There's a lot of buzz on the Internet today about some "leaked" Microsoft slides concerning Windows 8. But, like the Computerworld article on the subject says, you shouldn't get excited about anything in those leaked slides. You're likely to end up disappointed. If any of you can remember back to 1994, when Windows 95 beta versions were out, there were some awesome options available that never made it into the operating system (OS). In fact, some of them have never made it into any Windows operating system.
Every new iteration of a Windows operating system brings out the wishers and "it's going to do this" types. Rarely do they ever come to fruition. That is unless you're talking about service packs, hotfixes and security alerts. Those you can predict with great accuracy.
If you want to know more about Windows 8 features, here's a list of "for sures."
- Service Pack 1 due in 3 months from Release
- Service Pack 2 due one year from Release
- Service Pack 3 due 18 months from Release
- Windows Updates requiring reboot every 9 days
- Security fixes requiring reboot every 16 days
- Freezes that require reboot every 51 days
And those are just a few of the "secret" and "leaked" features that are known at this time. Updates will be made as they're received by our secret and leaked news feed aggregators.
There's a bit of a Zeitgeist when it comes to operating systems. Some features that dreamed up in brainstorming sessions are just too advanced for regular users. They're not ready to make the leap. People acquire and adopt technology in small increments.
If you don't believe it, take the CPU world as an example. There were 8088, 8086, 80286, 80386, 80486, 80586 and 80686 processors. They were released incrementally. People bought an 80286 when it was the best available but traded up when the 386 came out and so on.
There's something called "planned obsolescence" that you should read more about.
Expectations grow with time. If you gave someone a Pentium Pro-based system in 1987, the expectation would have been for a Pentium II or III in 1988. DOS would have run really, really fast on those.
The point here is that you shouldn't get your hopes up for any super feature that you hear about until you see it. Dreaming is not the same as having. And, Microsoft learned its lesson with Windows XP, which is still perhaps the best Windows OS ever made. They also learned their lesson with Vista--perhaps the worst Windows OS ever made.
What do you think Windows 8 should have as new features? Dare to dream.