Windows 8 squeezed to fit 2012 Dell fondleslab?

Will Microsoft deliver Windows 8 in time for OEMs to ship product in 2012? Yes, according to some supposedly leaked Dell slides showing a roadmap that has a Dell tablet running Windows 8 arriving in January 2012. The tablet is codenamed Peju. The Windows-8 device is almost an afterthought om a roadmap that's dominated by …

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

where's the app for that?

If you want a platform to be succesful don't you need applications ?

Don't those still need developers (or has IBM's Watson really made a breakthrough) ?

If you intend to launch in less than a year and you haven't even told the developers of the existence of the new platform they are expected to all switch to - isn't your app store going to be a bit bare on day 1 ?

[Volker Hett]

Especially Adobe!

It takes them a couple years to adapt to new APIs and then a year or two to build new APIs for them to use.

Hopefully Win8 will have a 16bit X86 mode so we can use Photoshop filters :(

[Richard Plinston]

Windows 8

It was alleged that after XP the next Windows was supposed to be a .NET CLR based OS that could run on X86 or POWER CELLs. MS spent until 2005 trying to get it running reliably and fast. Then they had to give up and throw together Vista to get something out the door before the corporates killed the 3 year renewal after getting nothing for 6 years.

Perhaps Windows 8 is this project that will be finally good enough to ship after 10 or 12 years.

Or is it that finally they will get processors that have enough cores and enough cycles to stop it looking sluggish when compared to Win3.11 on a 386.

[Dick Head]

Windows working on ARM, via the LongARM project...

...well, at least it's better than calling it the ShortArm project.

Maybe this only makes sense to ex-military tapes.

[Ken Hagan]

Which is more likely?

Microsoft go from "not even a first technology preview" to "all betas and release candidates done" in less than 10 months.

Or...

Dell exec has fantasy powerpoint slides.

[RegisterThis]

Just another piece of the MS puzzle ...

Just another piece in a bigger picture playing out with the 'ailing' MS at the centre?

- Next Windows will run on ARM as announced and demo'ed

- Ties in with Nokia dumping Intel and Meego for MS

- Ties in with Nokia/MS being reluctant to indicate *which* version of WinPhone will be on the first Nokia device

- Dell date ties in with the 2012 timeframe hints from MS/Nokia for the first real joint device

- helps make sense of MS's laclustre development of WinPhone since initially released (6 months to announce a few new features)

Personally, I think that when you put all this together, a lot of questions are answered:

- MS Windows 8 will be a single OS for desktop, tablet and phone form factors

- The 'skin' may differ and WinPhone 7 may be the 'skin' without the eventual insides currently

- This would help explain the apparent lack of concern MS has about the missing features in WP7 ... they will all be in Windows 8 underneath

- This makes sense of the Nokia / Windows tie up:

MS recognises that it dominates the desktop and laptop market, but has no offering in the mobile market: Its core strength for cornering the mobile market is a seamless experience across all devices - full compatibility. True write once, run everywhere albeit with a different UI.

In Nokia, they have the dominant handest manufacturer in the world as the route to market. Yes, in the smartphone segment, for every Blackberry (RIM #2) sold Q4 2010, TWO Nokias were sold and likewise for Apple (#3) (Would never have guessed so from all the press noise?). And that is not even thinking of Nokias reach into the mid and lower end markets which they dominate even more.

So at the other end of the spectrum, you have Nokia recognising their biggest asset is their user base of which a massive majority have not even converted to smartphones yet - but Nokia have nothing to tempt them up the value chain. A seamless windows experience on their new smartphone that integartes with their PC makes it far more tempting to stay with Nokia and an all MS world?

--> So I think I see where the MS and Nokia strategy are heading? Flame away :-)

[Richard Plinston]

Vaporware fails

> a massive majority have not even converted to smartphones yet

Most of Nokia's phones are not smartphones, they are inexpensive phones, just phones, and that is what those users want.

WP7 cannot run on simple phones and it isn't suitable for cheap phones. Taking $55 for WP7 takes the phone well into negative profit.

So if Nokia becomes all WPx then it throws away most of its current market to fight for a part of the 4% market share where buyers actually want WP7.

Many years ago MS was successful with its policy of pre-announcing vaporware. When GEM was demonstrated at COMDEX in 1983 MS announce Windows and then spent 2 years writing it while users waited and didn't buy anything much.

That was in the days when computers cost as much as a small car and were turned over in 3 to 5 years.

Today with mobile the turn over is 1 or 2 years. MS Pre-announcing that it will have something out at the end of this year or next has zero effect. People will buy stuff now because by the time that comes out they may buy again, or something else. They will not wait for Nokia-WP7, or Windows 8 and by the time those come out the market will have changed again and MS will still be 2 years behind Apple and Android.

MS is failing because they can no longer control the market with vaporware and soon won't even control the PC OEMs.

[It wasnt me]

Oh really....

If Micrsoft is in the 'advanced stage of engineering' Windows 8 so soon after 7 then expect another Vista.

Oh, and its a fucking operating system for gods sake. Why would I need another one so soon? Its just the piece of crap in the the background thats supposed to make everything else work. The day you dont even notice windows is there is the day it has succeeded. So why not try to get one working first before releasing another pile of stinking shit into the wild?

[Steven Knox]

Why?

"If Micrsoft is in the 'advanced stage of engineering' Windows 8 so soon after 7 then expect another Vista."

Win2000 took 4 years. WinXP took 1.5. Vista took 6 years. Win7 took 3. It's currently a year and a half from release of Win7. Mid-2012 would be three years. (Of course, some watchers expect MS to release in late 2012, probably around the 21st of December ; )

Of course, WinME took 3 years to develop as well.

So I don't think the timeframe is really a good predictor here.

[Martin Nelson]

Nope Vista did NOT

Vista did not actually take 6 years.

Back in 2002/3 they had an early candidate code-named Longhorn...it was a really poor testing version and anyone who did test it will tell you that it did NOT become Vista.

Longhorn's progress was actually pretty good, but it was scrapped as an consumer OS in 2004ish and development spun off into server territory...but based on new tech. Put simply it wasn't working...testers hated it.

In it's place came Vista...it was hastily built and poor quality at first. I seem to remember a test version being sent out in 2005? Personally I HATED it. The flaws were legion. the problem was, and I'm sure many of those who tested the product will attest, MS DIDN'T listen to us. They carried on with the system making no fixes.

Vista was built between early 2004 and late 2005...extra features and gloss were added up until RTM in 2006.

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC...

My recollection is that MS wants to put out a new version of Windows every 3 years. So, that would put Win8's release at the end of 2012, or the beginning of 2013. I think they mentioned they wanted to count from when they actually planned to ship Win7 (early 2010) instead of when they actually did ship it.

And, well, the obvious answer to your question is that bug fixes don't pay the bills. Installs do. New versions = more fresh/upgrade installs. And, while MS would like you to upgrade every 3 years, I think there's a general understanding in some circles that you're better off skipping every other release, so you end up on a 6 year cycle.

[Anonymous Coward]

'Operating System'

In a strict CS sense, the operating system should indeed be some invisible background layer, but we all know that for most people the term is really equivalent to 'platform'. The SDK is a lot more important than the underlying operating system.

The bit I like is the Adobe AIR like model - because that's worked out so well. Even people with no idea what AIR is complain about the BBC iPlayer app.

[D@v3]

Mircosoft OS releases

Firstly, if they are saying Jan '12, then that probably means more like oct / Nov '12 at the earliest.

Also, there seems to be a pattern (emerging) with MS OS's, and if Win8 turn out like many seem to think it will, then it will just add more weight to the argument. For some time, every other OS release has been 'a bit on the poor side'

Win 98 (good)

WinME (awful)

Win XP (really quite good)

Vista (terrible)

Win7 (pretty good)

Win8 ????

[Steven Knox]

Missed editions

What about 98SE and 2000? They'd actually fit your model:

Win 98 (good)

Win 98SE (pretty bad)

Win 2000 (quite good -- XP without the Fisher-Price interface)

WinME (awful)

Win XP (really quite good)

Vista (terrible)

Win7 (pretty good)

Win8 ????

Except, of course, Win9x were based on a completely different kernel, so it's actually two lines:

Win 98 (good)

Win 98SE (pretty bad)

WinME (awful)

Win 2000 (quite good -- XP without the Fisher-Price interface)

Win XP (really quite good)

Vista (terrible)

Win7 (pretty good)

Win8 ????

and that breaks the trend up.

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Microsoft OS releases

It makes rather more sense when you look at the kernel version numbers:

Win98 = 4.1

Win2K = 5.0 (you should have cited this one rather than the diseased ME)

WinXP = 5.1

Vista = 6.0

Win7 = 6.1

So the quality of Win8 really depends on whether it is 7.0 or 6.2. The latter is perfectly possible, since there can't be much more farting about for anyone to do in the Windows kernel, unless MS want to change the device driver model /again/. In fact, if I were porting Windows to ARM, I'd try to keep the resulting product as close (architecturally) to its predecessor as I could, since frankly I've got enough on my plate with the port.

[Volker Hett]

totally different Kernels!

Win95/98/ME are somewhat based on DOS but more integrated than MS-DOS/Windows 3

Win2k is NT4 with USB and Win98 GUI.

[Anonymous Coward]

re: kernel version numbers

Win98 wasn't NT4.1 - it was one of the 16-bit-with-32-bit-extensions descendants of Win3.1, as was its successor WinME. The only significant thing they had in common with the NT kernel was the WDM.

[Anonymous Coward]

all getting a tad confusing

I dont suppose that any of you have thought that "Windows 8" on a tablet might just be that?

We have some amazing ideas here, personally, i think whats more likely is that you will end up with Windows 8 on a tablet. where that comes from is anyones guess. But think of it this way

There are 3 different formats at the moment, desktop, Phone, and tablet, all are very different and could live along side one another, Desktop moved from a name based OS to a number, 7

Windows Mobile very slowly moved from 6 to 6.1 to 6.5 to 6.5.3 then finally 7

7 isnt great on a tablet as we know, so logically a third branch is likely to be made and it would be confusing to keep it called 7, so here comes 8, probably a reskined Windows 7 initially,

So, from a marketing point of view, We have the name "Windows X" which covers all branches of OS which will be gold when it comes to the end users choosing what they want and remembe MS is going metal with skydrive intigration bringing everything together under one roof with access to everything from any format.

Personally i think we will have a windows tablet 8, built from Windows 7

Later we will see a windows Desktop 8 and a phone 8,

Potentially MS will release new code in to Windows tablet given that it will have a much stricter set of hardware and limited number of users, working code from that could be taken to Desktop which would have given the code time to mature for the masses of desktop clients

Writing for tablet could be akin to Apple making OSX, apple as a much better record of stability, why? because its only got a limited number of hardware configurations to think about.

[Paul Shirley]

Silverlight?

<<XAML markup at the interface layer with a web store>>

Isn't that just Silverlight running as the UI on any convenient OS kernel they have lying around? Android has proved you can build an app ecosystem around XML with sometimes token amounts of supporting code, not surprising if Microsoft decide they can do the same with XAML.

Silverlight hasn't set the world alight but that's never stopped Microsoft forcing an unwanted tech on the world. I suspect there's less to this version of Windows 8 than first appears ;)

[NoneSuch]

On another note

Who will take odds that Win8 will be out before Duke Nukem Forever? hehehe

[DEAD4EVER]

windows 8

ok seriously this has to stop i have just upgraded my system to windows 7 it runs fine without issues no bugs no nothing and now where talking about windows 8 oh for petes sake. christ some companys are still running xp and 2000 because they cant afford to keep upgrading them it costs money microsoft stop it will ya or better still delay windows 8 for another 3 years or so.

[Anonymous Coward]

naa

as i posted, i seriously doubt you will see a windows 8 desktop version.

I'll place my bet on a Windows Tablet 8 which is a reskined desktop 7 with minor code changes .

You will then see a few years down the line a Desktop 8, and a phone 8.

the next version will be a Windows (insert market) 9 which will be even more compatible and intertwoven which each other using plenty of cloud based functions to go between them all.

thats a guess obviously, but i think its a reasonable suggestion and much more likely then a Desktop 8 coming next year.

[Anonymous Coward]

Under ND

Okay, I've seen some stuff under non disclosure.

Dell are blowing fart bubbles with this slide deck.

Never forget MS think corporate first, punters second.

[John Bailey]

Finally..

A sane post.

MS make their money on the corporate level. Home users are a PR exercise. Keep em thinking Windows is the only OS. Not a major concern.

Win8Tablets will, if they ever exist, be corporate stuff, Microsoft's home turf. Perhaps a token effort for consumer tablets. Android and iOS will take the consumer market, and might gain some traction with corporates in some small way.

My predictions, as prone to being wrong as anybody else.. But with a two year time scale.. Certainly more realistic than some Dell suit blowing smoke rings.

ARM and x86 are not code compatible. Windows programs are too big to run on titchy low power ARM SOCs. So anybody expecting to be able to run the same OS and the same apps on both is either not sufficiently technical, or severely delusional.

[Revelationman]

Stupid

It took Microsoft SP 2 to make Vista run smooth then they bring out Windows 7 now here we are again Windows 8 stupid !!

I run Vista Business SP 2 it has not given me one damn problem runs smooth as silk, people have been saying upgrade to Windows 7, I said why should I spend the money ! I know when I do upgrade Microsoft will just release another OS .

The smart way in the Linux way just release and kernel update keep the same platform but the Linux way is free and Microsoft wants to make money !

Well I am not upgrading I am not spending $150 to upgrade not now, it's time Microsoft changes there ways of updating new systems .

[Anonymous Coward]

hmm but...

but thats not the smart way for joe blogs public, tell me, how many programs on Linux need to have OS specific files?

Linux is very fragmented and whilst its not that difficult to do for people that know what they are doing its not so straight forward for other people.

Everything has its market, what suites you doesnt suite others, thats the nature of everything/

[Anonymous Coward]

There is one way Microsoft could accelerate Windows 8

By basing it on a BSD variant. :-)