Discussion on:

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

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