Windows 8 (Windows vNext) Riskiest Product Bet for Microsoft

[JMH]

Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer is considering the next version of Windows as the riskiest product bet by the Redmond company, according to a Mary-Jo Foley report.

Windows 8, or Windows vNext as Microsoft would prefer it, is for the most part a great unknown.

In the post-Longhorn/Vista era, the software giant is extremely careful with the details it shares about Windows operating systems still in planning or in development.

The public should expect Windows 8 to be treated no differently from Windows 7, and some might still recall that Microsoft only started revealing information on the successor of Windows Vista quite late in the development process, when the feature set was all but set in stone.

However, every once in a while, there are glimpses into what exactly is coming, and the small comment from Steve Ballmer is exactly this.

Ballmer is not discussing a roadmap, features, capabilities, etc., he’s simply stating that out of all Microsoft products planned over the next years, Windows 8 is the riskiest bet.

More -
Windows 8 (Windows vNext) Riskiest Product Bet for Microsoft - Softpedia

 

[Lebon14]

Agreed about the risky bet. Microsoft doesn't want another Vista (even though I like Vista )

 

[JMH]

Same topic, different source -

Steve Ballmer, Windows 8 Will Be Riskiest Product | Windows 8 News

 

[Lomai]

Maybe they will offer free upgrades to Windows 8 for those who are still on Windows XP
Vista and 7 users will still need the normal upgrade route

 

[bobtran]

The real risk is weather or not users will agree to go back to Microsoft's 3 year cycle. I would not be willing to bet that this will be a successful road-map on OS upgrades from this time into the future.....people are just a little bit less willing to continue with the disposable society than they were a couple of years ago.

Today's consumers are getting to be more corporate in their financial decisions and asking where is the ROI that justifies the cost of the upgrade.....currently the majority of XP users (50+ % of all Windows users) are totally unwilling to upgrade to Vista or Win7. The benefits do not outweigh the costs involved and their computers are still getting the job done just fine.

The upgrade path includes just too many incidental side effects like the need to buy new 3rd party apps to replace working software that is not compatible with the Vista/Win7 kernal as well as hardware and OS which money conscience consumers are less and less willing to part with without a good reason.

Mr. Balmer is right to be concerned.....Push too hard and it could cause a revolt among consumers just when Smart-phones and tablets are beginning to change the landscape of the next few years and not necessarily in the Desktop/laptop direction where Microsoft OS/Office dominate......Lets not forget that more and more companies are beginning/continuing to require employee's to provide their own IT equipment and that this will inevitably lead to a change in the way business is accomplished, weather by smartphone, internet tablet, some device currently unknown....

The server environment will continue as is for some time to come but the front-end is changing frighteningly fast where traditional companies like Microsoft are concerned.

 

[HerrKaLeun]

I don't think the 3 year cycle is bad itself. This ensures less dramatic changes with each iteration. Like with vista it was so far away from XP that the changes were so big that MS (and hardware manufacturers) couldn't handle them till SP1/2.

IT departments not wanting to switch frequently can skip one iteration and be on a 6-year cycle. (not that I agree with using outdated software......). Dang, it is 2010 and people still using XP are on a 9+ years cycle...

We won't get W7 at work before 2010 if at all then. Probably right before W8 comes out (we got Office 2007 right before 2010 came out). But how much money does it save to switch so late? The change must happen one way or another. It is better to make it as quick and painless as possible and not to extend the suffering needlessly. Since W 7 will lose all support in 2019 switching to W7 now would have given us 9 years of service at the same cost. since we get W7 next year or 2012 we have the same cost of change, but only 7 or 8 years of use.
Edit: when we purchase new laptops and desktops they come with a W7 license. Our IT department then installs XP since we "can't handle" such new software like W7. so we pay for W7, but don't even use it.

Of course there is a cost to upgrade. But there is a cost to not upgrade as well. that cost isn't seen easily, but exists and can be huge.

 

[Win7User512]

Could Windows 8 become a second Vista? We are not sure what Mr. Ballmer meant when he answered the question, but he surely must have known something at this point that the public does not.

Oh reallllly? You think? I mean, he's only the CEO.

 

[FerchogtX]

The problem itself with SO upgrades is the new stuff added, XP had some issues too before it's first SP... Vista had problems because of performance, most people wanted to install that OS in a 512 MB RAM Machine with an **ugh** Celeron D Processor and an onboard VGA that barely mannaged to show pixel shaders v1.1, even with greater systems Vista had performance issues until SP2 (SP1 was still slow, I tested on many machines)

Instead, with more dedication and love we got Windows 7, faster, safer and reliable, and it EVEN runs with 512 meg systems (tested against Vista)... What Microsoft need is not a 3 year cycle that results on hot-made not reliable OSes, they need to test extensively and release a solid product, like now is Windows 7...

JUst my point of view though...

See ya!!!

 

[marco100]

Windows 7 is fine but so is XP. I have Windows 7 on my new HP laptop because it came preinstalled/OEM. I have four older PCs all running XP and until it comes time to replace the hardware, there's just no reason for me to upgrade the OS on these machines.

I deliberately waited to buy a new laptop until Windows 7 was out and had been out for a while, skipping over Vista when I heard about the negative feedback.

The main applications in our family are word processing + web browsing. My son has started gaming but on the Xbox360 platform.

One thing I have to say that also might be relevant is that some of the Linux live distros seem to have finally gotten to the point where they actually run reasonably well for ordinary Joe consumer. I tried a few a couple of years back and could never get them to work right. Now however I've got Ubuntu 10.10 and a couple of other distros and they seem to be able to set up a desktop which allows basic/standard apps like web browsing, file copying and word processing to occur in the event of some horrible unrecoverable MS OS crash (which actually has never happened to me anyway).

I have one of the Linux distros running live off a USB flash drive and at this point, although I'm certainly not an Open Source fanatic, if Microsoft pushed too hard trying to sell me an OS that I really don't need, I feel reasonably confident that I could run everything I need (i.e. software apps) off one or the other Linux distros. I haven't actually installed any Linux distros primarily because when I first got the new laptop I messed around with the recovery partition (curses you HP recovery partition!) and ended up creating a few dynamic drives on the C: drive.

I've idly thought about trying to create a dual boot with a Linux distro and Windows 7 but just don't feel like messing around with wubi or doing anything that might make me need to do a clean install or mess around with bcd or restoring MBR or anything like that. (If I need to I would just check out the tutorials here of course.) I have an external USB hard drive and have been using Windows 7 backup including imaging to backup the hard drive, but I also have been using Clonezilla for redundancy which seems to work fine.

MSE also seems to be a pretty big improvement and with its availability lessens the need for a new OS just for security purposes.

In terms of my web browser I have to say I use IE virtually not at all. At some point a while back I started using Firefox and it generally works fine.

All this stuff is really just commoditized (is that a word?) and unless someone needs really cutting edge/high performance it doesn't seem apparent that thee year changes every year to the average user's OS is really necessary.

That is not to say Windows 8 won't be a great product and an improvement on Windows 7 but there has to be something pretty clear that I need that exists in Windows 8 but not in 7 or XP for lay down the cash for it. Otherwise I guess I will get it the next time I need to buy hardward, assuming I don't buy a used 7 or XP system on E-bay.

By the way I just wanted to say this is a GREAT forum.

 

[HerrKaLeun]

Marco100:

you are correct in that for your applications XP is fine and probably W2000 would do too. Same for the Linux OS you have. But the same I could say about a 1975 car which did the same as today's cars, bring me from A to B. But you probably find 1000 more reason here why W7 is useful and why updates (whether as new OS or SP) are needed.
- W7 (and vista) have better Taskamanger taking advantage of multi-core CPUs, even in single-threaded software. for some of my software thsi is 20% faster than in XP due to using multicore better. You need to consider, XP was designed in a single core 32-bit world.
- 64 bit really works well
- driver install automatically (for the most part)
- with new wide screen monitors aero snap makes working on multiple documents more productive, almost like dual-monitors
- inherently safer (yes, even if XP uses MSE, W7 with MSE still is safer)
- better with SSD (TRIM)

So you see with the progress in technology there is a good reason to upgrade. Of course, the competition of Apple and Linux forces MS to upgrade as well. Again, when you have an old existing system and are happy with it, XP is not a wrong choice. but for newer hardware, sophisticated productivity applications, W7 is much better.
When you buy a new PC with OS, you pay for the OS either way. Then you might as well get the most up to date one It costs the OEM $ 30 to buy the XP license, to buy a Vista license or to buy a W7 license (I'm making up the amount, but $ 30 s a good guess)

 

[Crispy]

Windows 8 in 2012, Now You See It, Now You Don’t

Microsoft has purged all mentions of Windows 8 from a company site in the Netherlands which revealed that the next major iteration of Windows is right on track for availability in 2012.

After confirming officially, but inadvertently, that the successor of Windows 7 is only a couple of years away, the software giant managed to easily go back to its traditional silence related to upcoming Windows client and server releases.

The latest statistics shared with the public on the operating system’s run on the market in the first year after general availability indicate that in excess of 240 million licenses have already been sold worldwide.

But even with Windows 7 immensely successful, Microsoft is treading extremely lightly, as to not steal any of the thunder away from Windows Vista’s successor.

The original post from Microsoft Netherlands which mentioned Windows 8 has been altered, and the focus placed on Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1), another forthcoming Windows release that Microsoft is not really talking about in terms of release deadlines, only saying that it’s due in by mid-2011.

“For Windows 7, Microsoft Service Pack 1. This service pack is still in the testing phase and is expected in the first half of next year available. The first update of Windows 7 is the new version of Windows Live Essentials (explore.live.com) became available in mid-June,” reads the Google translation of the article.

“Microsoft works For Windows 7 to Service Pack 1. This service pack is still in beta and expected to close in the first half of next year become available. The first update of Windows 7 is the new version of Windows Live Essentials (explore.live.com) became available in mid-June,” is the translation provided by Bing.

Does this change the fact that Windows 8, of Windows vNext as Microsoft wants to call it, is expected in 2012? Well, not really.

Even before Vista was done, Microsoft changed the pace at which Windows releases would be delivered, to once every three years.

It’s really not that difficult to do the math considering that Windows 7 was released in 2009, and to come up with 2012 as the year for Windows 8’s launch.

Source: Windows 8 in 2012, Now You See It, Now You Don’t - Softpedia

Dam JMH you beet me agian lol , oh well.

 

[Layback Bear]

To my way of thinking, (this is my opinion) Windows 8 will not come out as long as Windows 7 is selling the way it is. Unless Microsoft feels that all those XP users are waiting for Windows 8 so they can change over to a new operating system. Which means to me, why would a company that has many computers on XP change to Windows 7 when Windows 8 is just around the corner. A company can do their home work now on new hardware needed and then just jump over Windows 7 and go to Windows 8. If my opinion is even close, a company could get out of the 3 year cycle to more than a 6 year cycle. IMHO after a 6 year cycle new operating system will be 64 and 128 bit systems. Microsoft want to put XP in it's final resting place as a great operating system that just got old. My it rest in peace.