Industry News » Curtains drawn to reveal Windows 8
Curtains drawn to reveal Windows 8
Microsoft’s Windows 8 has been released in the form of a developer preview build to show off all the new bells and whistles.
It’s little surprise that the Microsoft Build conference was the site of the first big reveal of Windows 8, where Microsoft unveiled a huge range of new features in the upcoming operating system, which is due for its retail release in 2012. The updated interface has been streamlined to a very pleasingly-minimal new look, with very little on-screen clutter. The biggest surprise in the new look Windows, however, has to be the removal of the Start menu. In Windows 8 you have a Start screen, which exists as a separate entity to the Desktop – using the familiar Start button will launch the new screen, rather than popping out a cluttered menu. Pressing the Start key on your keyboard will open a new searching interface.
Windows 8 also gives a much more refined and robust solution to touch interfaces, with improved support for touch-screens and gestures, for those that like to poke their grubby fingers all over their screens. Windows 8 will, of course, be available for tablet machines as well as desk- and laptop machines so again, no surprises here.
Tipping its hat to the green-minded, Windows 8 will run on ARM powered machines, providing a much more energy efficient operating system, though the version previewed at the Build conference was running on more power-hungry x86 machines.
As there’s currently no specific release date for the latest version of Windows, it’s likely that there will be floods of details emerging over the coming months. It’ll be interesting to see what Microsoft has in store and how they plan to top the success of Windows 7.
(Source: TechRadar)
Epicentre Says: “As computers move away from the exclusive realm of the techy-minded more and more, it’s a logical step for Microsoft to make the look and feel of Windows 8 as accessible as possible by implementing sleek, minimal design and removing the highly familiar interface that has featured in increasingly minimal iterations of XP, Vista and 7. With the new Metro interface, users of tablets and touch-screen monitors will have an easy time of navigating around the system and launching their apps. However, care needs to be taken to ensure the interface isn’t too alien to long-time users who are accustomed to the current style, which brings with it the risk of users trying something entirely different from a competitor.”
