Didn't notice that one before. :D By the way, the OS runs better than Windows 7. Already using VS11 to dev some stuff.

What kind of applications do these businesses run?

Our business hasn't even moved over to Windows 7 yet, some of our key software is up to XP only. They certainly wouldn't like programs that clear their RAM when mnimised or focus is shifted, we deal with ~1Gb text files and that would just slow things down.

If the UI is changed loads for Windows 8, how will things like the Win32 API cope with it? I'm guessing that MFC will just receive a new version, and the .NET framework stuff will as well. Anyone tried developing via Visual Studio or Cygwin/GCC yet?

Using VS11 Beta right now, doing a WPF 4.5 project for my undergraduate thesis. It works perfectly, VS11 is in every way better and faster than VS2010... by a huge amount.

The desktop is everything like Windows 7, but improved very much.

EDIT: Just checked, making MFC applications is available in VS11, so I guess a new version is available.

Useful to know, thanks. I skipped VS2010 as 2008 seemed fine for ANSI C/C++ with MFC, which is what I used it for.

Going back to orcishgamer's argument how Android does this (auto-managing the closing of app) and it's fine:

ANDROID DOES THIS AND IT'S *NOT* FINE. You want examples why? I'm watching a YouTube video but suddenly remember I have to set up an alarm. I switch to my alarm app, set the alarm and try to go back to the YouTube video. NOPE, YouTube was closed. Have to reload the video and manually find the bit at which I paused. I'm using a Autodesk's SMB and drawing something. Have to switch to the internet app to check something really quick. I then switch back to SMB and NOPE, SMB was closed. I have to redraw whatever I was drawing.

This basically kills multi-tasking with apps.

Need I say more? Auto-closing apps always were and always will be a piece of crap unless we can stop them from auto-closing. And there's also the argument of them not closing at all or in time, which I discussed earlier.

This.

It should be rare, but still very possible.

The feeling of not being in control of a device is infuriating, especially when the only control you need to fix the immediate problem is being able to restart what has broken.

Sometimes on my Geeksphone, the browser will stop loading pages. It hasn't locked up so Android won't kill it, but it isn't functioning correctly. The choice on stock Android is to wait and hope it gets closed or cycle the power..

.. but on CyanogenMOD, I can just hold down 'Back', which kills it and then start it up again and carry on what I was doing - in less than 5 seconds.

Come on, it has not changed "that much"; tombstoning is not a new concept nor does it requires a complete rewrite of the OS nor WinRT, it makes a lot of sense for mobile OS, very few for a desktop OS, the only reason we see it in Windows 8 is because Ms is afraid of lagging too much behind iOS.

But tombstoning is far from perfect, it only works well as long as the amount of time required for an application to save it's state and "die" and the amount needed for it to restart and reload it's state is "negligible" enough; there is a reason why this "feature" is only for Metro apps, because there are no miracles, no magical new concept behind it, it all boils down to storage speed and amount of data to save, it's easy to Tombstone Angry Birds but it's harder or even impossible to tombstone something like VS2010 or Office, at least not before Memristor or any other SSDs successor to comes around, it's true for iOS it's true for Android and it will be true too for Windows 8.

Concerning Metro, and UI changes, I definitely agree with Scott Barnes, Metro is a great idea with huge potential... too bad 99% of the time Microsoft doesn't have a single clue what to do with it.

16 bit ones :/ Mostly financial ones, bookkeeping and similar. Also, my typical user is in his 40s or 50s, uses outlook,browser and shared files/sharepoint stuff on servers. I see absolutely no need to move some of them from xp, let alone from win7 which was hard to get them used to.
After 2 days of extensive use, I really don't feel comfortable using it. "Simplification" of settings leads to network/system admins being frustrated and metro/desktop mashup will only confuse my typical users who don't even use any of the stuff metro is made to exploit :(
Oh well, downgrading licenses time again ;)

Are you kidding? I didn't get to take IE6 out back and shoot it until like 2 years ago! All because someone spent a fuckton of money on some "critical" applications ages ago. Oh, and since they need new apps but are stuck on IE6 they tend to test their new apps just on IE6, guess what the only browser the apps tend to not have too many bugs in is...

But things are better now, they've moved on... to IE7! Seriously, fuck IE! Versions 9 and 10 appear passable. And while I'm at it, fuck Firefox and it's bullshit, memory gobbling, memory leaking, POS bytes that run it.

heh Orcish, if you'd only know about what idiots work here in software industry. First of all, all e-banking software requires either IE or windows platform to run. No mac, no other browser. Programs tend not to work on x64 platforms, and business software is either in 16bit or uses stuff so outdated that it's incredible how I even manage to make it run on modern machines. And no, they don't want to spend more euros on new software, training and modernization :(
Few businesses that listen to reason change software for new versions that can (gasp!) run on a proper server and has client/server achitecture but they are like 1 in every 50 :(

Don't kill me, I wrote a lot of that software:(

Mostly the teller front ends and other sundry items, though I've written some consumer facing stuff too, probably covers around 40% of a really huge market.

I've had people straight out tell me my software sucks and is inflexible. The problem is devs only have so much pull on requirements. It's the sales department and other big, revenue generating areas in banks, etc. that get to design the requirements. Even if my software pulls in an extra 60 million in profit per year (and it does) they get credit.

I said "fuck it" and left that area awhile ago for something I feel makes a difference.

Well it's all about not risking to step to a new platform and having security holes I think - which is ironic because the older software probably has security holes because it's oudated.

Our bank's ATM still used Windows 95 until a few months ago when it got replaced with a unit with touch screen. Go figure.

You know those Diebold voting machines that sucked at security... what else do they make...

The answer to your next question is "Yes".