Microsoft Might Release Windows 9 a Lot Sooner

Microsoft has already confirmed that it’s working on the internally-codenamed Blue upgrade that’s expected to bring quite a lot of improvements to the Windows 8 platform and help it boost the rather disappointing sales.
More here.

Microsoft Might Release Windows 9 a Lot Sooner - Softpedia

 

[jimbo45]

This another repeat of a lot of useless discussions.

Some say Windows 8 is the future - others say Windows 8 sucks.

I suggest we wait and see what the future brings - the present sucks.

Not sure why it is a "Useless" discussion.

Some people ARE worried (of course incorrectly) that their computer will suddenly stop working. -- Just cast your minds back to the absolutely ridiculous theories that were flying around for the Y2K changes ( 1999 - 2000) -- people said Cars wouldn't start, planes would stop flying etc etc. In fact it probably was the biggest damp squid in History with those Greedy service companies and "Consultancies" such as Accenture, KPMG, Deloitte etc ripping businesses off for Astronomical amounts of money for doing basically NOTHING.

I remember some old SAP consultants who were getting paid over 2,000 USD A DAY back in 1999 for doing very little work on these "Y2K" projects.

Funnily enough IT seems to be the only business I've ever seen where with few exceptions the longer you are in it and the more experience you have the rates actually GO DOWN. !! ( Some of these same consultants are lucky now if they find SAP contracts paying 600 - 700 USD a day in 2013 -- so Go and figure that one out. Luckily Engineering is still good as modern education leaves a huge skill gap and these jobs can't be "off shored").

So some people need to be re-assured that their computers won't suddenly stop working even if Ms were to vanish overnight -- which of course it wont do.

(BTW a lot of the millennium problems were caused by people writing the YY in two digits - so was 010100 01/01/1900 or 01/01/2000. For insurance companies and Banks it would make a difference but relatively easily fixed,

The old IBM mainframes held year dates as well as two digits so people would label expiry dates on data like 99/365 for "indefinite" but then of course 00/001 would be less than the previous date so the data could be overwritten. However all these changes weren't a mega issue -- although people working for those "consultancies" I've mentioned above conned businesses into thinking it was the most complex project ever in order to justify their ludicrous huge payments).


Cheers
jimbo

 

[Wenda]

Hi there
Even HDD's were not very common and hugely expensive. Even had you managed to get some sort of DVD hardware at the time the Video cards and screens available wouldn't have been able to play any sort of video -- so unfortunately the answer is NO to video on Windows release 1.

Windows 3.11 might be a different proposition -- certainly in a VM -- haven't got the time to mess around with it but I'm sure SOMEONE on the forum will try it.

WFW (Word for Windows) and EXCEL still run perfectly OK on Windows 3.11 BTW.

Cheers
jimbo

Second attempt at a reply, Jimbo, I had one almost ready to send & the blasted browser locked up..

Anyway, I haven't tried to play DVDs in Win 3.11, but with a 16-bit version of something like
VLC, it should be do-able, or the 32-bit version might work with the Win32s extensions for Windows 3.1
installed. May have a play around with that... The Windows 3.1 'Media Player' is basically useless as most
file types currently in use weren't even around back then.

As for Word and Excel working on 3.11, they certainly do. I have Windows for Work-groups 3.11, running on
top of MS-DOS 6.22 in Virtual-Box. It has MS Office 4.3 (full) installed, which works just fine and, although its
interface isn't as 'good' as some later versions, it is every bit as usable and productive now as it was in 1995.

It was the last 16-bit version of MS Office, the next version was Office 95, which was 32-bit.

Even now, at nearly 20 years old, Office 4.3 is still light-years in advance of most 'app-style' stuff
available on tablets. And it's blindingly fast in a VM on a fast, modern machine, in fact the whole OS is.

Here's a couple of Office 4.3 screenshots for the skeptics, and a
bonus pic of my Virtual-Box VMs...

Wenda.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
Windows 3.11 is BLAZINGLY fast on a VM -- my only problem with EXCEL is that I like to get a load of Market data from the Internet and dynamically update various portfolio types of things -- The whole Internet query interface has changed as well as the "In built" Visual Basic stuff for macros --however for basic stuff the old EXCEL runs just fine.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Wenda]

Yes, I can see how that would 'cruel' it from your point of view, but as you
say, for general/basic use, it's more than adequate for most. And I'm
certainly pretty comfortable with the Win 3.11/Office 4.3 combo, because
it's what I learned PCs on all those years ago when I upgraded from the
C64/Amiga to the PC.

After all, when it comes down to it, how many functions are in Office 2007
or 2010 that 90% (a guess) of users will probably never see or use?
Even with the ribbon, which makes it pretty easy for even a newbie to find
functions and options.


Cheers.

Wenda.

 

[whs]

Jimbo said

So some people need to be re-assured that their computers won't suddenly stop working even if Ms were to vanish overnight -- which of course it wont do.

I doubt that there are many people on this forum who have that concern. My point was that we are going around in circles with the same arguments - and that on n-teen threads.