Much different from Windows 7. Sure, it has the start-bar-and-icon “Desktop” look that Windows users are familiar with, but it also has a new, touchscreen-optimized interface called ‘Metro,’ which looks more like the Windows Phone operating system and which looks like the future of Microsoft Windows from here on out.
The touch-optimized interface was all Stephen Sinofsky, President of Windows, and Julie Larson-Green, Corporate Vice President of Windows, were talking about when they showed off Windows 8 to developers at the conference. (They did not, however, mention when the new OS would be available to users.)
Here are some screenshots of the new Windows 8 from Sinofsky and Larson-Green’s presentation, along with explanations of the newest features and interfaces that users can expect on their new tablets and PCs.
The newest windows version called "Windows 8" is coming with a touchscreen-optimized interface "Metro" which is more welcoming mobile gadget market. Windows 8 also has characteristics of Windows 7 but it adds more features to make it mobile friendly. However the release date hasn't announced yet but we can expect Windows 8 available for users by this year. Here's the key features that stand-out Windows 8 OS from Microsoft.
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| From Windows 8 developers preview. |
1. Support for both PC and ARM processor based tablets: The windows 8 will run on the traditional PC's with x86 architecture and ARM processor based mobile devices and tabs. This is something new about windows that it's the first version of windows that supports both PC and tabs.
2. Touch-optimized UI: Windows 8 will show you a tiles-based user interface incorporated with the Metro style apps. The metro apps are beautifully designed touch optimized widget for your desktop. It also supports multiple screen wallpapers which can be stretched on several displays.
3. New control Panel: Beyond changes that has made in the Windows 7 from XP, Microsoft again revamped the control panel for windows 8 which now includes Personalize, Notifications, Users Wireless, General, Privacy, Search, and Share.
4. 1-Second Wi-Fi Connections : Microsoft says it's building technologies to include in Windows 8 that can let users to connect onto a Wi-Fi network in as little as one second. Usually establishing Wi-Fi connection in windows 7 takes about 12 seconds as it have to do scanning, obtaining IP address & network ID etc but windows 8 will be fast enough to do these steps within one second.
5. USB 3.0 Support: Windows 8 will natively support USB 3.0 which can have 10 times more speed than a usual USB 2.0
6. Multiple Monitor Support: Without using any third-party apps, windows 8 comes with drivers necessary to operate two monitors. Also, you can easily swap between monitors by tapping the switch button in one of the monitors.
7. Touch Input password: To unlock your Windows 8 computer you may use a combination of touches and swipes which is like more familiar to android users.
8. Windows App Store : Windows 8 will have an app store like android and apple which should be another business opportunity for app developers. Metro-style apps will have great potential among the app world.
9. Faster performance: From a blog post from mashable.com, windows 8 will boot in less than 8 seconds and the Metro UI launches apps almost immediately after you've clicked them. As a 128-bit OS windows 8 supports 512 GB RAM. The memory foot-print has been reduced (it's the amount of RAM a program uses wile it's running) also the RAM and CPU usage.
10. Improved Windows Explorer: The new windows explorer concept uses ribbons as elements and has a fresh new file copying system and has ISO mounting options so that you can mount the image files without using any 3rd party apps.
- 11-Lock Screen - The new lock screen for Windows 8, which appears after you put your computer to sleep or restart or lock your computer. Notifications such as new email alerts, Wi-Fi availability and other essential, user-chosen information will be pushed to this screen.
Hardware requirements
Microsoft says that the Consumer Preview works well on hardware suitable for Windows 7; these system requirements may change in the final release.
| Architecture | x86 (32-bit) | x86-64 (64-bit) |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | 1 GHz | |
| Memory (RAM) | 1 GB | 2 GB |
| Graphics Card | DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver | |
| HDD free space | 16 GB | 20 GB |
To use touch input features, touch enabled hardware is required.
In order to run Metro applications, a screen resolution of 1024x768 or higher is required to run one app at a time, and a resolution of 1366x768 is required to run two app side-by-side using snap.
Microsoft has said that the following virtualization products can be used to run Windows 8 Consumer Preview: Hyper-V in Windows 8 Developer Preview, Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2, VMware Workstation 8.0.2 for Windows, VirtualBox 4.1.8 for Windows, Parallels Workstation 6 for Windows, Parallels Desktop 4 for Windows, and XenDesktop 5.5.
Microsoft requires that Windows 8 PCs support no-reboot upgrade of graphic card drivers and Windows 8 PCs should resume in two seconds or less, but the two seconds resume requirement is laxed for ARM based PCs
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