Windows 8, Touch Screen Revolution

Imagine what happens when Apple I-Phone, Android, Windows Smartphone and many more touch screen features are merged. Well, prepare yourself for Swipe, Slide, Zoom and many more interactive gadgets in Windows 8. Microsoft has planned to officially launch Windows 8 in October 2012, but beta version called ‘Consumer Preview’ has been launched in Feb 2012.

Microsoft has rework Windows as a “touch-first” operating system, meaning that its interface is simple and designed to be used in touch tablets similar to the iPad. Future laptops and PCs will likely have touchscreens as well. That’s just the direction things are headed. So Microsoft’s goal is to create one platform that can serve a keyboard and mouse just as well as a touchscreen.

Windows 8 will employ a new user interface based on Microsoft's Metro design language. The Metro environment will feature a new Tile-based Start Screen similar to the Windows Phone OS. Each tile will represent an application, and will be able to display relevant information such as the number of unread messages on the tile for an e-mail app or the current temperature on a weather application. Metro-style applications run in full-screen, and are able to share information.

 

 

Other Fetaures:

·        IE 10

·        Login / Sign in  using a Windows Live ID

·        Hybrid Boot will use "advanced hibernation functionality" on shutdown to allow faster startup times.

·        Windows To Go will allow Windows 8 to boot and run from a bootable USB device (such as a flash drive).

·        Two new recovery functions are included, ‘Refresh’ and ‘Reset’. Refresh restores all Windows files to their original state while keeping settings, files, and Metro-Style apps, while ‘Reset’ takes the computer back to factory default condition.

·        Native USB 3.0 support

·        New Windows Task Manager design

·        Xbox Live (Including Xbox Live Arcade)

Hardware requirements:

To use touch input features, touch enabled hardware will be required.

Minimum hardware requirements for Windows Consumer Preview
Architecture	x86 (32-bit)	x86-64 (64-bit)
Processor	1 GHz
Memory (RAM)	1 GB	2 GB
Graphics Card	DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
HDD free space	16 GB	20 GB