Imagining the Future of Windows 8

Exavior said:
Emission said:
Oh hell yeah.[/QUOTE

if you agree that the console is better in terms of cost then why have them go away from it and go with the most expensive option?
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Honestly, I didn't know which you were referring to. I thought you said the PC was more economical, and in my opinion, it's substantially more economical when you can have one device that does everything, instead of two devices. Having two devices is rather un-economical considering how underpowered the 360 is and how little functionality it has in comparison to a computer. Even the cheapest of the gaming computers aren't that much more expensive than a 360 would be, and yet substantially more useful.
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Give me the ability to finally display the seconds of the time on the Taskbar. :rolleyes:
 
i think microsoft should just release an xbox emulator for like $50 that people can put on their computer, crank up the graphics, and play xbox games. (although i guess they would have to get an hd-dvd drive for their computers.)
 
to add to my post, that way the majority of xbox gamers (who dont have gaming-quality computers) can keep getting the new xbox consoles and playing on their shitty controllers, and we can use our computers with real video processing power and mouse+keyboard.
 
ekuest said:
to add to my post, that way the majority of xbox gamers (who dont have gaming-quality computers) can keep getting the new xbox consoles and playing on their shitty controllers, and we can use our computers with real video processing power and mouse+keyboard.
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Not a bad idea. Only thing is that it might actually eat into the xbox sales, but what do I know. I'd prefer it though.
 
full hardware 3d intregation. what else does a 3d card do...? ...hardware accelarated gui.
 
I would hope this xbox for windows lets you play against the baby xboxer's with controllers. The keyboard and mouse is far superior to controllers in FPS type games.
 
Emission said:
Not a bad idea. Only thing is that it might actually eat into the xbox sales, but what do I know. I'd prefer it though.
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thats the best part. doesnt microsoft lose money on the console, or at least make very little profit? i know thats how it was for the original xbox. they make their money off xbox live subscriptions and dlc.
 
ekuest said:
i think microsoft should just release an xbox emulator for like $50 that people can put on their computer, crank up the graphics, and play xbox games. (although i guess they would have to get an hd-dvd drive for their computers.)
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I had the same thought. There actually are Xbox emulators already available, that appear to run everything perfectly. All MS would have to do it make it more polished/easy to use. Why add bulky dedicated hardware to a PC when you can emulate it in better quality/faster with modern systems?
 
PynkFloydd said:
Virtual Xbox?! Nooooooo

Just bought an Xbox for the Kinect. It's cool and all, but for those that don't know Live, they charge for everything. A gold subscription is required for multiplayer and there's no such thing as free DLC. That's not even bringing in the controller vs. mouse debate. Oh yeah...and release titles are an average of $10 more (from what I've glanced at) for Xbox. Aside from a few cool exclusives that aren't on the PC (like Gears of War or Red Dead Redemption), I'll never buy a Xbox version over the PC version.

So, no thanks on Xbox for the PC! Steam is already that and more...
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You're my hero.
 
Don't really play games anymore (virtually never) but i do like the idea of an in-built xbox360, i'm sure it'll lead to a bit of a merging between the two platforms. as it is today pc games are like configurable xbox games supporting the 360 controller out of the box. i'm sure that newer games for the xbox with begin to cater more for the pc market and they'll know they're on a pc and support pc peripherals, graphics and options. perhaps one day the microsoft gaming platforms will be one having basically 'windows' games that detect if you're using an xbox360 (or even next gen microsoft console) and change the menus accordingly.

this will somewhat heavily handedly 'encourage' to release console and pc games simultaneously if they want sales in the leading console's market. rather than the 6 month to indefinite delay for the pc version's release. also with more and more of these games having in-built support for a mouse/keyboard will allow the console to come out with them because there'll be a wide range of games to justify their release.

my missus would love it because then you'd be able to run a guitar for guitar hero, she loves that game but there's no pc version and i'm not buying an xbox just for that crap game.

it'll facilitate transition to the next gen console with games starting to have specs on the back. minimum requirements xbox360 or windows 8 *basic pc specs* and recommended xbox 3 or windows 8 *better pc specs*.
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
Maybe they can dumb down the interface even more, and get rid of more simple but very useful features like say, listing the amount of space the files in a dir take up, or getting rid of the up directory button while adding a billion different other navigation methods.
 
Im quite content with windows 7, hard to see where more innovation could be had but w.e.

Maybe for all the folks that think the desktop is the only place for shortcuts and files, a dumbed down organization innovation for them?
 
OldSchool said:
Maybe they can dumb down the interface even more, and get rid of more simple but very useful features like say, listing the amount of space the files in a dir take up, or getting rid of the up directory button while adding a billion different other navigation methods.
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In an Explorer window, click the folder you wish to navigate to in the 'address bar'. Having breadcrumb navigation is really quite a bit more intuitive than "press up button repeatedly until you are where you want to be". Alternatively, use Alt+Up Arrow to go up one folder level.

Never hurts to read the documentation.
 
Emission said:
Exavior said:
Honestly, I didn't know which you were referring to. I thought you said the PC was more economical, and in my opinion, it's substantially more economical when you can have one device that does everything, instead of two devices. Having two devices is rather un-economical considering how underpowered the 360 is and how little functionality it has in comparison to a computer. Even the cheapest of the gaming computers aren't that much more expensive than a 360 would be, and yet substantially more useful.
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maybe i misunderstand the person that you were refering too. i thought they were saying that while shitter that it was still more economical.

I still don't see the point of having a virtual xbox. what do you gain? if you want to play games on your computer then play computer games. The point of a console is being able to play all games without the need to worry about hardware. If you make a virtual console, it wouldn't matter if your computer get faster the games would still look the same on your high end gaming computer as they do the worse piece of shit you could buy. otherwise if they did look better on your higher end computer than you would have to start worrying about hardware and at that point you are making a computer game, so there is no need to make the console game. Console games can be made by a company knowing that every system will have the same specs so they will all perform the same. A virtual system takes that away from them and gives them a PC.
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Exavior said:
maybe i misunderstand the person that you were refering too. i thought they were saying that while shitter that it was still more economical.

I still don't see the point of having a virtual xbox. what do you gain? if you want to play games on your computer then play computer games. The point of a console is being able to play all games without the need to worry about hardware. If you make a virtual console, it wouldn't matter if your computer get faster the games would still look the same on your high end gaming computer as they do the worse piece of shit you could buy. otherwise if they did look better on your higher end computer than you would have to start worrying about hardware and at that point you are making a computer game, so there is no need to make the console game. Console games can be made by a company knowing that every system will have the same specs so they will all perform the same. A virtual system takes that away from them and gives them a PC.
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Seems like it makes a little more sense when you put it that way, but if thats the case then I might as well just ask them to stop making "console exclusives" and make all of those games for the PC too.
 
And I was trying to say that my computer is more economical in the sense that it can do a lot more than my xbox ever could, and is upgradeable. Not like you can swap out processors and video cards in the xbox.
 
Hey, there's even a release date now, January 7, 2013.
That's the latest news from Motherland Russia. I hope it's not from the same guys who falsely announced SP1 last Friday, but I fear that with a name such as "Apocalypse Edition," it' just another rumor.

Curiously, winrumor.com is expecting a release as soon as October this year (they are raving mad) until October next year tops, which would make much more sense. Like Windows 7, it seems to be just a new revision of Vista, version 6.2, so hopefully there won't be many technical delays that would prevent Microsoft from launching at their planned date, whatever it is.
 
Curiously, winrumor.com is expecting a release as soon as October this year (they are raving mad) until October next year tops, which would make much more sense. Like Windows 7, it seems to be just a new revision of Vista, version 6.2, so hopefully there won't be many technical delays that would prevent Microsoft from launching at their planned date, whatever it is.
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Last I checked, Microsoft hadn't made any announcements as to version number, so anything is pure speculation. That being said, the version number doesn't indicate "just a revision" of anything. ALL of the Windows NT-based products (NT 3.1, 3.5, 3.51, 4.0, 2000, XP, Vista, 7) are "just revisions" of the NT products that came before them. In all likelihood, 6.0 vs 6.1 for Windows Vista and 7 had more to do with the appcompat problems of upping the version number (there are plenty of incompetent developers out there who don't know that >= is an operator and just use ==) than anything else. Version numbers are largely arbitrary, so it's easiest to change the part that won't break legacy apps.
 
It is no speculation, the current Windows 8 builds (shown at CES) are all numbered 6.2 internally.

True, version numbers are arbitrary, but I wouldn't call the "NT" versions of Windows you mentioned as minor revisions or even compatible. There's been too many changes not just in the GUI: The driver model changed, Windows moved to 64-bit, etc. "New Technology" is an 18 years old meme which has ceased to mean anything long ago.

Devs may make mistakes, but I think we should rather blame the software companies that don't issue updates once the problem is recognized and prefer to make us pay for an upgrade.
 
Windows 8 is going to be a HUGE change. ARM support, more modularity and dual UIs for touch and desktop. Regardless of the version number this is going to be the biggest change to Windows ever overall just from the UI and ARM support alone. The reason is simple, a whole new generation of apps will need to be developed to support all of this and there's never been a true din the box ual UI Windows before, that's huge, huge, huge.

The size and scope of what Windows 8 means I don't think is understood yet and I think the betas will need to come out VERY soon to make a late next year date, there's a TON of work third parties are going to have to do.
 
That will be a feat, given how much power Windows require to run, but is ARM really a factor of progress for Windows, or the other way round? It's a very old 32-bit technology, exactly as old as NT mentioned just before (18 years,) even if it has been updated ever since. Maybe they're talking about Windows Phone 8... ^-^

I am not sure I see the point in running Excel to view a spreadsheet on a small iPod or a phone or a Canon EOS, and I am not sure either if Microsoft will lower the price of ARM Windows enough to be adopted by tablet manufacturers, or that these tablets will be powerful enough for HD video and other modern applications.

But it's just my feeling, I have no idea what kind of changes you envision with Windows on ARM devices.
 
Chimel said:
But it's just my feeling, I have no idea what kind of changes you envision with Windows on ARM devices.
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The primary point of putting Windows on ARM devices is for the slate market, plain and simple. I envision a slimed down Windows on ARM, thinks like Media Center I would think won't have the recorder built-in, that type of thing. And I see more power optimizations in it as well.

Windows 8 ARM is Microsoft's consumer tablet strategy plain and simple and I pretty much expect it to have a UI and battery life to make it competitive with existing mobile OSes, otherwise what is the point? The pricing strategy will be intresting but I would figure that it will be competitive as price is also an issue with existing Windows slates, but that's mainly because of higher hardware costs for x86 compared to ARM devices.
 
Yeah I meant slates too by tablets, not "Tablet PCs". So you're in fact not interested by ARM, but by slates. And any programming that needs to be done will use Windows OS, not directly the ARM CPU instruction set, so you would probably be just as fine if Windows 8 did not support ARM but Intel designed a non-RISC low-price low-power chip for these mobile platforms. Not criticizing, still trying to imagine scenarios for Windows 8 on ARM devices. Well, maybe it's too early to tell at this stage.

It's good if it brings competition, but if it's going to be just a consumerist device, like a browser and media player, I think most owners would still prefer to go with Apple or the light Chrome OS than Microsoft. Even the slim and lean Linux seems to be in a better position to handle ARM devices. It seems that Microsoft is more reacting to products like Chrome OS and desperate to find alternatives to the Windows CE/Phone failure rather than leading the pack, so I wonder if their commitment will hold.
 
Chimel said:
Not criticizing, still trying to imagine scenarios for Windows 8 on ARM devices. Well, maybe it's too early to tell at this stage.
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No problem, at least you're thinking about it rational. What you're saying makes a lot of since. ARM hardware is just cheaper and more power efficient and I just don't see x86 matching ARM on cost and power anytime soon.

Since we don't know what any of this looks like or how well it will work who knows what customer will prefer. But if Windows 8 ARM can seamlessly work with Windows 8 x86 desktops and laptops, provide some compatibility with printers and that sort of thing and offer excellent productive experiences, why wouldn't it do well? Microsoft has a LOT of technology to throw at this problem, Surface, the canceled but I bet not forgotten Courier project and even Kinect. Think of slates that don't even need to be touched for interaction. Not saying that any of this is actually going to be the case but I think there's enough in the Microsoft toy box to deliever some very intresting and unique slate devices and experiences.

Remember, Microsoft is never first to the game, but they have that annoying habit of sitcking around until they hit the mark. Windows is a very good example of this. While they have their failures the sucesses have more than made up.

If Microsoft stays focused on delivering compelling and unique experiences and they are clearly capable of this, they will do just fine in this market. They simply haven't bothered with the slate market, one that they were in long before Apple and Google. They even had a Windows Mobile web browsing slate that was kind of launched along the Tablet PC, that was in 2002. For whatever reason they pulled it out of the market and it just vanished. Bizzare.
 
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