Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Will Windows 8 RTM in April 2012?

There have been so many rumours about Windows 8, many of them completely wild and untrue, that it’s sometimes hard to seperate the good from the bad.  The latest is a report that s a source has informed  that Windows 8 will hit RTM (Release to Manufacturing) in April 2012.
This is far before most people expected but let’s have a look at the rationale for this, why it could turn out to be true and examine the optionsMicrosoft has available for release.
Windows releases are normally seen on PCs about a month or two after a new operating systemRTMs.  It’s all down to how long the OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) need to customise the builds and get them loaded onto shipping computers.  So if the April 2012 date is to be believed that would put a Windows release at June, right in the middle of next summer.  This won’t happen at all, but it doesn’t mean April isn’t possible.
We won’t see PCs shipping with Windows 8 next summer because summer is always the slowest sales period of the year for new computers.  The two biggest sales periods are the back to college period (at the end of August, beginning of September) and the Christmas holiday period.
Microsoft will want to see a big rush of people buying Windows 8 in the early days.  It generates excitement and it’s good news for them.  It makes sense to get Windows RTM’d by the end of June next year in time for the college sales period.
Windows 7 missed this important sales period at a time when the computer makers were having difficulty in the global economic downturn.  This caused great anger and resentment from many companies and was a high-profile story in the news.  It makes sense then, especially as Windows 8 will be such a tough sell after Windows 7, for Microsoft to make sure they release it at the right time.
So where does this April 2012 figure come from.  This time the release of Windows will be different as there will also be an embedded version to run on ARM chips at the same time as the installable version.  It will still take OEMs a couple of months to configure their Windows images the way they want, but it will then take an additional couple of months to program those images onto all the tablet computers and other low-power form factors that will be running the chips.
This will be further complicated by the fact that all these products will be new and thus, so will many of their production lines.  These devices have to be ready for the official launch of Windows 8 and will need to be assembled ahead of their usual time to guarantee this.
On this score the April 2012 figure now makes sense, as for a launch at the end of August / early September that year, OEMs would probably need access to a final version of Windows 8 in the spring to make this happen.  This doesn’t mean that the x86 and x64 versions of Windows will also RTM at the same time however.
More info from:http://www.windows7news.com/2011/06/28/windows-8-rtm-april-2012/
As it said, Windows 8 will hit RTM (Release to Manufacturing) in April 2012, we should pay more attention on how to take use of it, and learn more about Windows 8 features, like  Windows 8 facial logon, new wallpaper, update from Windows 7 ect.

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