Here it is, the middle of August. It’s hot (at least here). I’m in the middle of a few projects. No juicy computer news. So I thought that I’d prattle on about Windows 8.
Who knows if they’re really going to call it Windows 8 or not? All the rumors are about Windows 8, but Microsoft may shift strategies and name the new operating system after a year (which is traditional) or a weird letter combination (which isn’t traditional), or just an oddball name (which is usually a sign of death, as in Windows Millennium Edition).
Windows 8 is rumored to appear about a year from now, or probably in early 2012, if Microsoft sticks to their usual slippage schedule.
Microsoft is apparently seething with jealousy over Apple’s OS X, which I still call “Oh es eks” even though it’s “Oh es ten.” They’re trying to create users who are as excited about Windows 8 as they are about Mac OS X.
Good luck.
Efforts are being made to reduce the time it takes the computer to turn on. In his book, The Humane Interface, Apple fellow Jef Raskin tells how he designed an instant-on computer. He did cheat a bit; the image on the screen was active before the computer was really up and running, but the effect was solid on the user: The computer looked like it was on instantly.
Good luck with that, too.
There’s talk that Windows 8 will incorporate technology that uses facial recognition to log you in. Let’s hope they overcome some of the racial issues that are prickly pears in that technology.
Some nerds are insisting that Windows 8 will be the first 128-bit operating system. Are there any 128-bit operating systems? Anyway, someone somewhere is excited about it. I honestly don’t see any benefit until there are 128-bit programs out there. I mean, really?
Personally, I hope that they get rid of that Homegroup BS. I don’t like the way Windows 7 networks. It’s just a pain. And the whole junction thing between folders and directories is messy and inconsistent.
My guess is that they’ll change some things around. They’ll rename items on the Start menu and in the Control Panel. They’ll change the look of this, and add a new shortcut to that. If Windows 7 is Windows Vista Plus, then Windows 8 is most likely going to be Windows Vista Plus Plus.
Yeah, I’m not excited. But then again, these are the dog days of summer, and I must get back to writing on my current project.
I think they should just realise an add on/update pack not realise a whole new OS. I paid £80 for Windows 7 when it came out which is not too bad I guess, lets hope they don’t make it very expensive, otherwise people will start using Unbuntu or something. I have seen student discounts for Windows 7 which is nice, In the UK even now if you want to buy a copy of XP it’s still around £60! which is ridiculous considering it was realised in 2003. I was building my PC and kept forgetting to take into account the operating system as I was using Windows 7 beta, of course that would run out. SO that’s quite a chunk of change considering my entire PC mother board and and case was £130.
Comment by chiefnoobie — August 18, 2010 @ 6:37 am
That’s is pretty spending for an OS.
I remember — and I could be wrong — that DOS 5 was only about $49 or so, which seemed really cheap at the time. People updated en masse, which drove the product update craze for the next 20 years. Then again, DOS 5 offered lots of great features. So far it looks like Windows 8 is just another ho-hum update. So pricing it too high doesn’t seem worth it.
Comment by admin — August 18, 2010 @ 8:02 am
I have just read one good thing about Windows 8. It says this
“If you can’t explain in an error message what went wrong and clearly indicate what to do about it, then you shouldn’t have an error message.”
Now that would be worth paying a little extra for, I haven’t had that many on Windows 7 but the, try to repair as administrator option never works it always says you will be notified when a fix becomes available. Can’t say I’ve had any notifications yet!
Comment by chiefnoobie — August 18, 2010 @ 9:29 am
Good idea! Not only that, the computer should try to fix the situation first.
Pet peeve: When you get a network error and then are asked, “Would you like to start the troubleshooter?” The computer A) knows about the error and B) knows about the troubleshooter. Why can’t it just C) start the troubleshooter and fix the problem!
Comment by admin — August 18, 2010 @ 9:39 am
I always thought that a 128 bit OS would be like me putting 5$ into Donald Trump’s account. Would Mr. Trump notice the extra money. No. No way. Its like the octo-core processor all over again. You’ll never notice the extra speed unless you’re in to some REALLY hardcore gaming. Nobody will notice the extra speed.
Not only that, but most programs still run native in 32 bit anyway. And developers aren’t going to be very happy about having to rewrite their code after they just changed to 64 bit applications last year.
Comment by gamerguy473 — August 18, 2010 @ 12:46 pm
That’s a good point I really can’t tell any difference from the speed of my old XP machine to the new windows 7 64 bit, just using the internet I’m sure there are some but like you said for the average user they would be hard pushed to spot the difference. Also another reason why I am still using the old XP is because some games I like just won’t run on Windows 7 64 bit, which is really annoying, some games aren’t even that old, I have some from 2007 they just don’t like the 64 bit OS.
Comment by chiefnoobie — August 18, 2010 @ 1:06 pm
I was seriously looking into getting the 12-core MacPro. It would be a computer I could use for years. Then I noticed that there is only one program I use that even takes advantage of multi-core, and that’s Photoshop. Even then, Photoshop only uses two cores when it can. So all the extra core stuff is sort-of wasted. Ditto for a 128-bit OS. Unless there is software written 128-bits wide, what’s the point?
Comment by admin — August 18, 2010 @ 1:37 pm
12 cores! I didn’t know they made them with that many yet, it would takes years for people to write programs to use anywhere near that amount of power. Still you wouldn’t have to buy another computer for a very long time.
Comment by chiefnoobie — August 18, 2010 @ 1:54 pm
Dan- what are the issues involved in making a OS boot instantly? DOS booted instantly so I know it can be done.
And why are executables so bloated today? If I make a hello world program in C it creates a 8k executable. But old computers like the Apple II only had 4k of RAM. What went wrong?
Comment by BradC — August 21, 2010 @ 10:51 am
I suppose DOS booted “instantly,” but only when you weren’t processing a raft of device drivers, which usually added about 90 seconds to the entire process.
The executables are bloated because they’re coded in C or C++ and not in assembly language. While coding in ASM would result in smaller, faster code, it would take a long time to develop. Also, back in the old days, memory was limited. You wanted your driver to be 3K instead of 5K because there was competition out there that was 4K.
(By the way, the ASM version of “Hello, world!” is only a handful bytes longer than the character count of the text displayed.)
The drivers loaded today all have to register with the OS, cross-communicate, check their bounds. A lot of that is error-checking that DOS lacked, due to the multi-tasking nature of today’s operating systems. Also, today operating systems are graphics, not text, which requires lots of overhead.
On the Canon Cat, Raskin’s instant-on computer, the user was tricked into thinking things were on instantly. First, the screen was saved as a bitmap image when the power went out. When the power went on again, the bitmap was loaded, which gave the impression of instant-on, but it was a diversion while the rest of the OS was loading. Today’s computers do something similar with hibernation, and I believe the goal of Windows 8 is to speed up hibernation.
Comment by admin — August 21, 2010 @ 11:11 am
I have been trying Unbuntu out recently I know nothing about Linux, but I was impressed with how fast things loaded like Firefox or the whole OS which was very quick. I am also using an 8 year old PC to do this. mainly because you can’t get Wubi to work with Windows 7 64 bit, it did surprise me the that Unbuntu worked on such an old PC. This again points to bloat because a PC that is 10 years old can run the latest version of Unbuntu, you only need 256mb RAM to get it going, imagine Windows 7 chugging along on that!
I think to get an OS to boot very quickly you need to use a solid state hard drive, I saw a video of someone booting OS X in 8 seconds using one.
Comment by chiefnoobie — August 22, 2010 @ 1:56 pm
In my book Optimizing Windows (written for Windows 3.1), I wrote of an experiment where I trimmed Windows 3.1 down to the bare essentials and loaded the entire thing onto a RAM drive. (A RAM drive was the ancestor of the solid state drive.) I got Windows 3.1 to boot in under a second. It was pretty cool!
Comment by admin — August 22, 2010 @ 2:34 pm
I think that is a good question why does an OS take so long to boot up? My main PC has 4 gbs of RAM but it still takes over a minutes or so to boot and get on line, I know solid state hard drives will reduce the boot time considerably but they aren’t cheap. I guess there is a load of superfluous stuff that Windows has on it that you don’t know about, which is running in the back ground.
Comment by chiefnoobie — August 25, 2010 @ 2:41 am