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So now Microsoft is going the way of Mozilla with Firefox.
Oh wow, fail.
Oh wow, fail.
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Microsoft Will Update Its Windows OS Every Year
- Thread starter CommanderFrank
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rudy
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So how is this different than the service packs they have to release? I am sure they do the same thing. The big difference here is that with service packs MS has always been shy about releasing new features, because new features are what they need to push people to a new OS, with a faster release cycle as soon as they come up with a feature they can plug it in within a year. A company that operates on MS software can always elect to stay behind a little longer to save costs, but I am guessing that MS is aware of this and is going to build things in a way that is helpful to those people.
Pieter3dnow
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Last update on windows 7 which has a severely crippled user interface set you back $30 if I'm not mistaken. For that money you get , nothing , except that you are $30 lighter in your wallet. You can however for your well spend $30 undo the user interface and replace with what you are used to in Windows 7.
When Valve and others finally decide to just go forth with Linux and the rest of you sheep understand that MS is never going to do something worthwhile with the OS except for grabbing your cash , you will not only jump ship but dare to be critical of what an Operating System should do and not will do to you.
It's not so much MS end, it's the software engineer/integrator end. There is pretty minimal testing with patches. Install your program, launch it, make sure it works fine.
With a new OS, you have to go through every single program that you make and make sure it works fine. Not to mention having to go through the whole process of having to lockdown the OS, install what you need to, make sure it all works. Then get it approved for use. By the time you go through that whole process, the next OS will be released.
I'm a government contractor and just to get an OS accredited for use takes over a year.
If you are talking about Windows 8, there isn't much wrong with it. No real difference between it and Windows 7, except you have a full screen start menu now. Under the hood, there are of course advancements, but none I make use of. It also cost me $0 to move to, since I have Technet.
I have icons on the desktop, I clip icons to the taskbar, I also like to do a ctrl+r and simply type in what I want. I rarely ever use the Metro UI. Those 3 things are simply faster than going into the Metro UI or even going into the start menu under Windows 7. Only time I really touch the Metro UI nowadays, is when I'm using my laptop in tablet mode. It's a lot easier to press the tiled icons, than go through the start menu. I prefer Win 8 on my laptop/tablet, than Win 7. Now, if only more programs were built for touch. Winamp is a pain to press buttons. I have to pull out my digitizer pen to use it.
rudy
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But you are not understanding me, what is the difference between a patch and an OS? Nothing they are arbitrary divisions based how much you sell it for, a patch is free and OS cost money if they start rolling out an OS every year it is going to be much closer to a patch and will require less testing.
Semantics
2[H]4U
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Windows 98SE anyone?
Weird how i'm the sheep but i didn't pay 30 dollars to make windows 8 look like windows 7 because i have half a brain and can learn something new. Funny how it apparently doesn't take that to learn to use linux but i guess i wouldn't be a sheep then touting linux.
Nope, entirely new GUI every year.
So just when you thought you figured out a menu, the shit changes. Technological musical chairs, woot!
rudy
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An exception does not make the rule.... Sure certain years are going to come with larger changes than others, some years maybe every 10 years they will need to completely gut most of it and start from the ground up, but most years things will flow pretty easy. I am just pointing out there is no reason to blow things out of proportion. MS as a company can only develop so fast and the testing load of software devs will correlate.
wonderfield
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To you?
That was my first thought. AMD drivers, Mozilla Firefox, Ubuntu... forcing regular and frequent updates never seems to end all that well.
This is only a problem for proprietary software.
Which is, unfortunately, a large part of the reason many people are using a computer in the first place.
For MS, sure. It'll be less testing. Testing methodology outside of MS is going to be different. It doesn't matter if the OS is going to be nothing more than a minor patch update of the old OS. It's still a new OS and will require you to go through a full set of testing, due to accreditation requirements. Even accreditation packages for a Service Pack takes close to a year.
All in all, I expect the government to start skipping OS's and MS losing out on money. The government will skip OS's and when they do buy a new one, it'll be cheaper. Upgrade every 2-3 years with a cost of like $400 an OS. Now it'll still be upgrade every 2-3 years with a cost of like $100 an OS.
rudy
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well since MS typically only gets out an OS every 3+ years maybe that wont matter, I think that is the trend they are seeing. And since the government and large corps will still skip their OS sometimes they would have to wait 6-7 years to cycle a new OS.
Or they could switch to something custom like LiMux ala Munich as save a bundle. Of course, that would require skill and effort something the most state and local agencies don't have in abundance.
It's not a matter of skill and effort, it's a matter of giving up part way through and reverting back. Weaning yourself off Windows is a huge headache. Both for the users and the administrators.
For many large enterprises, you'll be stuck migrating for 5+ years. Too much software that's simply incompatible with *nix and the need to have new software created, as none are available. As they move forward, they find this out during the years, and simply revert back. Other keep pushing forward.
Some large enterprises will have zero issues swapping, but they still take a long time to crossover. Other simply just move to some free software, like OpenOffice.
Also Munich isn't full *nix. Not yet. So far, it's not what I'd call "save a bundle." They saved 10 million euro over 7 years in licensing. Sounds like chump change when the city probably spends billions each year.
I'd prefer to see the cost increase required to make the migration move. Then later on, the job losses/increases.
Where I was previously working it was the other way around. Some genius in the administration decided a lot of things run on Windows, so they should try and reduce the Linux dependency by switching a lot of the Linux infrastructure to Windows. It lasted about 6 months and after sooooo many people complaining and sooooo many compatibility problems and soooo much headache for IT people they just gave up and reverted back to Linux.
Ya, it happens the other way too. When you're ingrained into Windows, Linux, or Unix, moving to something else is going to be a pain.
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Until Linux is a viable, consistent, fast, always stable OS call me. Until then, I will stick with what you call be a sheep.
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Until Linux is a viable, consistent, fast, always stable OS call me. Until then, I will stick with what you call be a sheep.
Of course I am referring to the Desktop, not servers.
Until Linux is a viable, consistent, fast, always stable OS call me. Until then, I will stick with what you call be a sheep.
Until Windows is a free, consistent, fast, always stable OS, call me.
I'll give you "viable" though, since it's often a pain in the arse to find software to do what you want to do. Other than a few shit versions of Ubuntu that gave me freezing and instability, all the Linux distros I've tried have been consistent, fast and stable.
In the end I find myself swapping between Linux and Windows much more than I want to because they both have glaring flaws.
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Until Windows is a free, consistent, fast, always stable OS, call me.
I'll give you "viable" though, since it's often a pain in the arse to find software to do what you want to do. Other than a few shit versions of Ubuntu that gave me freezing and instability, all the Linux distros I've tried have been consistent, fast and stable.
In the end I find myself swapping between Linux and Windows much more than I want to because they both have glaring flaws.
No argument from me, I always enjoyed trying it out on and off over the last 17 years. A few times I tried using it exclusively just because but it never really worked out. (I like using all OS's though, even OS/2 Warp and the Amiga back in the day.)
Speed wise, I always found them to be about the same as Windows XP. The desktop elements would often crash and video driver issues would occur and kick me to a command line. Windows 8 for me has brought fun back into computing like it used to be back in the Amiga days. Competition is good but the free cost never really swayed me one way or the other.
The cost doesn't bother me on high end systems, it does on low end systems. If you're already paying $1000 for a system, sure, the cost of Windows isn't a big deal. If you're scraping by with a $300-400 build (which frankly, is not all that bad these days, not including the monitor my current machine cost me $300 and it's fast enough and can play some games) then having to pay for Windows on top of that is a bit of a kick in the teeth.
The problem is, MS has the monopoly. At the end of the day, you don't use the computer for it's OS, you use it for it's programs, and since MS has the monopoly in desktop space, chances are the program you need to run will be on Windows, not Linux.
Most software developed today and in the near future is/will be written in Java and targets Android/iOS, not .NET or Metro
For traditional desktop applications, it can certainly be a pain trying to find viable alternatives in Linux. That said, those applications also tend to cost oodles of dollars, like $150 for Photoshop or hundreds for CAD (for an annual license. Thousands if you're buying the software outright)
It's changing very quickly and the odds are stacked against MS as far as most software is concerned, and for very much the same reasons why Linux doesn't have most of those feature desktop applications. It'll change, though. Gaming is still the big one, and once that happens the other dominoes will fall.
As far as this "stability" issue people are having, well... I don't know what to tell you. Nearly all HPC's are running Linux and a vast majority of mission-critical boxes as well. The issues people tend to have with stability generally revolves around drivers and poor kernel support because hardware manufacturers don't bother supporting Linux as well as they do Windows, not some crazy "stability" issue that's inherent to Linux as an OS.