Upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for only $39.99!

[persia]

The market has consistently rejected open operating systems.  Linux, BSD, etc have failed to gather more than a small fraction of desktops.  People like closed systems, end of story.  Even Android, which is a Unix distro and open source has locked down the OS.

[persia]

And Linux is Unix based, Linus' original intention was to create a free open source Unix and used his name combined with Unix to name it.  We can all be glad he didn't call it Torvaldix...

Android is Linux based, not Unix based.

Well yes, counting is difficult and becoming more difficult, is an ARM tablet a computer?  An intel tablet a computer.  What kind of OS are Windows RT, iOS and Android?  The language has yet to catch up with the reality.

And while Linux only makes up about 1% of the market, that still places it at number three behind Windows and OSX (unless you want to throw in Phone OS' like ios).

I don't expect ChromeOS to compete, but who knows?

As far as ChromeOS goes, the first really big product to use it has just been introduced.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/

Since Android has done quite well, its not unreasonable to expect other alternative OS' to gain a foothold.

Hey, you guys are encouraging development for AmigaOS. What the market share for that (and, yeah, it probably is larger then the one for MorphOS).

I'm not as interested in commercial success as I am in overall ease of use and utility.

The only thing commercial success helps bring is developers and software.

[persia]

Microsoft's share of all "personal devices" -- which include PCs, smartphones, and tablets -- is only around 30 per cent.

[persia]

Never heard of slipstreaming?

http://lifehacker.com/386526/slipstream-service-pack-3-into-your-windows-xp-installation-cd

If you aren't pirating it, you get the one that came on your purchase disk?  That may not be current or service packed.

EDIT: Iggy beat me to it

[persia]

I actually like metro better than that funk ball formerly know as "start."  And I suspect a lot of the apps will come out in Metro so that they can take advantage of cross compilation for Windows RT on Surface like devices.  Take a little time to play with Windows 8 with an open mind.  I just wish there was someway to tuen off that legacy desktop....

[persia]

My bet is Window 9 will drop that horrid legacy Window 7 desktop and make everything run in metro.

My bet is that you'll end up running it and you won't hack anything.

[persia]

One of the things that I notice with Windows 8 is that while the Windows 8 interface works fine with a mouse, a lot of the Windows 8 style apps feel clunky with a mouse.  They are better with a touchpad and a huge portion of Windows users still use mice.

[persia]

I just wish I could turn off the legacy desktop in Windows 8, it just looks so 20th Century....

[persia]

The Metro name was a code name during development.  The UI doesn't have a real name other than Windows 8.

Calling Windows 8 Metro is akin to calling Windows 7 Vienna or calling Windows XP Whistler...

[persia]

Microsoft always uses code names, the last four versions of Windows were Whistler, Longhorn, Vienna and Metro, none of them ever were official names of anything.  None of them were used after the commercial release of the OS.

Actually Commodore did the same thing, the A500 was referred to as Rock Lobster....

[persia]

And there you have it the UI and OS are Windows 8, that's what they are called, plain and simple.  Microsoft probably could have worked out a deal with Metro AG had they wanted, but it simply wasn't worth it for a codename, so they dropped it.