Microsoft wants you to forget Windows 8

[Firefox]

Microsoft wants you to forget Windows 8

Look to Vista for how Redmond will treat Windows 8 as it moves on to the next bright, shiny OS

Computerworld - As talk of the next Windows begins to build and some details of what most are calling for now either Windows 9 or Threshold come into focus, it's worthwhile to take a moment to remember Windows 8.

Because Microsoft will want everyone to forget it. And we will.

Unless the Redmond, Wash. technology company radically changes its habits, it will throw Windows 8 down a memory hole even before the successor ships. Just like it made Vista persona non grata in its official messaging in 2009, it will shove Windows 8 so far into the background that we'll need the Hubble telescope to find it.

Not that that's unusual. All companies fake amnesia to a stunning degree, even when what they want to forget -- more importantly, what they want customers to forget -- was once trumpeted with Joshua's band. Ford tossed the Edsel into the don't-mention file, Coca-Cola did the same with New Coke, Apple erased the Performa and Ping from its corporate memory, and IBM would be hard pressed to admit it ever knew the PCjr or OS/2.

It's always about next year's shiny object, not last year's.

Vista redux

To see the future for Windows 8, look at how Microsoft treated Windows Vista -- the 2007 edition that launched late and quickly garnered negative reviews that painted a reputation from which it never recovered.

In the months leading up to the launch of Windows 7, Vista's successor -- and a wildly successful one at that -- Microsoft came close to banning the word "Vista" from press releases, its most official line of communications to the media, investors, partners and customers.

From January through October 2009 -- the latter was Windows 7's launch month -- Microsoft mentioned "Vista" in just one press release headline or the single-line synopsis accompanying a headline. During the same stretch, Microsoft used "Windows 7" 16 times.

In comparison, three years later, during the January through October 2012 run-up to Windows 8's debut, Microsoft mentioned "Windows 7" in 6 press release headlines or summaries, and used "Windows 8" 14 times.

So while a failure...............

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[daledoc1]

"W8, W8, we hardly knew ya'!"

[Spud]

The question we should all be asking is: Will the next OS release by Microsoft be any better than Vista or Windows 8?

[daledoc1]

Historically (at least since 98ish), every other OS has been a "keeper".

So, let's hope so.

Otherwise I see another "extended support lifespan" announcement for Win7 (similar to that for XP) sometime around XMas 2014?

(After all, think about all those Enterprises who just moved from XP to 7.  I don't see them dumping 7 for H8 or even 9 anytime soon...)

 

<pure, idle speculation>

[pondus]

Satya Nadella Just Made The Single Best (And Most Obvious) Decision For Microsoft Windows

http://www.businessinsider.com/nadella-merges-windows-phone-windows-2014-7

[David H. Lipman]

...Coca-Cola did the same with New Coke, ...

That's what I have been stating for many, many, months.  I even stated it to Microsoft representative when I was on the phone with Microsoft in the beginning of November '13. 

 

I have repeatedly stated that Microsoft FAILED to learn from history and the lessons learned from competition between Coke-Cola and Pepsi Cola.  Microsoft was trying to be like Apple just like Coke-Cola was trying to be like Pepsi.

 

The lesson is so simple.  Just Be Yourself ! 

[Firefox]

Even if the call it Threshold, I thinks folks will still call it 9....

[CWB]

"As long as they try to make the os more like a computer and less like a fisher - price product it should do fine."

 

CFA

 

when they release this supposed new OS , i wonder if they are going to cut users a break on the price on changing from W7 or (more to the point) W8.1 ?

yeah , riiiight ...

/me checks the sky for aviating members of the porcine family .

[ethanwdp]

If they go back to the normal formula, which is improving upon the previous OS, I'll immediately upgrade to Windows 9 or threshold or whatever.

[catscomputer]

Interesting topic. I have laptop running Vista and laptop running Windows 7. I'm just a home user and I don't know if it's just me, but I find there is very little difference between the to two OS. My Win7 is tons faster than my Vista laptop but the specs of the Win 7 laptop are a lot better, and so you'd kind of expect that. Also my Vista laptop is 8 years old. I admit I only came to use Vista right after SP1 had been released, so not sure what it was like before then, but I've not had a single problem with it to date. Serious question - why do people hate Vista so much? Have I just been lucky to have never had a problem with it? I preferred Vista to XP, truth be told. I've yet to use Win 8/8.1.

[Mark]

No worries catscomputer, you're not alone. I ran Vista here on my main box for about 3 years and enjoyed it lots. I had purchased a new rig with enough horsepower at that time (quads had just come out). I was a little apprehensive so I installed XP alongside as well (multi-boot). Turns out XP accumulated dust.

Windows 7 is a *lighter* Vista, both are very similar in many aspects. I never had one problem with Vista here, even before SP1. You are correct though that Vista requires more robust hardware than W7 to run freely. I can't blame many-many Vista users for complaining, mostly because manufacturers were shipping Vista desktops and laptops with insufficient RAM and slow processors, so the computing experience became very painful. As in 3-4 minutes to boot to the Desktop type thing. I saw many Vista Basic machines with 512MB of RAM, and Home Premium equipped ones with 1GB, which is way inferior to what was needed. With slow single core Celerons or Semptrons. I tested such machines and wanted to throw them out the window... This wasn't all Microsoft's fault, but Vista did hit the streets with real high power/resource requirements and computer manufacturers underestimated this badly. Those with decent hardware didn't experience Vista the same way.

[catscomputer]

Hey Mark. Your explanation about the low spec processors and insufficient RAM certainly explains a lot. Many old XP rigs had only 512MB or 1GB RAM. I think my old XP box had only 256MB RAM, but the less said about that POS old computer the better! It crashed and froze constantly. My Vista laptop had 2GB RAM and an old AMD Turion processor which was very low spec by todays standards, but gave me no issue running Vista HP. My new laptop is a beast in comparison though, hehe.

 

I love Win7 and am in no hurry to upgrade. I'll only do so when this computer bites the dust or Win7 isn't well supported anymore. I think it'll be the former scenario rather than the latter.

[Mark]

Hey cats

 

Yeah exactly, the hardware step from 9x/XP to Vista was enormous and many thought they could simply upgrade to Vista. Nope. Microsoft didn't help either by lowballing the requirements when Vista came out. Manufacturers sold way too many machines with *minimum specs*, to try and keep prices down. Fast dual cores and new quads were available but expensive and RAM wasn't cheap either, IIRC. During the Vista years, processors really progressed and so did HDD transfer speeds (from IDE to SATA I, II and then III). RAM got much quicker (SDRAM to DDR1, 2 then 3), and cheaper. So by the time W7 rolled out, a lot of us had much more power available than the minimum W7 specs required. That made the W7 launch a whole lot easier for MS and manufacturers.. because you could now buy power PCs for less than $1000, or a decent one for $500.

 

I have W8 installed on two machines, but I don't use it much. I tweak it to run like W7 and that way it's fine (on non touchscreens). I did have to use a third party shell, which is kinda ridiculous­. Hoping W9 will bring full Desktop functionality back as an option for those of us who still use computers to get real work done...

Edit to add : main machine here has W7

 

[/Rant]

[David H. Lipman]

For many years I stated that hardware drove the software.  That is the software was being written based upon the hardware presently deployed. 

 

At some point, and I forgot the relative time frame when that paradigm shifted, the software drove the hardware.  That is the software then caused the hardware manufacturers to ramp up and meet the needs of the software.  This was in the areas of;  Primary and Secondary Storage, Computing power and Video.

[Mark]

It makes sense the way you put it. From my perspective, the paradigm shifted somewhere early in the Vista stint. I started *home computing* late Win95 early Win98. I could easily run AutoCad (v14) from the Win98 machine that had only 128MB of RAM and a 500Mhz Athlon processor, with Norton antivirus in the background of course. That was a beast

 

When XP rolled out, a lot of the older hardware was capable of running it. The hardware race was slow to progress, with processors gaining only 100Mhz every other month and RAM prices staying through the roof for a long time. Vista was the game changer I think. PC sales started to level off in favor of tablets so the PC hardware makers had to kick it up in a big way. Boy did we see improvements and price drops. I honestly think that if SSDs had been cheaper sooner, we'd have seen much less PC sale decreases over the past few years. The SSD is possibly the new game changer, getting PCs up to speed with tablets. Too little too late, maybe...

[AdvancedSetup]

The real change was Windows 3.0 (in my way of thinking) - Microsoft wanted to do many things but couldn't because the hardware was not fast enough to support those new features. Once the hardware caught up they put 3.0 out.

 

From Microsoft:

 

On May 22, 1990, Microsoft announces Windows 3.0, followed shortly by Windows 3.1 in 1992.

 

A new wave of 386 PCs helps drive the popularity of Windows 3.0. With full support for the Intel 386 processor, programs run noticeably faster. Program Manager, File Manager, and Print Manager arrive in Windows 3.0.

[AdvancedSetup]

From my point of view the 2 most obvious speed improvements were

 

Windows 3.1 - going from 4MB or RAM to 8MB of RAM was like night and day and even a novice could easily see the speed improvement.

Don't recall the exact date but sometime around 2009 / 2010 when Flash-based SSDs became affordable to the general public. The SSD is undeniably a vast speed improvement over a standard mechanical hard drive.

 

There are certainly many improvements along the way but those 2 really stick out in my mind as the most bang for the buck speed improvements.

 

I'm not expecting to see anything in Windows 9 (or whatever they call the next version) to come along and match one of these.

[Mark]

I wasn't computing in the Windows 3.1 days so I missed that. I believe you though, haha.

 

 

I'm not expecting to see anything in Windows 9 (or whatever they call the next version) to come along and match one of these.

I think W9 won't be the big success that a lot of folks are expecting from the cycle we've been accustomed to (one great system and then a dud, then one great etc...). W8 is definitely a dud, but the way MS thinks right now, the focus (obsession ?) on mobile will still be very present in W9 I'm sure. Let's dream for a second that we'll somehow get an option to work from a full Desktop again ; what could it bring that would make us forget the W7 Desktop experience ? We need something big to beat W7, and I'm not sure the current management has what it takes to deliver that in time for 2015... I hope W9 is good enough though.

[AdvancedSetup]

Oh I hear ya. The current CEO and other big wigs at Microsoft have flat out said they think mobile is the future and they're going to drive there with the product. Personally for me there have been only minor improvements since Windows 98SE in the GUI department. As far as I'm concerned if they pretty much left the GUI like it was in 98SE and updated "most, not all" the improvements from XP, Windows 7, 8 and put under the hood we'd all be happy. Then have a button you click that says "I want the phone-mobile look" and bang it looks like Windows 8 and the rest of us can stay with the older look and use.

[David H. Lipman]

I wasn't computing in the Windows 3.1 days so I missed that. I believe you though, haha.

 

I started with an IBM PC/XT, 10MB HD, Hercules mono card, 1MB RAM, serial mouse with Windows 1.0.  We had to install RAM chips 9 per row (8 for data, 1 for parity)

Been using Windows ever since and have used just about every ¹flavour.  Been through EMS, XMS memory as well 286 and 386 versions.  Upgraded 286 systems with 386sx chip-kits and Completely Universal IO Design (CUPID) systems.  XT, AT and ATX, ISA and EISA as well as the short lived Micro Channel Architecture (MCA).

 

I remember Microsoft playing "catch up" to Invisible Networks, LANtastic and others when they, MS, added NDIS2 and WINSOCK to Windows 3.1 to make Windows v3.11 (aka;  Windows for Workgroups - WfW ).

 

--

 

A choice of User Interface "skins" would be the *BEST* way to proceed.  Classic and Metro.

 

{ Just like in the Classic Coke metaphor }

 

I also think skin choice should be available for MS Office.

 

Ribbon Skin

or

Pull-Down Menu skin

 

---

1.  With NT I didn't start until NT v3.51 and still have the books for the NT Resource Kit.