Microsoft have now announced much more about their plans for Windows 8 running on ARM architecture including the somewhat curious decision to support the full Windows desktop, even though almost nothing can run on it.  But the fact that the desktop exists at all, and this means that it might be possible to install software that doesn’t come directly from the new Windows Store, leaves an interesting malware question mark over the platform.

So far, Windows 8 on ARM is the most malware resistant operating system on the planet!  I’ve always wanted to say that but this time it’s actually true    No malware at all exists that can infect this platform as nobody’s been able to write anything for it yet.  Thus, Windows 8 on ARM for the primary reason that it will be an embedded OS, will go on to be the most secure version of the operating system ever.  This won’t stop some forms of malware that try to trick users into giving up sensitive details, especially in the desktop version of Internet Explorer that will still support plug-ins (but ONLY ARM-encoded plug-ins I might add!) but nothing will be able to attack the operating system directly.  This will make Windows 8 on ARM just like iOS, QNX or WebOS in being malware resistant.  I’m leaving Android out of this as Google don’t monitor apps as they’re submitted and thus the platform does have a malware problem.

But this question mark over the Windows desktop and whether you will be able to install apps separately from the Windows store still needs to be answered.  What’s more another question Microsoft have yet to answer is whether Windows 8′s new in-built anti-virus software, Windows Defender, a rebadged version of Microsoft Security Essentials, will also be in the ARM version of the OS.  In theory there’s no need to ever have it, or any other anti-virus protection on the ARM platform.  With Microsoft vetting everything that comes through the Windows store, and only downloadable malware to worry about it again will be as secure as iOS, QNX and WebOS, where the majority of tablets run fine with no anti-malware protection whatsoever.

I do find it curious that Microsoft aren’t yet addressing these problems.  It’s very likely, and I will expect this, for Microsoft to say that the ARM devices will ONLY support apps and software from the Windows Store.  It’s also likely that nobody will ever release desktop software for WIndows on ARM either as the market for such programs will be too small to justify the enormous development costs.  The ARM desktop then will only ever be used for six programs.  File Explorer (formerly known as Windows Explorer), Internet Explorer (for which no plug-ins with the possible exception of Flash will ever exist) and Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote (none of which in all likelihood will support VB scripts or Macros).

I’m left wondering then if Windows 8 running on ARM processors could truly be as secure as the competition.  This is Windows and Microsoft though so you can imagine why I’m having a nagging doubt.  The company’s track record with security in Windows isn’t exactly stellar.  Windows 7 with User Account Control might be a nice and secure platform to work on, but nobody in their right mind would ever consider using it without having some type of malware protection installed.  There will still be the WIndows SmartScreen protection, but will this help?  You need an active Internet Connection to use it and how effective can it be anticipating threats that don’t yet exist?

So what do you think about the security of both Windows 8 running on ARM processors and Windows 8 running on Intel?  Do you think that Microsoft will include Windows Defender with the ARM version or will people never need it at all?  Do you expect to be able to install programs on the ARM desktop, or for tablet manufacturers to begin making machines with full USB ports so you can plug pen drives into them and do exactly that?  Why not tell us in the comments below.

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While Microsoft have announced that a consumer preview of Windows 8 will be made available at the end of this month, UK retailers can’t wait for it to arrive. Sales of PC’s in the UK and around most of the world have dropped off an awful lot, mainly because of the global recession. In the UK alone, PC sales have dropped by a massive 20 percent in the final quarter of 2011.

For the whole of 2011, sales had dropped 15.9 percent, which was equivalent to a drop of 2 million units. We also have to remember that this is a drop on 2010′s sales, which also saw a large drop from 2009 sales figures. So in reality the drop is a lot steeper.

Most major manufacturers saw a drop in their sales apart from Apple and Lenevo. According to Gartner, Acer lost 46 percent year on year, HP nearly 16 percent, and Dell 9 percent, with only Lenovo rising 14 percent. In fact, the market has contracted so much that now Apple accounts for 10 percent of the sales, a big increase from 4 percent in previous years.

UK retailers are hoping that Windows 8 will be able to give them a boost in sales, sooner rather than later. As the year progresses, we will becoming closer and closer to the final release date of Windows 8 and people will be reluctant to shell out for new Windows 7 machines when they know an update is only around the corner. This is unfortunate news for retailers, but it’s something that happens with every new release of Windows. However Microsoft did run program for the release of Windows 7 which meant that anyone who bought a Windows Vista machine in the run up to the release of Windows 7 got a free upgrade to it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft introduced a similar scheme for Windows 8, they’ll have to if they don’t want sales to drop off completely.

Retailers are also hoping that Windows 8 will get the consumer excited as well. The new Metro UI is sure to be visually appealing to consumers, particularly on the tablet side of things and should spur on sales there. UK retailers are also banking on sales of Ultrabooks to pick around the release of Windows 8 when Intel’s range of Sandybridge processors are brought to the market. Netbook sales have dropped off a lot and hopefully Ultrabooks can pick up where they left off.

“PC vendors face a long, uphill struggle to regain the interest of consumers. The introduction of Ultrabooks in late 2011 is desperately needed.”

So I know a lot of you guys are desperately waiting for Windows 8 to come out so you can play around with it, but it’s also clear that UK retailers really need it for a much needed boost in their sales figures in these recessionary times.

Source:

Gartner

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Windows on Arm (WOA) is the new member of the Windows family. Like Windows Server, Windows Embedded, or Windows Phone, WOA builds on the foundation of Windows, so this means that it has a commonality and shared code with Windows 8.

Two different Windows 8 products

One thing that became apparent with the blog post from Microsoft about WOA is that it is different from Windows 8.

Here are some of the main points from the post:

• WOA PCs are still under development and our collective goal is for PC makers to ship them the same time as PCs designed for Windows 8 on x86/64.
• Metro style apps in the Windows Store can support both WOA and Windows 8 on x86/64.
• WOA can support all new Metro style apps, including apps from Microsoft for mail, calendaring, contacts, photos, and storage. WOA also includes industry-leading support for hardware-accelerated HTML5 with Internet Explorer 10.
• Desktop support will be available WOA and Windows 8.

Here is what they are saying. WOA will have one set of PC’s, Windows 8 another. Metro Apps will be available on WOA and Windows 8.

Confusion?

It looks like the dynamics at Microsoft are in a compromised state. While some developers may have wanted to have just one version of Windows 8, the ARM version or WOA, others may have wanted a backward compatible version, using the DOS through Windows7 legacy. Neither side won, or rather both sides won. Each is keeping its own version, but not overlapping with the other.

Here is what one part of the blog says:

“The availability of the Windows desktop is an important part of WOA. The desktop offers you a familiar place to interact with PCs, particularly files, storage, and networking, as well as a range of peripherals.”

Then later they say:

“At the same time, WOA (as with Windows is designed so that customers focused on Metro style apps don’t need to spend time in the desktop.”

Then they finish with:

“Some have suggested we might remove the desktop from WOA in an effort to be pure, to break from the past, or to be more simplistic or expeditious in our approach. To us, giving up something useful that has little cost to customers was a compromise that we didn’t want to see in the evolution of PCs.”

So you have two different development approaches to Windows 8, the traditional one, and the ARM one. This looks confusing to me because they will overlap and it will cause confusion for developers; which brand to develop for? That can’t be good.

Source Microsoft

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Microsoft have released an extensive blog post and a video about Windows 8 running on ARM processors.  The video also shows off new apps that have not been seen before including email and calendaring.  One of the biggest questions about Windows 8 on ARM has now been answered, will there be a desktop.  The answer to this is a resolute yes.  In the post Microsoft said…

“WOA (Windows on ARM) includes desktop versions of the new Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. These new Office applications, codenamed ‘Office 15,’ have been significantly architected for both touch and minimized power/resource consumption, while also being fully-featured for consumers and providing complete document compatibility. WOA supports the Windows desktop experience including File Explorer, Internet Explorer 10 for the desktop, and most other intrinsic Windows desktop features—which have been significantly architected for both touch and minimized power/resource consumption.”

This does raise some interesting questions.  For example will these four Office apps be full or cut down versions, more like the free Office web apps?  It also indicates that, for the time being at least, Microsoft have abandoned all development on a Metro version of Office.  This is a tremendous shame given that Adobe Photoshop Touch has already shown how powerful touch apps can be, and that Microsoft’s Ribbon, which is already touch-friendly but can be found nowhere in Metro, would suit the form factor very well indeed.

The question also needs to be asked of what will people use or need the desktop on ARM devices for, and will they ever use it?  I’ve written about this on our sister site gHacks today where I make the case for once again splitting Windows into consumer and business versions.  In short though the main problem will stem from the fact that it is unlikely software houses will recode their existing Windows software for ARM chips (existing x86 and x64 software will not run on the new platform, even in an emulator).  This will leave a desktop with only four Office apps, Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer and I can’t help wonder if this will confuse the people who want to use their existing software, and annoy IT Pros and business in equal measure.

Either way the video, which you can see below the screenshots here, shows Windows 8 being very speedy on an ARM machine.  This shouldn’t come as a surprise as I’ve tested Windows 7 on a 1GHz AMD C50 processor and it was extremely quick and responsive.

The video, as I said, also shows off new apps, and I’ve taken some screen grabs of them here for you to see.  I have to admit the new email and calendaring apps look lovely, and every bit as pretty and functional as I’d hoped.  Another question that’s been answered is will there be a dedicated Metro file manager.  The answer to this too is yes and a screenshot can be seen below.  There is much more in the video itself.

[Start slideshow]

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Well as of yesterday we now know that the Windows 8 Consumer Preview will be unveiled on February the 29th, and Microsoft is currently finalizing the Metro apps that will be included within its release. According to sources “familiar with the matter” the Verge is reporting that the following Metro apps will ship in the consumer preview of Windows 8 later on this month.

• Camera
• Messaging
• Mail
• Calendar
• SkyDrive
• People
• Photos
• Video
• Music

They are just the known apps so far, the chances are that there could be more when the Consumer Preview is revealed. They will also all be updatable from the Windows Store where we will probably find more apps.

The Metro interface

The Mail, Calendar, People, and Messaging apps will be the core Windows communications apps and they haven’t been branded by Windows Live. Microsoft is also apparently working to integrate SMS support into the Messaging app as well since at the moment it operates the same as Windows Live Messenger.

The Music and Video applications are currently branded with the Zune brand and were built by the Xbox team. According to the source however, this branding will probably be removed ahead of the final Windows 8 release and changed to Xbox Live. Making Xbox Live the primary brand for Windows 8 entertainment.

Microsoft is still trying to decide on which apps it will actually bundle with the final release of Windows 8, which is expected to be towards the end of this year. With Windows 7 they removed Outlook Express in an attempt to make things easier when updating the OS and individual programs. In Windows 8, the Windows Store will be responsible for updating Metro Apps and also provide easy access for users to go and download new ones if they wish. Microsoft will probably only add the essential core apps for the release of Windows 8, leaving it up to consumers to choose more apps from the Windows Store.

Source:

The Verge

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Metro seems to have caught the fancy of Microsoft, the whole company. Recently, Steve Ballmer at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, touted the value and importance of this new User Interface (UI). When it is released it will go to the Windows Phones, and also to Windows 8. Ballmer hopes that this new UI will change users view of the Microsoft Smartphone, because it is so unlike iPhone or Android.

Origins of Metro

Going back to 2009, Ballmer put together a new design team to come up with something that could compete with appeal of Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, but still be uniquely Microsoft. A new UI? Yes, that was expected, but they came up with new design principles as well, which are to become the new look and feel of Microsoft’s key consumer offerings.

Before that, its lineage goes back to the Zune digital music player, which foundered against Apple’s iPod. Nevertheless, the Zune user interface won kudos from reviewers when the Zune HD debuted, even though consumers largely ignored it. Next, the Metro designers also drew on work done years earlier in Microsoft’s Encarta encyclopedia s and its Windows Media Center interface.

How It Looks

So why does it look so different? Here, Metro takes its design cues from way-finding graphics used in transportation signs. With bold, clear lettering and iconography, this helps commuters find their way to subways and air travelers navigate to their boarding gates. The focus on clarity and readability would be crucial to the new interface.

The Metro interface

Then the group came up with a look using white space. This would eliminate clutter that they felt would only confuse users. This means also that the chrome frame that separates one app from another on a screen is gone, because the decoration around the app detracts from the experience of using the program. Instead, they implemented a newly developed typeface called Segoe because it is easy to read, and it relies on animations that roll screens away as users navigate through the interface, for example, giving them context about where they’re going or where they’ve been.

Other Microsoft Consumer products

For Microsoft, the big impact is that now they have a new design approach to their products. This will affect them as new upgrades or products are rolled out. Metro will be the universal interface for products at Microsoft.

Source: Cnet

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ARM and Windows 8 desktops…will it be possible?

Ok, that is a good question because Windows 8 is supposed to be a radically different type of operating system. In fact it uses System on Chip (SoC) architectures. What is that?

SoC

An SoC is an integrated circuit that brings together all components of a computer or other electronic system into a single chip. It may contain digital, analog, mixed-signal, and often radio frequency functions … all on a single chip design. A typical application is in the area of embedded systems. One benefit is that SoC designs usually consume less power and have a lower cost and higher reliability than the multi-chip systems that they replace. And with fewer packages in the system, assembly costs are reduced as well.

New development features

Unlike current x86-based machines, which mainly use processors from Intel and AMD, ARM-based SoC devices generally draw less power and can wake from standby instantly. The impact for Windows 8 systems is that SoC systems can enter a near-sleep state but they can still retrieve e-mails, text messages and other information.

Intel ARM Development

Who’s working on ARM? And will it be ready for Windows 8 deployment?

Intel’s first system-on-chip, “Medfield,” is at the final prototype stage according to VR-ZONE. Moreover, it is performing well, even against other chips like NVidia Tegra, and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon.

So there are multiple companies preparing to use ARM. Already the market for ARM is the mobile and tablet market. The question is whether ARM will handle Windows 8.

Some blogs mentioned that ARM-based devices use SoC architectures, and that SoC devices will run both Metro-style and desktop apps suggests that ARM-based computers will support the Windows 8 desktop after all. That said, Microsoft still has to say officially how the Windows 8 desktop will run if Metro will be the new GUI version.

Source PCWorld, ZDNet

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Well it’s finally official, Microsoft have begun sending out press invites to the launch of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. The event will be taking place at Mobile World Congress on the 29th of February in Barcelona.

Microsoft haven’t given very many details regarding the event, but it’s scheduled to take place between 3pm and 5pm CET.

It looks like Microsoft are celebrating the leap year by announcing the Consumer Preview of Windows 8 on the last day of February. We had heard plenty of rumours that Microsoft would be announcing the Consumer Preview before the end of February, so that much has turned out to be true at least. Microsoft generally make the Consumer Previews and Beta’s available the same day that they are announced.

It’s quite interesting that Microsoft have decided to announce it at the Mobile World Congress which is primarily reserved for mobile gadgets. I guess you could read from that, that Microsoft are looking to push hard into the mobile market with Windows 8.

Anyway, there’s not too long to wait now before Microsoft release the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. You can be sure that we’ll let you know as soon as it’s available

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Say what you like about Windows 8 (and who isn’t) but it’s embracing new technologies like never before.  This got me looking at Apple’s desktop operating system, OS X, and asking myself if Windows 8 might leave the Lion trailing far behind in its dust.  First things first though, I’m not going to assume that Windows 8 will be a tablet operating system, as that would be unfair given that Windows in its various forms currently runs on about 1 billion desktops and probably about thirty or forty tablets worldwide.  I’m also not anti-Apple, as OS X is a very polished and accomplished operating system that almost nobody has a bad word to say about.  What I want to do is take each operating system on its merits and compare these two operating systems as they will stand, shoulder-to-shoulder this October when Windows 8 is expected to launch.

This means we will still be using OS X Lion on iMacs because Apple’s desktop OS release schedule usually means they release something new every eighteen months to two years, and with Lion coming out in the summer of 2011, that means the next big cat will lag from a few months to as much as a year behind Windows 8.  So where will these two operating systems stand and why, do I think anyway, Windows 8 will be ahead of the pack?

Let’s start with touch, as Windows 8 is centred around it in a way no desktop operating system ever has been before.  This is significant because when you look at it objectively Windows is the only desktop operating system to ever feature touch.  It’s never been in OS X or GNU/Linux and, although most people expect the next generation iMacs and Macbooks to be multi-touch enabled they might not appear for another year or more.  Touch is important as any new way to interact with our computers opens up opportunities both for existing users and people who are new to technology.  This can include the elderly, disabled or very young children, all of whom can have trouble with keyboards.

Touch brought with it handwriting recognition to Windows, which has now been with us in some form or another since around 2005 when Microsoft first introduced the concept of the tablet PC.  The handwriting recognition in Windows is really quite mature now and far ahead of the competition.  Apple, by contrast doesn’t even offer the feature on the iPad and it has to be added via a third-party app.  Again this offers new ways to interact with our computers and opens them up to new people and new markets.

While we’re on the subject of interfaces there can be little doubt that Microsoft’s Kinect sensor will revolutionise the way we use PCs in the same way it has done for gaming.  It may only be useful for broad swipes but imagine the fun people will have playing with it on a new laptop, or the benefits it can bring to the physically handicapped?

It’s not just in interfaces that Microsoft is leagues ahead of Apple.  Data encryption is another area where they still rule the roost.  No matter how secure people might tell you their Macbook is, it’s still vulnerable to being dismantled and having the hard drive removed.  Microsoft’s Bitlocker drive encryption technology has now been with us since 2005 and is widely considered as the business data encryption tool.  This is at a time when data protection and data encryption are more important than ever before.

Add to this new technologies such as hard disk storage pooling, new advanced file management features and the Windows To Go feature, which will allow you to load your entire copy of Windows 8, including all it’s installed software onto a bootable USB pen drive and Windows 8 is clearly well in the lead.

If you want to come back now and say that the average desktop user doesn’t need any of these features then I would say this to you.  Each one of the very few technologies I’ve listed here is either currently making a big difference in the world today, or is set to do so very shortly (such as Windows To Go).  There is nothing here that can be considered frivolous or useless in any way.  In short I could suggest, if I dare, that Apple have spent so long concentrating on the smartphone and tablet space that they’ve simply taken their eye off the desktop and when they had chances to import some of these technologies into OS X, remember that OS X and iOS run on the same core kernel, they missed the opportunity.

There are also, and this is important to say, areas where OS X is ahead of Windows.  While some of these areas have been historically significant, such as user security, OS X doesn’t currently lead in any meaningful way, and with the technologies that are making a big impact in the world today.

The reason I say this is because, while the focus of Windows 8 might be on it’s funky new Metro front end, many people will be comparing Windows and OS X and wondering why the precocious Metro upstart is so far ahead.  Apple clearly has some catching up to to, and they’d better hurry because I do actually want to buy an iMac, but until they begin to support touch they can forget it.

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Microsoft has always shipped a handful of games with each version of the windows operating system. This usually included one or multiple Solitaire versions, good old Minesweeper, and even online games such as Backgammon or Hearts. Tom Warren over at The Verge got his hands on a list of Windows Store games that Microsoft intents to offer in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview build that will supposedly be released later this month.

According to Tom, the following games will be available in the preview version of the Windows Store.

• Hydro Thunder
• Toy Soldiers
• Reckless Racing
• Angry Birds
• Ilomilo
• Rocket Riot
• Full House Poker
• Tentacles
• Crash Course
• Ms Splosion Man
• Wordament

Angry Birds is without doubt the biggest name in the list. Some of the lesser known games have received rave reviews though. This is for instance true for Ms. Splosion Man or Rocket Riot,  which both have been released on Xbox Live Arcade. Judging from the names something’s there for virtually any taste. From Poker over racing to puzzle games.

It is also interesting to note that the majority of games are already available on Xbox Live Arcade.

Tom notes that the Windows 8 Consumer Preview version will ship with Pinball and Solitaire preinstalled on the system, and that the remaining games listed above are available as separate downloads from the integrated Windows store.

Windows Store will carry free and commercial game and application offerings. Developers can either offer their apps and games for free, or charge users between $1.49 and $999 for them.

The games included in the preview version of Windows Store are all-in-all high quality games. It is likely that Microsoft plans to integrate high quality apps in the store preview as well.

Update: Microsoft News has reported that other games will also be available at the start of the Windows 8 Beta. The games mentioned are Beards & Beaks , geoDefense, Zero Gravity, Rise Of Glory, iBlast Moki, Sudoku, Minesweeper and Cut The Rope.

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There’s still a lot we don’t know about Windows 8, and won’t for the next couple of weeks until the Consumer Preview (beta) is released.  I know that there’s still an awful lot to come, especially for business users, IT Pros and Enthusiasts that we’ve not seen, or even heard of yet.  But of the things we do currently know about this new operating system what I am personally most excied about?  As a Windows MVP and a Windows Author, with my “Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out” already out the door and two Windows 8 books currently being written (plus at least one more to come after that) I’ll know this new operating system inside out (if you’ll excuse the pun) by the time it ships.

This is the case with Windows 7 where I use a great many of the operating system’s more advanced and perhaps less-known features every day.  These include Aero Snap which allows me to work on two documents side by side, Taskbar Jumplists for pinning of regularly used files, including some I store up in Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud service and networking features that make sharing and working on different files on different computers a doddle.

Assuming I’ll continue to use all of these, I thought I’d detail here which of the features that will be completely new to Windows 8, I’m most looking forward to, and why.

8 : Reset and Refresh

As the author of a Windows 7 Troubleshooting book, the idea of a quick way to reset Windows is very useful and extremely compelling.  This isn’t a basic “quick fix” feature either, as it’s programmable with your own custom Windows images.  So you can create an image of a fully-working and installed system, complete with all your software and settings, and use the Reset option to quickly roll back to a fully working copy of Windows.  As a way to expand on the System Image functionality goes, this is a winner in my book.

7 : Live Tiles

I might probably use the desktop more than Metro, but I have rather grown to love Live Tiles on my Windows Phone.  With the Live Tiles on the new Windows 8 Start Screen I can see just how much additional information they will be able to provide and just how useful they could really be.  For example I could check my latest emails, look at my calendar, see what the weather’s doing, see who just mentioned me on Twitter and more by just sitting there.  I wouldn’t have to do anything at all!  That’s really quite cool.

6 : Multi-User Tablets

My biggest beef with modern tablets is how they lock you into a single-user account, forcing you to buy an extra tablet for each other person in your household who wants to use one.  Windows 8 will finally change all that, bringing multiple-user accounts to tablets for the first time.  Apart from the obvious cost-saving to households and businesses, this single feature will elevate Windows 8 above the competition whenever the salesman in the shop begins to talk about it.

5 : Improved File Management

The changes and improvements to file management in Windows 8 are such that I can’t help but wonder why it’s taken so long to do things that are so obvious.  The new copy and replace dialogs are extremely helpful and the simple fact that you will be able to pause a copy or a move operation, shut your computer off, go out for the night with friends, and continue the copy from where you left it the following morning is, frankly, worth the upgrade on its own!

4 : Better Windows Phone Sync

I love my Windows PC and I equally love my Windows Phone, but no matter how good the Zune Desktop software is, it’s becoming very old hat to use software such as this to synchronise the two.  While many of the details are still secret, it’s become apparent that Windows 8 will be able to synchronise with your Windows Phone directly, which will bring many added benefits, much of which we don’t yet know, but extra functionality (please synching of Internet bookmarks) is bound to be a part of the package.

3 : Hyper-V

I use Virtualisation, in the form of XP Mode, every single day to run an old Microsoft graphics package that I love, but that won’t run fully in Windows 7.  The incluison of Microsoft’s excellent type-0 hypervisor, baked into the OS for the first time will solve many a problem for many people, and help make Windows 8 the most compatible version of Windows yet… until all support for XP ends of course but we’ll cross that bridge later.

2 : Windows To Go

It’s one thing to be able to carry files around with you on a pen drive, but so far it’s been the preserve of expensive third-party software to allow you to run the entire operating system from a pen-drive.  Now, Windows 8 will bring you the opportunity to carry your copy of Windows, and it’s software, with you wherever you go.  No longer will we need to fret about leaving the laptop at home.  Just plug the pen drive into any PC and, hey presto, there it is.

1 : Kinect

As a favourite thing to look forward to with Windows 8, how could anything except the Kinect sensor integration, complete with it’s “Minority Report” operation of the new Start Screen not top the list?  It may not be useful for anything but broad gestures, but by ‘eck it’s gonna be fun to play with when we get it!

There are other things I’m looking forward to as well such as pooled storage, better battery life and more mobile working support, and no doubt even more will appear when I get a copy of the beta.  What are you most looking forward to in Windows 8?  Why not tell us in the comments.

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Somehow I don’t think Microsoft did this on purpose, but a Bing page has been discovered which is still under construction, that contains some information regarding the Windows 8 consumer preview. If you go to this Bing page you will see what I’m talking about.

First off that fish swimming in the background appears to be Microsoft’s mascot for beta versions of its operating systems. A fish very similar to this was to be found in the Windows 7 beta’s and release candidates.

The page also appears to contain several hotspots and links scattered across it. A lot of these links are broken which indicates that the site is still under development, but a few of them are working. The working ones are to the Building Windows 8 blog and one about developing Metro style apps.

All the other ones appear to be broken, I was especially disappointed to find the “See what’s new in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview” link was broken.

Originally we thought that Microsoft was going to launch the first Windows 8 beta at the end of this month, but then we had a few rumours that it may be called the “Consumer Preview” instead. This little find today pretty much confirms just that.

Of course this website doesn’t leak any details about the release date for the consumer preview so we are still in the dark as to when it will actually be released and available to download but we can be pretty certain that it will be some time this month.

Source:

Bing via Cnet

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Chinese website PC Beta has released new screenshots from the Windows 8 Consumer Preview (beta) showing that the Start Screen wallpaper we’ve seen in the Developer Preview probably won’t be the only one available when we see the full beta later this month.  While full details of exactly what and how many wallpapers will be available, until Stardock get their way, the image of the new rings wallpaper isn’t an unpleasant one.

The screenshots also show a modified Charms bar with new icons and a slightly modified Control Panel, now called PC Settings, where the descriptive text from items has been removed.  Finally these is a screenshot reinforcing the news that the Windows Start Orb has now been removed from the desktop.  Rumour has it however that it reappears if you mouse over to the bottom left of the Windows desktop taskbar.

Much still isn’t known about the Windows 8 beta, probably too much frankly and there are a great many quite legitimate questions that people are asking.  It is clear though that Microsoft have done a great deal of work since last August when they would have signed-off on the Developer Preview build, and that they’ve taken on board much of the feedback they received from that build.

One piece of feedback concerned the blanket alphabetical way in which apps were treated in the search screen.  One of the new screenshots shows apps now arranged into categories, as per the current Start Menu.  It’s probably not a perfect implementation, but it is at least a significant improvement over what we’ve seen before.

What do you think of these screenshots and the new look?  Do you like it?  Why not tell us in the comments below.

Update: Someone has leaked all Windows 8 Wallpapers that Microsoft intents to ship with the consumer preview version of the operating system. You find them linked below:

[Start slideshow]

The wallpaper images have  been posted here originally.

New Windows 8 Wallpapers and Charms Bar Shown in Leaked Screenshots is a post from Windows 8 News, Rumors & Tips - The Latest Microsoft Windows 8 News, Rumours & Screenshots. Visit Windows 8 News, Rumors & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 8 News, Rumors, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

There’s been an awful lot of hype building up around Windows 8 and how Microsoft are looking to finally enter the tablet market properly with it. Everyone seems to have forgotten that the vast majority of people still actually use laptops and desktop PC’s, and while that trend is slightly changing, I think it’s still important to remember the current traditional way we use Windows.

Sticking to the subject of tablets though. ARM’s CEO Warren East recently spoke about how Windows 8 will have an advantage over Android when it comes to tablets once it hits the market. While Android has been an incredible success in the smartphone industry, the pick up rate hasn’t been quite as good in the tablet market. He called Android tablet sales “disappointing” .

He cited a number of reasons as to why Windows 8 will have the advantage over Android tablets:

• Microsofts Brand
  Microsoft have a big advantage over Android since everybody knows, recognises and trusts their brand. Microsoft is much better known than Android amongst the general consumer and it’s a company that everyone can relate to.

  I think we can be pretty certain that Microsoft are well aware of this fact and will probably do their very best to exploit that fact. They’d be foolish not to.

• Intel Needs To Catch Up
  While Intel may be dominating in the PC and Laptop market, the vast majority of tablets are actually running ARM processors. Intel are trying their hardest to break into the tablet market, but at the moment Android tablet manufacturers prefer the cheaper ARM alternatives. Windows 8 will support both ARM and Intel processors which will give it another slight advantage over it’s predecessor – Windows 7 which only supported Intel’s x86 architecture.

• Android Needs More Time
  Android is doing very well in general, but it’s the smartphone market where it’s currently excelling. A few years ago when Android first came to the market there was very little enthusiasm around it. However 2 years later and it had suddenly taken off.

It will be interesting to see how Windows 8 tablets are received in the market and how quickly they’ll take off, if they do of course.

What do you think? Will Windows 8 powered tablets have the advantage over Android?

Let us know in the comments below

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Windows 8 is being developed with more portable devices in mind, tablets more so than anything else. While it will still retain the traditional desktop interface somewhat, the new Metro UI has been designed specifically with touch screen devices in mind. Some tablets are pretty small and portable, but none of them are quite as portable as a watch.

So can you imagine having a watch powered by Windows 8 on your wrist? Well a creative designer came up with a watch concept that is just that, check it out below.

It certainly looks like something from the future and wouldn’t look too out of place in a high tech spy movie. It was designed by Mithun Darji and he’s managed to do a pretty good job at porting the Windows 8 Metro UI onto the watches screen. Of course it’s only a concept and the chances that we will ever see it are probably pretty slim, but then again we have seen some android powered watches recently so you never know.

This concept comes with built in Wi-Fi, doubles as a phone and even comes with a bluetooth headset for the times when you don’t want to do a James Bond on it and talk directly into the watch. Other features that we can see are the dedicated media buttons along the top of the device as well as volume keys and four buttons along the bottom of the device.

So will we ever see a watch like this? Probably not because Microsoft has laid down certain hardware requirements for Windows 8 which would be very hard to replicate on a device as tiny as a watch.

But it’s a pretty cool concept none the less.

Would you wear a watch like this if it actually came to market?

Let us know in the comments below.

Source:

Ubergizmo

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PC users who are buying a new computer with the Windows 8 operating system, and those who are upgrading their existing versions will have to cope with quite a few major design changes over previous versions of the Windows operating system.

The new Metro UI interface obviously makes the top of that list. Tech savvy users who follow the development of Windows 8 are still not sure whether it will improve their workflow on desktop systems. The Windows 8 Beta, which will supposedly be released later this months, should give everyone an answer to that.

A recent screenshot on the PC Beta forum suggests that Microsoft may have plans to change the desktop interface significantly as well. The developer preview released last year already crippled the start menu that Windows users were using in previous versions for various tasks such as starting applications, searching or opening the Control Panel.

The screenshot now shows a taskbar without a start menu button.

According to Neowin, that button appears only when users move the mouse (or their finger) to the left lower corner of the screen.

The basic idea behind the move, besides removing noise from the interface, is to make users use the taskbar and the new charms for all the things they are doing on the desktop. Charms basically appear when you move the mouse to the edge of the screen.

The default start menu functionality had been crippled by Microsoft before, and it feels like they just followed their new all or nothing philosophy to the end.

Pinning applications directly to to the taskbar will become more of a necessity in Windows 8, considering that users do not have options anymore to start apps from the start menu. What about seldom used applications, you may ask? Your only options at this point in time seem to be the built-in search or to use windows Explorer to navigate to application folders directly.

What’s your take on the change? Lets discuss in the comments.

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It feels kinda confusing that Microsoft intents to ship two different versions of Internet Explorer 10 with the Windows 8 system. First the plugin-less Metro UI variant, and then the standard desktop variant that supports plug-ins. The company is driving towards a plug-in free web in Windows 8. The core reasons for doing so are battery life, security, reliability and privacy.

While battery life is certainly an argument for mobile PCs running Windows 8, it is not convincing for desktop users. Security, reliability and privacy on the other hand could convince desktop users as well.

Instead of going all in like Apple did, Microsoft has decided to implement a backdoor into Windows 8. Users who open a website requiring plug-ins to function properly, are presented with options to launch that website in the desktop version of Internet Explorer instead.

Webmasters and developers can add http headers or meta tags to their websites to force Metro UI Internet Explorer 10 to display the plug-in prompt to the user. Microsoft furthermore maintains a compatibility view list of popular sites that are requiring plug-ins for all or some of their site’s functionality.

HTTP Header

X-UA-Compatible: requiresActiveX=true

META Tag

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="requiresActiveX=true" />

It is interesting to note that Microsoft sees those options as a short-term mitigation.

This mechanism provides a short-term mitigation. The desktop browsing experience and most plug-ins were not designed for smaller screens, battery constraints, and no mouse. Providing an easy way to the Windows desktop is the last resort when no comparable plug-in free fallback content exists.

Is this a hint at what Internet Explorer 11 might look like, or how Microsoft envisions Windows 9?

There is another issue that has not been addresses yet. Internet Explorer 10 is tightly integrated into Metro UI, and it is likely that Microsoft won’t offer options to switch the browser to an alternative. This would close out browsers like Firefox, Google Chrome or Opera from the part of the operating system that Microsoft is putting all their development power into.

While it is still possible to install those third party browsers on the desktop, it could feel awkward for those users to use Internet Explorer on the system again. (via)

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File management is and always will be an essential task for all computer users. It includes file storage, accessibility and visibility among other things. Microsoft in a new blog post on the official Building Windows 8 blog has highlighted file management changes of the upcoming operating system. You probably know already that Microsoft intents to improve file management processes in Windows 8. This includes a better way to resolve conflicts. Conflicts occur for instance when you try to copy a file into a directory where the file name is already occupied by another file. Windows 8 adds visual information, e.g. thumbnails if you are moving photos to a new file conflict screen to give users more control over the process.

Windows 8 systems benefit from faster network throughput, for instance when you start a copying job over Wi-Fi and later on plug in a network cable. Jobs furthermore will automatically pause if the computer enters sleep or hibernation modes. The job can be resumed once the machine wakes again.

One of the many changes to Windows Explorer is the file manager’s ability to respect EXIF orientation, which means that you will always see your photos in the right orientation on the screen.

The padlock icon has been removed from Windows Explorer as it was causing delays in the file manager. They have been replaced by a sharing status column that is now displayed in the file browser.

Another new addition is the ability to pin folders to Start. This feature is accessible under the Easy Access menu in Windows Explorer’s new ribbon interface. It is furthermore possible to pin executables to the Start menu as well.

Please note that when I say Start, it means the Metro UI interface and not the original Windows Start Menu.

The announcement that Windows Explorer would ship with a ribbon interface has caused quite the controversy among users of the Windows operating system. Microsoft as a response has decided to minimize the ribbon interface in the Windows 8 beta release by default.

Ribbon minimized by default: With the ribbon maximized in the Developer Preview, we’ve been able to learn a lot about how people interact with it, which has enabled us to tweak and fine-tune it. With the beta, we will be making a major change that brings Explorer in line with our design principles for Windows 8. As in our copy dialogs, Task Manager, and Metro style experiences, we will be reducing distractions and trusting users to discover functionality on their own, by minimizing the ribbon by default.

According to an internal non representative study “heavier” Windows Explorer users make use of the Ribbon more often than lighter users. Users who prefer to work with a minimized ribbon interface on the other hand had a strong preference for hotkeys. To further encourage the use of hotkeys, Microsoft has added tooltips to many functions in Windows Explorer that highlight their hotkey.

Personalized Windows Explorer settings, like a maximized ribbon bar or actions in the Quick Access Toolbar, are now synchronized via Windows 8′s roaming feature.

The majority of changes make sense from a user perspective. Especially the ability to synchronize Windows Explorer customizations with other PCs running the operating system is an excellent option. What’s your take on the changes?

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Windows has always come in different versions known internally as Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) that currently include the names “Home Premium”, “Professional”, “Enterprise” and “Ultimate”.  Historically, when the consumer and retail versions of Windows were developed separately the SKUs included titles such as “Windows for Workgroups” or “Windows 98″ and “Windows NT 4.0″.  It’s accepted then that each new versions of Windows will come with multiple SKUs.

There are some legalistic reasons for doing this as well which include the N editions that are make available within the European Union and are full versions of Windows but without Windows Media Player, and special editions for emerging markets.  This is very different to the approach taken by Apple where there are only two versions of each OS X release, “Desktop” and “Server”.

This week though somebody within Microsoft told me that we should expect just a single SKU for Windows 8 which came as a surprise to me.  Now I’m not taking this snippet of information as authoritative as it wouldn’t be the first time a Microsoft employee has misinterpreted some snippet of news from within the company and given me the wrong information, or perhaps even disinformation, who knows.  Therefore I wouldn’t assume that this information is gospel, but it does raise some very interesting questions.

Technically there could just be a single version of Windows 8.  It would be excellent news for home users who would gain access to useful features such as the Hyper-V virtualization client, as XP Mode was only supported in Windows 7 Professional and above.  It would also make it clear to people what features they were getting with the OS.  Any Systems Administrators might not be so happy though to have to hide the games, Windows Media Centre and the like in Group Policy, a task that would just be time consuming.

Also the aforementioned special editions that are sold within the EU wouldn’t be a problem either, as you would either buy “Windows 8″ or “Windows 8 N” (not that anybody ever does!).  But what about Windows 8 on ARM-powered tablets and what about cheaper editions for emerging markets?  For the latter they are commonly limited to running three programs at a time and don’t include many of the more business-oriented features.  If there was a single version of Windows 8 then it would either have to have a massive price-drop worldwide to match the price in these emerging markets, or Microsoft would have to abandon these markets completely.

There is also no word yet on whether Windows on ARM will even support the desktop.  After all the current desktop software for Windows would need to be re-engineered and nobody’s going to do that given the small size of the overall market and the low maximum price people are prepared to pay for tablets software.  The ARM version of Windows would have to be its own SKU anyway in practice, being completely incompatible with Intel architecture and probably only available to OEMs as well.

For these reasons and more I find it difficult to believe that there will only be one SKU for Windows 8, but my source in Microsoft seemed pretty determined that this will be the case.  We may have to wait several months for the announcement of what will really be happening with Windows 8 editions.  Until then it would be interesting to hear your views on this.  Why not tell us below!?

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One of the biggest changes that’s coming with Windows 8 is the fact that it supports ARM processors rather than the traditional x86 Intel/AMD processors.While Microsoft have given us a few glimpses at tablets with ARM processors running Windows 8 in the past, we’ve never got a proper demonstration as Windows 8 was still a bit unstable on ARM machines.

But now it’s been reported that Windows 8 is running “quite stable” on ARM processors at the moment and will be sent to developers sometime in February. The source of this news is from a high profile PC manufacturer according to Cnet. Microsoft have not officially confirmed this news.

“In October of last year. [Windows 8 on ARM] scared the industry because it was unstable. But what we are seeing now is quite stable,”

said another source, they also confirmed an expected February developer release.

“We haven’t heard this directly from Microsoft, but we’ve heard this from the hardware partners that [Microsoft] is working with. We’ve been promised something in the February time frame,”

The big deal with these ARM processors is that they are a lot cheaper than the current Intel/AMD chips that we all use. It’s expected that tablets running ARM processors will be significantly cheaper than their x86 counterparts. Intel are currently marketing their latest chips as being thinner and faster, with a much longer battery life. But ARM processors also provide all these benefits, at a lower cost.

Nvidia Tablet With ARM Chip Running Windows 8

Some sources have claimed that Windows 8 devices powered by ARM chips will ship later than those on traditional x86 chips because Windows 8 wasn’t running stably on ARM chips a couple of months ago. But if Microsoft have managed to sort things out and are preparing to ship out an ARM suitable copy of Windows 8 to developers next month, then they must have things sorted out.

However ARM chips do have one major drawback. They are unable to run legacy Windows applications and that’s where Intel and AMD chips still have the advantage over ARM manufacturers like Texas Instruments, Nvidia and Qualcomm. That’s one of the major snags that Microsoft have to try and sort out before Windows 8 hits the market. There’s nothing more frustrating than having programs that won’t run on newer devices.

Source:

Cnet

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If you thought that Windows 8 would improve the personalization features of Windows 7, then you are only half-right. While the operating system certainly offers its fair share of customizations, it has now been confirmed that Windows 8′s new Metro start screen will not offer as many customization options as users may have hoped for.

Instead of allowing users to pick the color scheme or background image they want, selection is limited to eight different styles currently. While it is fairly certain that we will see custom hacks to overcome the limitation, it is likely that many users will be disappointed by the lack of options.

Windows 8 director of communications Chris Flores mentioned in a Tech Radar interview that users would not want photographs as the background, as the photo would not stretch or scale with the start screen, and that it would be covered up mostly as well so that it would be barely visible.

He is basically saying that Windows 8 users lack the intelligence to make this personalization decision on their own, and that Microsoft has to step in to protect their Metro interface from ugliness.

We here at Windows 8 News do not like this restriction at all for a number of reasons. There is certainly nothing wrong with offering official styles that users can switch to. But offering eight styles, and maybe more when the final version comes out, is not enough from a personalization perspective. What if I want to have a photo as the background and do not care if it is repeated or stretched out? What if I have configured Metro for a set amount of apps that won’t change in the near future? Why would Microsoft block the use of a fitting wallpaper image or photo?

What Microsoft should do to resolve the issue? Add a switch to the Control Panel so that users can remove the restrictions, or even better, remove the restriction completely and let users personalize their desktop the way they want to.

What’s your take on the issue? Lets discuss in the comments.

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Kinect is certainly one of the best products that Microsoft has at the moment. They’ve shipped an impressive number of units over the last year or so and also recently announced that they were going to be releasing a desktop edition of it as well. The desktop edition of Kinect ships from February 1st and has a slightly smaller sensor which has more accuracy at close range. But what if Microsoft built the Kinect sensor directly into laptops or monitors? Even tablets?

Well apparently Microsoft are looking into just that. According to the Daily, there’s some prototype laptops which are currently being tested which incorporate Kinect sensors into them.

The devices appear to be Asus netbooks which are running what we assume to be the developer preview edition of Windows 8. There’s an array of small sensors covering the top of the screen where the webcam is normally found and at the bottom of the display there appears to be a set of LEDs.

They’ve also said that a source at Microsoft has even confirmed that these devices are indeed the official prototypes of laptops featuring a Kinect sensor and Kinect technology.

Microsoft recently revealed a lot more information on an array of new sensors that they were incorporating into Windows 8 which you can read about here. They never actually mentioned anything about Kinect sensors so this must still be a prototype project.

If you think about it, there’s loads of ways that Kinect could be used in a portable device like a laptop or even a tablet. Of course gaming is an obvious one since that’s what Kinect is currently used for the most. But Kinect supported laptops could offer great support for people with disabilities and improve the accessibility options.

Of course Microsoft will more than likely not be making it’s own laptops with Kinect built in,  they’ll probably just license out the Kinect technology to interested manufacturers.

It will be interesting to see if Microsoft does bring this up at some stage. I ‘d imagine that they’d like to keep it quiet for the moment so as not to hamper sales of the new desktop version of Kinect.

What do you think, would Kinect work well in a laptop or portable device?

Let us know in the comments

Source:

Thedaily 

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Microsoft today revealed information about sensor support that the company plans to integrate into the Windows 8 operating system. Before we start, I’d like to point out shortly that sensors are not a new feature, as they have been integrated into Windows 7 as well. You can check out Windows 7 Sensors explained for an overview of what sensors were about in Windows 7.

Sensor support in Windows 7 however goes beyond that, which makes it an interesting feature again. That’s likely the main reason why Microsoft has put the adaptive brightness feature at the very top of the article. Adaptive brightness was included in Windows 7, but limited due to the quality of available display panels.

A sensor basically adjusts the brightness of the screen based on ambient light conditions. the right screen shows a tablet with adaptive brightness enabled, the right screen one with the feature disabled.

Windows 8 supports automatic screen roation, another new feature that tablet and mobile users will benefit from mostly. When a user rotates the device, the screen will automatically rotate with the user.

Data from an accelerometer allows the device to determine its basic orientation. By automatically rotating the screen, people can use their devices (primarily slates and convertibles) in a more natural and intuitive way, without needing to manually rotate the screen with software controls or hardware buttons.

One of the interesting new concepts that Microsoft integrates into Windows 8 is Sensor Fusion, which combines the strengths of multiple sensors to overcome weaknesses of individual sensors. Microsoft demonstrates the concept in the second part of the video below.

The remaining parts of the article are all aimed at developers, and how they can use sensors in their applications. Microsoft has created a sensor API that developers can use as part of the new WinRT.

Through these APIs, developers can access the power of sensor fusion from any Metro style app. These APIs are clean and simple, and at the same time give developers access to the data needed to support everything from casual games to virtual reality applications. Of course these capabilities are all available as Win32 APIs for game developers or other uses in desktop applications.

What is your take on sensor support in Windows 8?

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We’ve had the “Developer Preview” of Windows 8 and now that the beta is due in the next month we could find it being called the “Consumer Preview”, at least according to Janelle Poole, Microsoft’s director of public relations who in a statement at CES was found to have said…

We haven’t talked about the release date and we generally don’t. We are talking milestone to milestone, so for us right now, we’re talking about the next milestone being the Consumer Preview happening in late February.”

ZD Net blogger Mary Jo Foley reported the phrase yesterday for the first time and is wondering if this will indeed be the official title for the beta with perhaps the release candidate being the “Enterprise Preview”.  In her blog post she said…

Such a name also could help Microsoft’s PC partners who need a way to make new tablets and PCs that they’re bringing to market from now until the time that Windows 8 is shipping seem more up-to-date and palatable. (”This runs the Windows 8 Consumer Preview — so you know it’ll be able to run the final Windows 8 with no problem.”)

Let’s have a look at what this might mean though if it happens.  So far Microsoft have been promising somewhere near 300 features for IT Pros that were not ready in time for the Developer Preview release last September.  We still don’t know what most of these features are but some have leaked including new multi-monitor support features and the ability to pool the storage on your computer in a RAID-like system.

IT Pros are still very concerned about Windows 8 however, I’m giving a talk this Thursday to a large group of them in Manchester which is one of the UKs biggest technology hubs, and this isn’t the first such talk I’ve been asked to give.  What will they take from the name “Consumer Preview”?

It’s mostly likely I think that Microsoft are desperate for Windows 8 to be popular with consumers and that they want to reassure the general public that while they might be very late to the tablet game, by some three years or more, that they’re ready now and Windows 8 tablets are what they should be buying later in the year.

It’s true that Microsoft are pinning a great deal on this release and if it fails to gain serious traction in the consumer space, IT Pros will probably feel as though they were left behind for a pipe-dream.  The fact that Microsoft will want to focus very hard on consumers then will not come as a surprise to anybody, especially with major businesses only now migrating to Windows 7.

There is also the fact, as Mary Jo points out that “the current Windows organization doesn’t show code publicly at all until it’s pretty much set in stone and going to be tweaked very minimally.”  We can be pretty sure that the beta, or Consumer Preview will be very usable day to day in the same way that the Windows 7 beta was.  Microsoft already have a live Windows Update feature working with the Developer Preview (though it won’t update to the beta), but it’s possible that the beta might just update to the release candidate if it’s close enough to completion.

If enough millions of people then update their computers to the Windows 8 beta, then in theory all Microsoft need to do at the end of the process is to sell them a new product key online and people can continue using Windows 8 without having to reinstall.  We still know nothing about this though and it might not happen this way.

It is clear though that Microsoft at this point are focusing much more on consumers than in IT Pros.  This doesn’t mean they don’t care about, or aren’t going to cater for IT Pros.  It just means that the company has decided to put all of its marketing might behind the consumer angle in the same way they have in the last year with Windows Phone.

So next month we’ll see what happens with the beta and what it is called, as soon as we know we’ll report back to you here at Windows 8 News.

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Any of you who followed CES this year will know that there was a whole load of new Windows 8 tablets announced that we can expect to see once Windows 8 itself is actually released later on this year. Of course there is a few tablets out there that people have installed the Windows 8 developer preview on already. However I’m sure that many of you have got the Windows 8 developer preview up and running on your laptop which doesn’t have a touchscreen.

While you can still use Windows 8 without a touchscreen, the whole Metro UI experience isn’t as good navigating with a mouse and keyboard. So it would be nice to have a touchscreen tablet to try it out and get a real feel for Windows 8.

Well you can actually build your very own Windows 8 tablet if you like, all you’ll need is a touchscreen and an old laptop that you don’t mind taking apart!

Over at instructables some fella has posted about how he went about making his very own tablet so he could try out the Windows 8 developer preview.

Now it’s not exactly a work of art, and it’s a bit bulkier than traditional tablets, but hey it works! The process is quite straightforward really as you’ll see from the video below. But essentially all you do is disconnect your existing screen, attach a new touchscreen and sit it on top of the keyboard. Add a few nice bits of trim to hold everything together and you’ve got yourself a tablet!

Of course you’ll have to go get yourself a touchscreen and then take apart one of your laptops. Performance will also depend on the machine that you’re using but as we know, Windows 8 doesn’t require specs that are too high.

So are you willing to convert your laptop into a tablet to try out Windows 8?

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Since Microsoft is looking to get into the tablet market with Windows 8, it’s imperative that they make the OS compatible with mobile networks since a lot of tablets these day ship with 3G capability as well as WiFi. In the latest post over on the building Windows 8 blog, Microsoft have explained how they’ve built in native support for mobile networks in Windows 8.

First off they’ve developed a new control panel which will allow you to turn radios on and off, as well as configure connection settings and get contact information for support. While Windows 7 did support mobile networks, the user was left to install all the appropriate software to manage these things, where as it will all be integrated straight into Windows 8. This will make the process of using mobile broadband much easier for consumers.

The new network settings control panel lets you configure settings for all the various radios in your device, including WiFi, mobile networks and Bluetooth. There’s also an “airplane mode” to disable it all. This has been pretty much standard on all mobile phones but it’s new to PCs.

They’ve also made great advancements with how Windows 8 will manage your mobile data. They’ve managed to reduce connection times and limit the amount of data that’s being transferred when you’re on a mobile network where you could have a monthly allowance. Windows 8 will automatically switch to a WiFi network when available like most phones do.

Microsoft have really made things much easier when it comes to using mobile broadband too. Windows 8 will monitor your traffic usage and keep track of it so you know just how much data that you’ve used. Hopefully this will help stop users going over their data caps and from raking up huge bills without realising it.

What’s more, even if you don’t currently have a data plan with a particular network, Windows 8 will recognise this and allow you to purchase a data plan from the network by directing you to their website. There’s also metro apps being developed for the mobile networks which give you an overview of your account and more.

It’s really quite impressive how much work Microsoft have put into making Windows 8 very mobile friendly. This new mobile network management system is much better than that on any smartphone and I’m sure plenty of tablet users will find it incredibly useful.

There’s a whole load more stuff that Microsoft talk about such as options to reduce data usage, CPU usage and other performance factors that they’ve taken into account. I’m not going into detail on them here because Microsoft have gone into great detail on them over at the blog

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Microsoft will introduce a Windows Store in the Windows 8 operating system that can be accessed directly from within the operating system. Navigation of the store will be consistent with the Metro UI, and the store layout has been designed with touch interfaces in mind. The store on first look looks like a horizontal copy of Google’s Chrome web store. Apps are displayed in rectangles with the logo making up the majority of screen estate, while the apps title, costs and ratings are displayed in a smaller area at the bottom of the screen.

The store landing page will be the first page that users see when they open the store. Microsoft intents to feature interesting apps there, but also app categories that are easily reachable by scrolling horizontally in the store window.

The store has been designed with touch in mind, which becomes apparent in this paragraph:

Navigation is simple and consistent with Windows 8 Metro style UI, so it will be familiar and easy for Windows 8 users to find their way through the Store. Store categories are presented across the top of the screen, with compelling apps featured in each category. To browse, you simply pan to the right or left—with a flick of the finger it’s incredibly easy to see new and interesting apps across all categories and the overall breadth of the Store. If you’re interested, you can also drill down to the apps in a specific category with a single tap on a category name.

Mouse and keyboard users, the majority of Windows users right now, can use those input devices to navigate the store. The experience won’t be that pretty though, considering that scrolling pages horizontally is not that common with these input devices.

The store front categories will feature “a set of apps that are editorially chosen based on a variety of factors, including whether they do a great job on the platform or a great job expressing Metro style design principles”.

It is possible to use the pinch gesture to zoom out of the store interface to get a zoomed out view of the store to pick specific categories right away. You may remember that this is also possible in the Metro UI to quickly get an overview over all installed apps on the system.

Searching the store, unsurprisingly, uses the same mechanics that Metro UI search uses. Just tap on the search charm to display the search sidebar on the right. This feature is available in all Metro UI windows and apps.

If you happen to think of an app while browsing the web or using another app, you can just tap the Search charm, type in your search term, and select the Store to see search results for your query.

Suggestions are displayed while you type the search phrase into the form. Windows 8 will display a search results page in case no app matches what you are looking for.

The very same layout is also used for all category pages in the store. Users can filter results in a variety of ways. It is for instance possible to only display free apps, sort by newest or display only a specific subcategory that is available.

Individual app listing pages follow all the same layout. The pages use visual elements of the apps brand color and logo on the app pages which means that colors will vary widely across the board.

Microsoft notes that it takes one tap on an app listing page to install free or trial apps. A password prompt is displayed for paid apps that acts as a confirmation to go ahead with the purchase. Users are automatically taken back to the previous page they were looking at while the app is downloading and installing in the background.

A progress indicator is displayed and the app is automatically added to the start page, so that you now that everything is going along as planned.

Update checks for new app versions are performed once a day according to Microsoft. These updates are automatically downloaded in the background when the computer is idle. They won’t be installed without user input though. This behavior can be turned off in the Store settings.

All apps can be installed on a total of five different PCs running Windows 8. This sounds as if information about installed apps are synchronized with other PCs of the user automatically.

Here is a short video that offers additional information and details:

You can find out more about the Windows Store user experience on the official Windows Store blog.

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A few weeks ago I reported on a leak that had shown up of the Windows Server 8 Beta. There wasn’t really a whole lot to look at then, but now thanks to WinUnleaked I’ve got a few more screenshots to share with you this time.

The other day Microsoft went into a bit more detail about Windows Server 8, primarily about this new file storage method known as ReFS that is only going to be in Windows Server 8. There’s a few screenshots of that below as well.

Unfortunately the screenshots aren’t of very high resolution so it’s hard to see all the details, but it’s all we got.

The Lockscreen for Windows Server 8 Beta

Below is the current log in screen that we’re familiar with in the Developer Preview

This is the log on screen in the currently developer preview

And below is now the new one that’s in the Beta

Windows Server 8 Beta Login Screen

Again below we have the current Server Dashboard in the developer preview

Windows 8 Server Developer Preview Dashboard

And the one below is from the Beta

Windows Server 8 Beta Dashboard

The next few screenshots are of the new file system and storage manager that I mentioned earlier

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Everybody is eagerly looking forward to the range of Windows 8 based tablets that will be released once Windows 8 hits the market towards the end of this year. There was a whole load of tablets revealed at CES this year, each of them hoping to compete with Apple’s iPad. One thing that was consistent with all the tablets was that they all had pretty decent specs, then again they will have to if they want to run Windows 8 properly.

Over at Within Windows they’ve gone through the Windows 8 hardware requirement documentation and uncovered what the minimum requirements will be for these tablets if they want to be certified for Windows 8.

Here’s what the minimum specs of any Windows 8 certified tablet will be

At least 10GB free space

Wireless and Bluetooth 4.0 + LE

Support for Direct3D 1- device w/ WDDM 1.2 Driver

Resolution of 1366 x 768

720p Camera

Ambient Light Sensor

3 axes Accelerometer

Gyroscope

USB 2.0 (at least one port)

Speakers

Minimum of 5 finger multi touch

Microsoft are making sure that all they’re devices will at the very least support multi touch out of the box, and having a minimum of 5 finger support means that you’ll be able to get at least one hand on the screen to try out all those new touch features.

NFC “touch marks”

While NFC isn’t a requirement on Windows 8 tablets, if manufacturers choose to include it they must also have these “touch marks”. Basically a little sticker or indicator of some sort so that the user knows where to point the device to another NFC device. Common sense really.

Driver Upgrades That Don’t Require a Reboot

This is good news for everyone, Microsoft will now require that graphics cards don’t require a reboot when they’re updated.

Must have 5 Hardware buttons
Microsoft are being very strict when it comes to the number of buttons allowed on these tablets. They’re saying that there must be 5 buttons, no more and no less. This applies to all Windows 8 tablets and convertible PCs.

The buttons will be

• Power button
• Rotation lock
• Windows Key
• Volume up
• Volume down

The requirements for the Windows Key are that it will be at least 10.5 mm in diameter and can be in any shape (e.g. sqaure, round, triangular,hexagonal even).

New combination for CTRL + ALT + DEL

Now Windows 8 PCs joined to a domain without a keyboard will have a new option to log on. A new option will be the press the Windows Key + Power. Of course you’ll still be able to use the traditional CTRL + ALT + DEL using the on screen keyboard.

2 Second Resume from Standby
Microsoft won’t require that Windows 8 ARM PCs resume in two seconds or less … only x86 Intel-compatible Windows 8 PCs will have this requirement. This requirement actually is in place for Windows 7 as well so this shouldn’t be too much of a problem for tablet makers, and it can only be a good thing for consumers. The reason Microsoft haven’t set this requirement for ARM is probably because they don’t know enough about how Windows reacts with ARM as of yet. We may see it introduced in the future however.

So there’s the minimum requirements and specifications for Windows 8 tablets. If you ask me any machine coming with those specs is going to be pretty feature packed, especially once you load Windows 8 on to it. However Microsoft haven’t detailed any minimum processor requirements, but they did say that any machine which was able to run Windows  7 will be able to run Windows 8.

The minimum specs for the Windows 8 developer preview were:

1 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM for 32-bit systems or 2 GB of RAM for 64-bit systems.

So that’s probably a good guideline.

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Goodbye NTFS hello ReFS. That is one main element of Windows 8. Microsoft has announced one of the most significant changes that will come with the Windows 8 OS, a new file system. Called ReFS, for Resilient File System, the system will be available through a staged evolution.

Starting as a storage system, ReFS will begin on the Windows Server 8 only. Then  it will become a storage system for Windows clients, and then ultimately “as a boot volume.”

The Internals of ReFS

ReFS will complement the Storage Spaces feature in Windows 8 and Windows Server 8.  This means that that works in many ways like drive extender. It will also help with the verification and auto-correction of data and make it available to a large scale of operations. This last part should make file fragmentation not so big a problem anymore. Consequently, ease of use should increase as well as performance improvements on the system.

In another area, one of Microsoft’s goals with ReFS is to maintain a high degree of compatibility with a subset of NTFS features. Obviously, eliminating NTFS can only be done gradually but that means that incorporating elements of it in ReFS will be necessary so that data files and software programs are still accessible. On the other hand, it will eliminate other elements of NTFS that provide limited value at the cost of system complexity and footprint.

A New OS means a New OS

While Microsoft has been launching operating systems for over 30 years, they have been part of the DOS model. This new operating system is truly new, as Microsoft has been pointing out for some time. As new features are released, we will get a better picture about what the Windows 8 System will look like.

Release time? Still up in the air, but maybe by the 3^rd quarter of 2012.

Source: Microsoft Blog Site

.

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Before you get all concerned about Windows 8 being doomed and Windows tablets being something that nobody will buy let’s get some perspective.  Monica Chen and Joseph Tsai at DigiTimes have today said that Intel-based Windows 8 tablets could cost between $599 and $899 dollars when they go on sale later this year.  This is exactly what they currently cost and shouldn’t be unexpected by anyone.

In their article they say that…

Intel and Microsoft [are] both…unwilling to drop their related hardware and software quotes, and as a result, it could push consumers from wanting to purchase the devices.

This information should probably be taken with a pinch of salt, as should the whole story probably.  I wanted to comment on this story and add some balance to the argument.

It is true that the majority, probably over 80% of all Windows 8 tablets will be based on ARM designed processors.  This will be because these machines will have a significantly higher battery life than their Intel equivalents, be thinner and lighter in all probability and be cheaper as well.

One of the reasons for the price difference is that ARM-based motherboards don’t have to support all the hardware that an Intel board will.  There will be no support for external USB devices not even USB 3.0, no firewire, Thunderbolt or even support for SATA, Gigabit Ethernet and everything else that goes with a modern PC.

In part it is all these extras that drain the battery of Intel-based tablets faster, coupled with the fact that their ARM equivalents are lower-power and more efficient with the electricity provided to them.

Intel are working on new chips, though it should come as no surprise to anybody that they will be some way off and currently all the major tablet manufacturers will be eyeing up ARM as the way to make their sexy new Windows 8 tablets attractive to consumers.

Microsoft will not, as DigiTimes suggests, drop Intel as a supported chip manufacturer.  This can simply never happen without jettisoning not only Windows 8 as it stands but an entire ecosystem of hardware and software and billions of computers and users worldwide.

DigiTimes’ article is certainly sensationalist and it’s gotten a lot of coverage this evening.  It’s hardly factual or reasonable however to point out that when Intel Windows 8 tablets go on sale, the fact that they will cost the same as Windows 7 tablets do now will be a shock.  These tablets will commonly carry Core-i5 processors and 4Gb or more of RAM, as they do now, and be extremely powerful tools for IT Pros, designers and other professionals.  These tablets simply will not be targeted at the average consumer but instead at people who need the power to run full desktop suites on the go.

In a way it’s a shame to see articles such as this as they don’t help.  There is still a great deal we don’t know about Windows 8 and about how it will perform, especially on battery life, on the next generation of Intel chips.  We will find out, in the fullness of time, and we’ll discover how much these devices will cost us.

DigiTimes’ “sources” don’t seem to like either Microsoft or Intel very much at all, but frankly… balance is much more important.

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An article in Zdnet Windows 8 is a big risk to the consumer PC industry made some important points about the status of the PC industry as a whole and Windows 8 specifically. The gist is that the PC industry is in trouble, and Windows 8 may not help it recover.

“The consumer PC industry is in the doldrums, with sales down at uncomfortable levels and a near-tangible lack of enthusiasm in the air.”

Consumer Business is Down…But Enterprise Business is Up

2011 was the year of the tablet. Anyone, following this industry will tell you that. The revolutionary approach to computing with the invention of the Apps, changed how people used computing devices. Specific operations, and there were thousands of them, changed what people did with their devices. The spillover, moreover, to the smartphone market, one that didn’t even exist 10 years ago, was remarkable. This was like watching how the US changed after Edison introduced the light bulb. You can’t go back, and don’t even want to.

So yes, the PC is down, because it’s model goes back to 1975. It was time for a change. And consumers clearly saw it. They wanted computers, just not the PC.

Yet Microsoft and hundreds of other companies continue to produce software for the business market, and doing well. What that says is that the PC is not dead, but continues and will continue to have a life that will survive the tablet onslaught.

Will Windows 8 Help or Hurt?

The existing computer operating system model goes back to the days of DOS. And it has not changed. Sure enhancements occurred and it became faster, slicker, and more powerful. But even with the GUI interface, and the GUI operating system, it was still a DOS based model. Windows 8 is supposed to change that.

New boot ups, a new interface, new CPU technology is supposed to change how the computer operates. This will lead to new types of applications. And some of these changes clearly come for the tablet concept.

Will Windows 8 help or hurt? Obviously, that answer won’t be finally given until a year after it has been released and consumers and experts make their findings known. But is the PC industry dead or dying? We can say, let’s hope not, but more realistically, we can say, it isn’t.

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At the moment we don’t have a solid release date for Windows 8, Microsoft never really give us a fixed release date until the final build has been completed. At the moment everyone’s thinking that it will be towards the end of this year, probably in time for the holiday shopping period. At CES this year, Pocket-lint reported on a conversation they had with Microsoft that indicated a October release date.

They spoke with Janelle Poole who is the director of public relations of the Windows Business Group. She had this to say:

We haven’t talked about the release date and we generally don’t. We are talking milestone to milestone, so for us right now we’re talking about the next milestone being the consumer preview happening in late February.

One of the things that I think is a good guideline though is we’ve always said that Windows releases come round about every three years and this year will be three years in October since we launched Windows 7. So I think that’s a good guideline to consider.

It would make sense that this is when Windows 8 will launch, as October 3 years ago will be when Windows 7 launched, which is hard to believe. Windows 7 did also come to market earlier than expected thanks to a series of extremely stable betas and release candidates. I’m sure that Microsoft are working as hard as they can to get Windows 8 ready as soon as possible to cash in on the tablet boom and also get their new OS out on the latest line of ultrabooks that will be flooding the market this year.

It will be interesting to see if Microsoft stick to their 3 year product cycle, or will they cut it down a little like they did with Windows 7?

When do you think Windows 8 will be released?

Let us know in the comments

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The guys over at Neowin managed to record a live Windows 8 demonstration by a Microsoft employee over at this year’s CES. One of the interesting aspects of the demo is that Windows 8 is shown on multiple devices and in different versions. This includes features that have not been on film before, like Microsoft Music, new mouse gestures or background colors. And while that is probably nothing to get too excited about, it provides everyone with a nice impression of what Microsoft is going to deliver with Windows 8.

One of the most important things that I personally take away from the demonstration is the fact that Windows 8 will indeed launch in the Metro interface, even on desktop PCs and traditional laptops.

A cool feature that has been demoed on the day was the ability to zoom in or out of the Metro UI, which is a very interesting option to get a better overview of all installed apps in Metro UI. The zoomed out mode furthermore can be used to group and move apps around, which should work a lot better than in standard mode, as it may mean a lot of scrolling until you reach the new position for the selected app or group of apps.

According to the demonstrator, Windows 8 will not make any compromises when it comes to the desktop. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft will keep that promise. Another feature that was demonstrated on the day was the ability to display Metro apps and desktop apps side by side on the same screen, which opens the door for some interesting options.

Here is another demonstration session that has been uploaded by another user to YouTube. It is basically the same session, with the difference that this one is not cut off in the middle.

After watching the new Windows 8 video, has your impression changed or remained the same? Let us know what you think of the operating system.

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New images have appeared of the Start Screen personalization options in the Windows 8 beta.  In the images, posted online by TheVerge.com you can see shots from what they say is build 8175.  They show that Microsoft are sticking to their guns on a background to the Start Screen that’s far less customisable than what we’ve been used to for years (though give it some time and Stardock will come up with something as they always do).

There’s no custom desktop image for example though there are eight background patterns to choose from.  Then there’s a choice of nine colours.  This isn’t what most people would call “customisation” but its a start and we could still see more appear by the time Windows 8 ships (making people writing books like me redo lots of screenshots!)

I’ll let you judge from the images below what you think and it would be very interesting to see your comments.  It could be argued for instance that if you want to work primarily with the Windows 8 ‘traditional’ desktop that the blue, black and grey shades might be less Metro-like than the green we’ve seen in the Developer Preview, and will make the new Metro pop-ups less intrusive.  It remains to be seen however what Microsoft will release next month.

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At CES 2012 Nvidia demonstrated Windows 8 running on a tablet powered by Nvidia’s new Tegra 3 processor, which is built on the ARM architecture rather than the traditional x86 that Intel and AMD use and dominate the market with.

In the past Windows didn’t support ARM processors which meant that Intel and AMD were the only real players in the processor market. However ARM processors have become more popular in mobile devices since they are more energy efficient and offer high performance as well as good battery life. Nvidia’s latest processor the Tegra 3 is a perfect example of this.

Microsoft said that they were going to add support for ARM processors in Windows 8, but apart from a brief glimpse at their Build conference last year, yesterday was the first time we finally got to see Windows 8 working and running on a Tegra 3 powered tablet.

Nobody really got to have a hands on with the tablet, and we’re not really sure what kind of one it is. At the moment all that you can see is the Nvidia branding on it. It’s rumoured that it could be by ASUS who produced the first Tegra 3 powered devices so it may possibly be a variation of their upcoming tablet.

Nvidia demonstrated a variety of demanding games running perfectly well on the tablet.

Nvidia’s CEO was very excited about the prospects this year. Between Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich and Windows 8, there’s ample opportunities for tablet makers and consumers coming up this year. It will be very exciting to see what tablets are released alongside Windows 8 when it hits the market towards the end of this year. I feel that if Windows 8 is to be a success, it really needs to enter with a big range of high spec tablets.

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Previously we thought that the final build number for the Windows 8 beta build was going to be 8175. Sources said that the beta build had been signed off but now it looks like they were wrong. New information coming from WinUnleaked.tk states that the beta build is still in development, but a roadmap for it has been laid out.

According to their undisclosed sources, the Windows 8 Beta is currently in a pre-beta state and that the final beta build will not be 8175.

Here’s what the road map apparently looks like:

• From now until January 21st, it’s in Pre-Beta stage
• On January 23rd, Windows 8 will enter Beta “Escrow”
• Then from 23rd to the 28th, testers will be voting for the final Beta Build and then sign off the Beta.
• January 30th – The official Beta build is expected to be shown off at an internal preview

Targeted build number is now expected to be 8200.winmain_win8b1 not 6.2.8175.winmain.111217 -1215 as previously thought.

So it looks like it will be the beginning of February when we finally get out hands on the first official beta build of Windows 8.

Source:

Winunleaked.tk

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The closer we get to the actual release of Windows 8 ARM tablets the more I’m mulling over the pros and cons, and wondering just how successful such devices will actually  turn out to be.  At the moment Windows 7 tablets are pretty powerful machines.  They have a great many advantages over every other tablet with support for just about any USB device and the ability to run full desktop apps such as Microsoft Office.  Add to this a friendly tablet interface and surely you’re on to a winner!?  Alas then comes the problem.  There is only one but for most people it’s a deal-breaker, and that is the poor battery life that comes with running Windows on Intel x86 based chips.  A battery that dies on a tablet after about only four hours simply isn’t good enough and there’s no indications that things are going to change any time soon.

So a Windows tablet on ARM architecture must be the way to go then?  Well, actually no.  The problem with an ARM-based Windows 8 tablet is that you will not only forego the USB device support, but also the ability to run existing Windows desktop apps and suites.  You’ll have fantastic battery life but these two problems are, frankly, the reason most people want to use Windows on a tablet in the first place.

What they’ll be left with is essentially a blank slate (sic!) where all the software will be new and none of their existing Windows programs will run.  Is this what people want a Windows tablet for?  The Windows app store, despite Microsoft’s attempts to build developer excitement for Metro, will take some time to get going and build momentum.  It will be leagues behind the app stores for the iPad, Android tablets and even the HP TouchPad and Blackberry Playbook, and this situation will last for many months if not years.

So are Windows tablets going to prove disappointing for people?  Well, this is all in how Microsoft design the code and architecture of the ARM tablets.  If they go down the route of tablets as we know them now then they’ll be no more Windows than an iPad or a Samsung Galaxy Tab is now.  If they do find ways to run existing Windows software, that software will have to be recompiled or perhaps even completely re-engineered to run on them, and many if not most software companies won’t be interested in doing this given that the sales market will be comparatively small.

We might find out more about Windows ARM-powered tablets this week at the Consumer Electronics Show, but it’s becoming clear that Microsoft need to tell us what what types of hardware and software (if any at all) these devices will support when they come to market, probably in early 2013.  Until then if you’re considering buying a tablet I wouldn’t advise you to wait.  If you aren’t fussed about Windows desktop programs and USB devices then any tablet on the market these days will suit you (and prices on the Blackberry Playbook are tumbling) and if you want the full-fat Intel experience then there are a few Windows 7 tablets either out there or coming soon that will fit the bill for when the Windows 8 public beta begins.  But if you’ve been waiting for a tablet that runs Windows, supports all your desktop apps and has a great battery life, you could end up disappointed.

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Windows 8 is still nearly a year away from being released and we’re hoping to get a good look at it in the first public beta in about a months time. But many people who haven’t actually downloaded and installed the developer preview don’t know what’s new in Windows 8.

Well today I stumbled upon this great little infographic from thetechlabs which explains it all and makes it very easy to see the top 10 new features that are going to be in Windows 8. Personally I think some of these features aren’t necessarily worthy of a top 10 spot, but none the less it’s still a handy little infographic.

Do you agree with this list? What would you add or remove?

Let us know in the comments

Here’s the list:

1. Windows to go
2. Windows Store
3. Metro Style UI
4. Better Security
5. Internet Explorer 10
6. Faster Booting
7. Apps always on
8. Minimal Ram
9. Single Platform

Windows 8

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A hidden “easter egg” has been found in the Windows 8 Developer Preview by WinUnleaked.tk that reactivates the transparency on the very nice looking new Aero Lite interface, while disabling much of the extra eye-candy that comes with the full Aero glass effect on the desktop.

On initial inspection it’s unclear exactly how this new Aero Lite Glass differs from the standard Aero Glass effect, though closer examination reveals that it’s much simpler and forgoes effects such as highlights around the minimize, maximize and close buttons.  Also the back and forward buttons are a much simpler Metro style, which many people might prefer.

To activate this you just need to follow these simple instructions…

Navigate to the \Windows\System32 folder

Launch WindowsAnytimeUpgradeResults.exe

Given the title of the program that you launch to achieve this effect it’s unlikely this will still work with the final version of the operating system.  What is also unclear though is whether or not this second Aero will be available in Windows 8 as an option.  The fact that it exists now though will probably mean that it will be available afterwards as a registry hack.

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Microsoft in a new blog post has revealed detailed information about the new Storage Spaces feature of the Windows 8 operating system. Storage Spaces enables two new features in the Windows 8 operating system that were not available in previous client Windows systems.

It first can be used to create storage pools, a feature similar to Drive Extender that was part of Windows Server for a while. This basically allows users to create a joined storage pool from multiple discs. Storage pools can be created using different physical discs and connection methods. A basic example would be to combine a 2 Terabyte disk and a 1 Terabyte disc into a storage pool to have 3 Terabytes of data accessible under a single drive letter.

Instead of just creating a storage pool with a size of 3 Terabyte, Microsoft provides users with options to select a larger size right from the beginning. The core benefit here is that administration is easier when additional drives are added to the pool.

The second feature can be used to create virtual disks that behave just like physical discs in the operating system. Virtual disks offer capabilities like thin provisioning, and resilience to failure of underlying physical media.

Lets take a look at the terminology that Microsoft uses:

Thin Provisioning: Microsoft gives an example where two 2 Terabyte drives are assigned to a Drive Pool with an initial storage size of 10 Terabytes. The technology relies on on-demand allocation of data which improves the efficiency significantly.

Instead of having to connect drives to the computer that at least meet the 10 Terabyte requirements, users and system administrators can now use the 4 Terabyte of space they have for as long as it is sufficient. New storage devices can then be added once the storage reaches the physical limit.

The magic that allows us to create a 10TB mirrored space on 4TB of total raw capacity is called thin provisioning. Thin provisioning ensures that actual capacity is reserved for the space only when you decide to use it, for example, when you copy some files to the volume on the space. Previously allocated physical capacity can be reclaimed safely whenever files are deleted, or whenever an application decides that such capacity is no longer needed. This reclaimed capacity is subsequently available for usage by either the same space, or by some other space that is carved out from the same pool. We achieve all of this through architected cooperation between the underlying file-system (NTFS) and Storage Spaces.

Resiliency This optional feature can only be used if at least two hard drives are used to create the drive pool. It basically mirrors data on different disks of the pool, so that data can be recovered even if a physical disk fails. Resilience is achieved through mirroring and parity.

Another core (also optional) capability associated with a space is resiliency to failure of the physical disks comprising the storage pool. For example, the space we’ve illustrated above is a mirrored space (in other words, it has the mirrored resiliency attribute associated with it). This mirrored setting ensures that we always store at least two (and optionally three) complete copies of data on different physical disks within the pool. This way, despite partial or complete disk failure, you’ll never need to worry about loss of data. As a matter of fact, the physical disks comprising the pool are typically not even visible to other components within Windows or to applications running on your PC. By extension, the fact that some physical disks within the pool have failed, is completely shielded from other Windows components or applications. They continue to operate on the space, completely oblivious to the fact that Storage Spaces is working quietly in the background to maintain data availability. Additionally, upon disk failure, Storage Spaces automatically regenerates data copies for all affected spaces as long as sufficient alternate physical disks are available within the pool.

There’s another resiliency attribute, called parity, which directs Storage Spaces to store some redundancy information alongside user data contained within the space, thereby enabling automatic data reconstruction in the event of physical disk failure. While conceptually similar to mirroring, parity-based resiliency utilizes capacity more efficiently than mirrored spaces do, but with higher random I/O overhead. Parity spaces are well suited for storing data such as large home videos, which have large capacity requirements, large sequential (predominantly append) write requests, and an infrequent-to-minimal need to update existing content.

Here are screenshots of the new functionality. I suggested you check out Microsoft’s blog post for additional information and an FAQ that answers some of the most pressing questions that users and admins may have.

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A few days ago I reported that the Windows 8 Beta build had been finalised and signed off with the build number 8175. This is almost definitely the build that will be released to the public next month when Microsoft distribute the Windows 8 Beta for testing. However, while everyone seems to have focused on Windows 8, they’ve also forgotten that Microsoft are hard at work with Windows Server 8 as well.

There hasn’t been too much coverage on this so far but Winunleaked.tk has posted a screenshot of the installation screen for Windows Server 8.

I know it’s not really much, but the poster says that the Beta version has come with a good few changes such as a refreshed Dashboard UI, new features and some code improvements. At the moment they’ve got it running on a Samsung slate and hope to have a few more screenshots in the near future.

I’m sure they’re will be plenty more beta leaks of both Windows 8 and Windows Server 8 as we near the release date of them, hopefully at the beginning of February.

Source:

Winunleaked

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One of the more interesting features in Windows 8, certainly from my perspective as the author of “Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out” is the ability for Microsoft’s new operating system to self-repair and reinstall itself.  This isn’t actually as clever as it sounds but as a simplistic explanation it’ll do.

Microsoft have today though offered more insight into this process, called refresh and reset.  In a post on the Building Windows 8 blog they said “As we began planning for Windows 8, we asked ourselves: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if you could just push a button and everything is fixed?’ We really wanted to focus on the concept of ‘push button’, which translated into a design goal that represents a simple to use, predictable, and fast solution.  The point of this is…

With Windows 8, there are a few key things that we set out to deliver:

• Provide a consistent experience to get the software on any Windows 8 PC back to a good and predictable state.
• Streamline the process so that getting a PC back to a good state with all the things customers care about can be done quickly instead of taking up the whole day.
• Make sure that customers don’t lose their data in the process.
• Provide a fully customizable approach for technical enthusiasts to do things their own way.

While this sounds like a wonderful solution to all your woes, it’s still not quite as wonderful as it sounds.  The two options will allow you to perform one of these tasks…

• Reset your PC – Remove all personal data, apps, and settings from the PC, and reinstall Windows.
• Refresh your PC – Keep all personal data, Metro style apps, and important settings from the PC, and reinstall Windows.

You’ll notice this says it will keep “Metro style apps” and doesn’t mention desktop apps.  This is because Microsoft will have a much tighter quality control on Metro apps and cite reasons in the blog including reinstalling bad apps and having little or no control over some installer types as the reason.  In fairness there probably are very good technical reasons why this is the case so there’s no need to disbelieve them here.

Windows 7 comes with an image backup system however in all editions that can be used with Startup Repair to restore your copy of Windows with all of your programs and settings intact.  Fortunately this hasn’t been forgotten and Microsoft have built it into the Rest options.

With this in mind, we’ve made it possible for you to establish your own baseline image via a command-line tool (recimg.exe). So when you get a Windows 8 PC, you will be able to do the following:

1. Go through the Windows first-run experience to configure basic settings.
2. Install your favorite desktop apps (or uninstall things you don’t want).
3. Configure the machine exactly as you would like it.
4. Use recimg.exe to capture and set your custom image of the system.

It’s not completely clear yet how this will work with the existing backup options, where a friendly wizard interface will walk you through the image backup process.  It is unlikely however that a command line will be the only way to do this.

So how long will it actually take to perform a refresh or a reset?  Microsoft timed the results on the machines they gave out to developers at their BUILD conference last september.

The refresh and restore options will also work from the new style Windows boot menu, should your copy of Windows be unable to start.

In Windows 8 Beta, there will also be a tool that you can use to create a bootable USB flash drive, in case even the copy of Windows RE on the hard drive won’t start. You’ll be able to start your PC with the USB drive, and fix problems by refreshing your PC or performing advanced troubleshooting. And if your PC comes with a hidden recovery partition, you’ll even have the option to remove it and reclaim disk space once you’ve created the USB drive.

It’s great that Microsoft are making these features more accessible and easier to use.  It is ironic however that the more stable and trouble-free Windows gets, the more troubleshooting and repair features are introduced.

Clearly these tools won’t suit everyone so I’m not concerned about whether there will be another edition of “Troubleshooting…”  I’ve also found on my own Windows tablet that the Developer Preview of the OS didn’t feel there was enough space to store all the rescue files and, as such when I went to try the tool it failed to work.  It might be that on some tablet devices where flash storage is at a premium, this may be the case in the future.

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Microsoft have today confirmed that Kinect will be coming to the PC early this year “not as a hack but as a commercial product with dedicated PC hardware”.  Some changes include a shorter USB cable and new firmware to allow close-up usage of the device.

It is probably safe to assume the new Kinect for PC will also be smaller than the one for the Xbox, due to the need to fit it into tight spaces on people’s desks.

In a blog post today the company said…

Kinect offers PC users (and developers) some unique capabilities that change the way people interact with their computers, including:

• Skeletal tracking
• Motion sensing
• Voice recognition
• Facial recognition

It is with Windows 8 that the Kinect is probably going to make the biggest impact, the decide will no doubt be usable with the new Metro interface that’s coming with the company’s next generation OS.  Being able to operate your PC apps with gesture controls, apart from bringing Minority Report’esque coolness to the PC for the first time, will also help those people who don’t have touch screens with their existing PCs.

In many ways this could save Windows 8 as the Kinect is already a much sought-after device, not just with the Xbox 360 but with a great many different people, including robotics and other researchers.  This will no doubt lead to a whole new range of Windows apps designed to harness the power of Kinect.  Obvious applications are programs for children and the disabled.

It will be with gaming though that the most interesting things will happen.  PC gaming has been on the decline for some time now and the advent and increasing popularity of all-in-one machines, which do not have the latest and fastest gaming hardware, are hammering more nails into the gaming coffin.  Could Kinect for the PC reinvigorate this?  Certainly with the big first person shooter titles, such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Kinect will probably never be used.  The device could drive up the number of smaller and easier games however.

Microsoft have also long talked about being able to play the same game across the PC, Xbox 360 and Windows Phone, though this hasn’t really happened yet.  Having Kinect on a PC could enable people to play on two screens on their PC and Xbox in their home simultaneously.

Suffice to say the long-overdue arrival of the Kinect sensor for the PC is going to be a huge event, and Microsoft are hitting the ground running with incentives for companies that want to harness it for the PC (and they’re not just limiting this to games developers either) with “the BizSpark Kinect Accelerator incubation programme, which will give 10 tech-oriented companies using Kinect (on either Windows or Xbox360) an investment of $20,000 each and other benefits.” among other incentives on the Microsoft Developer Network.

By the time Windows 8 launches we’ll have a good feel for how Kinect will fit with the who PC architecture, how flexible, popular and effective it will actually be, and crucially, if it can give Windows 8 the edge and keep this often criticised operating system firmly on top.

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We’ve had a few leaks of Windows 8 builds recently that have been getting closer and closer to the beta build. Now it’s been reported that the Beta Build of Windows 8 has been signed off by Microsoft and is currently doing the rounds in a very close circle of testers.

The news was reported from Russian site Wzor and Win7vista. If the dodgy google translation of it is correct, then the Windows 8 Beta was signed off on December 29th 2011 and the official build number for it will be  6.2.8175.winmain.111217 -1215

Apparently the beta will also be distributed with the English, German, Japanese and Chinese language packs so more people will be able to test it out then the developer preview.

It’s really pretty difficult to make out anything more from the source, it’s anybody’s guess as to whether or not this is a legit claim, but Wzor seems to be pretty accurate in the past and it would make sense that the Beta build has been signed off now. Microsoft may well demonstrate it at CES 2012 which is just before the expected release date of the Windows 8 Beta in February.

For now we’ll just have to wait and see

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Microsoft are looking to improve security in Windows 8 greatly and we’ve already seen evidence of this with a new bootloader that prevents harmful software like rootkits from ever executing on your system. There’s several improvements in the BIOS security, however it has come under fire recently. Some people have said that it could prevent other operating systems from being installed on a Windows machine as they wouldn’t have the necessary signatures.

But now McAfee are predicting that because Windows 8 will be so secure on the software side of things, that hackers are more likely to go and try hardware based malware attacks instead, which are now seen as an easier option.

“Advances in the Windows 8 bootloader security feature have already caused researchers to show how they can be subverted through legacy BIOS,”

Intel are also looking to roll out it’s UEFI (unified extensible firmware interface) which could enforce secure booting on machines, which will again make it even harder for hackers to use traditional software methods of hacking. They’ll need to find away to get around these security features on the hardware side of things.

According to the report, we could see hackers attacking graphics processor functions, the BIOS and other various hardware components.

We will keenly watch how attackers use these low-level functions for botnet control, perhaps migrating their control functions into graphics processor functions, the BIOS, or the master boot record, In spite of our efforts to thwart their ambitions, attackers clearly see the value and power of attacking hardware and moving outside of traditional operating-system attacks.

This is actually a very interesting report. Basically what McAfee are predicting is that because Windows 8 has become a lot more secure on the software side of things, it now means that it’s made it more vulnerable to attack on the hardware side. Hackers will now see hardware as an easier target to attack the OS. If hackers manage to do this, it could make it very difficult to protect hardware against malware attacks etc.. as traditional antivirus systems don’t protect against hardware attacks.

Source:

McAfee Report

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One of the coolest things that we’ve seen come from Windows 8 is the new picture password log on feature. For those of you who don’t know, this is a new method of logging in. All the user has to do is draw a pattern and tap in a certain location and sequence to unlock their PC. It’s quite a cool feature if you ask me, however it’s been slated be some security experts.

Kenneth Weiss runs a three-factor authentication business called Universal Secure Registry and is the inventor of RSA’s SecurID token. Here’s what he had to say about it

I think it’s cute, I don’t think it’s serious security

Well that doesn’t say too much for it now then does it. Kenneth actually described it more like a Fisher-Price toy than a serious choice for secure computer access.

Read this post to find out more about the picture password

The concept is good, but from a security perspective there is some flaws. For example, if anyone sees you input the pattern it’s quite easy for them to remember. Unlike a traditional password where the pin/password that you enter is displayed as “*”, you’ll be able to see exactly what the user’s entering. Also it’s a bit of a pain trying to right down what your pattern is in case you forget it. It would have to be quite long winded to make sure that you get the pattern right.

However, because it’s so quick and simple to set one up and enter the password, I think we may find that more people will start using this. There’s plenty of people who don’t use a password what so ever so if they used this picture password it would be better than nothing wouldn’t it?

Also all you have to do is make sure that the wrong people don’t see you entering in your pattern and you should be ok. But I’d be interested to hear what you guys think of the picture password.

Is it a good feature that you will use? How secure do you think it is? What are it’s major flaws?

Let us know in the comments below

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There’s been much talk over the new Windows 8 App Store that’s set to be released alongside Windows 8 sometime next year. Microsoft hasn’t given us a chance to have a proper look at it yet, just shown us a few brief demo’s. However they have released a few bits of information to us over the last few weeks. One of the biggest things we discovered is that the Windows 8 App Store will be accepting open source apps.

It also looks like the Windows 8 App Store will be a great deal for app publishers as well. For a start, Microsoft will apparently allow publishers to keep all subscription money, which is unlike Apple’s policy on their app store. What’s more, Microsoft has also undercut Apple when it comes to the percentage of revenue that they will be taking over developers. Apple currently takes 30 percent of  an apps revenue, while Microsoft will only be taking 20 percent after an app has had a net of $25,000.

Another bonus is that Microsoft will allow developers to offer time and featured limited trial software which Apple does not currently allow on its store. Microsoft will also allow developers to choose a payment option of their own as well.

We have full platform support for free apps, trials (both time-based and feature-based trials) and paid apps, including in-app purchase…developers can also choose to manage their customer transactions directly, for example, with newspaper subscriptions, or to adopt a business model with offline fulfillment, such as for auctions,”  We don’t mandate a specific transaction engine and developers can use their own. They can also choose the ad control that works best for them.”

While some people have said that Microsoft is far too late to the game with Windows 8 and the Windows 8 App Store, there is one thing you need to remember. Over half a billion Windows 7 licenses have been sold and there’s over 1.25 billion Windows users around the globe. This dwarves the few million iPad’s that have been sold. Apple may have had a good head start in the tablet market, but with Gartner estimating that 400 million new Windows machines will be shipped next year, you can be pretty sure that a lot of them will tablets once Windows 8 is released.

Of course, the one major thing that could hold back the Windows 8 app store is that it probably won’t work on machines other than those running Windows 8. And since a lot of Windows 7 users probably will not jump to Windows 8 straight away, we could see a pretty slow pick up rate for Windows 8

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There was lots of hype coming up to Microsoft’s Build conference which was held in September this year. We knew that we would all be getting out first real look at Windows 8, but the main reason we were so excited was because it was rumoured that the first developer preview of Windows 8 would be made available to us all. Our wish came true, and every Windows enthusiast immediately started downloading it.

In fact it was so popular, that over 3 million copies of the developer preview have been downloaded to date. I think it’s fairly safe to conclude that all the people who downloaded the developer preview went and installed it, but the question is:

Are you still using the Windows 8 developer preview?

Personally, I can’t remember the last time I fired it up. I know this probably sounds bad since I’m an editor for a Windows 8 website, but bare with me.

When I first downloaded the developer preview, I immediately installed it in a virtual machine (see my guide here on how to do that). Of course I played around with it for a few days but I quickly got bored. First off, because I was running it in a virtual machine, the performance wasn’t that great and secondly because my laptop doesn’t have a touchscreen to take advantage of the Metro UI.

I got fed up with the slow response times and really just left it at that. I’d had a look around the menus and tried to launch a few of the apps, but a lot of things kept crashing on me. I really wasn’t too bothered with it.

At the moment the Windows 8 developer preview is sitting idle in a virtual machine on my hard drive, and to be honest it will probably stay there until the Windows 8 beta comes out. I think the developer previews are good for getting an idea of what the OS will be like, but it’s not until the beta builds and release candidates that it’s actually worth using them. Microsoft have said that there’s a lot of changes to come between now and the Windows 8 beta.

I’ll probably start dual booting my system with the beta builds and definitely with the release candidates when they come out. But until then I’ll be sticking with good old Windows 7.

What about any of you guys? Are any of you actively using the Windows 8 developer preview these days?

Let us know in the comments

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It seems to be coming a regular occurrence now, we’ve got yet more leaked screenshots of the latest Beta Build of Windows 8. Microsoft are due to release a Beta edition of Windows 8 to the public sometime in February and they are rumoured to just be signing off on it now.

These latest leaked screenshots come from Win8China and are of the installation procedure and initial set up of Windows 8. The first of them shows the product key screen of Windows 8

As you can probably see, the major difference now is that all the set up menus have been optimised for use with touchscreen devices and all have an option to display a virtual keyboard

The Windows 8 beta setup shows two options similar to what you get with Windows 7. One is for keeping  “keeping windows settings”,personal files and apps or the second is to “keep nothing” from the previous Windows installation. It’s quite self explanatory, the first option will keep your files and settings, while the second is basically a clean install.

It’s not too clear yet what the upgrade options will be for Windows 8. You can be pretty sure that you’ll be able to directly upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8, possibly Windows Vista but Windows XP users will almost definitely be out of luck since they weren’t able to upgrade to Windows 7 without performing a clean install

Source:

Win8China

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We do not know a lot yet about the operating system after Windows 8. Heck, we even do not know if it will be named Windows 9 or if Microsoft will give it a different name. Everything is possible at this point in time.

A leaked roadmap suggests that we might be able to play around with the next but one Windows earlier than everyone thought. The roadmap suggests that we may see a developer preview of Windows 9 at the Build 2013 conference which should takes place in the middle of the year.

The developer preview is then followed by the first Windows 9 Beta release during the January CES 2014 and a release candidate release during the MIX 2014 conference in April. The Windows 9 RTM would then be released during Build 2014 along with Internet Explorer 12.

The final version of Windows 9 will be released in November 2014 along with Windows 9 Mobile and Kinect HP2. Microsoft would release another operating system only two years after the release of Windows 8, which is expected to be released in August 2012.

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For over 4 years we’ve covered the development of Windows 7, and now Windows 8.  It may seem a bit premature to start thinking about Windows 9, but we can assure you Microsoft aren’t and they are already working on this release, even though Windows 8 hasn’t been released yet.

Some details about Windows 9 have been released.  Over on Windows 7 News & Tips, Mike has tried to pull together what we know about Windows 9 so far.  Below you can read a summary of his post.

—————————————

x64 only

Back before even Windows 7 was launched Microsoft announced that its successor, Windows 8, would be the very last version of Windows to support the old 32-bit architecture.  It was very important that Microsoft made this announcement then.  This then gave businesses a six year warning that they’d have to redevelop their ageing legacy software to work with a 64-bit operating system.  It also warned software developers that they had just six years left to make sure all of their software, plug-ins and Windows extensions would be 64-bit; probably the most high profile example being Adobe’s Flash player which is only just appearing in a 64-bit beta despite Internet Explorer having gone 64-bit with Windows Vista in 2006.

Possibility: All modern hardware has now been 64-bit for about three years now so there’s no need for hardware manufacturers to catch up.  However this will put added pressure on hardware vendors and software companies to run their code through Microsoft certification programmes, as the move to 64-bit may force all unsigned code off the platform (Note: this may happen with Windows 8 )

Legacy Support will be Dropped

Again it is a possibility that this will happen with Windows 8, but the move to a completely x64 operating system will mean that there will be absolutely no need for any legacy support within the operating system anyway.  This will be because none of the legacy apps, drivers and plug-ins that exist today; which all run on 32-bit architecture, will run on a 64-bit only platform.  The move will be towards sandboxed virtualisation.  I say sandboxed as Windows XP will be completely out of support before Windows 9 goes on sale, and Microsoft will need to reassure business and consumers alike that running legacy code in a virtual machine will be safe and secure.

One OS to run them all

Okay, so Lord of the Rings jokes aside, it was announced at the Worldwide Partner Conference that Microsoft want to move all of their systems to a unified operating system.  This is what Apple have done with iOS on the iPhone and iPad being a set of extensions on top of the core OS X kernel.  It makes sense too and we, again, may see some of this with Windows 8 as back in January this year, the CEO of Intel commented that his company would be shipping Windows 8 on smartphones.

When Microsoft were developing Windows Vista they did away with the old OS kernel from XP and instead replaced it with the core kernel from Windows Server 2003.  To this day both the desktop and server versions of Windows run the same core kernel, and this move has proved spectacularly successful for Microsoft.  Windows 7 is widely acknowledged to be one of the most secure operating systems available today (ongoing issues with legacy support not withstanding).

A unified Interface

Again this was announced at the WPC.  It makes some sense for Microsoft to move all their devices, where possible, to a perhaps not unified, but certainly standardised interface.  This isn’t always possible or a good idea.  For instance the addition of Launchpad in OS X Lion, which  arranges your icons in a grid pattern on the screen in the same way they appear on the iPad.  While a nice idea in principle, it’s been criticised for spacing the icons too far apart on the desktop, making excessive mouse movements required for launching them.  According to many people it’s a poor alternative to OS X’s current dock.

If you can standardise some elements across your platforms though then you can help people move seamlessly from one to another.  Nobody is ever going to argue though that tablet interfaces will work on the desktop or vice versa, Windows 7 on tablets is the finest example of this.

In all, Windows 9, when it appears in 2015 will be a significant departure for Microsoft and probably the most exciting version of Windows ever.  That said it will also cause businesses, software companies and hardware vendors significant headaches if they don’t start work on 64-bit versions of their products very soon.

It is still possible that some of this functionality, even perhaps in more limited forms will appear with Windows 8.  It’s unlikely though that we’ll see a full scale move to a legacy free future this time around.  Microsoft simply don’t work that way and businesses would be up in arms if not given enough notice.  Stranger things have happened before at Redmond though.

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Dedicated to bringing you all the news & rumours about Microsoft’s new operating system Windows 9, which is being developed at the same time as Windows 8, which will replace Windows 7 in 2012.  Windows 9 isn’t expected to be ready until 2015 so we’ll have a lot of time to track its development!

To keep up with the news on Windows 9 as it happens then subscribe to the RSS feed for this site.  You may also want to:

• Join our forum to talk with other readers
• Visit Windows 7 News or Windows 8 News

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