Windows 8 New Features
Windows 8 New Features
There is no doubt that the Metro UI will be the killer reason for early
adopters to buy Windows
8. I see lots of cheap tablet sales to people who can't wait to get
their thumbs
on the apps in the new user interface.
In my opinion, the other new features illustrate how concepts that Microsoft
introduced in
Vista, and improved in Windows 7, have been perfected in Windows 8.
Windows 8 New Features Topics
♦
 Windows 8
Metro-style UI Start Screen
The first thing you notice after Windows 8 initializes is a new tiled
Start screen, which replaces the Windows 7 desktop. As you swipe the screen from right to left, a special overlay appears,
which is rich in customizable Apps.
The new Windows 8 UI is not so much "Touch-centric", but "Touch-first."
While this new display feature is ideal for horizontal screens such as tablets, the tiles
do work well on
bigger screens because they respond to a mouse click almost as easily as a finger.
Incidentally, the Metro UI also goes by the nickname MoSh (modern shell).
See more on
Windows 8 Metro-style UI »
Microsoft Windows 8 Requirements
No new features here! Windows 8 will need the same system
requirements than it's predecessors, namely, for a 64-bit system:
1GHz Processor, 2MB RAM, 20GB disk space, DirectX 9 graphics
card. You can get away with 1MB of RAM on 32-bit systems.
Incidentally, Windows 8 will be the last desktop operating system to come in
both 32 (x86) and 64-bit (x64) versions.
The only problem with Windows 8 requirements is that you really need a
touch screen to benefit from the Apps in the New UI.
Windows Explorer Ribbon
Another new feature for Windows 8 is a ribbon for Explorer (I am not talking
about IE here).
Microsoft introduced the ribbon in Office 2007; at first many of us did
not 'get it'. But now I think the ribbon has come of age and I
am comfortable with the Windows
8 version because the menus are better designed and more intuitive.
'Steadily improving and no longer a shock for we users.' Mr Sinofsky.
The new Windows Explorer focuses on three tabs at the top: Home, Share,
and View. (See screen shot). Further down, on the left side is
the File menu to cater for common operations such as 'Copy'.
Incidentally, I find 'Copy as path' handy for pasting a file path into
another Explorer window.
See more on the Windows 8 Explorer ribbon »
Aero Auto-Colorization
Auto-colourization is an
example of a Windows 8 feature that you can customize more than the
equivalent in Vista or
Windows 7. The idea is that you can change the appearance of Windows shell,
menus and taskbar. It's worth seeing the extra Personalization options for
example,
Windows Color and Appearance.
Task Manager
The Windows Task Manager has changed, the
information is now displayed with applications grouped in columns. Furthermore, it has
several new tabs, notably 'Startup' so that you can remove programs that you don't want to load
automatically at startup. (See screenshot below)
See more on the Windows 8 Task
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Windows 8 New Features
Windows 8 and IE 10
The Metro UI techniques also
extend to IE 10, where the browser is optimised for touch, and panning. IE 10
has a split-screen keyboard so that you can type urls with your thumbs. It will also has
hardware accelerated HTML 5 to support a whole range of apps.
Note 1: 'Internet Explorer Immersive' is an alternative to Aero Graphics for
tablets, phones and some laptops.
Note 2: See how to configure
the Desktop version of IE 10 in Windows 8 »
Portable Workspace
The catchphrase is 'Run Windows 8
from a USB Stick'; seems similar to a Linux Distro. The Portable
Workspace Creator could be used to create copies of Windows 8 for
troubleshooting, as well as for people on the move. Probably only
available for the Windows 8 Enterprise Edition and above.
Windows devices connect faster and work
better on Windows 8 than on previous operating systems.
Cloud Screen Integration
One possibility for the
gung-ho is that you could setup your user account in the cloud, in this way you
could logon from anywhere that has an internet connection and get your settings.
Perhaps this is a case for having a second user account just for travelling?
It will also be easier to store
data on Microsoft's own Skydrive, and to integrate with Office 365, Office
Web Apps, Windows Live and Azure.
PowerShell 3.0
For those, like me, who enjoy
monitoring and changing operating system settings with PowerShell, then
version 3 is a joy with its 2000+ new cmdlets. However, the real benefit of
PowerShell 3.0 is for professional developers; for example, AppX is Microsoft's new method
for deploying applications in Windows 8, it's similar to Silverlight XAP,
thus PowerShell has new cmdlets called Add-AppxPackage and Get-AppxPackage.
See more about Windows 8 PowerShell »
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Naturally there is plenty of hype from Microsoft, but so far I am not
picking up the usual gripes and Microsoft bashing, at least developers and
power users seem happy with Windows 8.
"Windows 8 is a true reimagining of Windows from the chip to the
interface."
Tami Reller of Microsoft
Windows 8: The Trend for a Better Laptop-->
Tablet
Laptop users were the most vociferous critics of Vista. Microsoft
listened, then made improvements to the battery life and awakening from 'Sleep'.
Windows 8 continues the battle to win back laptop users by removing interrupts and timers that interfere with the operating
system when it's trying to save power.
Windows 7 blocked processes that tried to wake-up laptops automatically
when they're not plugged in. Windows 8 takes this a stage further with
a new 'intelligent alarm' that wake them up for remote desktop or virus scans, but only if
they're plugged in.
Windows 8 will also be designed for mobile devices that use System on a
Chip (SoC).
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