Hmmm, the more I see of this Metro animal the more I dislike it.  The guy in the above video just gave me more reasons to avoid it like the plague... like the ugly icons for your installed apps... the fact that grouping is up the shit and scrolling in Metro is not that convenient when you have numbers of apps/items.  Nope, definitely not for me.

This anti MS idiocy makes me laugh.  All MS is doing is securing the computer.  They're not demanding OEMs lock out other OSes, and never have.

All they are demanding is that an existing UEFI option (that they did not create) be enabled and usable by their OS, to lock out rootkits getting between the OS and its loading process.  They're not forcing anyone to lock out Linux or any other OS.

Rootkits are the only major security problem left in computers, because they're hard to find, hard to remove, and generally a gigantic pain in the ass.

So if there's anything to complain about, it's the OEMs.  And I'm sure they'll get a lot of complaints.

Has anyone thought about this?

Major OEMs have always wanted to lock the buyer into buying hardware from them at inflated prices. This is the way to do it. Any hardware upgrade is Buy New Computer. After all, they have to keep their cash flow going. Systems that have a programmed End Of Life.

Most of us here are enthusiasts and build our own from high quality parts. We want our systems to be robust and last a longer time. This sort of thing won't affect us.

It is not 'anti-MS' idiocy.  The company has made some not so good decisions in recent times [default Metro, dropping the gadgets gallery, for example] and people are not happy with the results.  Besides, MS didn't get to the top by playing fair, and if we trust it implicitly that's when it will most likely take advantage of us.  And no, this is not just another conspiracy theory.  No, not at all!  It's what the large and successful corporations do to ensure survival... they use any means possible to stay on top.

As for this being purely a security thing on MS' part, I doubt it.  Besides, it still hasn't got the implementation of UAC right.  If enabled you're still clocking okay for apps that should be remembered as being safe long ago, and this new measure in Win 8, given MS' less than admirable security record, is likely to be fraught with issues for users and [as the OP suggests] be open to abuses by the OEMs. 

The fact that all hardware and software will require Windows 8 Certification in OEM machines, in itself, can and will be a nightmare for users.  For example, when a part breaks down, which is quite likely given how cheaply and nastily OEM rigs are thrown together, the user will be required to replace it with an OEM part rather than a better, more reliable one of his or her own choosing.  And what about non- MS partner software a user may want/need to run?  If it's not certified by Win 8 then it can't be run, can it, and that, my friend, takes away from the user's freedom of choice.

So no, it's not just some anti-MS thinking, and it's not without merit and some cause for concern.  Simply put, the users of pre-built proprietary machines will have greater mediocrity foisted upon them [by the OEMs AND Microsoft] unless there's a customer backlash... like a boycotting of all OEM machines with Win 8 installed.

If that were the case, the next manufacturer I'd be looking at would be...... ME!!!  If one OEM has gone down the wrong path, from a consumer's perspective, it's likely others will follow or already have... as decreed by Microsoft.

Got sources for that? There's quite a difference between requiring the bootloader to be signed and requiring *everything* to be signed. MS is only requiring the former for Win8 certification. The latter would require the vendor to take responsibility for providing anything and everything, and that's not something PC vendors are going to do, as it's not not worth the costs.

I wish I had your faith, Kryo, but I do not believe that MS or the OEMs are really doing what's best for the consumer.  They dominate and control the market through saturation, their sheer enormity, and consumers of proprietary machines are more or less told to "be grateful for what you get".

Those would be the costs that inevitably are passed on to the consumer... right, and with all these extended warranties they try to sell you these days, it would be of little or no cost to the vendors to lock users into designated hardware/software. 

The thing is, because the majority of PC consumers buy straight off the shelf, expect it just to work and rarely ever think outside the square, the PC market is a captive one, and the vendors know it.  Hence there is no reason for OEMs to lift their game... and if they want to do shit that's not so great for the consumer, they know they can pretty much get away with it, because uneducated sheeple who [thus blindly] buy their machines are not going to complain. 

A case in point, to highlight the nerve, disregard and sheer audacity of the OEMs... all the non-essential and annoying crapware/bloatware they bundle with their systems.  Apart from a few. slightly more educated magazine writers, I have yet to see complaints, enmasse or otherwise, coming from average/off the shelf buyers regarding the practice of installing unwanted and sometimes harmful crap on new PCs.  Yes, harmful crap!!! 

On more than one occasion I've had to get rid of MyWaySearch toolbars [among other things] from brand new, never been used OEM machines.  This particular toolbar has been flagged by the security community as being harmful, yet OEMs still installed it. Then there's the 100's of megabytes of trialware users have to purchase to get any real use from.  It effectively is [free] advertising for other vendors... and in one way or another, users are paying for that crap when they purchase OEM machines,

So no, when it comes to the OEMs doing the right thing by consumers, I am neither trusting or optimistic.

That's true.

Actually they (OEM's) work on a relatively small markup. That is the truth and it's a rather important part of this pending mess.

They need all the edge they can get (and MS knows this, believe me) so the "Microsoft Windows 9 Certified" becomes a major selling point and the OEM's won't give up any possible advantage. You'll see it happen, so there's no long range thing - probably stating around August 2012 (the latest guess as to W8 release date). Also, the possibility of becoming 'slightly' or 'imperceptably' more propietary is something which shouldn't be ignored (and won't be by the OEM's).

If the product is excellent, it'll have relatively little, if any effect on the consumer. If it's a 'less than ideal' product, then the OEM has a 'locked in' market. No one can afford to switch brands every day, or very few, anyway.

The assertion as to preventing boot sector malware, is a 'partially true'... and not in a bad sense at all. The boot sector and root kits are real baddies and not to be trifled with. The problem with MS's solution to them (and I can accept MS wants it's OS to offer real security) is that by doing so, it will kill the competing OS's.

That needs further looking at since MS has a *certain* rep (as do many businesses). The "secure boot" promises to be a massive legal minefield for MS both here and abroad.

It's also not sound thinking to believe hackers won't be able to hack their way into it. History has shown us the value of such Maginot lines.

The major W8 inspired field to go into isn't IT. Unfortunately it'll be becoming a litigator-negotiator. And that's a shame.

That's when you add in the CEO and upper echelon salaries.  Take them out and the profit margins are reasonably good.... given the cheapest of parts and labour are employed to build these things OEMs call a computer.  For mine, take out the top 5% of any... all of these companies and they will not only profit more handsomely but actually come up with some great ideas that actually empower the consumer rather than hold them back with mediocre products merely operate/just work, not serve the user.

I tell ya what, Doc, I'm so glad you posted this thread... because I've been wanting to vent about this issue for quite some time and just needed a venue to do so.  It just isn't the advent of Win 8 and the proposed 'security measures' that bother me.  Both Microsoft and the OEMs have taken it upon themselves to tell consumers what they want and what's best for them, and I abhor the fact that we as consumers are rarely, if ever. listened to.

Take, for example, UAC in Win 7. Microsoft has has since the advent of Vista to get it right, yet UAC continually prompts for permissions on safe applications that should be on a whitelist by now but are not.  Now I have seen users [and uneducated ones as well as the educated] bitch about this feature... not just since Win 7, but since Vista hit the shelves. 

The other main bitch with MS, is its insistence to force users to facilitate then install things to a 'Public' folder they would otherwise never require or use, I am the ONLY user on my PC, yet I am forced by MS to have, by default, a public set of folders that take up valuable space on my limited SSD.  I can't install skins and other things to an off-site HDD because MS says so.  Where the fuck does MS get off telling me where to store MY shit... on MY effing PC?  For security, bullshit!!!!

As for the OEMs, don't get me started on those fucks.  What they do to a reasonably working PC [can't say perfectly a perfectly working one cos that'd be an outright oxymoron, given the cheap shit they generally put in 'em] is near friggin' criminal, to say the least.  My niece's partner's daughter brought her brand spanking new Dell to me because she couldn't surf the internet as she was normally accustomed.  The reason?  Dell installed a so-called 'browser helper'.... something that searched its way rather than hers.  Let's just say it took me the best part of an afternoon to get rid of it... a MyWaySearch toolbar that, once connected to the internet, more or less took control of search references and where the browser went.

More to the pont, though, is the inferior and cheap parts the OEMs use for their 'off-the-shelf' machines. I can't remember just how many I've had to replace the PSU's in... or just after the warranty expiures, just how many mobos, CPU's and RAM sticks I've had to replace.  I've never seen that rate of attrition in custom or home-builds, So I therefore place the responsibility for these equipment failures squarely at the feet of the OEMs, who clearly have a responsibility to consumers but invariably neglect it to post greater profits.

I'd like to have the positivity and perhaps trusting views Kryo has of MS and the OEM's, but I am a realist who sees these corporations for what they really are... greed driven entities who produce the cheapest and nastiest PC possible and tell people "it's a friggin' bargain at twice the price". 

Sorry Kryo, but I cannot share your optimism or trust in people who clearly have agendas of their own.

The only way things will change is through ethical people creating a company that sells a good product at a cost commensurate with the quality of the product... not an Einsteinian conclusion to reach but a utopian one, I'm afraid. Our species just isn't up to it, because if one starts a company, he becomes the judge of what he receives from it. Idealists will say that if he's too greedy the company will go out of business. That doesn't seem to happen, does it? Not judging from what we see in the world.

It's all rather depressing because with the advent of W8 (and MS's OS market share), the precedent of "If you don't create an OS as well as a company to make the OEM's, you're SOL." will be set. Face it, the OEM's have no incentive. The other OS's market share is so small they have no leverage whatsoever, unless they become OEM's as well... and that's no solution. Who's going to buy an additional computer just to run another OS? I wouldn't be expecting the OEM's to be doing much business there.

The BIOS board producers are the only hope, but with the size of the DIY community? The main hope will be the gamers and the emerging markets. For the latter, I don't hold much hope, as they'll fall prey to the same marketing strategy that the West did.

Let's also not forget that the hackers/cybercriminals have had a good deal in creating and contributing to this situation, may they rot in hell.

I figure the game's pretty much over for the small OS's in the desktop/laptop markets except Apple... and even they're being pressured strongly by Asus and Acer.

The MacBook Pro has just recieved serious upgrading of hardware because of this (without a rise in price, incidentally):

[ http://www.infopackets.com/news/business/apple/2011/20111029_apple_upgrades_macbook_pro.htm ]

The only real competition left for OS's is in the mobile market.

I wonder how many people will buy Windows 8?

Best regards,
Steven.

The sad thing is, by the article you linked, the upgraded specs are the same as the HP laptop I recently purchased. The price on the MacBook Pro is $2499.00 and the HP is availible for below $1000.00 which includes sales tax and a 5 year extended warranty.

The only thing I trust in is their profit motive. Turning every PC OEM into its own walled garden would be extremely cost prohibitive (restriction at the level you describe can't be done by a single signing authority), and thus it is extremely unlikely to occur because prices are already at the point the market will bear. People aren't going to pay more for the same in a poor economy--they'll just buy it at the old price elsewhere.

Now, this sort of thing is already occurring with tablets--I seem to recall hearing Amazon will block Kindle Fire users out of the android market and only allow Amazon market apps for instance. It's only really practical if done from the ground up; for a general purpose machine, the existing software ecosystem is just far too vast for this to work.

Isn't HP parting from making PCs? I think I read that on article a while back and I did see it on a Revision3 tech web episode.

I'll say it again: You DO NOT need a BIOS-based board to run older OSes or to dual boot. An EFI board with signing turned off in the settings will work just fine.

It's worth pointing out that the market is a bit more complicated than that. MS has to, in effect, compete against themselves, simply because the size of the install base with older versions of Windows with no compelling reason to upgrade. For instance, I believe XP (a ten year old OS) only recently fell below 50%. The market still has to support all of those existing systems, and will most likely continue to do so for at least a decade, regardless what MS does on new machines. Those who do move off XP are moving onto Win7, where they're likely to stay for years to come (business users especially).

They've reversed themselves according to an article I read yesterday on TechRepublic (I think).

But where will you find that? My concern also is that the chipmakers will go the route of the OEM's... Not a fact yet, but ...

The same place you find boards today. Off-the-shelf manufacturers aren't going to sell boards that only work with Windows 8. Forcing signing on is impossible for such vendors since they have zero control over what other hardware or software you might use, and attempting to gain such control would amount to market suicide.

You can nearly always bet on vendors taking the choice that results (or looks like it will result) in more near-term profit. Having every existing hardware vendor build its own walled-garden infrastructure and cut itself off from the existing PC ecosystem would be completely counter to that motive.

Except voiding the warranty...

i cant wait i never bought a complete prebuild pc and never had one in my life... so nothing to be scared of
besides how long will this prevention be stable until the walls start to crumble 

Sorry to say it, Doc, but you are so, so right....  on so many levels, in fact... and not because you want to be right. but rather that the upper management of major PC manufacturers want it to be.  All too often OEM hardware and software has been sub-standard by design.. not to mention all the unnecessary bloatware which is not only annoying but is sometimes downright dangerous. Regardless of this, however, OEMs still persist and install it, regardless of what users as a whole want.

Shoot, I don't think OEM management gives a gratuitous flying fuck about its own [long suffering] shareholders. So long as obscene 'big buck' salaries to high ranking management figures keeps flowing in unabated, I very much doubt these free-loading mother-fuckers would give you or I the time of day, much less truth, honesty and respect as consumers.... even if we were shareholders, for that matter.  

The fact is, OEMs demand top dollar for products that were conceived by others with greater knowledge and expertise than themselves, yet they  continue to extract top dollar on diluted. watered down ideas because average users continue to accept mediocrity and nothing more..  .

Also, it is a complete fallacy based on complete and utter lies that the profit margin on OEM machines is quite small.  The truth is, profit margins are handsome enough and would be much greater if upper management and waste of space hangers-on, who do eff all for the money, were discarded entirely. So yes, while I may often speak regarding the greed and corruption within corporations, about those in high positions who use their power to enhance their wealth, the old saying is still quite true, that there's no smoke without fire.

Anyway, I'm near falling asleep right now cos it's gone 3.00am, I'm dog tired and need some urgent shut-eye, so I'll wrap this up for now and bugger off the bed.

Oh, and sorry about the 'f**king' language, but these OEM mo-fo's really get my freakin' dander up and I'm prone to a bit of effing and blinding.

Starkers - those public folders only take up a few MB in space and can be deleted. No big deal Last time I saved something I wasn't forced to use a public folder on my computer. No one is forcing you to do anything.

Um, no, kona, those public folders cannot be easily deleted... not if you have WindowBlinds and other skinning apps... because Public Documents is where all your skins are installed... by default.  So, while these public folders take up only a few MB's shortly after the OS is installed, they soon swell in size when you have several libraries for various skinning apps.

In fact, with 78 gigs of skins in total, I had to significantly reduce library sizes and the number of skins I stored in those folders so as not to over-bloat the drive and cause operational issues... like there's not a lot of room left on a 120gb SSD with the OS and near 80gb of skins, so something had to go, and obviously that couldn't be the OS

As for not being forced to do anything, well I am.  I would rather my skin libraries be stored on another physical drive entirely, but cannot because the default path is to the public document folders at MS' behest.  This can only be changed by a registry hack, something I am loathe to do due to the various complications that could occur, so yes, I feel that I'm being forced to do stuff someone else's [Microsoft's] way rather than my own.

Here's a thing to think about:

How many aftermarket boards are set up to allow or facilitate overclocking (usually with additonal options in the BIOS), and how many OEM boards are not?

And, how many of those overclocking options are used by the general public (answer, not very many).

So, here's the thing:

Most (if not all) of the same board manufacturers that currently support overclocking (and other user configurable options, like memory speed, etc.) aren't going to magically (and / or maliciously ) leave off an option that would be used by most of the same customers that use these other features.

My current MB is UEFI. It allows any OS to be installed and booted.

Yes, we should make ourselves heard, and let the board manufacturers know that we'll consider the option to disable secure boot a 'make or break' buying feature.

But, the betting odds are that (nearly) every aftermarket manufacturer will offer the option (why toss off a portion of your customer base by leaving out options?).

As far as the OEMs go, they're going to screw up their systems, just like they always do. The answer to that is pretty simple, 'DON'T BUY AN OEM SYSTEM' (at least if they remove your options).

See, this is the thing:

You WILL be able to acquire a UEFI motherboard that gives you the option to choose (or not choose) the secure boot option. There's a market for it, so there will be products to serve that market.

If you're that concerned about it, do your research, and either make sure that your OEM source isn't an idiot, or buy a standard aftermarket board that isn't crippled (and those *will* be out there).

There's enough to be worried about with the way MS does business, in many ways, but this is not as big of an issue as it's being made out to be.

Red Hat (and the others) aren't worried about UEFI systems that will exist and will allow the option to skip secure boot. They want the same ability to negotiate with the OEMs that Microsoft has, and while that may be an ideal and desirable position, it's not going to happen anytime soon.

But, to repeat (and repeat and repeat, ad nauseum): There *will* be UEFI motherboards and systems that are readily available and that either do not have secure boot, or that allow it to be controlled by the end user. Maybe some OEMs will buckle and screw their customers. Just avoid them. But you can bet (with a very high degree of certainty) that companies like ASUS, ASROCK, GIGABYTE, and so on, who make the biggest part of their business from hobbyist builders, will be more than happy to provide all of the options that their users want, including the ability to control the secure boot ability.

And to answer the (usually unstated or alluded to) point about the OEMs:

It seems as though a lot of this sturm and drang is focused on what the OEMs will do. Maybe they'll decide that it makes good business sense to stick with a single UEFI system that doesn't have the option to skip secure boot. And, you know what? They have that right. Maybe it makes sense for them to not have to code and test the option. And, you know what else? You have the equivalent right to not purchase their product.

As I mention above, the probability that every single aftermarket motherboard manufacturer will refuse to offer the option is so close to zero that it doesn't warrant serious consideration.

If you want one, there *WILL* be motherboards and systems easily available that give you the control you want.

Just buy one of those, and quit worrying about what Dell is going to give you.

If MS was causing this to intentionally lock out competition they'd have the Justice Department right on their ass.  They aren't that stupid.  Last time that happened they lost a lot of customer respect and had to stop development on a lot of things (like IE) that've had a long and venomous tail.

Also, I like Metro.  The version in the Dev Preview does suck a bit, but it's already been modded for the better.

Anyway, I have stuff to do so it'll probably be a while before I'm back in nutter land (err the Stardock forums, I mean )