While I was fast asleep, Microsoft unveiled the SKUs for Windows 8 - and we're in for a surprise. Yes, after years and years of fully deserved mockery for releasing 343 versions of each Windows release, the company has seen the light and reduced everything to just four - of which only two, Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro, will be freely available in stores.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2010-09-23
Who doesn't want "advanced security"
end users don't want advanced security. They want simple security. However Enterprise want to finetune security like "this person can only use this computer between these office hours to start these programs".
"PC management and deployment" is also something that is only useful in an enterprise. It doesn't mean that you can't manage a "home" version of Windows. It just means that there is no easy way to make all 5 computers in your home have the same browser default homepage.
"virtualization, new mobility scenarios, and much more". Pro will support running Hyper-V and will support native boot from VHD. I don't know what Enterprise will add to this.
I see it like this:
Arm (Windows 8 RT): Appliance
Home: "your girlfriend, father and grandparents" that just want to use a computer for all their personal things
Pro: "you", with a machine that you might install yourself or get installed by an IT-person. All the functionality is there and you will most likely be joined to a domain
Enterprise: "people at work". All machines joined to a domain and everything centrally managed, secured and deployed as part of 100's or more of similar machines
This all makes perfect sense to me, although I would have liked Enterprise to be unneeded because I think Pro and Enterprise will be almost identical except for the license. All that "Enterprise-stuff" will most likely be just some tooling on Server 8 anyway (and a different license "of course")
And I would have loved for the ARM version to be available in a version that could be used for a desktop as well, but I can understand that there isn't a use/business-case for that (yet).
My ideal would have been this:
Windows 8 appliance (phone/tablet, the OS is just there in the background)
Windows 8 home (you can customize the look-and-feel of the OS that gets installed by your OEM)
Windows 8 workstation (the IT department does everything for you and you are on a domain)
Windows 8 server (with a GUI-feature that is disabled by default)
Member since:2005-06-29
Member since:2005-07-12
"Advanced Security" Probably refers to BitLocker, as Group Policy stuff come as part of domain login capabilities of Pro. (and, IIRC, GP settings are even accessible on Home versions). That is something that has traditionally come as part of "Ultimate" versions, which Microsoft is apparently doing away with (Finally!).
Also, that is something that should be available in all versions.
Edit: Oops. should read the whole chart first. BitLocker comes with Pro (Finally!)
Edited 2012-04-17 18:33 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Google added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance."According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow."During its Keynote today, Google announced new features coming to its flagship search function - you know, that thing we all started using Google for. VP Amit Singhal spent some time discussing what Google's search functionality will eventually morph into. Google's strategy is summarized by three words: answer, converse, and anticipate. Singhal explained that many of the pieces of these upcoming changes can already be seen in products that Google has recently introduced - namely, Google Knowledge Graph and Google Now, with perhaps a splash of Google Glass, too." I hold on to my hat every time Google changes Search. It's such a vital product in my daily life.
Member since:
2012-04-17
To me, this means there will still be three desktop versions of Windows 8, not two. We'll have 'normal', "Pro" and "Enterprise".
Most of the 'enterprise' features listed can be very interesting to a user currently interested in the "Pro" version. Who doesn't want "advanced security"? (Would the 'normal' and "Pro" versions then have "basic security"? :-)) Deployment I can go without, but PC management is something even the most basic home user comes into contact with (installing updates, service packs, ...). As a developer, I regularly use virtualization to test other platforms and sometimes Windows is the platform being virtualized on top of Linux instead of the other way around. And even 'new mobility scenarios' (which can really mean anything from domain roaming to better stand by policies) are always welcome for my laptop.
I'm very interested in a more detailed breakdown of the differences. Remember that remote desktop is something Windows 7 only allows to "Pro" versions and higher, while this is something a home user could definitely benefit from by allowing their PC-savvy friends to fix their computer.