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Microsoft Previews Windows 8 for Tablets and PCs

This Windows 8 will likely sell over 200M as a bare minimum after two years and reignite the uses for actual PC's and laptops once we get monitors with touchscreen.

Tablets will go back to being a niche product once the love affair with it goes away. It is just right now the iFad has taken over and people want touchscreen on bigger screens than their phones. Tablets only do a half-ass job at real productivity. It is just an urge for gadgets geeks who want to buy something new. Most people who need to do real work still relies on a personal computer. It is premature for Apple to say we are living in the post-PC world. No, we are still living in it. Over 450M sold for Windows 7 is proof of that and I don't see real laptops and desktops dying off anytime soon especially with smartphones starting to have bigger screens. It is just that the PC has reached a saturation point in sales while tablets is still not peaking yet.

Microsoft needs to get Windows 8 on desktop monitors and laptops with touchscreen as fast as possible. I still prefer a 17-inch screen on my laptop with a disk drive to backup my media and better FPS gaming with a cooling fan over anything a tablet can ever do.
 
Savor said:
This Windows 8 will likely sell over 200M as a bare minimum after two years and reignite the uses for actual PC's and laptops once we get monitors with touchscreen.

Tablets will go back to being a niche product once the love affair with it goes away. It is just right now the iFad has taken over and people want touchscreen on bigger screens than their phones. Tablets only do a half-ass job at real productivity. It is just an urge for gadgets geeks who want to buy something new. Most people who need to do real work still relies on a personal computer. It is premature for Apple to say we are living in the post-PC world. No, we are still living in it. Over 450M sold for Windows 7 is proof of that and I don't see real laptops and desktops dying off anytime soon especially with smartphones starting to have bigger screens. It is just that the PC has reached a saturation point in sales while tablets is still not peaking yet.

Microsoft needs to get Windows 8 on desktop monitors and laptops with touchscreen as fast as possible. I still prefer a 17-inch screen on my laptop with a disk drive to backup my media and better FPS gaming with a cooling fan over anything a tablet can ever do.
Click to expand...

What a load of bunk. The iPad is no fad. Most people use it for video streaming, e-Books and casual surfing. That is not going to change!
 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...th-windows-8/2011/09/21/gIQA6JCGmK_story.html

Microsoft breaks with PC world, reinvents itself with Windows 8

By Joshua Topolsky, Wednesday, September 21, 6:26 PM

Last week, at a large developers’ event, Microsoft formally introduced its next operating system to the world, and it’s nothing like the Windows you’re used to.

It’s clear the company has watched and learned as Apple stormed into the marketplace with the iPhone and iPad. Microsoft’s new Windows 8 looks and feels like it’s built from the ground up to do away with the noisy, dated interfaces of the desktop computer, replacing them with a touch-friendly experience that’s focused on a new way of computing.

In fact, the PCs used for application development, which were handed out to attendees, weren’t really PCs at all — they were touchscreen tablets made by Samsung. No keyboard, no mouse. No kidding.

Among the hundreds of changes to the operating system, there’s one that stands out: Microsoft has almost completely reinvented the way you interact with Windows.

Windows 8 is largely based around a new user interface concept Microsoft calls “Metro.” If you’ve seen one of the company’s recent phones, you’ll understand it immediately.

If you haven’t, imagine a colorful, horizontally scroll-able page filled with touchable squares (Microsoft refers to items in this grid as “tiles”). Inside those tiles, you see applications or data that is continuously updated with information such as sports scores, weather or incoming messages. To navigate around or open applications, you perform finger gestures (little swipes) on the sides or bottom of the display. It’s extremely slick and very well-designed.

So it would seem that Microsoft is about to turn a big corner. I’ve used Windows 8, and I can tell you that’s a revelatory experience for a Microsoft product. The operating system, which is a year away from public release, feels completely fresh. It’s fast and clean, and intuitive. I would describe it as beautiful and sometimes even . . . magical.

That’s a big deal for Microsoft, which has long been associated with an ugly and inelegant operating system.

Unfortunately, there’s a catch.

Microsoft can’t or doesn’t want to let go of the underlying Windows you’ve come to know, and sometimes while using Windows 8, you find yourself jarringly bounced back to the old, familiar desktop environment. Microsoft touts this legacy interface as an asset, but I think new users may perceive it as something else entirely — a messy relic. And a confusing one at that.

The iPad isn’t successful just because Apple knows how to market or design products. In some ways, it’s the anti-PC — and that’s really appealing to users who have grown up battling software updates and viruses.

But based on what I’ve seen and heard, Microsoft is clearly not ready to make a clean break with the Windows of today, and that could be problematic for the Microsoft of tomorrow.

If you look at a graph of Apple’s stock price overlaid against Microsoft from the past 10 years or so, you see something stark and obvious: About halfway through the decade, Apple begins to break from what was a neck-and-neck race, buoyed by the iPod and iTunes. In 2007, right around the launch of the iPhone, the company jumps off like a bullet. From then on out, it’s a steep and dizzying ascent.

Microsoft shares, on the other hand, remain at nearly a flat line. I say nearly because it has actually dropped in value.

Apple has succeeded where Microsoft has failed because of its willingness to take risks and because of its uncanny habit for predicting what users want before they know that themselves. And that’s what makes Windows 8 so frustrating.

Microsoft has produced an operating system advanced enough to not just see around the bend, but to be what is around that bend. In many ways, the Windows 8 interface outclasses what Apple and Google are doing in the tablet space by being cleaner, simpler and more intuitive.

But Microsoft has to go all the way. This cannot be a half-step or a feint. If the company believes in the new product it has built, it needs to make it the focus of the Windows experience, not just an afterthought or view you can casually switch in and out of.

If you want to out-Apple Apple, then you need to have the audacity to believe you’ve got a better idea than the rest of the other guys.

And this time Microsoft, you just might.
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http://rcpmag.com/blogs/lee-pender/2011/09/windows-8-looks-great-but-how-will-it-go-over.aspx

Windows 8: Looks Great, But How Will It Go Over?

Legend has it that when Jimmy Page was forming a rock combo in the late '60s, he asked Keith Moon, then drummer for The Who, how he thought the band would go over with fans. "Like a lead balloon," Moon is said to have replied -- meaning not so well.

As it turns out, Led Zeppelin -- yes, that's where they got the name, or so the story goes -- went over pretty well after all. The band's sound was a pretty radical departure from a lot of what was popular at the time, but it worked. Zep remains one of the most influential bands in rock history, as anybody who's reading this probably knows very well.
Keith Moon, of course, isn't around today to pontificate on the prospects for Windows 8, and he probably wouldn't have much to say about it if he was. But his misguided prediction about the fate of Led Zeppelin is relevant to Microsoft's new operating system, which looks fantastic but faces an uncertain future.

Let's get this out of the way now: There are a lot of questions yet to be answered about Windows 8. But there's also, we already know, a lot to like about it. (For more than you could possibly endeavor to read about the new OS, go to RCPU's Windows 8 page here.) For us at RCPU, though, there's one thing that stands out above everything else: Windows 8 looks fantastic.

OK, so we still don't want to touch our PC screen, but other than that, the look of Windows 8 is magnificent. (And, yes, we feel that way about Windows Phone 7, too -- even though your editor doesn't have a WP7 device. More on that in a little bit.) Windows 8 offers a complete departure not just from previous Windows interfaces but from any OS interface we've ever seen. The tile concept is clean, crisp and simple, and it makes the old icon-and-file-folder environment look dated (which it is.)

From what we've seen of Windows 8, it's actually pretty. Not pretty good or pretty interesting -- just pretty, as in visually pleasant. It's pleasing to look at, almost like a Piet Mondrian painting or the Partridge Family bus. And looks do matter. Administration and security issues aside, the only way users will warm to a new interface is if it makes them feel welcome and comfortable. Windows 8 is a looker, to be sure -- but, like the cheerleader in high school that everybody was afraid to talk to, is it actually too good looking?

We've said in this space before that radical departures are dangerous in the technology industry. The upside (think iPod) is massive. But so is the downside. Microsoft was talking (and making) tablets back when the word still referred mainly to headache pills. That was a nonstarter at the time. Apple itself produced the Lisa, which was way ahead of its time -- too far ahead, as it turned out. The Lisa was a flop. And most readers here probably remember when the vaunted "cloud" was known as the ASP model (for Application Service Providers, of course), and mostly crashed and burned in the dot-com bust.

Windows 8 is that kind of risk. In fact, it's a much bigger risk than any of those examples. Microsoft is staking its whole future -- no small thing -- on a new concept for Windows. The company has always been fairly conservative, sometimes annoyingly so, with the interface for its money-spinning OS. Windows 7 might be structured very differently from Windows XP, but it doesn't look all that different. Nothing since maybe Windows 95 has looked all that different -- until now.

And that's the problem Windows 8 could face. As we've said here before about Windows Phone 7, the average user gets used to a paradigm (great '90s word; in the next entry, we'll try to work in "open the kimono") for computing and often has a hard time breaking away from it. Windows Phone 7 looks great, but it also looks unfamiliar. Android devices and iPhones are just what smartphones look like. They're familiar in the same way a wristwatch or a television or some other everyday item -- like a PC desktop -- is familiar. Is Windows Phone 7 better? Maybe, but it doesn't matter if it just doesn't look right.

For pretty much every Windows user -- and even Mac or Linux user, for that matter -- computing looks like icons and file folders. It has for a very long time. Oh, sure, there are varying levels of sophistication (yes, we hear you, Mac fans), but the differences are more like the difference between Scottish English and American English than they are like two totally different languages. Windows 8 is Greek compared to just about everything we've seen before. It'll certainly be foreign to the average office worker or consumer (who is, after all, the same person).

The question, then, is whether beauty and form will triumph over familiarity. Windows 8 is beautiful, but will it make users feel welcome and comfortable? That's hard to say. Comfort is a funny thing; think about that old T-shirt from college compared to a crisp new shirt that looks better but might be a bit stiff and unfamiliar. Which one would you rather wear around the house every day?

That leads us to another question: Will users embrace a new Windows concept from Microsoft in the age of the iPad and smartphone? That's even harder to say. The PC is such a commodity now -- albeit still an important one -- that it's a little bit hard to imagine corporate IT buyers or consumers stopping in their tracks to gawk at (much less purchase in huge numbers) Windows 8. Look at how long XP continues to hang on. (Then again, XP isn't the radical departure that Windows 8 is. We're running in circles here.)

Windows launches used to be a big deal, but Apple stole Microsoft's thunder in that realm a long time ago. Now, it's Microsoft's turn to show off something innovative and revolutionary. But is it too little too late -- or too much too early? Is the PC-as-cool-device era over for good, or can Windows 8 revive it? Is the world ready for a completely new face of Microsoft? Will the world care, no matter how fantastic Window 8 might be? The old band is touring with brand-new material, and it's superb. But will the fans just want to hear the old hits?

It's not a perfect comparison, but this is a little like the brick-and-mortar bookstore trying to adapt to a digital world. Barnes & Noble did it; Borders didn't. Which one will Microsoft be with Windows 8? The company is taking a huge gamble. It has its groundbreaking OS in place. Windows 8 looks great. Now it's time to see whether Microsoft's balloon will be filled with helium or made of lead.
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coldmack said:
You are thinking of fanboys/girls who overdid it on the coolaid. I on the other hand am a real Machead, which will criticize Apple when they do something I feel is wrong or lacking vs the competitors; hence why I don't(and never will) own an Intel Mac, a color screened iPod(unless you count the iPhone), or any of their older mouses. In all seriousness, I'd rather eat a really bad meal than try any MS OS.
Click to expand...

OK, can you explain this? So you are a machead, yet do not have any Apple system that is newer then 06/07?
 
tigres said:
OK, can you explain this? So you are a machead, yet do not have any Apple system that is newer then 06/07?
Click to expand...
Well I have an iPad does, that count? I would never touch a device using an architecture(x86) that imho is just awful and poorly implemented.

Oletros said:
And what will he use when their computers break?

Will he use a 2.004 computer in 2.015?
Click to expand...

Yes, I will still proudly and happily be using my PPC based Macs, and my iPad(hopefully iPad 5 by then); unless, Apple does the right move and introduces an ARM based MBA and really dominates the market.
 
coldmack said:
Well I have an iPad does, that count? I would never touch a device using an architecture(x86) that imho is just awful and poorly implemented.



Yes, I will still proudly and happily be using my PPC based Macs, and my iPad(hopefully iPad 5 by then); unless, Apple does the right move and introduces an ARM based MBA and really dominates the market.
Click to expand...
Wouldn't an ARM based MBA get cannibalized by the iPad?
 
diamond.g said:
Wouldn't an ARM based MBA get cannibalized by the iPad?
Click to expand...
Not really since the iPad will be running iOS and be on a 9.8in screen device, while the ARM based MBA would be on 11.6in and 13in(personally pref 12.1in-12.5in to replace both), and would run a full efficient version of OSX.
 
I have Windows 8 on a laptop and the UI is just horrible. It's a huge, HUGE step backwards for desktops and laptops. Instead of the start menu you're used to, you are redirected to a full screen tablet-optimized start menu (with huge tile icons that only take up space and is a visual mess), choose a program, and THEN go back to the "desktop". They better release a desktop/laptop optimized version soon, this Metro interface or whatever the **** it's called is horrible and confusing.
 
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tablo13 said:
I have Windows 8 on a laptop and the UI is just horrible. Instead of the start menu you're used to, you have to go to a full screen tablet-optimized start menu, choose a program, and THEN go back to the "desktop". They better release a desktop/laptop optimized version soon, this Metro interface or whatever the **** it's called is horrible.
Click to expand...

How do you know it will be like this in the final version?
 
tablo13 said:
I certainly hope it is not going to be like this in the final version... :rolleyes:
But until then, I will be disabling the Metro UI.
Click to expand...

I think the Metro UI is excellent. I think it provides a nice alternative to iOS and Android. It is intuitive and simple to learn. I would prefer to be able to go pure Windows or pure Metro. I think that Metro has the opportunity to be every bit as good as iOS. It's up to Microsoft to provide the software and the OEM's to produce good hardware. I think Microsoft will do their part. When this thing goes into beta, they will listen to consumer feedback. If everyone hates the switching back and forth, they may change it. They listened to consumer feedback with Windows 7 and they turned out a fantastic product. I believe they can do it again.
 
I love this Windows 8 design...

Those Live Tiles make my regular icons look like dead pixels! grrrr

I wonder if iOS6 will have something similar to live tiles :p
 
tablo13 said:
I have Windows 8 on a laptop and the UI is just horrible. It's a huge, HUGE step backwards for desktops and laptops. Instead of the start menu you're used to, you are redirected to a full screen tablet-optimized start menu (with huge tile icons that only take up space and is a visual mess), choose a program, and THEN go back to the "desktop". They better release a desktop/laptop optimized version soon, this Metro interface or whatever the **** it's called is horrible and confusing.
Click to expand...

If your using it on a laptop with no touch feature, I believe you will only get Window style interface. Metro will be locked, but can probably be hacked open.

Arm cpu base tablets will only get Metro. Window will be locked so you will not be able to run Window apps. Battery life will be ridiculously long. **MS wont admit it but this system is to go against the iPad.

Intel base tablets with folding or detachable keyboard or desktop with touch feature will have both Metro and Window interface and run both apps. Battery life will be good.

Laptop like yours and desktop will only get Window. Metro will be locked.
Battery life will be like normal laptops.

People were freaking out at the Samsung tablet, that was given out by MS, because it had a fan. The reason is because its a laptop, not a pure tablet...it had a bluetooth keyboard. It's the perfect system for developer to test both Metro and Window apps.

Im super excited about the hybrid tablets. Keyboard and mouse/pad combo can't be beat when doing work. But once work is done, I can remove keyboard and watch media at the comfort of my sofa. One device to rule all.
 
roach said:
If your using it on a laptop with no touch feature, I believe you will only get Window style interface. Metro will be locked, but can probably be hacked open.

Arm cpu base tablets will only get Metro. Window will be locked so you will not be able to run Window apps. Battery life will be ridiculously long. **MS wont admit it but this system is to go against the iPad.

Intel base tablets with folding or detachable keyboard or desktop with touch feature will have both Metro and Window interface and run both apps. Battery life will be good.

Laptop like yours and desktop will only get Window. Metro will be locked.
Battery life will be like normal laptops.

People were freaking out at the Samsung tablet, that was given out by MS, because it had a fan. The reason is because its a laptop, not a pure tablet...it had a bluetooth keyboard. It's the perfect system for developer to test both Metro and Window apps.

Im super excited about the hybrid tablets. Keyboard and mouse/pad combo can't be beat when doing work. But once work is done, I can remove keyboard and watch media at the comfort of my sofa. One device to rule all.
Click to expand...

No, actually the interface for me is partial Metro (for things like Start menu, lock screen, control panel, default IE, etc) and partial Window ("desktop") which just makes it confusing as ****. Even when I go to Control Panel, I have to go through this crappy touch interface control panel, and THEN I have the option to go to the "desktop" control panel for more options.
 
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Savor said:
Tablets will go back to being a niche product once the love affair with it goes away. It is just right now the iFad has taken over and people want touchscreen on bigger screens than their phones. Tablets only do a half-ass job at real productivity. It is just an urge for gadgets geeks who want to buy something new. Most people who need to do real work still relies on a personal computer. It is premature for Apple to say we are living in the post-PC world. No, we are still living in it. Over 450M sold for Windows 7 is proof of that and I don't see real laptops and desktops dying off anytime soon especially with smartphones starting to have bigger screens. It is just that the PC has reached a saturation point in sales while tablets is still not peaking yet.
.
Click to expand...

Huge sales yes, fading no.

I believe that we will see more and more mobile devices and huge screens (50"), and between them nothing. 15, 17, 20, 2x " will disappear from home systems. People will use their mobile devices to project contents on huge screens. Mobile device is going to be the next personal computer.
 
Danoc said:
Huge sales yes, fading no.

I believe that we will see more and more mobile devices and huge screens (50"), and between them nothing. 15, 17, 20, 2x " will disappear from home systems. People will use their mobile devices to project contents on huge screens. Mobile device is going to be the next personal computer.
Click to expand...

I still think people will have 30-40" screens for quite a while. Remember we're still in a severe economic depression.
 
KingCrimson said:
Remember we're still in a severe economic depression.
Click to expand...

True, but the cost of mobile devices is less than the cost of traditional laptops or desktops. Their carbon footprints too.

Large screens will be part of home conception. Their cost will decline when the production outlets rise.
 
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