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Windows 8 And Windows 9?

6Foot2

By 6Foot2
in Windows 7

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Michael

Michael

Posted
Posted
I've never really understood why Microsoft or websites 'leak' or publish information knowing full well that Windows 7 is due for release very soon. I still think Microsoft are their worse enemy getting people to upgrade from XP.
srochford

srochford

Posted
Posted

128bit lol. thats going to annoy everyone.

 

Can't see why it should annoy people? We've pretty much got 64 bit Windows working well (I've got 64 bit Windows 7 on 3 machines; no problems with drivers or the software I use) so I'd hope that by the time 128bit chips are commodity items there'll be no problems getting stuff working.

 

For people who do serious maths (ie games players :-)), having big number crunching ought to be a good thing

Fatmas

Fatmas

Posted
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Ergh. Give people a chance to install Windows 7 before "leaking" 8 and 9.

 

It seems to me that information leaks are always approved by top managed. Dear me

CyberNerd

CyberNerd

Posted
Posted
Can't see why it should annoy people? We've pretty much got 64 bit Windows working well (I've got 64 bit Windows 7 on 3 machines; no problems with drivers or the software I use) so I'd hope that by the time 128bit chips are commodity items there'll be no problems getting stuff working.

 

For people who do serious maths (ie games players :-)), having big number crunching ought to be a good thing

 

It would annoy developers who would have to re-compile all their software. It would annoy sysadmins who would have to re-install it and it would annoy customers who would have to re-buy it. of course MS get another marketing coup and software houses make more money. But Is there a practical reason to go to 128bit? The jump to 8bit, 16bit,32bit and 64bit were so that the O/S could address more memory, I don't see a reason for this other than marketing hype. if it is true.

t_h

t_h

Posted
Posted

It's the old "640k ought to be enough" again - people might not see a need for it right now, but why wouldn't Microsoft look into it for future versions of Windows?

 

We already have graphics cards with 128, 256 bit memory buses so for me it hardly seems excessive for a future OS.

srochford

srochford

Posted
Posted
It would annoy developers who would have to re-compile all their software. It would annoy sysadmins who would have to re-install it and it would annoy customers who would have to re-buy it. of course MS get another marketing coup and software houses make more money. But Is there a practical reason to go to 128bit? The jump to 8bit, 16bit,32bit and 64bit were so that the O/S could address more memory, I don't see a reason for this other than marketing hype. if it is true.

 

The change from 8 to 16 etc wasn't just about memory. Remember, there are two important sets of "numbers" in a CPU - the width of the address bus (controls the maximum RAM you can address) and the width of the data bus (controls the size of numbers you can process).

 

On 8 bit CPUs you were stuck with numbers no bigger than 2^8 (256 decimal). This meant that to do maths with "real" numbers meant lots of complex fiddling around (eg the Z80 CPU allowed you to use pairs of registers so you could deal with numbers up to 2^16 but that still doesn't allow you to handle decimal numbers with any precision)

 

Anything involving real maths needs more bits (eg true colour graphics need 24 bit numbers for each pixel). If you want to be able to process graphics reasonably quickly, you want to be able to do more than 1 pixel at a time.

 

Some developers will get annoyed; many will be excited at the prospect of what they can do now they don't have "stupid" restrictions.

 

Of course, not everyone needs the extra - there's loads of software which is 16 or 32 bit today even though we've had 64 bit CPUs in common use for ages. I've no doubt that 128 bit CPUs will happily run 64 bit software and there's no reason why we couldn't have VMs on "Windows 8" just like we can have on Windows 7 so you could run your old app in a seamless VM.

DaveMurphy

DaveMurphy

Posted
Posted

:D Apple should do large educational discounts to get schools using mac for everything... they're more "creative" as they say than Windows... and that's what kids need isnt it? Them Mac v PC videos on YouTube are right I guess.

 

The other main thing is the amount of people who can't use vista yet as it looks entirely different, the start button has gone... so all them tutorials we made are now wrong as there is no effin START button!

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cookie_monster

cookie_monster

Posted
Posted
Its a load of rubbish like every other 'concept' screenshot that is 'leaked' every now and then. Remember the vista 'concept' screenshots?

 

Yep do you remember the Luna screen shots for the Windows 2000 welcome screen that eventually was canned and ended up in XP.

 

 

Slashdot Technology Story | Microsoft Leaks Details of 128-bit Windows 8

 

 

I doubt that Windows 8 will be a 128 bit OS BUT I could see a new 128 bit filesystem being included.

srochford

srochford

Posted
Posted
:D Apple should do large educational discounts to get schools using mac for everything... they're more "creative" as they say than Windows... and that's what kids need isnt it? Them Mac v PC videos on YouTube are right I guess.

 

The other main thing is the amount of people who can't use vista yet as it looks entirely different, the start button has gone... so all them tutorials we made are now wrong as there is no effin START button!

 

If they can't use Vista after XP as the button (which is in exactly the same place and has much the same function) doesn't say "start" on it, do you really think they'll cope with the change to a Mac???

 

I think many people move quite smoothly between OS versions and machines. Of course there are niggles - I still want to press R to run an app instead of just pressing Windows, typing the name and letting search find it. The new method is better (the Windows R only works for programs on the path; search works for any program, document, folder, email etc) but I still find myself getting it wrong :-)

 

Part of the difficulty is how much help the OS should give the user. Many people will remember the *&^!"ing paperclip in Word saying "I think you're writing a letter; do you need any help" and don't want that sort of thing. Do we need "I think you're trying to find a spreadsheet - let me show you how"??

CyberNerd

CyberNerd

Posted
Posted
The change from 8 to 16 etc wasn't just about memory. Remember, there are two important sets of "numbers" in a CPU - the width of the address bus (controls the maximum RAM you can address) and the width of the data bus (controls the size of numbers you can process).

 

On 8 bit CPUs you were stuck with numbers no bigger than 2^8 (256 decimal). This meant that to do maths with "real" numbers meant lots of complex fiddling around (eg the Z80 CPU allowed you to use pairs of registers so you could deal with numbers up to 2^16 but that still doesn't allow you to handle decimal numbers with any precision)

 

Anything involving real maths needs more bits (eg true colour graphics need 24 bit numbers for each pixel). If you want to be able to process graphics reasonably quickly, you want to be able to do more than 1 pixel at a time.

 

The data bus must be what they are talking about. The data bus and the address bus need not be the same.

Similar to the Z80 example, the 386SX was 32bit processor but to get 32bit from memory required 2 fetches because it has a 16bit data bus but the 386DX has a 32bit data bus.

but what hardware is a 128bit os going to run on? Usually intel/AMD produce the chips first then MS play a catchup game. It took ages for windows to get onto AMD64 where other os's were going it well before - infact didn;t MS drop 64bit support in NT4?

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