,000+ copies of Windows 7. Never mind all the technical challenges around maintaining compatibility and having no downtime for core systems. For instance we (as in, Insurance) have several business-critical applications that are not compatible with Win7; one of which is a terminal emulator used to access a mainframe system. This specific version of the terminal emulator is no longer supported by the developer, and we can't migrate to a new version because newer versions aren't supported by the mainframe. The business cannot afford any downtime on this mainframe system because it is about as business-critical as it gets. Upgrading the mainframe would represent a significant investment of time, money and effort, so there would have to be a significantly appreciable benefit attached to it.

In business terms, having the latest version of something isn't always sufficient justification.

 

^ this is exactly the point, if it was only about the desktop it would be easy...

 

Those big old circular buttons for tasks that you can easily do with a mouse wounldnt be for the tablet push would they. Looking at that I'm getting worried windows will turn into. Cluttered compromise to get it working on tablets and mouse & keyboard systems.

I'd be happy if they made the ui a bit nicer (OSx just feel slicker) and allow folders to auto open when you hover the mouse over them and then close when you mouse away. Rather than currently where I open the folder, pick which program I want to run. And then have to close the folder after. thought maybe I'm alone in hating more than the nessasery amount of windows being open.