I know a lot of folks are eager to find out when they will be able to get Windows 8.1. I am excited to share that starting at 12:00am on October 18th in New Zealand (that’s 4:00am October 17th in Redmond), Windows 8.1 will begin rolling out worldwide as a free update for consumers on Windows 8 through the Windows Store. Windows 8.1 will also be available at retail and on new devices starting on October 18th by market. So mark your calendars!
Hopefully they repeat their new release discount pricing.
I only use windows in a VM for testing purposes, so the full retail price is beyond ridiculous.
It is free, it is just a servicepack from 8.0 to 8.1. Do not expect wonders, and if you have a developer account on microsoft.com you can try the pre-release out for free right now. The differences are rather small in my view.
URLs:
http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-confirms-blue-to-be-free-for-existin…
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2038718/microsoft-confirms-the-windo…
Edited 2013-08-15 03:15 UTC
I don’t own a copy of windows, though…
$150 is just too much, and I use a self-built PC.
Really? For how much would you sell software?
Lets say a software house that has 5 developers earning 1500 ^a‘not per month, a secretary earning 1000 ^a‘not and renting an office space for 800^a‘not a month.
That is a monthly expense of 9300^a‘not, disregarding taxes, electricity and other additional costs.
So how would you price boxed software to guarantee a steady revenue to cover those running costs? Even on months with slow sales?
Microsoft being the mammoth they are, have astronomical monthly running costs, maybe they could sell Windows cheaper, who knows.
But there is a reason why commercial software costs what it costs and open source software requires subscriptions/consulting to be profitable.
If MS didn’t try and completely change Windows every few years hey wouldn’t need so many developers.
In fact MS could probably sack 95% of their Windows developers, only make small incremental changes to Windows, give away Windows for free and charge for commercial support and still be highly profitable.
I think they tried that with MSIE 6.0.
Yes lets not try to improve the operating system
…
SERIOUSLY?
Wow. You’re serious aren’t you?
If they had that attitude, the world would still be on DOS.
You mean like how they got away with exactly that for 2 decades?
If you are talking about Windows 95 to ME, that is a common misconception.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95#Dependence_on_MS-DOS
But I am sure you knew that.
Well yes I do know many things. E.g. I know what the word “misconception” means.
I also know that you can add BootGUI=0 to the MSDOS.SYS to a Windows 95/98/Me installation, in order to access the underlying DOS version directly.
Oh here we go again. Acting like a jumped up prick.
The assertion you originally made that Windows is just stuck straight up on top of DOS and we both know that isn’t true … because you think you are big and clever making crap digs at Microsoft when it is far more complicated than that.
… but enough about yourself.
In any case, DOS was the basis for the bulk of Microsoft’s OS offerings/strategy for about 2 decades. Even the NT-based kernels took about 1 decade to supersede the DOS-based products completely. But if you somehow feel the need to twist established basic knowledge and facts to make your MS narrative work, so be it.
Nice try. I hope you feel really clever about that, because that is the best you are capable of.
It was not a basis, it was part of it, believe it or not you can’t build Rome in a day.
Apparently you don’t believe in a transition period, It essential for good IT.
Again it wasn’t DOS based, it used parts of DOS that it needed. They were reusing an existing codebase which is normally considered a good thing by more software engineers.
Edited 2013-08-15 20:21 UTC
The Wikipedia – article you linked to clearly says that DOS is kept resident even when Windows 95 is running and several DOS – functions are being relied upon even so far as to having execute a DOS – function every single time a new executable is launched — that does very much sound like it being based on DOS, in parts. It would be code re-use if it didn’t actually keep DOS resident and instead duplicated the same functions in its own executables or libraries.
With the above in mind I have to disagree with you. On the same note I disagree with the other guy, too, as keeping DOS a part of Windows 95 was rather clearly a transitional move — the Microsoft – folks knew that people still very much relied on all sorts of DOS – software in many areas, not all DOS – software worked reliably under Windows 95 and Windows 95 wasn’t stable even to begin with, so there were plenty of reasons for Microsoft to keep DOS there and not screw over customers by removing it.
It is called “hack it for the time being”.
While it does depend on it, that wasn’t the intent of the original comment. They were making out that all Windows 95 was, was a GUI shell for DOS … which clearly isn’t the case.
Windows 95 was clearly a transitional OS, which both you and I agree on and has to be judged accordingly.
The real problem was the usual snide remark that refuses to accept reality and from a poster that is clearly anti-MS. Serious software engineers know they can’t fix the code base all at once and do it in steps while preserving existing functionality.
Refactoring takes time and effort, and is very difficult to do especially when you are dealing with legacy code.
I was not making any statement as to why MS kept DOS around. I was simply pointing out that DOS was paramount for the bulk of MS’s operating system offerings for about 2 decades.
I find it hard to believe you, based on past activity on this website.
Edited 2013-08-15 21:34 UTC
… because you’re not understanding what I’m trying to get at.
Windows 95/98/ME were not just “windows.” They were really 2 OSs into one: DOS booted the system, launched win.com, and once windows was initialized DOS still remained in memory BTW.
So without DOS you simply could not have any of those versions of windows. Sure, MS did not sell DOS as a separate product after 98?. But that is a different matter. DOS was an albatross that took Microsoft a hell of a lot of time and effort to remove from around their necks.
So yeah; standalone MS-DOS was the bulk of MS’s OS offerings for about 15 years. And it remained an integral part of the non NT-based versions of windows for another 5/6 years. 15+5 = 20. So I have no clue why my original statement was so hard to parse.
At the end of the end of the day, we both knew you made it as a snide remark. That is what you do.
There were part dependencies on DOS, nobody argued that but that doesn’t make Windows 9x DOS like you implied with your first terse remark.
I can’t really agree with you. Parts of DOS were used in Win 9x, but saying that they were paramount, is just silly. The first remarks from me and my friends when we first ( successfully) booted windows 95, was something along the lines of “Oh Sh*T Dos is gone!”. Those of us that liked DOS for what it was were kind of upset over win95 doing things like removing direct access to hardware and requiring “Direct X” to run video games ( read Doom II) slower than they had run on the same system in DOS.
I’m not a huge fan of windows, and this point is somewhat arguable as DOS was needed to boot the OS until winme. But at the same time my first Linux distro ( ZipSlack) also needed dos to boot.
How about we all stop guessing and ask Raymond Chen.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2007/12/24/6849530.aspx
Let me quote:
What Raymond Chen says goes, as far as Windows history is concerned.
MS-DOS machines were not an uncommon sight up until (and even after) the turn of the millenium, particularly running legacy software and POS/embedded usage, sort of like how Windows XP is these days.
Edited 2013-08-16 12:13 UTC
I’m no expert on this, so happy to be corrected, but wouldn’t it be easiest to just look at the profits made by the Windows division? According to their latest SEC filings, Windows division had an operating income of $9.5 Billion on revenue of $19 Billion for the year up to June 2013. This gives them an (averaged) markup of around 98% across all Windows products.
http://www.microsoft.com/investor/SEC/default.aspx
I realise this is oversimplifying things, and I have no expertise in finance so hardly even know what these terms mean, but my (ignorant) conclusion is that Microsoft could sell Windows at half the price and still break even.
Since the Windows 8.1 update is free, a quick calculation suggests that after removing Microsoft’s excessive markup, the *fairer* cost for them to be selling it at would be $0.
Sorry I forgot businesses existed to make a profit.
That’s fine but moondevil made it sound look MS barely have their head above the water and by no means can afford to lower the prices.
There’s an important difference between “can not” and “will not”.
Edited 2013-08-15 13:27 UTC
I just meant software prices are expensive because of the amount of monthly expenses related to it.
How much Microsoft can lower the price and still have affordable profit I cannot judge.
Maybe they could sell Windows for peanuts while getting profit back from another business units.
That’s the joys of being a software company. Almost no variable costs and very low fixed costs. After a certain point, you’re basically printing money. Windows costs them nothing to replicate, and gains them everything to sell.
This is in stark contrast to becoming a Devices&Services company which has very volatile costs month to month as the service fluctuates in usage and you’re at the whim of supplier costs.
Its actually why Tim Cook is so masterful in his supply chain control (letting Apple extract ridiculous profits for a short while, there’s evidence that’s fading) and Samsung is such an unstoppable force.
It really depends, they still need to pay:
– employees
– burning media
– delivery
– marketing
– consulting companies doing outsourced stuff
Sure after a version is done, it is easy to replicate, but developer time costs money.
I worked for a few corporations where developer salaries were always seen as a big red minus on the budget as profits were assigned to sales division, not R&D.
Well, by all accounts they also have astronomical profits so go figure…
TBH for the complexity, support, backwards compatibility and the reliability of the platform (it been pretty reliable since Windows 2000 as a desktop OS, We can argue about the server editions but they are pretty damn stable these days) … I think most people are getting a bloody bargain for the price and if people are buying it they deserve their profits.
I always calculate how expensive something is by how often I use it. I use Windows pretty much everyday so it pretty cheap if you think of it that way.
However I do think it sucks that there are editions that are deliberately gimped (I have home on my Asus Revo and I can’t RDP into it).
Edited 2013-08-15 18:37 UTC
I don’t think we need to argue this at all. Microsoft can charge whatever it wants for Windows and their software.
Microsoft is a publically traded corporation, maximizing shareholder value comes with the territory.
I know.
But compared to the costs of some extremely crap software I am forced to use in the industry I work in … I don’t think people know how nice Microsoft is compared to these 3rd party suppliers.
For example, we recently got told by the 3rd party that “they didn’t have to justify the cost”, the changes were CSS background colors on a table and it was a 4 figure sum.
I’m not saying it’s not worth that; merely that for the limited use I have for it, the value is extremely poor.
I run linux and it serves me well. I only need windows because other people do.
The price when it’s bundled, and the discount upgrade price show that MS can get away with charging as little as apple do for the releases.
so what’s the reason?
I guess you like to skip paragraphs.
not really, my likes include cuddling, long walks on the beach at sunset, and a good red wine with my steak. I also like “reasons” to be actually mentioned directly when they’re brought to an argument. I know, I’m weird like that.
Edited 2013-08-15 19:23 UTC
They should be obvious to anyone that works in the industry like you claim to do so.
So either you are incompetent of you’re are lying.
Edited 2013-08-15 19:38 UTC
This is why your posts are hilarious, but not for the reasons you think (hint: projection).
I’m not the one making the claim, therefore the burden of proof does not reside with me. Quite a basic concept, really.
It is supposed to be a conversation based on a topic. Also perverting the scientific method to prove you are bigger than me is pretty pathetic.
What he is/was talking about is common knowledge, by those that work in the industry and easily google-able.
I shouldn’t need to do research for you based on your ignorance or incompetence.
You don’t want to have a proper conversation, based on your past posts on here.
Uh? The burden of proof I referred to is a basic component of civilized discourse among several parties, you know the type of stuff we’re supposed to be engaging in a comments section. That you thought I was referring to the “scientific method” speaks volumes about your general cluelessness.
In any case. I asked a simple question. If you can’t answer it, so be it. But just say so, or better yet… don’t get involved.
And yes, I do work in this “industry.” Unlike you apparently, since you don’t seem to grasp that in this case the term “industry” refers to a large set of very different companies and individuals, producing all sorts of products, in many cases unrelated, under disparate business models. So even though I know plenty of details as to how and why some of the product(s) my company sells cost what they do. I have absolutely no clue about the specifics re. actual cost structures and reasons for a copy of Windows costing what it does to the general public. Mainly because Microsoft is not the organization I work for. And no, I can’t “google it” because a lot of the reasons for the cost are due to very proprietary information that Microsoft would have no interest in making public. Thus, my original question.
Also part of the burden of proof is that for trivial known facts, some doesn’t have to prove it.
What you are asking me to prove is whether the sun rises in the morning and sets at night.
You asked a loaded question, the answer you already knew, to make a point based on your rhetoric.
It lovely you know about refactoring code, because you would also know that making assertions that it is easy to change everything quickly in only a few iterations while making sure that everything worked is a hugely difficult task.
If you knew as much as you said you do, you would be applauding Microsoft for doing as well as you did/are.
Because you aren’t saying this is why I know you are a liar or you are incompetent.
Edited 2013-08-15 21:36 UTC
Listen kid; Honestly I just wanted to know about specifics re the pricing structure of Windows 8.
It’s already well established you don’t have any specific knowledge/info on the matter. Meaning you are in no position to answer my query. So just leave it at that already.
Edited 2013-08-16 00:04 UTC
No you didn’t.
He likes to play dumb. Its clear to apparently everyone but him what moondevil meant, especially considering its in his original comment.
The OEMs pay $30 so why make consumers pay for 5 licenses? And what do you think Windows 8 cost to make?
Playing the poor developer card when talking about Microsoft…
Save $50, use the OEM version. I have that I have to have a copy for testing purposes, but I do…
Edited 2013-08-15 14:24 UTC
I’m still playing around with Windows 8. There is a lot to like (and not to like).
When people promote Windows 8 or Windows Phone apparently the Live Tiles are often named the killer feature.
Personally I think they are overrated.
In Windows 8 you only see them on the Start screen. I.e. when your not using your computer for anything. When you do use your computer you don’t see any live tiles.
I guess you can stop doing what you are doing and visit your live tiles. But then I have a living Facebook tile, I see a post from someone, but I only see part of it. So I click on it, the Facebook application launches and his post is nowhere to be seen. Not even by scrolling way down.
In fact a number of tiles provide partial information, useless information or both. I’m not even sure about some if I need to start the application first for it so show any or current information or not.
My WP7 phone is even worse as Live Tiles often don’t update (correctly).
I’d rather have a Status screen than a Start screen. A screen containing pointers at all unread messages, the weather, todo, calendar, eBay stuff, application updates, etc… Just a screen with info, not a mix of live tiles (that are mostly useless) and dead tiles to make it more messy.
I use Linux as my main desktop but also Windows 8. Both are quite functional and very usable.
Just that metro and desktop is a double gui in Win8 no clear choice is made.
Considering that windows runs about 7 to 8 years it is not that expensive, especially bought with a new pc.
One chooses his OS based on the software one wants to run, not the other way around.
The only OS I find crippled is android (IOS probably too), not getting root-access as default is unprofessional.
The scenario is glanceable information which invites you back into the app, not an end all be all dashboard of information. That’d be cognitive overload. Its just enough to get the user to come back. It drives engagement.
That’s strange, using the Official WP Facebook app? Mine goes straight to my notifications and right to the post. It used to be hit or miss, but Facebook’s since made it much more reliable.
Its at the discretion of the developer and the application must be run at least once for Live Tiles to become enabled as they need to set up a background task, push notification channel, or both.
The problem being that some developers go all out and use a Live Tile to complement their service. Meaning they actively push to the client.
Others do Live Tiles via periodic background tasks which poll a service or an RSS feed every 15 minutes.
Anther wrench in the mix is that battery saver stops all Live Tile/Toast notifications (If they’re from a service the MSPN queues them up) to save battery life.
Then of course there could always be a bug in how the specific developer implements notifications.
Live Tile reliability on WP7 had issues at times. WP8 has greatly improved on this.
Windows 8 is generally excellent with Tile Reliability and developers have more options on when to update them (System Triggers like connectivity changes, session begin, session end, etc.)
Microsoft is also lowering barriers to entry by providing free Cloud Computing for developers and creating a strongly typed API over the Notifications (Which are just XML payloads) and scaling them out across the Azure Cloud (Notification Hubs).
WP8 also includes more templates for Live Tiles which makes it easier to integrate with the OS. Same with W8 and to a greater extent 8.1
Its a lot better than it used to be, but there’s still room for improvement.
It’s the Windows 8 Facebook app.
If I see a message I expect to be taken to it when I click on it. Instead it launched the application and takes you right to the top and the latest posts.
I haven’t checked if it’s possible to change the info the title displays. Partial random posts aren’t that interesting and they keep coming back. I’d rather have information about notifications, but I’m not sure if you are in a position to make that happen.
After an update another app, Code Writer, now displays the file you’ve got open on its live tile. I found that rather clever and convenient.
Windows 8 doesn’t have an Official Facebook app, though one is in development. Which one are you speaking of? If its an unofficial app, well then YMMV with Live Tiles.
It’s Facebook Touch from… FBTouch.
Yeah, that’s not official at all and in fact very bad.
I’ve been on Linux Mint for years already. Windows is inferior to many, many Linux distros now in every way. This is a snoozer of an article at this point.
I agree. Thom should only post news about Linux (Mint).
WTF?
There are better Linux Distro’s so why only Mint? Perhaps that is what you use?
Of well, at least it isn’t that ‘brown/earthy coloured’ thing.
{Back to recompiling Gentoo from scratch…}
Uh, I’m just gonna throw you a bone here and let you in on a secret: MOS6510’s comment was…sarcastic.
I may or may not have been, it kind of depends if Linux Mint really is better than anything else on the planet and I have no idea as I’ve never used it. :-p
The logic is rather well, amusing would be the word? To stop posting any news of anything else but a single product, because that product is the best. Even if it is it still doesn’t make sense.
It’s a bit like me, a basketball fan, going to a sports site and commenting under non-basketball news that they should stop doing it because any other sport sucks.
And yet my Ubuntu distribution update from around April borked the wireless driver that now only works with IPv6 routers. This issue is yet to be fixed by Canonical.
Windows 7 installation talks to whatever router wants to speak with it.
Really? In every way?
Feeders.
“How do you know if someone’s a linux user?”
“They’ll tell you.”
They can spell their last name
I tried the latest version of Mint. Could not get Skype to work right, and my translation software does not work at all on it. conclusion: looks nice, but simply does not do what it has to do. Next!
That is my current approach to GNU/Linux and other alternative OSs.
Started with Slackware back in 1995 with the Linux 1.0.9 kernel and used most of the well know distributions since them. I even bought a few of them.
Nowadays life has other priorities and I don’t have any longer the patience nor the time to waste hours tinkering a system to work on a laptop.
Either it works out of the box, or it is dumped right away.
Exactly how I feel, I used to buy OpenBSD CDs and merchandise to support the project. But I just don’t have time and in my area most of the jobs are either C# or Java.
Oh and Gnome 3 isn’t as bad as everyone makes out.
Good for you, no-one cares and this item is not about how awesome Linux is.
I’ve been on mint chocolate for years already. Linux is inferior to many, many chocolate-flavors now in every way. Yours is a snoozer of a comment at this point.
What a delicious name for an operating system.
Yeah, unlike some other flavors of Unix, I can actually pronounce it
Any details on how the changes to the desktop mode will affect some of the utilities some people (like me) are using to make up for things like the missing start button? Or do these utils have to be updated to accommodate the changes?
Also, are the new device protocol APIs restricted to metro-land, or generic?
Edited 2013-08-15 20:15 UTC
The new HID APIs in 8.1 look to be Windows Store only. However this may change before release. During Win8 RC to RTM a few more APIs got the green light for Desktop use.
OK. That makes sense, I guess MS is going to push the app store mode real hard from now on. (Those APIs were, to me at least, the more exciting part of the update).
How is MS enforcing the segregation?
I couldn’t find an article or comment online, but the last person I talked to said that the protections in place were pretty naive (iirc described in the metadata format) and possibly easily worked around.
However the behavior in that case was undefined as some APIs may just work, and some may not. From what I could gather some teams made the decision to exclude Desktop support more political than technical, unfortunately.
http://www.pitorque.de/MisterGoodcat/post/Windows-8-Using-WinRT-API…
Shows how to get the ball rolling on consuming WinMD files from a Desktop project. I never tried to access any of the non-Desktop WinRT APIs though. Worth a shot.
I think this is quite pertinent to the 8.1 release:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/28
Fcuk the 8.1 pseudo-bait-and-switch update. Seems that Microsoft is determined to flush money down the toilet. Ballmer, Larson-Green et al. are frustratingly incompetent.