Last weeks Microsoft released the Developer Preview for its new
operating system, Windows 8, to public. It is known that Windows 8 Final
Release will be available in 2012. As all new operating systems come
with improvements and differences, Windows 8 promises to give customers a
new and improved Windows experience. Throughout this article, I want to
show you some of these new features of Windows 8.
Windows 8 Developer Preview can be downloaded through the link http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229516
. The operating system is coming with 32bit and 64 bit options. I will
explain the main differences of Windows 8 but you can reach a long list
of new Windows 8 features in winrumors.com website. So what are the main newly coming features of Windows 8?
The first thing a user will notice is metro style user interface (Figure 1). This interface is mainly designed for tablets and is build for touch. You can access your applications (Apps) from this single interface with a fingertip. This interface is a personalized layout with clean animations and writings to make the user interact with his/her PC fluid. The new Start screen puts everything you want and you need in front of you for immediate access. It is also alive! What I mean by that is the Apps show user up-to-date information as long as your device is connected to the internet. Therefore, you can access the information as it produced.
Previous Windows client operating systems support x86 or x64
platforms. Another new feature of Windows 8 is its ARM support. As the
new Windows 8 operating system is mainly designed for mobile devices, it
supports ARM-based chipsets now. The users will experience their new
Windows in various types of devices such as a 10-inch tablet or ultra
lightweight laptops.
Cloud computing is seen as the future of computing world today and Applications (as in the Android operating system) is the new trend in IT world. Therefore Microsoft implements its application solution to Windows 8 (Apps). Windows Store (identical to Google Android Market) will serve as a central point for application downloads. Windows Apps can work together by the way; making it easy to search, share, and send content between them. As I said before, when a user is connected to the Internet, Apps come alive with activity and show the latest content. May be the most powerful side of Windows Apps is their ability to come with the user! As a user sign in with his connected Microsoft account (LiveID) to another PC running Windows 8, his Metro style apps and settings go with him, so it’s just like using his own PC.
Another improvement Windows 8 has is the faster boot start. In windows8center.com website, there is a good explanation of why it is faster than its predecessors. Figure 2 shows the comparison of Windows 8 and Windows 7 boot up speeds for various PC configurations. Therefore, one of the most frastrating downside (long startup time) of Windows operating systems is not a downside anymore. :)
Windows 8 supports USB 3.0 standard natively. As I talked about USB
standard, there is a big improvement that Windows 8 can be booted from a
USB memory stick. This feature which is called “Windows To Go” will be
very helpful especially for system administrators I think. You can boot a
corrupted or infected machine with Windows 8 and perform administrative
tasks on that. Also a user can bring his operating system with him
wherever he wants. Just plug the stick in, work as he wants, finish the
job and plug the operating system out. :)
Uptil now, I talked about the general changes that the new operating system has over the previous one. But what about the user experience? Is there any changes or improvements in Windows while we are using it? Let me talk about it from now on.
Task Manager looks different now (Figure3). It is easy-to-use and all-in-one dashboard for monitoring the PC’s resources and services. The data is presented in color-coded tiles to point out the items that are using the bulk of a resource. There are 7 tabs included in Task Manager now which are; Processes, Performance, App History, Startup, Users, Details and Services.
Another new feature (which is not a big one but very important in my
opinion) is the ability to mount ISO and VHD files natively. From now on
with Windows 8, you can mount your ISO files as CD-Drive and your VHD
files as harddisks without needing a third party solution. As an
administrator, one of the first things that I’ve done is to install a
mounting software to my operating system. With Windows 8, I don’t need
it anymore (Figure 4).
Windows Explorer has a big difference now because it has a ribbon bar
which organizes the rich functionality of Explorer (Figure 5). Mostly
used commands are now organized in ribbon and users can reach most of
the functionalities with one mouse click.
Other than these, few additional changes that the users experience at
first glance are Internet Explorer 10, Push-button Reset, Lock Screen
& Notifications, LiveID logon. As I said before there will be lots
of improvements when Windows 8 is on the market. You can read more
explanation about the new features in http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/E/4/1E455D53-C382-4A39-BA73-55413F183333/Windows_Developer_Preview-Windows8_guide.pdf .
I think Windows 8 will be a realistic change for Microsoft and the real first step to cloud computing on the client side. It seems that user habits will change with this new release. Users will get what they want from the operating system more easily and friendly. I hope the article is helpful to you. See you next time.
The first thing a user will notice is metro style user interface (Figure 1). This interface is mainly designed for tablets and is build for touch. You can access your applications (Apps) from this single interface with a fingertip. This interface is a personalized layout with clean animations and writings to make the user interact with his/her PC fluid. The new Start screen puts everything you want and you need in front of you for immediate access. It is also alive! What I mean by that is the Apps show user up-to-date information as long as your device is connected to the internet. Therefore, you can access the information as it produced.
Figure 1: Metro Style start screen
Cloud computing is seen as the future of computing world today and Applications (as in the Android operating system) is the new trend in IT world. Therefore Microsoft implements its application solution to Windows 8 (Apps). Windows Store (identical to Google Android Market) will serve as a central point for application downloads. Windows Apps can work together by the way; making it easy to search, share, and send content between them. As I said before, when a user is connected to the Internet, Apps come alive with activity and show the latest content. May be the most powerful side of Windows Apps is their ability to come with the user! As a user sign in with his connected Microsoft account (LiveID) to another PC running Windows 8, his Metro style apps and settings go with him, so it’s just like using his own PC.
Another improvement Windows 8 has is the faster boot start. In windows8center.com website, there is a good explanation of why it is faster than its predecessors. Figure 2 shows the comparison of Windows 8 and Windows 7 boot up speeds for various PC configurations. Therefore, one of the most frastrating downside (long startup time) of Windows operating systems is not a downside anymore. :)
Figure 2: Windows 8 vs Windows 7 boot start comparison (taken from windows8center.com)
Uptil now, I talked about the general changes that the new operating system has over the previous one. But what about the user experience? Is there any changes or improvements in Windows while we are using it? Let me talk about it from now on.
Task Manager looks different now (Figure3). It is easy-to-use and all-in-one dashboard for monitoring the PC’s resources and services. The data is presented in color-coded tiles to point out the items that are using the bulk of a resource. There are 7 tabs included in Task Manager now which are; Processes, Performance, App History, Startup, Users, Details and Services.
Figure 3: New Task Manager
Figure 4: Mounting ISO and VHD files
Figure 5: Ribbon bar of Windows Explorer
I think Windows 8 will be a realistic change for Microsoft and the real first step to cloud computing on the client side. It seems that user habits will change with this new release. Users will get what they want from the operating system more easily and friendly. I hope the article is helpful to you. See you next time.
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