I am as calm as a mill-pond. I am just asking theorical questions to better understand and grasp the whole situation. Personally if I upgrade I would probably go down the KMS path, BUT this UEFI, and Hybrid BIOS boards do interest me a little. Plus I find it interesting just how much pressure M$ can put on manufacturers. AND its also interesting how manufactureres will handle a "forced' change-over and not be left with a host of machines they have to flog at below cost. I am sure they dont want to be left with outdated models when windows 8 get released. Thats common market sense. And even thou Windows 8 RTM aint flagged til second half 2012, its interesting that models are already out with at the very least UEFI boot function. Now if these are hybrid BIOS, what functionality does it has, can it be in theory at least, upgraded to Windows 8 OEM, (if one could get it). Why have that boot function at all??????????? Questions questions so early on. Back to reading up more.
You do seem calm, what I was getting at is just your excessive use of punctuation EFI/UEFI has been under development as a BIOS replacement for a few years now, so it's not that new. That's why many current mainboards are already UEFI-based. What changes with Windows 8 is that OEMs no longer have the choice of conventional BIOS or UEFI if they want to sell Windows PCs. There's still no information about how OEM licensing will work, so for now there's no way to tell if it might work with current UEFI implementations.
I've been doing some reading regarding UEFI and dug this up. I know its an old article but relevant nonetheless ....
Is there an easy way te determine you have bios or uefi? I always assumed I had UEFI cause I have UEFI boot and the ability to "open EFI shell from filesystem device". But these could also be UEFI features in a hybrid bios. So how to tell if something is real UEFI and not hybrid bios?
Ed Bott writes meaningless stuff about how to spread FUD. He could have saved the effort...busybody. Also he addresses 'windows 8'. What is windows 8? We all know that there will be licenses that don't need UEFI features. It is a possibility that OEM_SLP need Secure Boot. He is right when saying it's more propaganda than a technology. But there is a reason why it has started and responsible therefore is M$. They don't state clear words about. Wohoo! So the majority of OEM buyers are retarded and simple? They are happy with preinstalled bloatware + w8 and not mature to have the idea to install another OS? To borrow his phrase "That, ladies and gentlemen, is how posting crap without confirmed facts cannot stop FUD."
I can definitely see companies abusing secure boot. Just look at how much they screwed up RAID by linking a single hard drive and DVD drive, and then removing the ability to disable RAID in the bios. Yes I am talking about you Gateway & HP with your WHOLE SERIES' of DESKTOPS that had this problem. That major problem in the bios prevents any separate installation of an OS, or usage of a PE disc with the hard drive without SPECIFIC slipping or loading of THEIR raid drivers. So with the past experiences most of us have had, it is not inconceivable.
OK, that's cool, at least (and at last) now we can expect a whitepaper to leak somehow... Now the question is: how come Intel could be faster than MS ?!
I wonder how many OEM systems with UEFI will connect to the internet before the operating system is loaded? They could add a few drivers to make that happen. Will this create a new way to exploit a system for the black hats?