Windows 8
Windows 8 Release Date
It's official: After
months of speculation, Microsoft has set an official release date for Windows
8, its first update to the Windows operating system in almost three years.
After teasing that Windows 8 would be available toward
the end of October, Windows President Steven Sinofsky officially announced that
the next-generation of Windows will be released
on October 26.
Windows 8 Features
Overview
The Windows 8
Release Preview Product Guide for Business provides a detailed look at the many
new and improved features in Windows 8 that are important to business
customers. This guide can help businesses understand how Windows 8 enables
better business tablets, provides new possibilities for mobile productivity,
enhances end-to-end security, and delivers manageability and virtualization
enhancements.
Support for both x86 PCs and ARM tablets
Windows
8 is the first edition of Windows to operate on both ARM-based tablets and traditional x86 PCs based on ARM
processors from Intel and AMD.
“Support for ARM-based chipsets, touch, and sensors makes
Windows 8 work beautifully on your choice of a full spectrum of devices, such
as 10-inch slates with all-day battery life, ultra-lightweight laptops, and
powerful all-in-ones with 27-inch high-definition screens,” Microsoft contends, in a Windows 8
Guide distributed with Windows Developer Preview
In addition, the ARM edition of Windows 8 includes a new mode
dubbed “always on, always connected,” designed to let tablets act like
smartphones. Tablets can remain in standby mode without disconnecting from the
Internet, and then wake up instantly.
Windows
8 is designed to work seamlessly across both PCs and ARM tablets. Yet until
developers get a real start on apps for Microsoft’s still empty Windows Store, it’s tough to tell whether that will
be universally true.
Touch-centric, Tiles-based User Interface (UI)
Although
Windows 8 might look and feel like an entirely new “user experiemce,”,
Microsoft is actually layering a new animation-enabled user interface (UI) on
top of an only somewhat upgraded Windows 7.
The Windows 8 Start Menu is customizable through a mosaic of
tiles, which differ from traditional desktop icons by letting you view live
information from Windows 8 Metro style apps without actually accessing the
apps.
In demoing the tile-based UI at last week’s Build conference ,
Microsoft showed how the tile for a Windows 8 weather app is able to display
the current temperature in a city – along with projected temperatures for the
next two days – without requiring you to open up the app. A tile for Windows
Live Mail will show you your latest message, while a tile for a social
networking app will show you notifications.
“The [Metro] apps are full-screen. They’re beautiful.They’re
designed for touch, but of course, they work great with a mouse and keyboard as
well if that’s what you have. We wanted to make it really fast and fluid for
you to switch between them,” according to Jensen Harris, lead program manager
on the Microsoft Office User Experience..
Windows
8 users are also able to access Windows 7 apps. “Everything that runs on
Windows 7 will run on Windows 8,” maintained Steven Sinofsky, president of
Microsoft’s Windows and indows Live division, during a keynote at the Build
conference. However, in order to access Windows 7 apps, you need to switch to a
different built-in UI.
Charms
In
large part, ‘charms’ is a new implementation of the traditional Windows start
bar. Charms can also be used to quickly configure settings for individual apps.
On an ordinary non-touch PC, charms are accessed by dragging the mouse to the
bottom-left corner of the screen, to the same spot as the old Windows start
button. On a tablet, you swipe from the right side of the screen to bring up charms.
Microsoft recently applied for a trademark on charms. The charms
sidebar offers five sets of options, supporting both app-specific settings and
system settings such as volume and brightness. The options include Start,
Search, Share, Devices, and Settings. The Start option returns the user to the
home screen. The Devices option presents a list of connected devices. Under the
Share option, users can see social network sharing apps.
Snap Multi-tasking
‘Snap
multitasking” is designed to make it easy to run two apps in Windows 8
side-by-side, to resize them, and to switch between them. On the right-hand
side of the screen, you can snap an app into place.
You can make an app smaller or larger by dragging the bar for
the app. To switch between apps in Windows 8, you swipe from the left-hand part
of the screen.
However,
Windows 8 does not allow you to view all of your running apps on a single
screen.
Windows 8 Control Panel
Beyond
revamping the Windows task manager, Microsoft has also redesigned the control
panel for Windows 8. New options include Personalize, Users, Wireless,
Notifications, General, Privacy, Search, and Share.
As
Metro style apps become available, you'll be able to use the Personalize menu
to customize the Start menu with tiles for calendar, music, e-mail, Netflix,
and much more.
In
a demo at Build, Julie Larson-Green, Microsoft's corporate VP of program
management for Windows, showed how you’ll be able to position these Metro apps
on the screen, and also to combine them into groups such as friends and games.
Web Navigation by Touch
The Internet Explorer (IE) 10
browser built into Windows
8 is designed to offer faster browsing through greater hardware acceleration,
along with rapid gesture-based zoom, pan, and Web site navigation.
As
in other areas of Windows 8, you can quickly access Windows 8 charms, as well
as the two keyboards described below.
Two Touch Keyboards
Windows
8 also contains two soft keyboards: an “enhanced” traditional keyboard, plus a
new thumbs keyboard for non-touch typists.
In efforts by Microsoft to make typing on a virtual keyboard
faster and more accurate, the revised edition of the conventional keyboard
suggests words on the screen as you type. You can then tap to selected a
suggested word. Microsoft also provides a spellcheck-like feature
designed to automatically correct mistyped words – although like any other spellchecker, this
feature carries the potential to cause its own errors.
The keyboards are also aimed at automatically adjusting to
whaever human language you choose for Windows. These language settings will
automatically apply to the entire computer, instead of only to specific apps
‘Enhanced Copy Experience’
Windows
8 also introduces the ability to perform all current copy operations into a
single dialog box, instead of requiring you to perform file copying in separate
dialog boxes for each app.
The new dialog box for file copying lets you pause, resume, and
stop each sopy operation currently under way. It will also warn you if you’re
beginning to copy one version of a file on top of another.
Microsoft has also added a realtime throughput graph. “Now each
copy job shows the speed of data transfer, the transfer rate trend, and how
much data is left to transfer. While this is not designed for benchmarking, in
many cases it can provide a quick and easy way to assess what is going on for a
particular [copy] job,” noted Alex Simons, director of program management with
the Windows 8 management team.
Native USB 3.0 Support
New
USB 3.0 ports operate at speeds up to ten times faster than )SB 2.0. To better
support these speeds, Microsoft is outfitting Windows 8 with native USB 3.0
drivers.
Meanwhile,
though, USB 3.0 will purportedly continue to work under Windows 7, through the
use of third-party drivers.
“By
2015, all new PCs are expected to offer USB 3.0 ports, and over 2 billion new
‘SuperSpeed’ USB devices will be sold in that year alone,” said Dennis
Flanagan, director of program management for the Windows 8 Devices and
Networking Group, in a blog post. “There are also billions of older USB devices
that Windows must remain compatible with.”
Better Support for Multiple Monitors
Windows
8 also brings increased support for multiple monitors, The Developers Preview
of the new OS includes first-time capabilities for extending the taskbar across
two PCs, without any need for third-party apps. You can also stretch wallpaper
across two monitors, or display the Start screen on one PC and the desktop on
the other, for instance.
It's
also easy to switch between multiple monitors. The primary monitor has a start
button, and the secondary monitor has a switcher button. Clicking or tapping on
the switcher button will swap it out for the start button, allowing you to turn
the secondary monitor into the primary one.
Here are five of the areas mentioned in
Microsoft's guide likely to affect companies the most.
Windows To Go
Windows To Go allows businesses that develop
their own custom Windows 8 deployment, often referred to as an “image”, to
install it on a bootable flash drive. The image can contain all of the apps and
settings normally used on the desktops and laptops within the business. A
remote worker can then use this drive to boot their home or other
non-business-owned Windows 7 or 8-compatible PC and still access all
work-related functions without endangering the safety of the business data.
Mobile Productivity
Windows 8 was designed with mobile devices in mind, and a number
of features should make it more mobile-friendly. Beyond Windows To Go, features
like Direct Access will allow businesses that use Windows 8 Server to create a VPN-like
secure connection between the user's device and work resources, such as
business apps and internal websites. Built-in support for mobile broadband are meant to make working over a 3G or
4G connection similar to using Wi-Fi.
Internet Explorer 10
Windows 8 includes Internet Explorer 10, which Microsoft refers
to in two ways. “Internet Explorer” is the touch-based version of the browser
that runs on the Metro interface, while “the desktop version of Internet
Explorer” looks like IE9 and runs in the desktop interface. While most of the
security, management, and performance features from past versions of IE are
still available to both, the Metro version is “plug-in free”. Business
applications that rely on Active X controls, now described as “legacy”, will
only work in the desktop version.
Security
Windows 8 brings new features to help protect
against malware and viruses. The new “Trusted boot process” uses Secure Boot to load
antimalware early in the startup process to prevent rootkits from taking
control. When installed on hardware with a Trusted Platform Module, the entire
startup process can be “measured, signed and stored”, and even evaluated by a
remote service so the PC's integrity can be validated. While using a computer,
AppLocker can control which apps a worker can run and which files those apps
have access to, which can prevent malware from accessing private business data.
Management
Management and security features from Windows 7 are also
available in Windows 8, though tools like Application Compatibility Toolkit and
User State Migration Tool promise to make deploying Windows 8 faster and
easier. Windows System Restore feature has been updated and renamed Refresh,
and can restore a non-functional PC to working condition without losing a
user's settings and data. A similar new feature called Reset will allow
companies to wipe their data and apps from the machine, making it easier to
repurpose, sell or surplus it.
No comments:
Post a Comment