The Windows 8 picture is becoming clearer.Microsoft says Windows 8 is a reimagining of Windows, "from the chip to the interface" and has launched an Engineering Windows 8 blog. The corporation has promised that a pre-release Windows 8 build will be available to the public.
Microsoft says that "a Windows 8-based PC is really a new kind of device, one that scales from touch-only small screens through to large screens, with or without a keyboard and mouse."
Indeed, the new OS appears to have two completely separate interfaces - one, a traditional (and, on the surface of it, unchanged) Windows desktop and the other a new touch-based interface that borrows heavily from Windows Phone.
Actually, as you'll see, it basically is Windows Phone. You can move seamlessly between the interfaces and even have both on screen at the same time. So that leads us to believe there will be a single OS for tablets and traditional PCs.
Windows 8 system requirements:
The new demo shows Windows 8 running on touchscreens (potentially tablets too) - expect many Windows 8 devices to be touch-orientated - and this may make its way into the device spec.
Both Windows Vista and Windows 7 have system requirements of a 1GHz processor and 1GB of RAM. Vista requires 15GB of free hard drive space, and Windows 7 requires 16GB.
Given that there's been no real jump in requirements from Windows Vista to 7 (unlike the jump from XP to Vista, where XP required a 233MHz processor and 64MB of RAM) we'd expect Windows 8 to happily run on a system that can run Windows 7.
On 13 July 2011, Microsoft confirmed our assumption that Windows 8 would have the same system requirements as Windows 7. At Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference, Corporate VP of Windows Tami Reller talked about "continuing on with the important trend that we started with Windows 7, keeping system requirements either flat or reducing them over time."
On 18 May 2011, Intel confirmed that there will be separate editions of Windows 8 that run on ARM processors and versions that require Intel's own chips. The Windows 8 ARM editions will be tailored to mobile devices and Windows 8 tablets. The Intel versions of Windows 8 will feature a Windows 7 compatibility mode, while ARM versions won't.
However, the following day, Windows President Steven Sinofsky said that Intel's statements were "factually inaccurate and unfortunately misleading." Sinofsky didn't elaborate on how the statements were inaccurate, simply saying "We have emphasized that we are at the technology demonstration stage. As such, we have no further details or information at this time."
Windows 8 features:
The 'fundamentals' Microsoft is aiming for with Windows 8 include "a fast on/off experience, responsiveness, and a great level of reliability from the start".
You'll be able to use an encrypting hard drive to boot Windows 8 and they'll integrate with BitLocker and third-party security apps. Anti-piracy measures are also set to be improved, though it's unclear currently just how this would work.
Improving battery life will be based on some deep changes to the kernel; removing an interrupt in the kernel scheduler completely and removing more of the timers that interrupt Windows when it's trying to save power.
Windows 8 might get the same option for powering down unused areas of memory to save power that's on the cards for Windows Server, it will block disk reads and writes and some CPU access when you're not doing anything on your PC and PCI devices can turn off completely when they're not in use (assuming the drivers for specific devices support it).
Windows 7 stopped laptops waking up automatically when they're not plugged in; Windows 8 will get a new 'intelligent alarm' that can wake them up for things like virus scans, but only if they're plugged in.
Microsoft has shown effortless movement between existing Windows programs and "new Windows 8 apps." Yep, that's right - Microsoft is going right down the app route...
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