Windows 8
Windows 8 Pro
Windows RT

Windows 8 will be similar to Home Premium, but without Media Center. :(

Windows 8 Pro will be similar to Professional, and there will be an addon, for purchase, allowing you to install Media Center.

Windows RT (this probably comes from 'Windows Runtime') is the name for the OS on ARM. It will come with Office, and won't be purchaseable, only preinstalled.

More here: http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2012/04/16/announcing-the-windows-8-editions.aspx

EDIT: Bah, missed that one. It will have 4 SKUs, the last one being Windows 8 Enterprise, packed up with all features of Windows 8 (similar to the Ultimate and Enterprise editions of Windows 7).

I haven't been following Win 8.
Any reason to make the switch from 7?

So if you want media center, you're looking at Windows + DLC?

Great info! Thanks!!

Thanks for teaching me the concept of "SKU".
Sincerely, Tychoxi.

Off Topic, but do you know if it will execute VB6 executables? Will there will be any issues with VB6 code? I want a reason to get work moving on getting rid of that $4!t.

Not buying Windows 8 because it's to Windows phone like and I don't need a PhoneOS. Windows 7 FTW.

Yup, and as a result, the base price will be lower, because they won't be needing to pay for patents and licenses (just an example, Motorola wants $24, for a few patents, for every laptop sold for over $1000 that uses Windows (this has nothing to do with MC, but just an example, if they remove some things, the price will be lower)). http://msdn.microsoft.com/nb-no/vbrun/ms788708%28en-us%29.aspx

I don't know if this is a good news for you or not. :)

Thanks for the link.

It's not good or bad news. Just in no way useful to my goal.

On a personal note, I really hope they include some of MC's features in Windows Media Player, instead of those two regionally restricted, piece of shit, HTML5/CSS/JavaScript Metro disasters called Video and Music.

EDIT: Meh, who am I kidding. :(

If I'm not mistaken, looking at Microsoft's recent past in terms of OSes, I'd skip Windows 8 and wait for Windows 9. ^_^

I mean look at that :
Windows 98 = good
Windows 2000 = average
Windows ME = baaaaaad
Windows XP = good
Windows Vista = bad
Windows 7 = good

I can be mistaken, but there's kind of a pattern, don't you think? ^_^

98 - good
2000 - excellent for what it was intended for.
xp - the perfect marriage between 9x and NT
Win 7 - vista's true form.

The less said about the other two the better.

no mistake, wait for windows 9 it will be what windows 8 should have been /)

Best of both worlds would be to have a Charms button and a Start button. Start opening the Start Menu like in 7, and Charms opening the Start Screen like in 8.

That'll never happen, though.

EDIT: The Search, Share, and Devices contracts are amazing, I just fear that the implementation of those contracts could go terribly wrong (some applications in Windows Phone are a total DISASTER, if it wasn't for the Marketplace, they will never have happened).

Hopefully, most of the Metro applications for Windows 8 will be developed by good devs, and not some copy-pasters.

with a little luck it will have a shell choice option like 95 did where you could go back to the program manager that 3.1 was based off of. I'm all for the new interface for arm processors and tablets though. What microsoft doesn't seem to realize is that most people don't have a touchscreen pc and most won't be getting one either. My monitor is a 46 in tv. I sit in a recliner and have a shelving board that supports my keyboard and mouse. I'll bet there's quite a few others that do this as well. How I am supposed to support a touchscreen with this setup is eluding me other than having a second monitor. I know they say it supports the mouse as well but you can see where the focus is and it's irritating. The basic interface hasn't changed since 95 and it's worked that long. Why they would want to reinvent the wheel eludes me. Moreso, manufacturers aren't making quality monitors with touch panels in droves either. They should release a "desktop" version or have a installation profile that reflects this. Which, if they have any sense at all they probably will.

And Windows 2000 was a great os. What some fail to realize is that microsoft might have screwed the pooch in naming it that. (or it was a calculated move) It was the successor to nt 4. It was a workstation os that was pushed into the mainstream to compensate for the failure of ME and the loss of sales that that entailed.