any rumours about Win 8?

[yoshi]

A rumour says that Win 8 is introduced next year. I have no idea at all how plausible this rumour is. If any of you have rumours about it and ready to share it here, I would appreciate it much.

I need to replace Vista with Win 7 sooner or later, as MS stops the after-care service in Jan next year. (I use both Win 7 PC and Vista PC's)

If Win 8 is launched next year, I might choose to wait for a while.

yoshi

[rogleale]

Re: any rumours about Win 8?

The latest rumours about Windows 8 are pointing to July or August 2012

Roger

[Ian]

Re: any rumours about Win 8?

Win 7 is already quite a big improvement over Vista. I get the feeling that Win 8 will be centred around the tablet experience. Win 7 supports touch screens and is very good for pen-centric users but is not very finger-friendly and with capacitive screens this is the future for tablets.

Ian

[yoshi]

Re: any rumours about Win 8?

Oh, thanks again here, Roger.
Then most likely I will wait until then and install it on a SSD, then a clean install, which is better.
yoshi

[yoshi]

Re: any rumours about Win 8?

Win 7 is already quite a big improvement over Vista. I get the feeling that Win 8 will be centred around the tablet experience. Win 7 supports touch screens and is very good for pen-centric users but is not very finger-friendly and with capacitive screens this is the future for tablets.

Ian

capacitive screen? Sorry unfamiliar words for me. Does it mean a touch screen for a desk top monitor?

btw it sounds like a tablet with Win 8 is similar to iPad2. Then I prefer win to iOS.

yoshi

[Ian]

Re: any rumours about Win 8?

There are three types of touch screen that I can think of:

Pen touch (often sensitive to the variation in pressure and with systems like Wacom, are adapted from graphics tablets) - sometimes called an 'active' pen digitizers and only the pen can be sensed by the digitiser. The pen is actually sensed when it is not touching the screen as long as it is close enough.

Resistive touch (passive) - requires a physical pressure of a stylus or other reasonably sharp point, and is not sensitive to the variation in pressure. Only one point can be sensed at a time, so mult-touch gestures are not supported. It's a less expensive solution to manufacture and the surface of the screen has a plastic layer. This can make the display a bit dull and grainy. These screens can be used with gloves, within physical limitations. Panasonic G-series cameras with touch screens use this system, as do cheaper and older tablet PCs and PDAs.

Capacitive touch systems (made famous by the iPod Touch and iPhones) work in the same way as laptop touch pads. They are also passive digitisers and sense objects that can draw a tiny amount of current from the lightly charged surface of the screen. Finger tips are ideal for this. They are not sensitive to physically sharp objects like a fingernail or stylus, like a resistive screen. However, you can get a stylus for capacitive screen that emulates the mild conductivity of a finger. You can't use a capacitive screen with gloves on. Unlike resistive touch screens capacitive screens are less prone to being accidental operation by contact with inanimate objects. Capacitive touch screens are glass, often coated to resistive finger marks and to enable your finger to slip over the surface easily. They are more sensitive when sensing finger gestures and can sense more than one finger at a time for multi-touch gesturing, like pinch to zoom, etc. Capacitive screens are implemented in all the best and more expensive tablet computers.

Some touch-screen computers and laptops can combine a passive digitiser with an active one. My laptop (HP Pavilion TouchSmart tx2130ea) combines a passive resistive and Wacom pen-centric active digitiser. Later versions of the TouchSmart range replaced the resistive screen with a capacitive one while retaining a pen-centric active digitiser.

Hope that helps!

Ian

[Steve40]

Re: any rumours about Win 8?

GEEZE, we don't need a Windows 8, seven hardly works even after umteen updates. The bigger question is; will - can, Microsoft ever get anything right. They have tried and tried again, without sucking a seed. Or maybe they have.

[yoshi]

Re: any rumours about Win 8?

Hi Ian, thanks a lot for this informative reply. It surely helps me to grasp the overview of the recent technology develepment.

I am not sure yet if or ot I would need the said features as far as I use a PC at home. In prinicple, I do not like to touch a surface of monitors. It's same for me as photo prints, music records/CD's/DVD's ... maybe too conservative?

But it must be convenient for outdoor use. For mobile type devices such as smart phones including a netbook.
The only touch censor type monitor I currently use is car navigation monitor.

yoshi

[Ian]

Re: any rumours about Win 8?

GEEZE, we don't need a Windows 8, seven hardly works even after umteen updates. The bigger question is; will - can, Microsoft ever get anything right. They have tried and tried again, without sucking a seed. Or maybe they have.

I upgraded my daughter's PC to Win 7 from XP over the weekend and it's working perfectly. Yes, I have had problems with Windows 7 in the past, but I blame it on the bundled software that comes preinstalled on new PCs. I have clean installed Windows 7 on a laptop and desktop in the last couple of weeks and practically everything works brilliantly - the only problem I have had has been down to an old graphics card not supporting the HD format wide screen mode (1600x900) on a new monitor.

Windows 7 for pen-centric tablets is actually already pretty good and it has added support for multi-touch if your hardware supports this, but Windows 8 will be much more optimised for touch and at the same time retain compatibility with all the applications not designed for touch.

Had a demo of the Nokia Lumia Windows Phone handset the other day (a friend works for Nokia) - it's extremely slick. Windows tablets (as opposed to Windows PCs) will have much the same user experience. Microsoft is late to the game, but so was Apple with the iPhone...

Ian