Announcing the Windows 8 Editions

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2012/04/16/announcing-the-windows-8-editions.aspx

by Braasch • 14 years ago

57 75 14 years ago

MichaelGG• 14 years ago

Awesome! They listened to feedback and killed off the mess of SKUs. Now only if they'd allow disk encryption (Bitlocker) in the basic SKU, so non-Pro users can use the OS instead of having to install TrueCrypt.

loverobots• 14 years ago

I personally would choose TrueCrypt, but I understand the "let's go with default version" even if it's $100 or so more (upgrading Win 7 Home to the Bitlocker version costs about that).

I suspect the ones with Bitlocker will do well if MS scares the crap out of big corps about losing private information

endlessvoid944• 14 years ago

I love that Apple doesn't make me choose between editions. I paid $30 and I got the new OS. Did I get the upgrade edition? What features did I pay for?

No idea. I got it all, for $30.

I didn't even want to read the whole table for all the features of windows 8. I just want Windows 8.

ckluis• 14 years ago

It's the best they've done so far...

endlessvoid944• 14 years ago

Yeah I definitely agree. I can't believe they got it down to 3. But I also can't help thinking "what the hell. haven't they learned?"

It probably makes them more money overall. But with the cost of user confusion and possible frustration. I guess that's a tradeoff they're willing to make. Which is why I won't buy it for $100 bucks.

astrodust6• 14 years ago

Maybe they're following the grandmother rule, where if someone's grandmother can't figure it out after a ten minute explanation, they should go back and try again with a different plan.

tshtf• 14 years ago

If you want the features of the operating system formerly known as OS X Server, you shell over $49.99 in the App Stare: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/os-x-lion-server/id444376097?...

sigzero• 14 years ago

That isn't a direct comparison though because OS X Server and OS X are different beasts really (thought they share an awful lot). Joe Public would just buy "OS X" or in the Windows 7 world Joe Public would have to choose between "Windows 7 Starter/Home Basic/Home Premium/Professional/Enterprise/Ultimate" and in the Windows 8 world "Windows 8/8 Pro/RT" and would have to ask to know the differences between each.

sliverstorm3• 14 years ago

On the other hand, I love it when companies let me choose roughly what functionality I need, and pay accordingly.

OzzyB• 14 years ago

Unless of course the lowest option, functionality wise, isn't less than $30.

astrodust6• 14 years ago

You mean like cable companies where if you want ESPN you can buy it, but if you don't want the History Channel you can opt out?

If your product aspires to be that complicated, you're probably doing it wrong.

dewitt• 14 years ago

I agree that fewer editions is the way to go, but note that OS X has always had multiple SKUs as well:

  http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/os-x-lion/id444303913
  http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/os-x-lion-server/id444376097

And customers first need to buy Snow Leopard separately, because you can't install Lion on its own, you can only upgrade to it (somewhat amazingly):

  http://www.apple.com/macosx/how-to-buy/

On a related note, over the weekend I tried to install Lion on a 5-year-old iMac. Was surprised to find out it's not supported on hardware even that far back. I hope they don't continue either trend with Mountain Lion.

(And a footnote, Windows RT is for an entirely different architecture—ARM—and an entirely different class of devices, so no surprise there's a separate SKU for it.)

2muchcoffeeman• 14 years ago

Legally, i.e. according to the TOS, you need Snow Leopard.

You can install Lion on it's own http://www.macworld.com/article/1161087/install_lion_over_le...

But it's a bit silly.

endlessvoid944• 14 years ago

It's far less of a big deal, though, with a $30 price tag. I don't dislike upgrading from Windows 7 to windows 8 because I think it will be hard. I don't want to pay upwards of $100 to install an OS on another machine. I'll definitely pay $30 though. That's the equivalent of beer money on a night out with a few other friends.

beagle32• 14 years ago

Apple officially supports 4-year old hardware but not older (or at least, did in the past). All Apple software produced 4 years after the last PPC apple was sold had still supported PPC, and only then it stopped. I think that's reasonable. While it's technically easier to support a 5-year old Intel Mac compared to a 5-year old PPC Mac, I still think Apple is reasonable in not doing that.

It's not like your 4-year old hardware or software stops working. It's just that newer software gradually stops being available for your old hardware.

astrodust6• 14 years ago

The local store ran out of single licenses for Snow Leopard so I just bought the family pack for something like $59. I didn't even feel ripped off. It used to be $120 for a single copy, so this is like half off!

Microsoft still has the audacity to charge several hundred dollars for their OS. How is it that the cost of Windows keeps going up, but the cost of computers keeps going down?

creamyhorror• 14 years ago

"Microsoft still has the audacity to charge several hundred dollars for their OS."

That's really disingenuous, given that

1) the consumer versions of Windows traditionally cost less than $100

2) Microsoft doesn't make money on hardware, whereas the cost of Apple's OSes is priced into Mac hardware

You don't get to tut-tut Microsoft for an expensive OS (that runs on the consumer's choice of commodity hardware, cheap or expensive) when you pay a premium on a Mac all-in-one computer. You can justify Apple's OS pricing as being easy to stomach all you want - ultimately it's your choice to buy into the intended psychology of their pricing strategy - but don't try to paint that as a rational, fair comparison.

gouranga3• 14 years ago

Well that's a load of shit. They screwed you for $59!!!

1/ I've never bought Windows. I tend to buy new hardware when it comes along every 2-3 years (which is the typical lifespan of any hardware regardless of brand/vendor).

2/ And I didn't pay $1200 for the hardware either like Apple stuff. In fact I paid equiv $800 for a Lenovo with Windows 7.

3/ The non Apple hardware is EXACTLY the same and is cheaper (try a Lenovo T/X machine which are far better put together than Apple kit). Oh and I can change the battery without a screwdriver ;-) Oh and I can get the spare bits off ebay for virtually nothing.

I love how Apple fanboys enjoy telling people how they didn't get ripped off when they did...

PhrosTT• 14 years ago

You paid the apple tax when you bought your computer. You can only access that $30 price after paying a huge premium for your hardware.

pinaceae• 14 years ago

exactly, that's why all the macbook air competitors are half the price of...wait a sec...

Michiel• 14 years ago

> I didn't even want to read the whole table for all the features of windows 8

Took me all of 5 minutes to digest that table (and decide I want Windows 8 Pro for Boot from VHD and Client Hyper-V). That's not too much time to choose something I'm going to be using for 3 years, is it?

r00fus• 14 years ago

One thing jumps out at me... so only WindowsRT has Microsoft Office - that's pretty much a required app for many business PC users and severe fragmentation if it's seriously not available on the other Windows8 editions.

Am I missing something? Does this imply shift to "cloud" office?

walexander• 14 years ago

I think this implies "We already can sell Office on x86, but we're not even sure we can sell Windows on ARM".

cooldeal3• 14 years ago

I think it's more like they're driving home the point...

"Why get an artificially crippled consumption device when you can have the choice to hookup a keyboard/mouse and do real work?"

..by bundling Office with the ARM tablets.

sharth• 14 years ago

Windows RT is an ARM version of Windows. On that version, a touch optimized version of Microsoft Office will be included with the windows license.

klausa• 14 years ago

It means that it's the only one that comes bundled with Office - of course you'll be able to install Office on Windows 8, but you will have to purchase it separately.

modeless• 14 years ago

Of course Office is available on all Windows versions. It's included with Windows RT, which is an interesting choice. It's likely going to be crippled in some way, otherwise an ARM laptop suddenly looks like a far better value than an Intel laptop. Intel can't be happy about this.

recoiledsnake3• 14 years ago

Why would Microsoft care about Intel while competing against the iPad juggernaut?

Also, the Intel tablet/laptop has the huge advantage of being able to run all Windows software to date. The ARM will only run Office and Metro apps.

gouranga3• 14 years ago

It's a completely different version of Office. I imagine it's at least partially recycled from Office for Windows Phone (which is bundled for free). It's actually rather good.

sliverstorm3• 14 years ago

No, I take it simply to mean that Office is included with WinRT (but not Winx86) which makes sense- they are making a custom Office interface, and probably see WinRT more as an opportunity to make Office indispensable on ARM, rather than Windows. This is how they have always won- it's not about the OS, it's about the 'apps. (Apple has re-demonstrated that with iOS) Office is their "killer app"- Windows is an enabler.

roadnottaken• 14 years ago

They're taking 'Remote Desktop (host)' away from standard (non-pro) editions. That sucks.

DLarsen• 14 years ago

Nothing new here. The basic versions of Win7 didn't have it.

cooldeal3• 14 years ago

They can't take away something that was not there in the first place.

ender7• 14 years ago

'Window Steam Blog'

joshu• 14 years ago

same here.

joejohnson• 14 years ago

That giant table looks pretty awful, but I guess this is a huge improvement for Windows releases. For desktop users, it's really a choice between Pro and regular. For Vista, it was this mess: http://www.helpwithwindows.com/WindowsVista/vista-which-vers...

marklabedz• 14 years ago

Narrower, but longer.

GavinAnderegg• 14 years ago

Windows 8: Normal person edition

Windows 8: I work in a big company edition

Windows 8: At least I get Office for free edition

Also what's with this:

  All editions of Windows 8 offer a no-compromise experience.

If they're no compromise, why do I have to choose between them?

simonsarris• 14 years ago

Rather, the only compromise is price and for 100% of consumers that makes the choice completely obvious.

There isn't Windows 8: Productivity Crippled Edition, or Windows 8: Red and Blue editions where both have pros and cons. You don't have to labor over the difference because you're not losing anything by picking one over the other.

The kicker is that even if you bought Home and find yourself needing one of the extra features (BitLocker or joining a domain), you can upgrade to big company edition for the price difference without making any real changes but paying the price (no need to reinstall, etc).

For a given consumer there's literally zero reason to choose Pro until you need one of the features, and at that point you upgrade with Windows Anytime Upgrade and pay the price difference on the spot, and get your feature.

Because of this there's literally zero compromising, or decision making at all really. You just get Home and keep it until the day you need Pro, a day that will never come for most people.

eof• 14 years ago

No 'features for encryption' for "regular Windows." seems short sighted.

This is something that is only going to become more important as time goes on.

wmf• 14 years ago

For a home user, what attacks does BitLocker prevent? Where would home users escrow their keys?

ryannielsen• 14 years ago

While not necessarily "attacks", BitLocker will help home users against data theft from the loss or theft of a laptop.

Apple offers a full disk encryption variant of FileVault for every Lion user for this very reason. Thanks to Lion, I'm able to track my laptop and can remotely nuke the drive (with, granted, some big caveats) and, if the computer's not communicative, I at least know my data is encrypted behind some level of password protection.

And I was able to turn it on through a quick series of sheets, one of which helped me set up an escrowed recovery key that's encrypted with keys only I know and stored with Apple. Should I not trust the encryption process, I'm able to opt out of escrow entirely.

It would have been wonderful to see Microsoft acknowledge that everyone can benefit from full disk encryption, not just "pro" users.

sciurus• 14 years ago

'Windows Media Center will be available as an economical “media pack” add-on to Windows 8 Pro.'

Does this mean it is not available for the non-Pro version of Windows 8?

JumpCrisscross• 14 years ago

I think it's included in the non-Pro version by default versus being a paid (that's how I'm reading "economical") add-on to the Pro version.

beagle32• 14 years ago

Look for "no comprises" in this thread. If what you think is true, then .. Microsoft still doesn't get what "don't make me decide" means.

duaneb• 14 years ago

Well, it doesn't look like it will be available for Windows 8 RT, which is somewhat strange, considering that I would assume the ARM devices are media-centric.

K2h• 14 years ago

They need to integrate RT to remote very well to a real win8 or win7 machine and then I'm sold.

alan_cx• 14 years ago

I have not taken a detailed look at this Win 8, but from an "ignorant dumb punter" POV, from a brief look, it looks like it turns my expensive PC in to a dumbed down toy. It sort of reminds me of an old heavily restricted Win Terminal Server session with flash bits.

Am I only seeing one mode and one can have the traditional windows look, or is that what we are all supposed to use now? If so, it look like a horrific wrench to get used to and there for very off putting.

yuhong• 14 years ago

Yea, you can switch to the Windows desktop from the Metro start screen, though the old Start menu is gone and the start screen replaces it.

gnomesayin• 14 years ago

There are some slick elements of the Metro UI design, but it does feel hemmed in, restrictive, and more akin to tablets.

grandalf2• 14 years ago

As a long time linux user and recent OSX laptop user, I hadn't used Windows with any regularity since 2001. Recently I bought a copy of Windows 7 to run some niche software that lacks wine support and is cumbersome to run in a vm.

My first impression was that Windows 7 was great, it appeared to have removed many of the rough edges from XP and Vista.

Soon enough though I began to run into issues relating to legacy programs' security needs. Turns out, the only option I had was to run the programs as Administrator, since the crippled version of Windows 7 I bought has the ntfs permissions essentially disabled.

Why of all things would the secure filesystem be one of the disabled features on the consumer focused OS version?

This realization was a bit jarring, b/c I felt that the "tax" to use the OS properly in this case was fairly high. I can see charging more money for actual features, but NTFS permissions are clearly used behind the scenes in the Home version, so it feels more like using crippleware than opting out of advanced capabilities.

So I hope that Windows 8 uses a more reasonable way to determine what is a basic and what is a pro feature.

noblethrasher• 14 years ago

The Home version just lacks a nice GUI for the security stuff. You can still manage file and directory permissions from the command line using cacls.exe.

See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490872.aspx

grandalf2• 14 years ago

Cool! Do you know if anyone has written a ui that wraps this?

error54• 14 years ago

While we all have our gripes, I am enjoying the various ways developers can write software for Windows RT. I understand Microsoft is (probably) just trying to play catchup to iOs and Android in terms of apps but allowing developers to create apps using languages they already know (C, C++, or C#(via Visual Studio 11)) is a nice touch.

dpark3• 14 years ago

Don't forget JS+HTML. That's a first-class option in WinRT.

Disclaimer: MSFT employee, yadda yadda

Announcing the Windows 8 Editions

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