First look into Windows 8 at CES?

[va!n]

I know... i know... Windows 7 is the latest version Microsoft has released and personally i am very happy with this very stable version in most parts! So there are a lot rumours about the next Windows version (probally called Windows around and even on the net... And sure, i personally think about possible changes and improves for the next Windows.

The most rumours are, that the next Windows will use the new EFI for fast booting instead the old and outdated BIOS architecture! I am not really sure what to thing about EFI, when it comes to security, drivers directly stored inside EFI and so on... Sure, faster booting time and less memory usage would be nice! (Even when talking today about Gigs of HDDs i am very supried about the required GB space, a blank Windows7 needs and even how much memory even a simple app requires (like MS Calc == ~6-7 MB of required mem when take a look to the taskman)

Until MS releases any official papers/statements or the final Windows 8, all things are ofcourse rumours!

Believing some sources, MS will show Tablets and has plans to show a new operating system... (probaly an early version of Windows 8?) Sounds interesting! Rumours are saying that its possible that MS will show a first look into Windows 8 - even the biggest MS partners like Intel got a first windows8 milestone release!?

I am still looking forward to get hopefully very soon some official statements/infos from MS for the next Windows when it may come in 2012/2013... Its a long time and a lot things could changed in that time... even the market with Chrome, Android and Co

[staticgerbil]

I'm hoping that the next release of windows will be a lot more tablet friendly.

Since getting my iPad, I've found it so much more convenient to use a tablet.  Web surfing, document reading, email are all so much faster with a touchscreen and it's small enough that I can take it anywhere in the house and just set it down when if I need to chase a child

The point I'm slowly getting to is that I took a Windows7 tablet home from work the other day to test it out and Windows is quite.... clunky? to use with a touch screen.

Things like buttons on dialogs are hard to click as a lot of them are small and it was hard to press exactly where they were.

It did have a 3rd party program that kind of emulated iOS behaviour but it was buggy.

Sorry if that's a bit off topic but it is what I'm hoping to see in the next release. 

Either way I am looking forward to it.  Windows 7 is fantastic and they do seem to keep making positive steps with the OS.

[Shockwave]

I am very happy with Windows 7 to be honest, I'll probably not upgrade my O/S before I change my computer which means that I'll be using Windows 7 for the next 4 or 5 years...

[Pixel_Outlaw]

The funny thing is that the end user has been doing the same basic things with a computer since Windows 98.

Windows 7 is just a fixed version of Vista which provided little innovation over XP.

I really wish people would actually do something interesting in the mainstream with computers. Software always bloats to meed the demands of the new OS. I guess that is why I just can't get too excited about a new Windows release. Sorry if I came across negatively.

[va!n]

I'm hoping that the next release of windows will be a lot more tablet friendly.

Have you ever heared about "Windows Embedded Compact 7" or tested it?
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/products/windowsce/compact7.mspx

Seems its a special version for tablets (Win CE 7 ?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMpzq57VV40

[staticgerbil]

I just had a look at the video and a quick browse of the site and it looks like it might be exactly what I was hoping for

If I can, I might try to steal that tablet again and throw a version of embedded on it to see how it goes.

[hellfire]

I am very happy with Windows 7 to be honest, I'll probably not upgrade my O/S before I change my computer which means that I'll be using Windows 7 for the next 4 or 5 years...

The same applies here, just that I'm still using XP.

[va!n]

I am very very happy with Win7 Ultimate x64 too - and i dont want ever downgrade to vista or XP anymore! Win7 is an OS worth to buy it!

MS announced some news of a new Windows OS for the CES! They are working on a new and full compatible ARM Windows version, features all functons as the windows desktop version! A first look to it may be shown at CES - probaly an early version of the new windows 8? ^^

Personally i like the idea to have an ARM version of Windows too!

[staticgerbil]

I grabbed an evaluation copy of Windows Compact 7 and it appears to be just a version of Windows 7 that allows you to remove any component you want from the installation.

Basically I picked the few things I wanted, mostly media related, it then added dependancies that I had missed. 

The whole install only took up about 1gb of my hard drive which was quite impressive and it did feel like it ran faster than the previous Windows 7 install that was on the tablet.

The OS however didn't appear to give me anything that was more tablet friendly than regular Windows 7 had.

I did some reading and currently Microsoft don't appear to be working on a nicer tablet UI for Compact 7 (that they are admitting to) and are relying on 3rd parties to install their own nice UI on tablets.  I did read that Windows 8 will probably have something though.

I've downloaded a trial of a nice UI that seemed to do the trick...
http://www.thinix.com/product.asp?p=8FDF2852-CE87-4FEB-A830-542F609F5959&t=downloads

Windows Media Center does work really well however with the touch screen.  If I only wanted to watch videos, pictures and listen to music, Media Center on it's own would work quite well.

[relsoft]

I am very happy with Windows 7 to be honest, I'll probably not upgrade my O/S before I change my computer which means that I'll be using Windows 7 for the next 4 or 5 years...

The same applies here, just that I'm still using XP.

Same here buddy.

[Jim]

->SG - Yeah, WC7 is effectively Windows 7 Embedded which follows Windows XP Embedded.  There was no Vista Embedded 'cos it just would not run properly on most embedded hardware.  The awesome thing about XP Embedded was you could pick the features - so, you might need the web browser - and then it would work out the dependencies and give you the minimum amount of XP that would be needed to support the browser - and then you can add just the drivers that support your hardware and no others.  You could get XP down to just a few 100Mb.

Jim

[staticgerbil]

Ah right, thanks for confirming my suspicions Jim

From the video that was linked I was thinking they might have been trying to somewhat emulate the iOS ui but after installing it I had nothing that looked remotely like the video.  Unless the video was just Media Center, it was a bit blurry and hard to tell exactly what was going on.

Either way, it was certainly a hard drive saver and did feel like it was running smoother which I guess is the point.

[Jim]

Mostly it meant that for the gear I was looking at, that had only 512Mb or 1Gb of flash, I could guarantee that there'd be a set amount of space left for the videos that also had to go on there.  The OS didn't really, day-to-day, run any quicker, though it probably booted a lot quicker.  And every box was identical, which is a massive win.

Jim

[Hotshot]

I did rather Stick to Window 7 and why bother with Window 8 after so soon! Thanks but no thank you Mr Mircosoft as I am happy to have window 7 for years to come! Thank you very much 

[va!n]

At the CES 2011 Microsoft showed some very interesting news. At least they showed a next Winodws version (Win7 GUI) which works on Intel CPU, AMD CPU and on ARM too!

I have different feelings about supporting ARM (another CPU instruction set which is not compatible with x86/x64/SSE/MMX). On the one side i really like the support of ARM CPUs known for fast speed and less power consumption in comporation to Intel/AMD! ARM devices are a growing marking! Hopefully consumers can build there own ARM based computers (towers) for less money as the expensive Intel CPUs and running the next version of Windows on it.

The other site of this interesting news is, about x86/x64/SSE/MMX based Software! I think MS will not build in something like an x86/x64 emulator to run this software on ARM! Companies/people have to port/recompile (probally rewrite code sections, esp when they used ASM) to have two version of a Software for Windows... The X86/X64 and for the ARM version...

I hope this does not split the windows world to much into two sections. Let us wait and see what 2011 and 2012 may bring us

You can watch a very interesting video from MS at the CES here:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/ces/videogallery.aspx?contentID=ces11_video_liveKeynoteDay1

[LittleWhite]

People are already working with ARM ... I mean most of the tablet and cell phone are using ARM processor. You have just to set your toolchain correctly.
GNU/Linux (like Debian) is highly compatible with less known CPU ... and it never causes so much problem.
If they want something good for software, we have to do some king of package system ... so something called Windows Market Place

We'll see anyway