Windows 8 will run on all Windows 7 PCs (and Vista PCs too)

By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Worried that you’ll have to buy a new PC in order to be able to run Windows 8? Don’t! Microsoft has said that the Windows 8 system requirements will be the same, or perhaps even lower, than those of Windows 7.

Speaking at the 2011 Worldwide Partner Conference, Tami Reller, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Windows division, had this to say:

“In both of our Windows 8 previews, we talked about continuing with the important trend that we started with Windows 7, keeping system requirements either flat or reducing them over time.Windows 8 will be able to run on a wide range of machines because it will have the same requirements or lower.”

So if Windows 8 has the same system requirements that Windows 7 had, that should mean that Windows 8 will also run on systems that currently have Windows Vista installed on them.

As a reminder, here are the Windows 7 system requirements:

• 1GHz CPU
• 1GB RAM (32-bit) or 2GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

How will Windows 8 pull this trick off?

“We’ve also built intelligence into Windows 8 so that it can adapt to the user experience based on the hardware of the user. So, whether you’re upgrading an existing PC, or buying a new one, Windows will adapt to make the most of that hardware.”

Good news for those wanting a new OS without having to buy new hardware.

Rant: Android tablet pricing will kill the genre

By James Kendrick

Last month I shared what I believe to be true about the price consumers will be willing to spend on tablets, and with information slowly leaking out that OEMs are determined to price themselves out of contention I can’t keep quiet. My original rant was based on information at the time that the Motorola XOOM was going to be priced at an entry point of $799. I explained why I think that is too high, even for a well-equipped device. Now we are hearing that the XOOM will be retailing in Best Buy for $1199, an insane figure.
LG is showing off its upcoming Optimus Pad at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and it looks really nice with an unusual 8.9-inch screen. The insanity with Android tablet pricing continues, however, as word comes that the LG tablet will sell for €999 ($1350) in Europe. This is so far out in left field that it’s clear the Android tablet genre may be doomed for failure on a massive scale.
Is the problem that vendors are cramming too many high-cost components (or features) in tablets to try to stand out? If so that is a strategy doomed to failure, as it prices the device out of the range consumers will be willing to pay. Apple set the standard with pricing on the iPad, and no matter how any competing device compares with the iPad it better be priced similarly. That means $499 for an entry level model (Wi-Fi only), and well under $1,000 for a fully equipped version.
Tablets are a different class of product that affect how consumers approach the purchasing process. They do not replace an existing class of product, so no price comparison works. It becomes more of a marketing process to stimulate an impulse purchase, and $500 is the magic price point to make that happen. Android tablet makers may be killing the genre before it even gets started. As analyst Michael Gartenberg is fond of stating, a company can sell 50,000 of anything, a point of view I share. But that sales volume is nothing in the consumer electronic space.

Apple's nice timing: iPad production news may freeze consumers, Android rivals

By Larry Dignan

Apple has started production of its latest iPad and talk of front facing cameras and a lighter design is everywhere. The timing of this news, delivered by the Wall Street Journal, is exquisite since it could just freeze consumers as a bevy of Android devices hit the market.
The Wall Street Journal, which has been rock solid about Apple upcoming products, reports that the new iPad will be thinner and lighter, have a camera for videoconferencing with FaceTime, and be available on AT&T and Verizon. In other words, the Journal backed most of the credible rumors about the iPad.
The most notable thing about the Apple iPad 2 production news is the timing of it all. To wit:

• The iPad is in production just as Motorola starts pushing its Xoom tablet to the masses. Motorola chose to take on the iPad with a rather bizarre commercial during the Super Bowl.
• This news surfaces just as Hewlett-Packard plans to unveil its tablet plans, which revolve around the webOS.
• Dell is plotting a 10-inch tablet that runs on Windows 7.
• And it’s also worth noting that there are a bevy of Android-based tablets on deck.

Add it up and the Apple iPad production news is perfectly timed. Just as you’re about to ponder a rival tablet, there’s a great reason to hold out a few weeks—the iPad 2. Couple the prices of Android tablets, which are generally too expensive, and the potential of a better iPad on deck and I’m willing to bet more than a few consumers will hold out for Apple’s latest dream device.
Related:

Nokia at 'crisis point': iPhone and BlackBerry impossible to beat?

By Zack Whittaker

The news today that Nokia is at ‘crisis point’, a warning given by the company’s chief executive Stephen Elop, will not come as a surprise to the vast majority of consumers.
Elop’s memo to the company blames Google’s Android operating system and other rival handset manufacturers like Apple taking a share increase. While the company holds the mobile sales figures, the share is declining.
The fact of the matter is that for the Generation Y, Nokia was everything ten years ago. Today, the mobile market is swamped by BlackBerrys and iPhones and frankly, Nokia has not kept up.

The development process could be key.
Even though Nokia releases a new phone every other month, some simultaneously along the same series, the path that Nokia has taken is too complicated. Nothing yet truly competes with the BlackBerry range or the iPhone, arguably because Nokia has not been trying to, whereas others have tried and failed.
The iPhone and BlackBerry devices and platforms alone are in direct competition, and dominate the marketshare.
Nokia may well have the looks and the physical attraction to their vast quantity of phones and devices on the market, the goods, features and applications within them lack lustre.
For Apple, the timeline is quite simple. A newer phone of a subsequent generation takes over the previous. And while there is some overlap between the outgoing and the up and coming device, the generational cycle is simple and consistent.
Even with Research in Motion’s development path, though there is a wider range than the iPhone than one singular device per generation, the devices are tailored for younger users - as more of a by-product than anything else. The younger generation has hijacked the BlackBerry from the enterprise and corporate environment to recreate the business experience, adopting a young professional but social persona.
For Nokia, though, there are so many phones with very little to differentiate one from another. Arguably there is more consumer choice and customisability, but a sincere lack of consistency between devices. It is too difficult to know which device is ‘progressive’ or if it is simply a relic from a previous model with a slightly different case.
For us growing up, Nokia was everything. I first remember the want and desire for what was then a Nokia 3310 back when I was only 12 years of age. The customisable backgrounds, the personalised operator logos and the manually added ringtones were of such desire.
But now, with downloadable applications, touch-screens and QWERTY keyboards and reliable and on-demand media and messaging, one has to question whether Nokia can not only keep up but even stay in the game.

At last, it's time for SP1 for Windows 7, Server 2008 R2

By Mary Jo Foley

I’m hearing from a couple of my contacts that Microsoft plans to announce on February 9 that Service Pack (SP) 1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 has finally crossed the finish line.
(There have been a few earlier reports that SP1 was done and out, but today marks the official RTM announcement, my sources say. I’ve asked Microsoft officials for comment, but no word back so far.)
Word is that the bits will go to OEMs and Technology Adoption Program (TAP) partners today, MSDN/Technet later this month (WinRumors is hearing February 16, I see), and the rest of the Web on February 22.
Besides the usual kinds of fixes, SP1 for Windows client doesn’t contain much new beyond a few feature enhancements. The server version includes two new key features: RemoteFX and a dynamic-memory adjustor for Hyper-V.
RemoteFX is a new graphics acceleration platform that is based on desktop-remoting technology that Microsoft obtained in 2008 when it acquired VDI vendor Calista Technologies. The new Hyper-V feature in SP1 will dynamically adjust memory of a guest virtual machine on demand. (The guests supported do not include Windows XP, by the way.)
As Microsoft officials have said before, RemoteFX is a set of RDP technologies, including graphcis virtualization and advanced codecs. With RemoteFX, users will be able to work remotely in a Windows Aero desktop environment, doing everything from watching full-motion videos, to viewing Silverlight animations, to running 3D applications “all with the fidelity of a local-like performance.” In other words, users desktops become hosted as part of a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) or a terminal services environment. Via RemoteFX, users can access their remote desktops using standard RDP connections from rich PCs, thin clients, phones and other devices.
Microsoft officials announced last year a deal wtih Citrix, via which Citrix will integrate and use Microsoft RemoteFX within its XenDesktop suite of products and HDX.
Update (1:15 pm ET): Here’s the official announcement from Microsoft regarding SP1. The dates in my post above are all correct: OEMs get the code today; MSDN/TechNet on the 16th of February; and general availability is February 22.

Five Reasons Why Tablets Like the iPad Are PCs

By Eric Lai

Market research firm Canalys made a gutsy move today: it became thefirst major market tracker to start lumping consumer tablets like the iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab together with other PCs.

This has major implications. First, doing so vaults Apple into third place globally in Q4 among PC vendors, behind HP and Acer, according to Canalys. By contrast, Gartner and IDC, who are better-known for tracking the PC market (and presumably thus more conservative in their methodology), do not (yet) count iPads as PCs.

Also, calling a tablet a PC means that we are acknowledging a tablet is a real computer, not a dismissing it as some limited-use mobile device.

At the risk of wading into a ‘How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?‘ type of debate, let’s examine the arguments against counting tablets as PCs in order to knock them down. Shall we begin?

1) “There’s no [physical] keyboard.” Yes, but as BetaNews’ Joe Wilcox points out, IDC counts Windows tablets as PCs, even though a large percentage of them are stylus/finger input only.

2) “Tablets suck for doing real work like type long memos or build slide decks.” I know plenty of businesspeople, especially managers, who spend the majority of their time in Outlook or Lotus Notes, sending and receiving e-mails. Are they not doing *real* work? Does that mean doing e-mail on a tablet is suddenly not real work? What about pulling up sales leads or mining deep Business Intelligence data via rich analytical dashboards? Sounds like real work to me. These are all business tasks at which tablets like the iPad already excel.

3) “Canalys is just doing the bidding of Steve Jobs and other Apple fanboys.” Actually, Apple doesn’t seem to be interested in lumping iPads with its MacBooks or iMacs, judging by its recent fiscal Q1 earnings call.Nowhere does COO Tim Cook refer to iPads as PCs or computers. In fact, Cook implies that Apple internally sees iPads as being different beasts than Macs: “The iPad teams are building the best iPad for the future, and the Mac teams are building the best Mac, and I can tell you that both groups believe that they can continue to grow and do great stuff, and I believe that.”

4) “Neither iOS nor Android are full-fledged operating systems.” By what metric? Lines of code? Android has 12 million lines of code.Windows NT 3.51 had 10.1 million. Do we retroactively declare that those servers running NT 3.51 weren’t “real” computers? Or do we base this on the fact these iOS and Android run apps, not applications? Well, Mac OS X now has its own App Store. Or is it because iOS and Android run on ARM chips, not Intel? Well, then let’s start thinking of a new category to put Windows in after Microsoft ports it successfully over to ARM.

5) “Tablets aren’t as powerful as PCs.” Actually, ARM’s single-core CPUs last year were already more powerful than their Intel Atom counterparts, according to chip researcher, The Linley Group. The latest dual-core ARM Cortex A9 CPUs due to arrive in tablets this year should pull ahead of Atom even more, especially when bolstered by powerful graphics such as Nvidia. Indeed, the graphics chip in the Nvidia Tegra 2 chipset, the 8-core ULP GeForce GPU, supports 1080p video output on up to 2 simultaneous displays (1920×1080 resolution). That’s far better than any laptop I’ve ever owned.

Perhaps we should just let Canalys’ analyst Daryl Chiam, who made the call to redefine tablets as PCs, speak.
“Any argument that a pad is not a PC is simply out of sync,” said Chiam. “With screen sizes of seven inches or above, ample processing power, and a growing number of applications, pads offer a computing experience comparable to netbooks. They compete for the same customers and will happily coexist.”

“Each new product category typically causes a significant shift in market shares,” he continued. “Apple is benefiting from pads, just as Acer, Samsung and Asus previously did with netbooks. The PC industry has always evolved this way, starting when Toshiba and Compaq rode high on the original notebook wave.”