Windows 10 launches this summer in 190 countries around the world

daemin 11 years ago |

It may be a south-of-the-equator mentality, but it's not going to be summer in all of the 190 countries when Windows 10 is launched. differing calendars aside could USA-centric press releases just mention the month rather than the season?

AnkhMorporkian 11 years ago | |

They haven't announced a month, and there may be good reasons for that. They may have a target goal in mind, but still want wiggle-room if unexpected issues come up, and 'summer' sounds a heck of a lot better than 'At some point in the months of x and y'

xtrumanx 11 years ago | | |

Well there are other options: Q2/Q3 2015, mid 2015, etc.

AnkhMorporkian 11 years ago | | |

I don't think any other (non-verbose) options encapsulate what summer means with the same specificity. Q2/Q3 includes a far longer span of time, mid-2015 covers a 4 month period that covers a significant portion of spring and doesn't cover the entirety of summer, and I fear that all other simple options would suffer the same fate.

Considering the vast majority of computer users and potential Microsoft customers reside in the northern hemisphere, I don't think there's any problem with using summer as a timeframe.

hobarrera 11 years ago | | |

> I don't think any other (non-verbose) options encapsulate what summer means with the same specificity.

You mean lack of specificity?

From what I gather, it's at some point during the middle of my winter.

Of course, nobody actually remembers when the seasons start and end (though we just check wikipedia), while most people definitely know the order of the months. And even after checking, "this summer", is really a 3.5 month period, which is still as vague (if not more) as "mid 2015".

daemin 11 years ago | | |

So in that case what does Winter 2016 imply? Is it January 2016, or December 2016?

hobarrera 11 years ago | | |

I'm guessing that depends on contextual clues. If someone says "this winter" during August 2015, you can expect it to be the one about to start.

Of course, in some scenarios it's just impossible to disambiguate.

Quppa 11 years ago |

That's really soon, which fills me with dread. The UI as seen in the most recent pre-release builds is atrocious and it seems to be getting worse, not better, with each build.

Just look at these icons: http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-10-10036-83-updated-icons...

Perhaps they're pulling another 'Watercolor' (the pre-release decoy Windows XP theme that was replaced by Luna at the last minute), but I'm not getting my hopes up.

yuhong 11 years ago | |

Luckily at least the start menu should be fixed before RTM, as far as I know.

Quppa 11 years ago | | |

Fixed relative to what's in build 10036, undoubtedly, but I'm struggling to see how it will end up being an improvement over the Windows Vista/7-era version as far as desktop users are concerned. That said, it is an improvement over the Windows 8/8.1 Start Screen.

yuhong 11 years ago | | |

And that is all most users really care about.

nerdy 11 years ago |

It's going to be free for some Win7/Win8 users[1], I still use Win7 so I'm looking forward to the upgrade.

1: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2873214/windows-10-will-be-a-...

yaeger 11 years ago | |

You must have a lot of faith in Microsoft when you consider giving up your stable Windows7 in favor a dot zero release of an Operating System that in a lot of way still looks like Windows8. Unless I can see any kind of track record that it is indeed stable, all the cloud crap can be disabled and they actually put back Themes so I can get rid of everything "modern" or metro or whatever they call this nonsense, I am very happy sticking with 7 for at least the next 5 years.

tempestn 11 years ago |

I think this is as excited as I've been for a Windows release since '95. Which isn't saying a whole lot, but still, this will be the first time I've felt any desire to try upgrading to a new release as soon as it becomes available in 20 years.

james-skemp 11 years ago |

For anyone who checks comments first, I believe this is a better link.

http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/03/17/windows-...

Article linked to is a very brief summary that links to the above.

Urgo 11 years ago |

"summer" okay... so I guess by Sept 22nd. Not very descriptive for a news story..

BigChiefSmokem 11 years ago |

Is this for OEMs only? Usually it's a paper launch until October for consumers.

aceperry 11 years ago |

LOL, windows 8 users can't wait.

james-skemp 11 years ago | |

Meh. I can.

Windows 8 works quite well on both of my touch capable laptops, my gaming rig, and old 4-5 year development machine.

With 8.1 the Start button is back, but pressing the Windows key on the keyboard and selecting one of the pinned applications, or typing for search, works perfectly.

It took a while for me to put aside my feeling that things had to stay how they were, but once I did (touch capable device helped) I liked it. A lot.

I hope 10 refines things further. With the cost of touch capable Windows machines so low, the installed OS needs to work.

Edit: and if they can improve startup times even further with 10? Wow. Windows 8 was already faster than 7 on the same machines, even older machines and on non-SSD drives.

aceperry 11 years ago | | |

I can't wait. I can't use Win8 because the interface sucks so much on a real laptop. What was MS thinking? And I also hope they speed up the startup time, because it's definitely not faster than win7. In fact, all it does is show the "desktop" quicker, but you can't do anything until the little circle stops spinning, and that takes just as long as win7.

cyberjunkie 11 years ago |

Show us the Raspberry Pi 2 goods!

tdicola 11 years ago | |

Don't get your hopes up, by all accounts 'Windows 10' on the Pi 2 is a special version just for running GUI-less embedded applications. Look at what they have already for the Galileo/Edison (C++ only apps, no GUI) and extrapolate a little bit from there.

NeutronBoy 11 years ago | |

The terrible media circus that said Windows 8/10 would run on a Raspberry Pi forgot to mention that it would be the embedded editions of Windows, specifically designed to run IoT-type apps. Not the desktop version.