Windows 8 already getting hyped

With Windows 7 just four months old, it seems a bit early to be talking about Windows 8, but one Microsoft developer just couldn't keep his or her mouth shut.

Softpedia spotted a blog post on the Microsoft Developers Network that says the company's next operating system, referred to on one occasion as Windows.next, "will be something completly [sic] different from what folks usually expect of Windows." You can still read Google's cached version of the post from January 31, though theĀ actual post no longer exists.

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The blog, written by an unnamed Microsoft program manager, is long on hype and short on details. "The themes that have been floated truly reflect what people have been looking for years and it will change the way people think about PCs and the way they use them," says the post. "It is the future of PCs..." Other posts at the blog are equally enthusiastic about the company, with one knocking the iPad and another discussing how great it is to work at Microsoft.

Adding to the hysteria, John Mangelaars, Microsoft's head of consumer and online in Europe, Middle East and Asia, told CIO that Windows 8 will be "mind-blowing."

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All this talk of drastically changing Windows makes me a little nervous. I can't recall where I read this, but there's a theory that Microsoft tends to alternate between good and bad versions of Windows (so, Windows 7 good, Vista bad, XP good, ME bad, 98 good and, well, I guess Windows 95 was decent). There could be many reasons for this theory, but with Vista, it seemed like Microsoft reached too high and came down with a bloated operating system.

With Windows 7 scoring good reviews and sales, I'd hate to see Microsoft throw out the formula. One of the things people like about Windows is how familiar it is. Hopefully, doing something completely different doesn't mean abandoning the operating system's fundamentals. At least the rumored 128-bit architecture should be pretty cool.

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