Windows 8

[golden_boy]

This is Microsoft, folks. Do you really think they will let you play your xbox game on your desktop without buying a second DVD?

[bluntz]

If I had to run windows
I'd shave my dogs but and teach it to walk backwards

[Bloodshot]

I wouldn't care if you had to have 2 copies of an xbox game to play it on your PC, because I don't own an xbox 360 There are several games I would really like to play though, but it's not worth it for me to shell out cash for a new system AND pay for an internet service just for a couple of games.

[MH]

don't forget the pattern:
win95: good - yay I don't need to know how to use dos!
win98: bad - eww, active desktop
win2k: good - the stability of a server!
winme: bad - will you please stop crashing?
winxp: good - win2k... shame about the dummified UI.
vista: bad - my god this thing is slow
win7: good - still slower than xp, but hardware more than covers the difference

windows 8: hmm...

imho with windows 8 they're focusing too much on tablets. it'll probably run faster than 7, but the ui+drivers etc will hurt its public acceptance on desktops as it did with vista.

the xbox strings refer to a common namespace, rather than actual support. It implies they share header files between the two systems, but not that both systems will be the same.

Hah! Yeah, it's been the case that every second one is bad. I'm hoping for the best from Windows 8 as 7 has been a great baseline to build from, but it's looking more and more like the "let's do lots of sexy new exciting stuff" people are taking over in MS again.

More's the pity. Will they ever learn that an OS is just a platform for running programs and doesn't need to be sexed-up in and of itself? Every time they do that they fail horribly, and every time they pull back from it they release something great, but they never seem to learn the lesson from the previous time.

[Bloodshot]

Maybe they realize it, but see it as a pattern. They might think if they break the pattern, they will just end up failing on all fronts and not making any good OSes

Or they just want people to want the flashy stuff

[Spike]

well, of the list of 'bad' versions, vista is the only bad one in the NT tree.
The stability issues come from bad drivers. The slowness comes from their attempt to sandbox drivers, slow drivers (that had to be quickly pushed out the door after the fairly major rewrite from xp), slow hardware (many manufacturers sold it on hardware that was below the minimum specs), and the absolutely appaling filesystem (note that 'longhorn' was meant to have a completely rewritten filesystem, which simply wasn't written in time for vista or even win7, so the fs is mostly an afterthought).

win2k(NT5.0) was not available in a home-user version. all the initial installations of it were in businesses (and servers) on known hardware, so the driver issue was much less. This means that drivers were actually available for most hardware by the time NT5.1(winxp) was released.
Conversely, vista was the first version of windows (since win95) released directly to home users with a fully rewritten driver interface (win95 was released back in the dos days, so there were not that many different sorts of hardware anyway, and what there was was generally fairly simple stuff).
So its unsurprising that vista got such a bad reputation.
I think they expected vista to be less popular than XP, with its 'pretty areo stuff' to boost it a bit.

I suppose that they expect win8 to be generally less popular than win7, but the integration with windows mobile+tablets should make it a worthwhile release none the less. By the time win9 is released, enough people will be acoustomed to win8 that win9 will be welcomed, and maybe we'll have some desktop monitors with touch interfaces too, by then.
For desktop users, I doubt win8 will be that different from win7, just more ribbons (yuck, but at least they're motivation to try to use the metro stuff).

Anyway, it'll be fun to see how well it actually does, and greater competition in the mobile sector is good despite microsoft using their desktop near-monopoly to try to be relevent there.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

Things like metro have no place on a desktop pc....


Convincing a tried and true PC user to abandon their Mouse for Touch-anything is like trying to get a Mouse user to try a trackball for the first time.

Its understandable with Pads or Tablets though, but Desktops? Plz

[Bloodshot]

Off topic, but I had to use a trackball once to move a mouse a little over a year ago - and it got me thinking it could possibly be a nice replacement for a joystick for aiming on a gamepad. The trackball definitely felt more "natural" in movement when I was playing an fps with it then a pad's joystick does. It's still nothing compared to a mouse, but it's definitely closer to a mouse then the joysticks on a 360 controller are.


EDIT:
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W38JTIKSGGw&feature=channel_video_title[/ame]

Damn it, I so should have capitalized on that.

[Grim Warlock]

Windows 7 is Vista with more simplification to it, in fact it's worse. Windows XP would've been good if it wasn't so ugly and simplified, I want a Windows with the pre-XP theme and more access. The worse thing that have done on Windows 7 is with Windows Media Player, seriously I think Microsoft just wants to piss people off.

[grave_digga]

I don't use the media player (vlc instead) and you could simply set the theme to Windows Classic which is pretty much like W2k. Windows 7 is a great OS which works like a charm. Well, at least on those 20 machines im responsible for.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

I'm a 7 fanboy ever since the move from XP.

7>XP..

Anyone using XP is missing out on some nice features of DX10/DX11.

[Bloodshot]

I've grown to really like 7, to the point where I don't really miss XP anymore.

There are however, several games I'd like to play which require XP or older unfortunately because you need to disable direct draw, which is impossible in 7

I did install win98 on a VM for nostalgia though. Shit's awesome.

[Grim Warlock]

List of features removed in Windows Vista - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
List of features removed in Windows 7 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[MadGypsy]

I've never really relied on the OS for features. I actually strip my OS (upon install) to be barely more than a shell and a driver library. I've actually only used windows this long because of compatibility with the programs that I use, but we're at a point where *nix versions of everything are being made.

My next machine is probably going to be a *nix OS with no internet connection. Powerful, clean and set-up for nothing but "work"

[Grim Warlock]

Windows is not Unix-based.