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[shreader]

MS Employee Leaks Plans: Windows 9 to be Voice-Controlled Only
April 1st, 2010

With all the excitement and news regarding Windows 8 abound, how about some Windows 9 action? Sure to be removed soon, an employee by the name of Johan has externally detailed some of Microsoft’s plans for it’s ~2015 OS. So, what’s the verdict? The OS will *completely* do away with physical interaction. No more pesky keyboards, mice or dumb monitors you have to get all greasy with your finger tips. It’s all about speech with Windows 9 and Johan even wrote a bit about his experience with an alpha build currently circulating internally — of which, there are also plans for an Xbox 360 emulator (basically, a tweaked version of Virtual PC) which will also be speech-driven! Check out the following quotes from his review which shows that Microsoft has *clearly* been making heaps of progress:

>snip<

It doesn’t stop there. For more information on a projected release date and to read about additional features such as the Boss Key, go read his article referenced below (before it gets taken down). I’ll take a snap-shot of the original article just in case.


Microsoft Kitchen

[shreader]

Seems like a huge programming task.

I would hope that the mouse & keyboard don't go away completely.

What about people that cant talk, or talk clearly.
Game playing seems like it would be difficult.

[shreader]

Related article, JohanS 1 Apr 2008 :

Did you know Windows 9 will be voice controlled only?

Yesterday an early Alpha of Windows 9 was released on the corporate network and I couldn’t resist installing it. I started up the installation, which went very smoothly by the way, filled in the necessary details, clicked “Finish" and left it running overnight. When I arrived this morning a friendly Power Shell-window was greeting me asking me to calibrate the voice control.

Working with Voice control
After less than 90 minutes of training I was able to open notepad and highlight a section of text which was very exciting.

I wasn’t the only one who’d leapt at the opportunity to run the Alpha, so there were quite a lot of us shouting commands at our computers which caused quite a ruckus at times. It was quite impossible to keep a normal conversation over the phone with people shouting “New Paragraph!” and “Dear Mom!” left and right. Still, that’s the price you pay for being an early adopter I guess.

The decision to use voice command (VC) only is definitively a brave move, but I think it’s the right way to go. People have been generally hesitant to use the VC features of Vista, but I think that’s mainly due to the lack of support. Forcing developers to think outside the box and adapt their software for this new means of control is definitively the way of the future. Just like Nintendo demands that developers adapt to their unorthodox controller for the Wii, I’m sure Microsoft will start a new era in computer software with this revolutionary step.



After only 90 minutes I was able to highlight text in Notepad.

Other cool features
Apart from the VC there were a lot of other cool features that I really enjoyed.

Xbox 360 emulator
The next Windows will ship with a complete Xbox 360 emulator. It is basically a tweaked version of Virtual PC that allows you to run console games on your PC. I fired it up and played a little Halo 3, but I must say I was a bit disappointed. The voice control needs additional working on. It quickly got tiresome yelling at Master Chief and my cries of “go forward”, “go forward”, “fire”, “turn around”, “left”, “left”, “fire” and “reload” made it quite hard for me to disguise to my boss what I was doing. One of my colleagues had just picked up a case regarding twelve crashed IIS-servers and an on-line banking application. He was on the phone trying to sort the situation out and started giving me dirty looks after a while. I also must add that the whole Xbox-live experience was somehow diminished. The usual chatter was sadly missing since we were all so busy shouting directions. Still, it’s only an alpha, so I’m certain these things will be addressed.

Boss key
Another nice addition that also seems to heir from the Home Entertainment Division is a boss key. It's really quite surprising that we had to reach the 9th installment of Windows before this was introduced. All I had to do was say "Hi boss" and the screen would immediately present a blue-screen. This is useful in more ways than one. Not only does it quickly hide your Halo 3 session from view, but it also gives you a reasonable explanation as to why your productivity has been somewhat lacking. It's a pure stroke of genius.

On one occasion it turned out that the alpha had blue-screened for real due to some conflict with my graphics driver. It took me almost 15 minutes to realize this after having spent several fruitless attempts trying to wake it up from boss mode.

Release date
From what I've heard the planned release date is April 1st 2009, exactly one year from now.

[Grav!ty Profile]

So Windows 8 will be another Windows ME and like Windows Vista to be given a miss? I guess one needs to see what Windows 8 is about before deciding on that though.

Yeah yeah so I'm a cynic

[yeshuas]

Did you catch any of the dates of the article????????? The article allegedly is from 2008 which is 2 yers ago, and the release date was suppose to be 2009??????
Come on now this is 2010 and we haven't seen any signs of Windows 8 yet, and last April was suppose to be the realease date of Windows 9

[Grav!ty Profile]

Did you catch any of the dates of the article????????? The article allegedly is from 2008 which is 2 yers ago, and the release date was suppose to be 2009??????
Come on now this is 2010 and we haven't seen any signs of Windows 8 yet, and last April was suppose to be the realease date of Windows 9

Yes I saw the dates. So what is your point?

[yeshuas]

The dates are the point, this guy claims to have seen a beta of Windows 9, 2 years ago not a beta of Internet Explorerer 9 which would be believable to me, and I haven't seen any signs of Windows 8 beta

[Grav!ty Profile]

Actually the dates look about right to me, considering the time it took to put out the RTM of Longhorn/Vista which must have been in "early Alpha" before XP went RTM. Anyway, this leak will probably be squashed, MS would be crazy to get info on another Windows release out there so soon after Windows 8 is due. As far as I know Windows 8 is due in the second half of next year, 2011 which only leaves 4 years to go for Windows 9.

I still challenge anyone to give me one single feature of Windows 7 in daily use of the OS, which cannot be accomplished just as well on Windows XP. Bubbles screen saver? Pffft!

[yeshuas]

Ok I guess I am missing something, when he speaks of release date, who is it being released to, developers, etc. then I agree and believe.

I was taking it as it being released as a beta in April of 2009 or a year and a half ago, that is what I was guestioning

[augie]

I hope it's muuuuccchhho better than Vista's sordid attempt as I lost my voice trying to command the thing though it was fun at first. Will we need an i9( ) and a 200GB SSD to run it?