I picked up some various Windows 9 rumors from across the Web yesterday.
In no particular order:
- It has a reasonable Start menu
- The preview will be released at the end of the month
- I’ll be trying it out
- It will be finished by the end of the year
- It will be available for purchase in the March-April timeframe
- They may do a promotional price early in its release, like they did for Windows 8
- If they do a $40 promotion like they did last time around, you probably want to buy it, even if you wait a while to run it every day
- It will be more liberal about allowing reinstallation than previous versions but will be harder to pirate (which sounds contradictory, but we’ll see)
- There are still rumors it will be free or really cheap for consumers, which sounds really hard to reconcile with the above
Like I said, I’m going to give it a shot when it drops in a couple of weeks. I’ve got a machine running Vista that can’t stay at Vista much longer–and I have no great love for Vista–and I have a machine running Linux Mint. I’m impressed with Mint but I’m curious about Windows 9 so I may very well load Win9 on it, then reload Mint on it after a month or so. I like having a Linux laptop around too much to go without one for too terribly long now.