Hacker News Reader

Comment by kyberias | Hacker News Reader

I think the journalist here is confused for no good reason. Perhaps because he likes to make his own definitions of things. Windows 8 is the new release of Windows. It will be delivered in two builds: ARM and x86. The former being more limited and called Windows RT. They share the Metro UI but not very much of the traditional desktop UI. There. That's it. It's not really confusing at all.

View on HN

While you summed it up in far less words than the author of this post, I'm pretty confident the general consumer would have no idea what you just said.

It's unlikely that the average consumer would care much about the difference. Consumers might just want a portable tablet that they can use for email, Internet and read/write Microsoft Office documents. Business users will just use what there IT departments give them and if Windows 8/RT can run their legacy apps, that is a big win.

It might take a few years for Microsoft to adjust, iterate and revise, but I don't think they will let Windows 8 fail. Recall that it took the XBOX a few years to break into a market with two, very strong, established players (Nintendo, SONY) and now XBOX is leading that market.

"if Windows 8/RT can run their legacy apps, that is a big win."

Except Windows RT cannot, and Windows 8 can...

Agreed, it's not rocket science.

Some of these articles from 'so called' techies over the last week or so are really starting to feel like a bit of a click through bandwagon.

But... it's not called Metro anymore.

And Windows RT and WinRT are different things.

And there's new tablet offerings of Windows 8 that will be Windows 8 (not just look like them with the Metr... Modern UI) in a few months. If I didn't know that, I'd be pissed in a few months. If I do know that, I'll probably wait to see what the options and pricing are in a few months.

Even for those 'in the know', there's a lot of confusion and decision making.

EDIT: I say this as someone who has fond memories of MS from many years ago, became an antiMS bigot for a bit, and now just would like to see them succeed. Not as a huge fanboy so much, but as someone who likes to see a marketplace of good options/ideas. MS has often botched good tech seemingly because of internal politics, and that's sad to see.

You don't need to wait a few months to get "real" x86 Windows 8 tablets. Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba are all releasing x86 Windows 8 tablets and/or convertibles this week.

So you'll need to wait if you specifically want the Microsoft Surface Pro, but you'll have other choices starting on Friday. In fact there will be more x86 devices than ARM devices shipping with Windows 8 this week.

>> "But... it's not called Metro anymore."

Customers won't care. Most people don't follow the development of a software product and will call it Windows 8. If they need to differentiate between the desktop and the new interface they'll come up with their own way to describe it (the tile interface for example).

>> "And Windows RT and WinRT are different things."

Windows RT is the tablet operating system. WinRT is the Windows Run Time something customers will never hear mentioned and never care about.

As for the 'full' Windows 8 tablets vs the arm Windows RT ones I don't think consumers will care either. Most people will probably try it before buying, see what it can do, and as long as it still does that when they get it home they'll be happy. Full Windows 8 tablets will be quite a bit more expensive by the sounds of things anyway so they'll be aimed at a different market.

Maybe he messed them up, but this just proves his point. To anyone who doesn't know all the intricacies of Windows 8, it's all very confusing.

The average consumer is going to have a hard time figuring out the difference between two Windows computers, one RT and one the full Windows 8, that look exactly the same yet only one can run Word and browse Flash-capable websites.

And the average consumer knows nothing about ARM or x86 so that isn't exactly a good way to state the difference.

I fact both can run Word (!) because Microsoft ported Office to ARM but I guess that was not your point. I wasn't stating it for the average consumer. Here, let's try that: Windows RT has only "this fancy new UI" but cannot run old programs. Windows 8 can run them all. See? Quite easy to explain.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com