Posted on 01/21/2015 2:36:29 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Microsoft gathered a bunch of reporters together in its Redmond, Washington, headquarters Wednesday to show off the next version of Windows, Windows 10, which is expected to come out later this year.
You can check out our live blog of the event at the bottom of this page, but here were the highlights:
* Holograms. The coolest thing was a set of new products that will let people see holographic images. The hardware is called Microsoft HoloLens and looks a lot like Google Glass. There are also software tools within Windows 10 that will let programmers create apps that use holograms.
* Free upgrade: Windows 10 will be a free upgrade to anybody with Windows 7 or later, for one year. There was also a lot of talk about "Windows as a service," but that does not mean you'll pay for a subscription to Windows, like you do with Office 365. It just means Microsoft will push updates to the platform more frequently, and you'll get them in the background. That's not really new.
* Gaming: All Windows 10 devices will have an Xbox app that lets you connect to Xbox Live and play games against Xbox One users. You'll also be able to pause and record games, and stream them from an Xbox One to a Windows 10 device within your home.
* Mobile: This was probably the most lackluster part of the presentation. There will be a version of Windows 10 for smartphones, but it looks and feels a lot like Windows Phone, which has been around for four years. The goal, Microsoft says, is to create experiences that span different platforms. So, for example, you'll be able to start doing a task on your PC than transition to your phone.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
For the techies ( AKA Software Developers ) among you, here’s what Windows 10 has in store — Something called: Universal apps, which is a new way of building applications that can easily be ported from PCs to mobile and Xbox devices.
It’s not quite “write once, run anywhere,” but it’s a lot closer than past versions of Microsoft products. The goal? To convince Microsoft’s large base of Windows PC developers to move their apps over to Microsoft’s newer mobile platforms, which will hopefully close the app gap versus Android and Apple’s iOS.
Kind of like what Apple has had for the last... what? ten years?
People are going insane over the “HoloLens”. I’m actually pretty stunned that they kept that under wraps. That is some serious sci-fi stuff.
How many flavors of win 10 will there be and will the free be the cheapest ?
About 90% of the people who use Windows just write documents, create spreadsheets, read email, and browse the web. You don’t need a fancy OS to do this.
Wow, they are still at it.
And if it aint broke don't fix it.
One size fits all?
Amen.
I’ve been using Win XP Pro since it first came out. Now on SP3. It has features I’ll never use. I’ve used Vista (poor), Win 7 (what Vista should have been) and Win 8 and Win 8.1.
If I were going to upgrade, it would be to Win 7. Absolutely NOT Win 8. What a kludge!
Long live XP :) MSFT made it too good.
The XBox app is way over due. They should have done that the minute developers started leaving the PC as a game platform. It’s good ad copy “play all the PC games AND all the Xbox games”.
I’m still missing XP.
If you’re still using XP, congratulations! You are officially every black hat operative’s best friend. There have been hundreds of new exploits announced for XP since MS stopped patching it. If you think you’re safe, you’re deluding yourself.
I took the oldie and newbie to local computer guru and he swapped all my stuff onto the new one and installed "Classic Shell" so that my new 8.1 would not be too dissimilar from what I'd become accustomed to. "Familiarity" is very important to wifey and me....
I'll have to give this all a couple of months absorption and then maybe see if he recommends me swapping 8.1 to 10.
As an MCP, I’m both excited for and dreading Win10.
On the one hand, Win10 will represent the actual joining of several Microsoft development and design methodologies into one cohesive platform. On the other hand, Microsoft is going “all in” with Azure and their cloud services.
The “free upgrade” is a platform migration to Microsoft’s cloud where your personal data will be ported over and stored ad infinitum. No longer will the NSA/CIA/FBI require that your machine be turned on and connected to the Internet. No no! Now they can browse your documents without your knowledge any time, day or night.
There is a catch, however, as I understand it, and that is that you will have complete control over what parts of your system will exist where. There’s been talk among other MCPs including developers of Microsoft’s eventual goal being a thin-client-like setup where your local computer acts as a “dumb terminal” of sorts, and your entire system is hosted in the cloud. I’ve been saying this for years. Microsoft is finally taking the steps to make it happen.
Make no mistake, Win10 is a cool platform and will provide incredible control to system architects/engineers such as myself, but I would tread lightly for at least a year after retail launch. There WILL be bugs.
Bzzzzt! Wrong answer. I don't allow anything to automatically install updates. It can check and download but I must have final approval for the installation so I can let other suckers be the first to do it and tell people whether it actually works. I've been fighting an upgrade which @#((@*#(*s up my networking and drops the WiFi transmit speed to a few kbps. After the second full reinstallation of Windows 7 in a month I am finally trickling in the upgrades and setting many, many, many restore points to see which upgrade nukes the network. It looks like it may be an HP automatic "upgrade".
new ui not bad, not horrible
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