Who lies for you will lie against you - Bosnian proverb
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Ballmer claims 500,000 Windows 8 downloads in 24 hours
SOFTLY SPOKEN Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made a visit to the firm's Build conference and claimed it had already shifted 500,000 copies of its Windows 8 developer preview.
Microsoft released an early developer preview of Windows 8 and gave away 5,000 tablets running the operating system to attendees. It also allowed the wider public access to the preview, in the same way that it allowed prospective punters access to Windows 7 during its beta period back in 2007.
It didn't take Ballmer long to promote interest in Microsoft's upcoming operating system, with the showman citing 500,000 downloads of Windows 8 in little over 24 hours. Whichever way you spin that, it's an impressive figure, however it will be interesting to see the download rate once the hysteria dies down a bit.
Ballmer was seemingly his usual bombastic self on stage, with AllthingsD reporting he admitted there is much work to be done. On the issue of Windows 8 running on ARM, Ballmer said, "It's not going to be Intel or ARM ... it's going to be Intel and ARM." Well, you didn't really expect him to banish one of half of the incredibly successful Wintel alliance did you?
Microsoft has been slowly racheting up the hype about Windows 8, but during this week's Build conference perhaps the biggest piece of news was that there will be no legacy application support in Windows 8 systems running on ARM processors. That decision means that Microsoft needs to woo developers into producing code that will only run on Windows 8, which for developers is considerably limiting their market.
Although Ballmer receives criticism for his leadership of Microsoft fairly regularly, he does have a sense of humour while on stage. He ended his speech with a reference to his famous tirade, saying, "Let's seize the opportunity for developers, developers, developers!" Sadly he didn't follow that up with a dance. µ
Tags: Microsoft
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@the yagga-yagga,
Considering Microsoft only has about 90000 employees, I think that is very unlikely.
I downloaded it and had it installed and working in a hyper-v vm in short order.
It's not revolutionary, but I'd rather have a tablet+keyboard (like asus transformer) running windows 8 than android.
I liked that you can use a windows live id for your login, besides the cloud stuff, it gives home users most of the perks of being joined to a domain.
I don't like that you can't click and drag to side scroll, and I think in desktop mode the start button should be a classic start menu, but otherwise it seemed pretty good.
I'll tell you what I could with windows 8 that I can't do with IOS/Android. I installed it in a VM :-), installed a vpn, got remote desktop working, etc all in a few minutes :-)
The new task manager is also much nicer.
I also am glad that html+js+css is an option and not a replacement for classic windows dev languages like c++,c#,vb
499,990 of these downloads were microsoft staff
Use VirtualBox as it has issues with wmware and only works with workstation version and virtual pc has not been updated since 2007 and does not want to know.
I've downloaded it three times, twice at work, and once at home. Not actually managed to get it to work properly either. A friend also downloaded it and he's also getting a disk error.
Maybe microsoft can finally split its windows lineup to something that actually makes sense.
Windows for mobile phones.
Windows for tablets
windows for desktops
Windows for workstations (or "pro")
All this new interface crap does not add usability.
A new screen that has a smiley face and apologizes for a crash?
How about a formal letter of apology for the MILLIONS of man hours lost worldwide over blue screens?
But anyways, nice to see this will run on arm CPUs.
I don't doubt that MS got at least as many downloads as Ballmer is claiming. I did one myself.
"...however it will be interesting to see the download rate once the hysteria dies down a bit."
I downloaded to see if the hype is warranted and in my opinion it is not. Windows 8 is basically an improved Windows 7 (behind the scenes, I guess) with an emphasis on cross-platform usage. There seems to be a lot of misplaced "excitement" over the new interface, but it's no more useful than the old interface. I understand the need for a mobile device interface but it adds nothing but frustration for a desktop/laptop user. I foresee a market for third-party apps allowing for customization...