Interesting perspective. I guess consumers in general are going to find that everything in the store is Win 8 after October. If you use productivity and content creation apps on large screens this is not going to be a happy marriage if the reports are true. Will consumers have the option to stick with Win 7?

I doubt anything will ship with Windows 7 except custom-built computers (i.e. ADK, et al). Once you get to the Windows 8 desktop, it's pretty much the same as using Windows 7, so it's not the end of the world. It's just more bloated on your way there. You have to relearn how to get around outside of the desktop.
If the performance for audio is as good as Windows 7, Windows 8 is livable. The complaints regarding large screens and the desktop computer experience come from navigating through the Metro interface on the Start page. Once you are actually working in the desktop, it is the same as before if you use desktop icons or the task bar to access your programs rather than the start menu. If I do use Windows 8, I think I will become even more dependent upon the task bar.

This is an outline of Win 9 details - a bit out of date (last year) but makes a few salient points.

No 32 bit version, no backward compatibility with 32 bit apps.

RE: Windows 9 (if no 32-bit emulation mode any longer) I wonder if 32-bit VSTs will still be able to run in 64-bit hosts (i.e. Cubase 64-bit, via wrappers). It seems to me that they should work if you can get the installers to work.

If the 2015 date is correct it might perhaps be only a small number of people with 32-bit software left. I'm sure there will be emulators of some kind available - just might need to go 3rd party.

when windows 8 was "announced", you apparently can switch on the "normal" windows theme, with start menu and all. you mean the feature has been removed?

Anyone who understands the workings j-bridge etc feel free to jump in on this but my guess is no. My understanding is that 32 bit Windows code runs (on 64 bit OS versions) on another layer - WOW (Windows on Windows).

Unless I am mistaken, bridges like j-bridge run 32 bit apps on Win64 as external applications using this bridge for communication and streaming between the separate tasks - just as though you had fired up a separate 32 bit app. If I'm correct, when there is no WOW, you can't call 32 bit code up at all.

In the old thread, Bones wrote about his experiences with an earlier build and this is what he seemed to be saying. Dvorak and others now seem to be saying that you can't so easily be rid of Metro. One of the features of Win 8 that MS is trumpetting is better support of multiple monitors. Dvorak says on large screens, apps are maximised all the time - the usual system of multiple windows open side by side doesn't seem to apply. I would be interested to get more reports on this from those with experiece of the latest version. If it is really going to suck for what I do I would prefer to use Win 7.

Win 8 will have Thunderbolt support etc so in hardware terms it has some advantages for future compatibility.

The Guardian has a more comprehensive article on the latest preview and getting around it.

Yet more on the frustrations of Metro Apps etc.

Metro apps are maximized all of the time. Programs on the desktop follow current conventions.

Thanks for that confirmation.

We had 16-bit support from the beginning up to XP. It does seem a tad early to be losing 32-bit.

Again, I'd put money on MS to allow Win7 purchases for quite a while after release, just as they let people purchase XP after Vista and Win7 shipped. There really is no good reason not to that I can think of.