Discussion on:

Rejected: 74% of organizations have no plans to deploy Windows 8

Will be in the corporate world for a long time. Most places are just getting away from XP.
This o/s will be a dud. The tablet craze has died down now.

(Minority report fantasies)

My company just finished deploying Windows 7 with a handful of users still hanging on to Windows XP due to legacy apps. A lot of companies are beholden to their line of business application provider and can't even install a service pack without the vendor's blessing.

Businesses aren't like consumers. They don't base their purchases on one vendor's product release cycle. This isn't anything against Windows 8, it's just the reality of running a business. I'm pretty sure that even Microsoft won't upgrade all of it's PC's to Windows 8.

NT

you mean "obligated"

Some LoB vendors have companies by the short hairs. At my former employer, they dictated our IT environment. We couldn't patch a browser without their permission because if something didn't work and the browser sub-version number didn't match their requirements, we were on our own.

That bank is probably still running on Windows XP.

Some users use computers to accomplish speific work. SO they pick hardware and OS platforms that support the software that they need to do the work. Maybe?

In the world where software has to work reliably all the time, change in the underlyig platform is expensive and carries a lot of risk. Proper software validation is not cheap or easy, and it takes time.

To justify that risk there has to be a reward. That's reality 101.

No; no we don't agree.

Not at all likely they look cheap nasty and like something that was in Windows 1 Predevelopment Concept long before a Beta was ever thought about.

I saw better Icons with better design on BBS's long before most people knew what the inter web thingy was.

But maybe that's just me.

Col

tile option was tried in Linux a few years back and got picked on there by most of the users, to the extent some Linux developers have dropped them again and others have come up with a whole swag of alternate GUIs that appeal more to the non-tile crowd.

Glass 3D became Aero a few years later, and now the same with the tiles - which shows MS is 3 to 4 years behind the times.

like putting large wooden boxes on a sleek aerodynamic race car.

nt

Mostly what I don't like is that they've replaced the Start Menu. Why would I want a full-screen Start Menu? We got rid of that when Windows 95 replaced the Program Manager in Windows 3.1.

I don't like having to bypass the Start screen every time I log in to get to the desktop. As a support tech, I log into multiple machines dozens of times a day. That's dozens of times I had to get past the Start screen to get to the traditional desktop where I can get some real work done.

I don't like the inability to arrange the tiles to my preference. You can't push them all the way to the top or left sides of the screen; that leaves a lot of wasted screen space. You can't arrange them in horizontal rows; they get forced into vertical ones.

I find the ones for traditional apps to be ugly when compared to W7 Start Menu shortcuts. That's my personal opinion, but so is your 'expression' that everyone thinks they look nice.

I have no use for the 'live' feature of the Metro app tiles. I don't participate in social networking, don't need a constant weather update, don't need to track my 401K every second. There are plenty of cases where these would be a waste of slow bandwidth. I'll bet they're fighting tooth and nail to download e-mail in the northeastern US right now; streaming Tweets by default isn't going to make that any easier.

Yes, if I forget they were built by Microsoft, they might be easier for me to accept. That's because if the OS was from another source, I wouldn't expect it to behave like Windows. But it is from MS, and it doesn't behave like previous versions of Windows. MS is expecting me to abandon habits and behaviors they've spent years ingraining in me (and the users I support), for what I regard as minimal benefits.

W8 is going to rock on tablets and phones, but I don't see any benefits to it on a desktop, laptop, or any other device not designed for mobility or content consumption. I'm glad you like the tiles, but don't tell me everyone does. If it's 'just an expression', it's grossly inaccurate and I suggest you stop using it if it isn't exactly what you mean.

"Mostly what I don't like is that they've replaced the Start Menu. " You summed it up in one sentence.

....As they sort of vomited the whole thing up onto your screen.

I keep seeing these comments about the start menu being replaced. I installed Windows 8 and found a very nice start menu at about the same place as the Windows 7 Start menu. Just one click and the social interfaces disappear. I admit when it first loaded, I was felt a little confounded, until I went to windows.com and spent 15 minutes with the tutorials.

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT YOU FILLED ALL THE HOLES IN A LEAKY BOAT ANOTHER HUGE HOLE POPS OPEN; THEN YOU SAY TO YOURSELF "(OOPS) THIS. THIS AINT WORKING; TIME TO ABANDON A FRIENDSHIP THAT IS NOT WORKING; ( )HIT SHAPPENS.

Most of us in IT support have pretty much already fluent with Windows 8, it won't take noobs that long to learn and get used to it

You're imposing your knowledge and expertise on n00bs. Trust me, that's *not* the case. The problem with people in IT is they forget 'what it was like' back in their Dark Ages when they first saw, and tried to use, a computer.

Yes, we had a much better 'sense' of what it was we were dealing with because computers only drew users from those technically inclined and not afraid of trying things. That was half the fun.

But today's consumer is another breed. 'Trust me, we'll take care of you.' And they do. 'Click here.' And they do, without the most tiny of ideas of why. And all the companies, not just Microsoft, take full advantage of that complete lack of interest in 'how does it work?' Or, maybe more important, why does it work.

There is still a small portion of new users who are curious and want to know 'how/why' - and much more - they're the ones who will drive future changes.

I remember similar reports for (pretty much) EVERY Windows O/S release ever. If you use Win8 in Desktop mode, you essentially have Windows 7 for all pragmatic purposes. Metro will be choice when you're on a tablet, Desktop mode when you're at your desk. So, I think it will all depend upon the needs of the users. I know I'm ramping up to deploy it on MY computer, just because I want to be able to share elements of my desktop with a Surface Pro tablet once it releases in 2013 (an experience that I can't quite capture with an iPad). But for most of my organization, it probably will be a non-issue. We'll cut over to Windows 8 (or 9) as we upgrade/replace machines.

It's not the same as Windows 7 in desktop mode, you keep having to switch back and forth to the Start screen which is incredibly annoying, I keep losing track of what I'm doing and also I end up having to plaster the desktop with icons because I can't be bothered to go hunting for the tile. It's crap.

Set up the start screen in groups that are useful to you with the desktop icon in the top left, then the return key always takes you to the desktop. Put some useful shortcuts like "Shutdown" and "Restart" in the same group. Use Alt-F4 to close Apps instead of swanning around with the mouse and use the "Windows" key to switch to and from the desktop to the Start Screen. It is now quicker and possibly better organised than with Windows 7 Start Menu. I have no icons on my desktop and just a few on the Task bar. My Start menu has four groups, "Utils" including Desktop, Shutdown, Restart, Store and search, "Apps", "Productivity" including some MS Office icons and GIMP, "Tools" including Control Panel, Command, Secunia PSI and notepad. It works for me and when I start using a Windows tablet, which I'm sure will come, I can have the same setup.

Goodie for you.. Greytech .. you've spent time getting things the way you want them or need them ..

Many of us don't have time to do this for our users, nor having to switch from the desktops they are already use to, over to the Metro UI ... additionally as someone else posted.. the live tile bull.. our employees are not marketing are not *supposed* to be socially connected for the 9 hours they have on site .. they are to be working, with the exception of an EMPLOYER PROVIDED XMPP (Pidgin) connection which are *ONLY* setup for employee to employee communication .. and the the use then is more than just "update happy tiles" they are conversational based messages.

Just like others have said.. our shop (under 250 employees) are multitasking all day with 10 or more windowed apps (ie, ff, chrome, having additional windows each) not one employee have I ever seen with a full screen on anything unless its during a webex (or noc when watching movies) beyond that.. windows 8 appears to hold no love for the multi-windowed with more than simultaneous view enabled by the corners of our eye..

ie over lay several command prompts pinging different IP's so that you can see when one starts or stops responding while the other continues, or multiple SSH windows running a command in one then processing something in another watching for the shell to come back.. or even run MTR in a smaller ssh window watching latency and packet loss while doing other things..

all of this multitasking is hampered by a conceptualized tablet interface where your whole screen is taken up with *one* app.

Again.. the problem is that Microsoft didn't make it easy or even track what type of pc you're on.. I'm at my desk, two monitors.. I want the standard Start Menu & desktop experience .. I detach my screen / tablet .. then I'd like MS to switch over to a tablet centric interface.. but not while its attached at the desk, with two 22 inch monitors attached with the multitude of actions going on.

nt

Please explain? there is not a Desktop Mode in the current version; at least what I have found.

locked into expensive core software designed for Win XP that will not work properly on the versions of Windows released since, thus they'll stay with XP as long as they can as the cost of moving on is just too high in the current environment.

Yes, XP Mode in Win 7 helps some organisations, but I've found it will NOT run ALL software designed for XP, and this is the area that I see a lot of the delays.

Also, with the cost of touch screens being about three times that of non-touch screens (especially in the larger sizes) there is no advantage to a touch centric OS for people not using a touch screen.

Personally, I think the forced changes by Microsoft in command sets so legacy software and hardware don't work are what is causing much of the dissension of the last few years and will continue to be a major issue until they stop doing it.

None of the comments quoted in the article referred to application incompatibility. The GUI training issues seemed to dominate.

I wouldn't know if any of our legacy apps will work with W8. The interface issues have put deploying it off our schedule, so we haven't bothered with app testing.

from XP are doing so due to the cost of important legacy software. A few I know that were concerned about having move onto what they call Microsoft Orifice, have been successfully moved up to Win 7 with Libre Office - the move to Win 7 was due to some hardware driver issues between XP and their new PCs.

There are a lot of organisations with critical legacy software originally designed for Win 2000 and Win XP that do NOT have newer versions as much of it was special design stuff. All that is very costly to redo.

MS Office 2003, don't upgrade it; it won't work. Actually there are reports of users being able to install it and use it but it breaks the automatic windows updates.
Thanks,

Is potential incompatibility with legacy applications and the cost of touch screens the only reasons not to go to Windows 8? Although these two alone are probably enough, but there are many more reasons. Business is all about productivity. Is there a study indicating that using touch screen, as opposed other pointing device, boosts productivity. I don't believe that. Yes, touch screen is a great tool for consuming content; I doubt it's a great tool for producing it.

a lot with the type of work you do. For people like me who create and alter documents a lot (I wrote stories and edit others a lot now) Win 8 is a very retrograde step that reduces productivity. For some others it may enhance their productivity.

The whole topic of productivity is conspicuously absent from all the hyperbole about Windows-8 and touch-centric tablets. Is that a huge part of running a business? Your last two statements are so correct.

nt

Yeah, almost the entire financial sector is still using vertical software which won't run on Win8, and they really didn't need 7 in order to use it, or it won't run on 7, either. That, and the lack of backwards-compatibility. I alone operate my 22 machines. Due to lack of backwards-compatibility with each MS 'upgrade', I've had to keep my older machines deployed. Result is that each machine becomes dedicated to the programs and hardware which don't 'upgrade' with the OS. I purposely just bought three more machines with hardware which can 'bridge' to Win8 if I ever have to go to it. But I won't go to it except kicking and screaming, and the meanwhile am newly learning Linux so I can create dual-boots. You can still get Linux in older versions for very old machines (going all the way back to i386.) Can't do that with Windows.

MS really has made it too complicated and buggy. God forbid you should UPGRADE rather than install a fresh OS. Which version of the OS do you buy, do you pick OEM or upgrade or (now) System builder version, how do you know all the differences in each, to decide? The differences are significant, and undisclosed. Example: Excel 2003 won't run a DOS Lotus 1-2-3 on XP Pro unless I sign up with MS to have 'credentials', but will run fine on Home.

Upgrades versus clean install versus reinstalls, unknown features/bugs, removal of old useful features, wholly-new procedures -- all these make for slower sales, more angst, and a gradual weariness when an 'update' occurs. When a collegue was surprised I answered the phone right away, I said I was just idle, trying to 'screw up my courage' to install the machines which FedEx had just delivered. His laughter was of empathetic commiseration.

I would very much like to see priced Linux applications which can read the files Windows apps create. Still open-source, idea being you're paying for the software and you can change the code afterwards, or get updates from the Linux vendor, again for a fee. So still open source, but priced. That's akin to selling a Lotus 1-2-3 DOS template. Big market for that, back in the old days.

Linux needs to get out of its 'no cost' mentality, because the software DOES cost you in TIME. That's why it's less popular. People should be paid. We'd jump on that in the business world, as we don't want to write our own code, but need to be able to see how it works. Sorry, but LibreOfice and its kin don't have enough oomph. There are many other applications in Linux which are too weak compared to their non-Linux counterparts. There is money to be made, noble money. After all, people didn't stop buying Kleenex when other tissue began to be manufactured and sold. We stick to a brand that originates. The copycats generally produce a lower-quality product.

I'm sick of MS' tyrannical architecture, which is responsible for most crashes. Funny: once Win98 stopped being supported, it became stable, and I"ve not had even one crash since the support stopped. Now, suddenly my XP machines are much more stable, because I'm not getting the 'updates' as before due to support ending. So my new Vista and Win7 machines from Dell Auction, I wonder if I should update. Will see.

I shudder to think what a multiple-employee business is going through!

Wow. That must be the geek equivalent of the lady with 22 cats.

but it depends on which ones. Libre Office reads all the MSO files OK, is one example. There are paid for programs like Crossover that runs on Linux and will run most Windows based software within it, like a VM. Cedega and WINE are very much the same.

Unless there is something unique about the hardware, I'd look at that approach.

1) Windows Millenium. 2) Vista. 3) Windows 8. You'd think Microsoft could do better (and I am not a regular Microsoft basher).

Vista was an okay OS, get tired of people saying it was bad. It wasn't bad at all, it was just a shock to people who'd started using a computer with XP or 2000 and had no experience of having to switch drivers. The memory handling wasn't that fantastic I do agree but I've got plenty of users on Vista and it works fine.

Note that Vista is Windows 6.0, 7 is 6.1 and 8 is 6.2 - check the build numbers.

mainly due to incompatibility. Drivers didn't work for nearly a year. Applications were 6 months to a year before they had stable versions (antivirus anyone?).

No. Vista was a disaster. The only thing that "worked" on it was Office, and only if you upgraded.

Vista really did suffer out of the box, for all the reasons mentioned above. However, after several months (well, really after SP1) it was quite a good, stable OS. But no one ever heard those news reports and the myth of its atrocity grew and grew, even beyond the time when it was no longer true.

With press such as this, especially with headlines (Rejected!) that will be taken to mean 74% Plan NOT to deploy Windows 8--a far cry from the reality of 24% who feel this way, WIndows 8 may well be on the way to suffering from the same mythology.

the command set so the hardware that was manufactured as XP compatible was NOT Vista compatible. Then they didn't include enough drivers to over come that in the initial versions of Vista. Add in they didn't give the hardware companies enough lead time to make Vista compatible hardware, and you got what happened - software that didn't work well with much of the hardware.

By the time things had progresses to the drivers and compatible hardware being available, most people had given up on it. And the root cause was a deliberate arbitrary change of the command sets by Microsoft - in short, they shot themselves in the foot in an attempt to force change on people.

Microsoft hadn't solidified the basic method for drivers to interact with the OS until a month prior to release - thus the huge backlog in time for adjustments to be made to programs and drivers to accommodate. This is ALL on Microsoft's head. They should have solidified the driver architecture over a year in advance of release and this is why Vista was such a disaster.

That would have worked even better.

There was the driver issue, and that was huge. That's not really Microsoft's fault though.

There was also the default to aero-glass, which killed performance on PCs without a proper graphics card. That was their fault.

Then there was the permissions issue of their new 'security model', which you (if I recall correctly) needed to fix in the registry editor if you had any applications that wrote to any protected folders, again...their fault.

changed the command sets in the OS so the XP drivers would not work on the new OS. That was an arbitrary change by the MS management to force change and obsolescence.

The rest is true

Developers could have written Vista compliant drivers starting with Windows 98, they just chose not to. Now I completely agree they could -and should- have continued legacy driver support, but it's not as if this model was brand new for Vista (VxD to WDM).

pay Microsoft the Danegeld to have a copy of the command set and the code that allows it to work, then you have to write the driver to work with those commands. Now, a company that already has the command sets for Win 98, Win XP etc due to having already paid the Danegeld for that code can easily use that to write new drivers for the hardware they have. However, when Microsoft make the arbitrary decision to change the command set they wait a while now to make sure it will stay that way before they fork out the large sums Microsoft charge. This is because in the early days of Win 2000 and Win XP Microsoft made changes to the command set in SP1 and the companies had to spend time, effort, and money redoing all the drivers before the hardware would work properly. So now the companies wait a while to make sure there are no further changes to the command sets by Microsoft, then they buy the codes and start work.

It was not a case of legacy code to allow the gear to work with vista, it was a case of not making an arbitrary change to the internal Windows commands to stop them working with Vista. Hell, if Microsoft had stayed with the Industry standard command sets back in the mid 1990s we wouldn't need any drivers for any version of Windows since then, either.

Now, about the developers, would you spend a lot of money, time and effort on writing a lot of code before you were sure that it wasn't all going to be trashed on you due to someone else changing their mind while you're in the middle of it? Most developers wait until the details are solid, and that's what happened. It left Vista in the lurch until then. But the developers were only responding to the way Microsoft had trained them to respond.

What is with the rush lately to new OS? Blame Apple, they're good at coming up with new crap releases.

Even the open source community is buying into the hype of new OS versions every 2 years (FreeBSD took them decade to get to v5, in 3 years they jumped from v5 to v6,v7,v8).

Quickbooks releases a new software every year. Smartphones are released every year! I want to keep my phone for 3-5 years, what is wrong with that? The new technology is not better, it is just the same with a different twist.

Windows 8 is no different, no reason at all to buy into it unless you want touch screen stuff (and you can do that easily with Win7)

There's nothing new about this.

as I recall, the change was made for security reasons so that drivers no longer operated at as insecure a level. It's been a while, though, so my recollection could be off. But given MS's history of really working for backward compatibility in the OS, I would hesitate to assume that a move like this was arbitrary.

Otherwise companies like this
http://www.star-force.com/
wouldn't exist.
Star force uses a rigged CD drive driver to get access to the system, and even give them ability to shut your computer down.

thr players, including Microsoft, they established a set of Industry Standard Command Sets and the basic security protocols to go around them. Microsoft helped set them out. They used them for a little while and then turned their back on the Industry Standards as using them allowed anyone to create a program and application to work on ANY operating system - the whole aim of setting the standards in the first place; it did away with the need for drivers if all the hardware and software used them as set out in the standard. Then Microsoft found if they used their own set of command sets they could charge people for a copy to be able to write programs to work with that version of Windows, so they walked away from the Industry Standards. Since then they've changed the command set a few times, and charge developers for copies of the new sets when they make the changes.

It's purely a money raising gambit on Microsoft's behalf and has absolutely NOTHING to with security. What is being discussed her is the commands to utilise the standard hardware such as a print command etc as sent from the program to the operating system and then on to the hardware. The decision to change them from the standards was an arbitrary decision by MS management, and the decisions to change them since have all been arbitrary to increase profits.

Oh, I believe them when MS says it changes the OS security. The architecture is so buggy itself being responsible for crashes, and secuirty risks - MS has to come up with some gimmick to make people get the new OS in order to fix the old.

I don't have a problem paying for the fixes. I have a problem with all the OTHER stuff they do to mask the fixes, like changed interfaces which are more dysfunctional than before, and removed compatibilities in order to keep the rewrite cost down. Shifting the burden to the end user, in essence. These added changes are talked of as if new and improved, as security fixes aren't glamourous reasons for upgrade.

They're trying to fix the bad code, really. But they keep on doing it poorly. That took me 10 years to figure out, and now that I 'get' what MS is doing, I must leave MS behind. It left me behind, long prior. The 'new' will keep on having problems of the old, because they won't just FIX the old, but instead add new layers of rewrites to sell the fixes; and the new layers, add new vulnerabilities. They're not trying to gouge the customer. They're trying to keep the OS ffrom drowning.

When Win 95 came out they touted how safe and secure it was, then Win 98 was safer still, same message with Win 2000, and Win XP, it was the big reason for the Win XP SP 2 and SP 3, then Win Vista was more secure again, as was Win 7, and now more so with Win 8. It does make you wonder what they define as secure as there are already security issue with Win 8, as there has been in every version of Windows since Win 3.11.

Count my (very) large corporate parent as part of the 74% (an ironic perverse/inverse of the Romney 47%?). We are JUST moving into Windows 7 and Office 2010, and I can't see our ITO moving to Win8 any time in the next few YEARS. And you'll have to convince them that this is a good business/productivity move---and I'm not even going into the security side.

Ironically, MS seems to moving in an almost Apple'esque "consumer first, enterprise second" manner. Of course Apple never really had any (enterprise) to lose, so it wasn't much of a gamble. For MS, they might have bet the farm on this one, and only time will tell if it's brilliance or not.

some people still have this fly OS!

...into the corporate world are following exactly that path--consumers (especially at the C level) get the iPad and bring it to work and expect IT to integrate. Arguably, MS has a leg up here because the non RT devices will be easy to bring into the fold.

None of the Windows Phones or other devices will run desktop software at all, so I'm not sure what you are referring to. It isn't going to be any easier to use Windows-based tablets, etc. than Apple- or Droid-based devices, and given which of those have the higher market share, it's not hard to tell which is in higher demand (hint: NOT Microsoft).

We'll see what happens, but Microsoft really has a long ways to go to catch up in the mobile devices market and this new desktop OS isn't helping.

I wouldn't bother which of them has a higher market share today. I don't have a crystal ball, but now it starts looking pretty clear that soon it won't be Apple (I'd personally bet on Android.) The truth is integration and security will be serious issues in foreseeable future. And for ability to run full-featured desktop applications on Windows 8 tablet, that's just illusion.

If you are going to put out a new software program, what platform are you going to target? The one that can make you the most money. If you are going to have to build an app from scratch, you are going to target the platform that your potential users are using. Nobody is targeting Blackberry anymore. Or Palm. Noone builds apps for Symbian despite the fact that they have more than twice the marketshare of Microsoft in mobile. You look at your target market: Apple and Droid own more than 80% of the market and are pretty evenly split.

Noone goes fishing for the smallest fish in the pond.

You App is Cross Platform Compatible so you only have to write it once and not once for every platform.

Col

If market share mattered, then no one would have developed for anything but the Palm, because that used to have the vast majority of market share, at one time. The reason MS has so little market share now has nothing to do with market preference, but that MS abandoned the market. As it returns, the market share will shift back to MS. That is inevitable. MS never loses if it really wants something. The Zune lost only because MS did not bother to pursue.

"And for ability to run full-featured desktop applications on Windows 8 tablet, that's just illusion. ."
Assuming you meant Win RT, that is true. However, you can remote to a desktop and use it on Win RT. -so technically, you can use full featured windows programs on an RT.

according to the information from Microsoft Win RT has only a remote desktop client that ONLY allows someone to come in from a remote desktop to work the Surface. They say you can't control another computer from the RT. The Surface Pro is another matter.

I did it on a Surface RT at the Windows Store. (and I showed the Microsoft staff how to do it - because they didn't know it could)
I installed the Remote Desktop App on a Surface RT and remoted to a Win 8 laptop in the store.
I use the Remote Desktop App on my Win 8 machine at home to remote into my other Win 8 machine, Win 7, and Windows Home Server. They are all in the same workgroup.
Remoting from Surface RT to a networked computer on a domain requires some licensing. (search on ZDNet for Remote Desktop App & RT) Here's the text " Remote Desktop Client, which is available through the Windows Store. When this is combined with Windows Server 2012 or Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows RT devices (including Surface RT) users can access data and easily launch apps including legacy/Win32 apps"
I would give you the link but when I do, my reply disappears from TechRepublic. ARRRRRGH!
I have no reason to doubt that Citrix Receiver would work as well - even without Server 2012 or 2008 . A beta version is available in the Windows App store.

They say it's not possible at all, yet you can do it. I wonder, will it work without going through a server, say from the RT device to controlling your desktop as a peer to peer set up?

One of the posters on the ZDNet article said that you can.

The majority of them are experts with iTunes and not much more.

of any OT product. But what you've done with the RT is something the Microsoft tech staff back at MS HQ say can't be done, and one would normally expect a lot more knowledge by of the HQ tech staff.

if your requirement is to be able to connect to networked business resources, all three support Citrix Receiver but only RT can connect directly to a desktop without the use of a special client on the desktop.

according to the information from Microsoft Win RT has only a remote desktop client that ONLY allows someone to come in from a remote desktop to work the Surface. They say you can't control another computer from the RT. The Surface Pro is another matter.

NT

The reason I moved customers to W7,better malware protection(though I have had W7's infected by IE and Flash player flaws)support for SSD's(biggest reason so far),EOL of XP and full 64 bit support >4gb ram.

W8 has absolutely no compelling reason for a upgrade from 7.
None,zilch ,zero!

Kind of hurts the value.
You can build a tablet capable webpage in html5 WITHOUT Windows 8. If you decide to go with windows 8, you have to share your profits.

any big player today follows that model and it was not invented by MS but that's another question.
I think it is much more important to find opportunities to grow and the fact that we can now build, not tablet capable webpages but actually html5 apps that can interact natively with the OS is something new and I think you can't do it currently WITHOUT W8.

That's what I was thinking. FF and Chrome support HTML5; I suspect Safari does too, knowing Apple's disdain for Flash. Not only do you not need IE9, you don't need Microsoft.

I can't post the direct links, sorry.

This site shows compatibility vs browser - "The HTML5 Test"

This site has tables showing browsers vs elements supported - "When Can I Use"

Place a link between the Domain Name and the .whatever to break the URL and allow the post to appear. Like this

http://www.techrepublic .com/forum/discussions/102-396020?tag=forum-selector;discussion-table
notice the space between techrepublic and the .com? if you remove the space the link works.

Col

I usually can post links without any problems.
Occasionally certain threads won't accept them (like this one).

One recent thread accepted my post for a few hours, but it had vanished the next day (it didn't have any links in it).

as that's all in the browser, unless you're talking about a touch sensitive app for Win 8.

Windows 8 NATIVE apps written in htlm5 and javascript, regardless touch or no, will not run in web browsers on other OS. Those apps are running in Windows 8 environment and depend on native libraries not available to web browsers, particularly outside of Windows 8.

instead of being properly designed for the Internet, they're Win 8 specific apps utilising some html 5 capabilities.

The whole aim of using html 5 and having things written to the html 5 standard is to make them totally platform independent and work on any OS in any browser that's html 5 compliant.

Deadly Ernest is correct - the appeal of HTML or HTML5 is not that the web technology stack is great, because it's not. It's that the software will run in any browser (if you are judicious in your use of libraries). There are pre-AJAX web apps written in the mid 1990s that could still work today. I wrote a lightly ajaxy web app in 2008 that still runs, but we didn't use it for various reasons. Still, four years is not bad. I still have one script from around 2005 that would be useful given the right context. I'm using a crufty CMS from 2000 to run a website.

We apps have a long useful life. Recent trends to strip out more layout and formatting, and turn the server side into a REST service, will make the apps last even longer.

The web has become, more or less, the achievement of the goal of OO: cross-language remote procedure calls over the network, with totally encapsulated objects that communicate via messages.

Is this really so surprising? Most people usually only upgrade if they have to, by needing either a new computer or wanting something out of the new operating system. Of course, many times over people just get forced to upgrade the OS when they buy new. Because most people simply don't want the inside interface changed every time they buy new.

I don't understand the sudden big popularity of tablets. All a touchpad is, but a huge cell phone without a phone, and a laptop with no real features. In Windows 8, it almost looks like the tablets are a virus coming into Windows 8 features.

There is no compelling business case in most instances. I am sure over time as people become used to W8 and a few bugs are worked out it will happen.

Personally I am very interested in having a look at the Surface pro when it comes out. Mainly because of the touch centric OS and the purported ability of the device to integrate well into Windows based network infrastructure.

I would suspect this may become the thin end of the wedge as far as acceptance of Window 8 in our environment. That said I would think the earliest adoption for a standard workstation would be at least a couple years out. Assuming of course Windows 9 is not released in the mean time.

i have been in the IT business since 1959. First as an EE and later as a System Engineer. I am writing this on an HP laptop from home using Win7 and MS Outlook . I am planning to upgrade to Win8 with my next hardware upgrade in about a year. I will need the touch-screen support of the new hardware but my main reason for the upgrade will be the better and integrated cloud support of the new OS! -- George

When 2000 came out no one was going to move from 3.1 and 95 or they were just thinking of 98.
When XP came out no one was going to use it. It was full of spyware and other things that corporates did not, nay, never would want. Every one was going to stick to 98, or 2000.
When vista came out just plain no one wanted it.
When win 7 came out everyone had reason not to move to it and could not possibly see their IT moving to 7.
When win 8 came out. Ah, well you get the story.
Seems that people have severe memory problems regarding windows versions comments made when they are released. Particularly win XP was hounded. Vista we will not mention as nobody else does.
So we are all happy here with windows 3.1 and 95?

When XP came out it sat on the shelves for a very long time before it was started to be rolled out to business. After SP1 became available it started to be used.

However W2K and ME where never big on the Business Desktop all the business that i supported at the time stuck to either 98 SE or NT4 and didn't adopt W2K or ME at all.

Col