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You can't escape news this week without hearing something about the new, upcoming Microsoft operating system, Windows 8. Very few people have had a chance to play with the operating system, and even few own a beta copy. Unless you fancy parting with a few thousand bucks for one of the auctioned developer samples hitting ebay, all we have are ‘reports'.
Dwight Silverman, at the Houston Chronicle has written an editorial giving his views on the much discussed operating system. In the article he lists four main ‘selling' points which users should appreciate.
Improved search. Windows 7 power users love the search field that appears at the bottom of the Start menu. Just type what you're looking for – a program, a document or media file – and it appears in the Start menu's list area. Fans of this feature were dismayed when screen shots showed there was no such field on the new Metro start screen.
WindowsToGo. Suppose you could sit down at any Windows PC and have it boot up as your PC – with your settings, wallpaper, bookmarks and even your favorite software programs. WindowsToGo makes this possible by putting a complete copy of the operating system on a USB flash drive.
Syncing PCs. For some time now, Android and webOS smartphone users have been able to sign in to a new phone and have their customizations and even applications transferred automatically to a new device. Microsoft is bringing this feature to Windows 8.
Refresh your PC. Many Windows users think it's a good idea to periodically refresh their PCs by reinstalling the operating system. This can be a real pain, because it involves also backing up and restoring all your documents, then reinstalling your applications.
Still not sure? well make up your own mind by watching some of the videos of the Microsoft presentations.
If you don't have enough information on Windows 8, then check out the videos above.
Kitguru says: Windows 8, are you excited yet?
I have watched a ton of videos on this stuff and im not sold yet. It looks to be a tablet based system. No better for desktops than Windows 7.
Believe it when I see it. They keep promising us improved search, 7 still has an horrendous UI and can’t find a damn thing. Nothing I love more than opening a folder, looking at a file, then searching for it and being told it doesn’t exist when it’s sat on my desktop – whiles away the long winter evenings…
@ Daniel. Whats wrong with windows 7 search? The only time ive had an issue was in email, but I realised I used a tweak to disable search to speed up windows for my SSD.
Don`t like the idea of permanently integrating crap like twitter, facebook, mstore, and internet explorer to start. I do not use any of them, so for me it`s useless! I use google+, picasa, chrome, and few graphics applications. I need a fast access of huge amount of files in my projects and i need to see both, explorer window and my application on one screen, so full screen apps do not cut for me. I don`t see it as a main stream operating system for professionals at all, it looks like it`s suitable only for casual users who browse only internet, check mail and eventually do some word writing. Maybe if that “new” android like desktop idea could be totally disabled i might end up in buying that os.
@Ned
Well for me – it simply doesn’t work. For example, I was recently looking for my lens profiles for photoshop that had ended up in two entirely separate folders. (I like to keep them all in the program data/camera raw/camera profiles/camera, where the defaults are, 7 likes to hide any new ones created in account/appdata/roaming/adobe. Before I’d worked this out, no matter what combination of words and astericks I entered, be it Canon, *.dcp, 135mm or whatever, 7 simply could not find the new ones. The ones in program data popped up immediately, so it wasn’t a failure of search term, 7 was just incapable of locating the others. Fortunately, I figured windows is always dumping stuff in appdata that I don’t want there and found them.
You know Daniel, now that you mention it, I also seem to have problems finding things in folders like AppData. I wonder if it has something to do with natively ‘hidden’ folders not playing well with the search function.
dang M$ really needs to rip off every aspect of OSX soon…… it is getting out of hand….. especially since this is looking more and more epic fail by the moment