Windows Eight

Post Reply New Topic

How will Microsoft try to justify that people need to buy windows 8?

The gamers wont be so hard. MS will simply release a new directX that isnt available on vista/seven. They'll fall in line. They always do.

But for the rest, its hard to justify that windows needs more than 16 gigs of ram when seven only requires one. It will strike a discord if suddenly windows needs a 4 ghz processor when seven works on just half of that. If your office package suddenly requires four times as much ram as the previous version, what features will you be looking for to justify that?

People are going to expect the next windows(eight or whatever its called) to operate just fine on their current computers. If MS applies some sort of hardware limitations on it, it will be hard to justify. They got away with this in the past with 16 and 32 bit systems having achievable limits on ram(due to real hardware limits), but vista has an artificial constraint at 16 gigs. Basically the hardware has gotten away from the software vendors.

So then the hardware vendors reach a "why bother?" stage. If the software cannot fully utilize their hardware, people wont buy it. Prospects of profits drop off while they wait for Windows to catch up.

Lets not quibble: Apple faces this conundrum too.

So does linux, but that community isnt profit driven.

it's all just a racket.

"This is the new version and we slightly adjusted the taskbar. We're dropping support for the old version soon, so you better buy the new one."

Or, they'll just send it out to OEMs and people will buy WIndows 8 whenever they replace their old computers.


Seven needs more than one gig of ram. It's laggy on my machine even with four gigs (and yes, I know people will blame my graphics card, but I've seen it on discrete graphics systems- still laggy).

16 gigs of RAM will be relatively common in a few years. I don't see what the big deal is.


They expected the same of Vista. MS still made plenty of money off Vista.


I'm not sure what conundrum you refer to. Now that 64-bit is standard, hardware vendors have plenty of room to make better hardware without having to wait for software to catch up.

If Microsoft has any brains, they'd focus on improving features in Windows 7 through service packs and plan on making it THE OS to have for the next 10 years. Their next OS should be something truly revolutionary that exploits some remarkable new ability of PCs being developed. Not a rehash of what's always been there.

XP (for all it's worth) was a very successful product, and they should have learned by now that rushing out minor improvements or untested OS versions only results in backpedaling. After all, how long has XP been supported after it was scheduled for discontinuation?

Just going off what MS claims.



Its easily in reach now. I could probably have it for 700 bucks. Justifying it, making use of it.. thats the trick.


No they didnt. They barely made 20% of the market and its falling. Seven has just about caught up with it in half the time. MS reported their first ever quarterly loss in the vista days. Maybe they broke even. Maybe.



You are missing the point. Why grow into a market that isnt there? My desktop has 4 slots for ram. At reasonable prices you can get a 2 gig stick of ram, giving me an effective maximum of 8 gigs. Why are there no widely available 3 gig sticks? Because almost nobody will buy them because the operating systems do not currently saturate that much memory. Sooner or later it will happen, but it requires that Intel/AMD redesign the ATX motherboard and the memory manufacturers to create larger memory sticks.

The minute they do this it gets worse for the operating systems because the gap widens again.

I've maxed out my system's 4GB of RAM on occasion. I could probably make use of 8GB, and there are plenty of people who would be more memory-hungry.


Why? Because people will want higher-spec machines. They'll like being able to run more programs simultaneously and for their computers to be faster. And the next versions of Windows might require 4GB instead of "1GB", in which case people will start buying machines with 8-12GB standard.

There aren't a whole ton of 3 gig sticks, but 4 gig sticks are starting to become more common.


How so?

I really don't see what you think the problem is here. At all. I'm not even sure what you're stating the problem to be.

I had to work at it. It took rendering a weeks worth of video frames to bump into my swap.



I didnt see those either at tigerdirect.


How so?

I really don't see what you think the problem is here. At all. I'm not even sure what you're stating the problem to be.[/quote]

Then I suck.

The problem is that the operating systems and hardware manufacturers operate best in lock step. Neither can outpace the other without causing trouble, but thats whats happening. Nobody is building bridges where roads dont want to go. Nobody is building hardware that is unsupported by operating systems.

For example, Can you get a 128 bit CPU for a desktop system? Its almost certain that Intel knows how to build one(they probably have a concept model). But they wont go there without just reason. Would windows run on such a machine? Probably, but it wont run any better than on a 64 bit computer. Thats all its designed for.

So we will sit and languish on 64 bit technology until the operating systems outgrow those shoes, but the shoes are getting bigger each generation.

Example: windows xp needs a minimum of 0.128 gb of ram. It handled a maximum of about 128 gigs(64 bit hardware).It started to flush data to the page file before using 1 gig. But 64 bit was rare and buggy, and 32 bit only handled a maximum of 3.5(and not gracefully). I experienced this as an xp user with four gigs of ram.


Vista needs 1 gig of ram, and accepts a maximum of 128(I think). Seven? 1 gig and a maximum of 128 as well. It is a matter of increasingly difficult programming that determines how well this maximum gets used. But there are limits on human need: you only need so much formatting data in a document.

My xp era computer will run seven. It will likely run eight. That does not bode well for the hardware companies, and it also means that whatever 8 can do, xp can as well, and that makes the software companies look increasingly dishonest.

One percenters like us want nice hardware, but most people are cheap and buy the bargain computer. You can only force the new stuff on them but its getting harder to do that. Thats my point. I think.

If you run virtual machines or Chrome you can eat up a lot of memory. Alternately, just switch from GNOME to KDE and from Vim to Emacs.

Also: you have swap?


It took me approximately 8 seconds on the tigerdirect website to find a whole bunch of 4GB RAM sticks.


Which is why manufacturers delayed making systems with over 4GB of memory until recently. Now everyone uses 64-bit, so they have plenty of room to build better hardware before before they hit more software limits.


At this point in time there is no need for 128-bit CPUs, except perhaps in some niche supercomputing environments.


Languish? 64-bit is pretty good.


Remember when 640K was enough for anyone? The idea that anyone would need 4GB of memory would have seemed ridiculous 15 years ago, but here we are.


Only a pretty high-end XP-era computer would be able to run 7 comfortably. And the software has improved significantly The NT platform has significantly matured since its debut in the desktop market with XP, and security (and many other aspects) are much better in Windows 7 than in XP.


I don't see where you're getting that idea. Today 4GB of RAM is standard in basically all new machines. In five years the bargain computers will probably have 8 gigs of RAM, and software bloat will continue to fill that space.

I see what you did there. "Eight" and not "8" If they release the next version, it will really be Windows 7.0

Currently the 64bit version of Windows 6.x is
6.0 = 1.5GB RAM
6.1 = 2GB RAM

32bit is
6.0 512MB (0.5GB)
6.1 1GB~

64bit allows 128-192GB for Windows. Which I think MS will need to unlock later down the line

What do you mean? It runs fast, even on my moms laptop (2gb RAM, 2.4 GHZx2 proc., Integrated Graphics) it's no faster on my computer (4gb Ram, 2.6ghzx4 AMD Proc., Radeon HD 4830 512MB) The only difference appears when running games and editing video. The same differences would appear on any OS.

EDIT: Removed irrelevant portions of quote

my current OSes do the job.
my current software does the job.

i would only ever upgrade if
1) my current pooter(s) broke - and i was forced to buy new with OS pre-installed
2) Pro Tools / Cubase released a new version with features that only worked on bigger specs
3) i had a really large project and my system crapped out

my ubuntu version is 8.
mac version is snow leopard
windows version is xp sp2

I have the original XP SP2, Mac OSX & Linux Ubuntu 8 install discs.

Ok. How about this? If the trend is accelerating(and we dont have enough data points to tell) then feature implementation will be increasingly differed(like good 64 bit support was promised for xp and only happened in Seven). Likewise xp had several versions of directX but Vista had one (dx10), and Seven got a new one(dx11). Will Seven get a direct X12 or will gamers have to wait for Eight?

Maybe we have different expectations of speed. I shouldn't have to wait 60-90 seconds after login for Firefox and Thunderbird to be running and usable.

I've seen Win7 x64 on high-end systems (quad-core i7, 8 gigs of memory, 1GB Nvidia graphics card) and at that point it is actually fast. Roughly equivalent to running Linux on my laptop.

Are you kidding? The hardware vendors are PROFIT DRIVEN. If people buy a computer every 10 years, the hardware vendors are screwed. They need Microsoft or whoever to release versions with higher requirements so they can make money.

Can you guys name a good Windows OS?


Windows 8 won't be different, it's just hype.

The only windows OSes I cared for were 95, 98 and xp SP2 (SP3 f****d s**t up way too much IMO.)