Windows 8 Complete Guide

Microsoft is launching windows8 soon. So why not to check Microsoft Windows 8 Complete Guide. Here it is:
Moving to Windows 8, the first thing that you need to know is that it is now an operating system with two faces. It is certainly not Windows 7 with a touch layer simply tacked on top. The touch interface, which you have seen pictures of, is now a core element of Windows, and is on equal footing with the more classic desktop. It is important to note that Microsoft began to plan Windows 8 before Windows 7 shipped, putting the genesis of the coming version before the release of the iPad; Windows 8 is not a harried response to the iPad in any way, having been born before Apple’s slate was released.
This is the beginning of Windows 8 as it exists in a sense that there’s no product launch here from Microsoft, instead there’s an opportunity for 3rd party developers to get on board here right at the start of the next-wave OS.This event is what Microsoft is presenting as a welcome to Windows 8, especially in regards to the 5,000 developers at BUILD, launching the platform as an opportunity to developers.

Three years ago was when Windows 7 launched, since then 450 million copies have sold. Inside September 2011, the amount of users using Windows 7 has finally trumped the amount of users using Windows XP on the consumer market. Microsoft tells us they know this because they’re working with the numbers coming from machines hitting the Windows Update Service. As with any update to a new version of a major operating system, one must ask a similar question as – and you’ll have to allow me to nerd out for a moment here – Alan Bradley from TRON when he asked what changes had REALLY been made to the system that Microsoft would give it a whole new number.

Turns out 1,502 product changes have been made to Windows XP since Microsoft released it to manufacturing, these all being non-security updates. Improvements galore! Now what does this mean for Windows 8? Does it mean that the software will be continuously updated as the folks at Microsoft see ways to improve it? Of course, that’s a given. How many changes have been made between the Windows XP and Windows 7 we’ve known between their inception date and this end-of-summer 2011 timeframe where Windows 8 is released? That’s a number we’ll have to figure out on our own.

Reimagining Windows

Microsoft brings you Windows 8 as a operating system that is said to improve everything they brought forth in Windows 7, and what’s more, every bit of software that runs currently on Windows 7 will be able to run onWindows 8 without a problem.

Chipsets

ARM chips equals integrated engineering. Where X86, Microsoft says, was the same for every system, ARM chips are optimized for unique situations. Like what Microsoft says about software made for working on Windows 7 working on Windows 8, so too does everything they present here work on ARM chips.

Boldness

What’s so bold about Windows 8 is that they’re envisioning an operating system that scales from small form factors, keyboardless tablets, all the way up to gigantic servers running hundreds of processors.
Julie Larson Green, Corporate Vice President of the Windows Experience at Microsoft noted during the week of the reveal of Windows 8 that they had started planning Windows 8 in June of 2009, before they even shipped Windows 7 out the door. Of course changes in both industry and technology spark change, and in this mobilelandscape and move by many from one platform to another and/or the adoption of several platforms happening by the public, Microsoft planned accordingly. Microsoft wanted to top the release of Windows 7, but they did not want to do it in a way that was either linear or reactive – this being an interesting goal of course at that time as the idea of a tablet computer simply wasn’t a reality at the time – so what is there to react to?

In Windows 7 there were studies on form factor, user action models, and best of all touch. Microsoft has noted that they were the first group to add touch to a major operating system. As you know well, since that time, touchhas all but consumed the mobile market, and recent developments in non-mobile computing have trended toward touch as well to a degree. With this, the demand for developers to create apps for every single little function, one by one, this showing itself prevalently again on mobile, but non-mobile beginning to take back what is theirs in the recent past as well with on-device app stores on all machines. These are only two of a whole slew of points Microsoft touched on during the BUILD conference showing off the first real look at Windows 8 in September of 2011.

Tablets and PCs

You begin with a lockscreen (seen at the top of this post). This screen doesn’t look unlike what you’re used to with Windows Phone devices, giving you pre-opening updates about time, date, updates, and of course its all displayed with a background of your choice. One of the new ideas Microsoft has to make this experience unique is “Picture Password”.
What Picture Password consists of is a specific photo or digital image that, when you see it, you’ll know to draw a certain combination of shapes and lines on your display. If you draw the correct combination, you will be logged in. Circles and lines are what’s at play here – perhaps drawing a hat on a squirrel will be your password combo?

Then there’s a Start Screen. This is the place where you’ll return all the time before and after moving to other screens and apps. You’ll again recognize the look of this space as being a rather Windows Phone experience, and as each app is represented by what Microsoft calls a “tile”, you’ll certainly feel at home if you’re an avid Windows Phone user. Each tile has the ability to show off different actions before its activated to reveal the appinside, movement and, for example, feeds showing social networking news. The “serendipity of the web” has here been brought into Windows.

Tiles can express essentially anything you want and are themselves resizable and customizable. Tiles can open up to apps or they can sit by themselves and work. There are “groups” that can hold tiles “like folders” as they say, and there’s a new feature called “Semantic Zoom.” What this Semantic Zoom does is to pull you back from your interface in a way that you’ve never been able to do on a Windows device before. Fast and fluid touchlanguage throughout, allowing you access to all of your media, all of your content, all of your apps at once.

Source : Slashgear

11:16 PM