News - Windows 9 to be a free upgrade for Windows 8 users

[tribaljet]

I struggle to see what is wrong with Windows 8? 7 was slow and looked like vista. Windows 8 was much better in my opinion and has always worked flawlessly for me.

That has been discussed many times by many people. The bottomline of Windows 8 is that there were far too many wrong UI design decisions made while disregarding active user feedback and cherry picking people for test groups. Aside from that, there were features removed without any need whatsoever, but then again that has happened at each new Windows iteration. The redeeming point of Windows 8.x is that there are indeed palpable improvements under the hood, and alongside the possibility to restore lost functionality, made the OS worthwhile for me to upgrade to and not wanting to move back to Windows 7 at all.

Now, the waiting game for ISOs has begun (well, a bit too early for that but still) as they will inevitably surface. I simply refuse to use the Store for downloading anything at all, didn't need to use it to get a legit 8.1 ISO and will use whatever proper workaround there will be by then.

[loccothan]

I like MS

[RobbieRoy]

The unlawful are not silicon carbide?



Personally, I'd have said the mock latin is more pretentious, since it implies either a sad ignorance of latin yet an attempt to pretend to it, or a knowledge of it but a dubious attempt to be cool by perverting it, depending on whether the user is aware it's mock or not.

It actually comes from a WW2, and is a mock-latin aphorism thought to be from British Intelligence. It was used in a 1953 unofficial Harvard University song and is on the desk plate of the US House of Representatives Speaker.

So, no pretention in my post, just a fun reference to an existing saying I used to lighten the mood with some subtle self mocking.

(btw, my favourite comedic reference to pretention is from Fawlty Towers)

[Saracen]

To be fair, renaming Vista SP3 to Windows 7 appeared to sate the ire of those put off by the Vista branded system, once you got past the bad press Vista (and 8) were solid improvements on their predecessors. I suspect that bolting a start menu onto 8.1 will do a similar trick. Frankly, if they'd have included a tick box option in 8 to do so I think a lot more people would have stuck with it long enough to notice the other significant under the hood improvements made.

...

On the first point .... exactly. Calling it Win 9 looks rather like an attempt to reboot the bad PR .... and IF they sort the underlying issues, it'll probably work. It would also account for it being "free", which if it is effectively a service pack, it should be anyway. More slick PR.

On the second point, I'd say that that suggests two possibilities. Some existing users saw the "under the hood" improvements, and decided they justified putting up with the changes. But some of those that decided the "under the hood" changes didn't justify putting up with the UI. That would include me.

And I agree, a user-selectable option of UI probanly woukd have done it. But for me, it goes a bit deeper than start menu. Start menu is necessary for me, but not suffucient. I want to be able to disable MUI entirely, and boot to desktop (yes, I know we can now, before someone tells me) and STAY in desktop mode, 100% of the time, with no context switching. I don't have any interest in Metro apps, whether single screen or multiples.
I just wonder how serioysly MS are prepared to address the dissenter's objections. My suspicion is that it'll be the minimum they can, and be at least 50% PR schmooze. Time will tell, but basing it on past form ....

[Saracen]

I struggle to see what is wrong with Windows 8? 7 was slow and looked like vista. Windows 8 was much better in my opinion and has always worked flawlessly for me.

As long as :-

- I don't get metro apps
- I can completely avoid MUI
- I don't get those horrible tiles
- I don't get context switching to MUI at all
- I'm not pushed too far into MS cloud integration (which means not at all, in my case)
- I don't HAVE to have an MS account, and can still have a local account, and
- I get the blasted menu functionality back ....

.... I'd probably agree.

And yes, I know I can avoid cloud integration and MS accounts ... for now .... but it seems to me that the direction of travel MS want to go in is clear, and I'm not going there.

[crossy]

So, no pretention in my post, just a fun reference to an existing saying I used to lighten the mood with some subtle self mocking.

It worked ... you set it up and Saracen delivered the punchline. LOL

[spacein_vader]

Now, the waiting game for ISOs has begun (well, a bit too early for that but still) as they will inevitably surface. I simply refuse to use the Store for downloading anything at all, didn't need to use it to get a legit 8.1 ISO and will use whatever proper workaround there will be by then.

Why refuse to use the store, does it make any difference that the name of the application on the taskbar is 'Windows Store' rather than 'Windows Update'?

On the first point .... exactly. Calling it Win 9 looks rather like an attempt to reboot the bad PR .... and IF they sort the underlying issues, it'll probably work. It would also account for it being "free", which if it is effectively a service pack, it should be anyway. More slick PR.

On the second point, I'd say that tgat suggests two possibilities. Sone existing users saw the "under the hood" improvements, and decided they justified putting up with the changes. But some of those that decided the "under the hood" changes didn't justify putting up with the UI. That would include me.

And I agree, a user-selectable option of UI probanly woukd have done it. But for me, it goes a bit deeper than start menu. Start menu is necessary for me, but not suffucient. I want to be able to disable MUI entirely, and boot to desktop (yes, I know we can now, before someone tells me) and STAY in desktop mode, 100% of the time, with no context switching. I don't have any interest in Metro apps, whether single screen or multiples.
I just wonder how serioysly MS are prepared to address the dissenter's objections. My suspicion is that it'll be the minimum they can, and be at least 50% PR schmooze. Time will tell, but basing it on past form ....

On the 2nd point I'd suggest there is actually a 3rd group alongside those you mentioned: Those who like the new UI and find it preferable.

As long as :-

- I don't get metro apps
- I can completely avoid MUI
- I don't get those horrible tiles
- I don't get context switching to MUI at all
- I'm not pushed too far into MS cloud integration (which means not at all, in my case)
- I don't HAVE to have an MS account, and can still have a local account, and
- I get the blasted menu functionality back ....

.... I'd probably agree.

And yes, I know I can avoid cloud integration and MS accounts ... for now .... but it seems to me that the direction of travel MS want to go in is clear, and I'm not going there.

It strikes me that adding a start menu to the current 8.1 options would solve all of those problems, as once 8.1 is configured to boot to desktop you would never see the MUI with a start menu installed unless you use Metro apps which you don't. As you say, all the other issues (cloud etc) are optional.

Unless MS take the 'give with one hand, take away with the other' approach obviously.

On a personal note, save from the second between hitting the start key & hitting enter when I've finished typing the application name I don't see the MUI already, so there isn't far to go.

[Corky34]

Why refuse to use the store, does it make any difference that the name of the application on the taskbar is 'Windows Store' rather than 'Windows Update'?

Last time i checked i didn't need to provide my name, gender, address, DOB, and phone number just to use Windows Update.
Or read through endless privacy statements on how the data collected on me is used.

[tribaljet]

Last time i checked i didn't need to provide my name, gender, address, DOB, and phone number just to use Windows Update.
Or read through endless privacy statements on how the data collected on me is used.

This. I will not be forced to enter data I'm unwilling to, hence the Store isn't an option for me.

[spacein_vader]

Last time i checked i didn't need to provide my name, gender, address, DOB, and phone number just to use Windows Update.
Or read through endless privacy statements on how the data collected on me is used.

My apologies. I didn't realise the Store forced you to do this.

[SkAMA]

Need to upgrade to 8.1 this vista 32bit is bad and slowww

[Corky34]

My apologies. I didn't realise the Store forced you to do this.

The Windows Store in and of it's self doesn't force you to do that, but if you want to do anything beyond browsing you have a great deal of hoop jumping to do in order to avoid using a Microsoft account and that does.

I guess in the coming hours, or months we will find out if the rumor that Windows 9 comes with a new activation method that ties it to a (possibly) enforced Microsoft account were correct or not.

[anselhelm]

The real litmus tests for me will be:

(1) Desktop mode works at least as well as Windows 7.
(2) I can upgrade in-place from my Windows 7 installation.
(3) There is a cheaper pre-order price.
(4) ALL (and I mean ALL) my programs (especially games) will work.
(5) There's an actually-tangible improvement over Windows 7.

If there's a possibility that I might experience issues, then simply put I will give it miss. I have neither the time nor patience to troubleshoot a new operating system where the old one is working fine.

With previous ones, there was a clear incentive to upgrade for new features or stability. If Windows 9 doesn't give me a clear reason to upgrade, then I don't see the point.

[tickedon]

Some home users are still stubbornly sticking to 32bit. I doubt it's driven by business too much as all Microsoft terminal servers are now 64bit only, so they obviously don't care that much about backwards compatibility in the workplace!

Nope, businesses too Although the server stuff might be x64 only, we like many others still run 32bit copies of Windows on our workstations. When we rolled out new desktops 4.5 years ago, there was no compelling reason to go 64bit on a machine with only 2GB of RAM but plenty of reasons to stick with 32-bit (known quantities, drivers, other software etc).

Any machines we purchased in the last few years were also generally shipped with 32-bit OS images, even if they had 4GB ram, and this also simplifies our updates and maintenance (our AV requires a different package deployment on x64 vs x86 etc.). It is only now that we have started to mix in 64-bit OS images, and that's only because it was a new office and all the machines were going to be delivered with x64 images, so it made sense and didn't really add much extra work to configure the local servers to send out x64 packages etc.

[Output]

Logic would suggest that Windows 9 would be the name of the next version, but instead they've gone with Windows 10.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29431412

[LSG501]

Hmmm.

If this is true, about Win9 being free to Win8 users, it does make me wonder if it amounts to a tacit admission that Win8 has been, overall, a disaster, certainly in PR terms, and that so-called Win9 will be what Win8 ought to have been?

Having just seen the announcement for windows 10 I'd put it more down to the fact that on the surface it's more of a service pack update for windows 8, in the same way xp got new features with sp2.
It could have easily been passed off as 8.2 from what I've seen.

Apple have done the same a few versions ago when it wasn't much of an upgrade so they went cheap pricing with the hardware making up the profit loss.