Windows 8 will launch luxury PCs and laptops

One of the largest manufacturers of PCs and laptops has today said Windows 8 will launch an offensive against Apple - by being as expensive.

Acer chairman JT Wang said that the first wave of machines bearing Microsoft's new operating system will aim for the luxury markets in North America - traditionally occupied by Apple's MacBook range.

Wang said the success of Windows 8 will depend on the North America market - and the company is pricing high as computer sales for low and mid-end PCs have gone down due to the economic climate.

So, due to the economic climate, Acer is putting its efforts into luxury market, and Wang said Windows 8 needs to be as successful as Apple in the higher-end of the PC market to win recognition.

Wang made the remarks at the Computex tech conference at the Taipei International Convention Center, where he introduced six new Windows 8-based PCs, including two tablets, two 'Ultrabooks', and two all-in-one PCs.

He also praised the new operating system as a 'one-of-a-kind'.

He said: 'I’ve never been so supportive of Microsoft.

'The new operating system enhances users’ experience and productivity by allowing them to switch from entertainment applications to work applications in an instant.

'Acer will first focus on developing Windows 8 PC products, with plans to [commercially] launch its first Windows 8-based device in August and gradually launch all the announced products by the end of this year.'

He also said Acer is conservative about its second-quarter sales performance this year, as consumers are still waiting for the official launch of Windows 8.

Windows 8 is expected to stimulate demand for PCs later this year.

But one reason the operating system will not start out on budget machines is because hardware requirements has led to more expensive entry-level machines.

For instance, manufacturers will have to supply touchscreens on Windows 8 laptops, as the software is designed from the bottom-up to be touch-friendly.

Wang said this meant his company was targeting target markets such as North American, where ''purchasing power is strong and users appreciate product innovation'.

Microsoft is planning the official launch of Windows 8 in October - although some products may go on sale in September.

Ultrabooks, Windows 8 stars of Computex

 

Thin, lightweight ultrabooks, hybrid computers that transform from laptops and PCs into touchscreen tablets, and Microsoft's soon-to-be released Windows 8 operating system are among the highlights at this year's Computex. The event is proving that tomorrow's computer isn't a rigid device
that sits on your desk. It's portable, has a touch screen and converts into the most appropriate form factor for the activity you are completing, if new products on display during the first day of Asia's largest computer show, Computex Taipei, are any indication of future computing trends.

The event is second in the world only to CeBIT in Germany and is the launch pad for many large computing firms that have research and development centers or production factories in Taiwan.

Relaxnews has put together a recap of some of the stand-out products on display at the event:

Asus Taichi
The Asus Taichi is a dual-screen ultrabook that converts from a laptop into a tablet. The Taichi is available in 11.6" and 13.3" versions and runs on Windows 8. It features a high resolution 1920 x 1080 display, a full-size backlit QWERTY keyboard and trackpad and a third-generation Intel core processor.

Asus Transformer AiO
Asus's Transformer AiO is both an All-in-One desktop computer and the "world's largest tablet." It has an 18.4" LED touch display which can be detached from the base station and used and a touchscreen tablet. It features both Windows 8 and Android operating systems.

Asus Transformer Book
The Asus Transformer Book is a convertible ultrabook with a screen that doubles as a detachable tablet. The laptop is available in 11.6", 13" or 14" sizes and features a Full HD IPS display with multitouch. It has two cameras (a 5MP shooter on the rear and a HD video cam on the front), a full-size QWERTY keyboard and 3rd generation Intel processors.

Acer Aspire S7 Ultrabook
Acer's Aspire S7 Ultrabook series are thin and light full-HD touchscreen ultrabooks that run on Windows 8. The laptops are available in13.3-inch and 11.6-inch configurations and feature an aluminum metallic unibody design. The 13.3" version sports a 12 hour battery life while the 11.6" version will run for up to 9 hours on one charge.

MSI Slider S20
The MSI Slider S20 is also a hybrid laptop. The 11.6" Ultrabook runs Windows 8 and sports a new-generation Intel processor. Its display slides down over the keyboard to transform the device into a touchscreen tablet.

Samsung Series 5 Ultrabooks
Samsung has two touch-enabled Series 5 Ultrabooks on display at Computex, both of which run Windows 8 on 1366 x 768 resolution displays. The UltraTouch is a traditional-style ultrabook with touchscreen capabilities, while the Ultra Convertible has a 13" display that can fold backwards on top of the base.

Toshiba Satellite U840W Ultrabook
The Toshiba Satellite U840W Ultrabook lays claim to being the world's first widescreen ultrabook. It features a 14.4" 21:9 cinematic display, a two-tone aluminium chassis with a textured palm rest, a Intel Core i5-3317U processor, a 500GB hybrid hard drive, and Toshiba's new Hi-Speed Start. The Satellite U840W is expected to hit stores during Q3 for AU$1,499 (€1175).

Toshiba Satellite Z830 Ultrabook
Weighing in at 1.12kg, the Toshiba Satellite is the world's lightest 13.3" ultrabook. The laptop sports a second generation Intel Core processor, a 16mm thick aluminium chassis with magnesium cladding, a 13.3" Widescreen HD LED Backlit Display (1366 x 768) and up to 8 hours of battery life.

Microsoft Envisions 80-Inch Windows 8 Tablets

 

If you thought Samsung's 11.6-inch Windows 8 preview tablet was on the large side, it's nothing compared to the touch screen Steve Ballmer has in his office.

The CEO of Microsoft uses an 80-inch touchscreen with Windows 8 for communications and productivity, Wired UK reports. “He's got rid of his phone, he's got rid of his note paper,” spokesman Frank Shaw said. “It's touch-enabled and it's hung on his wall.”

An 80-inch Windows 8 touchscreen may sound like an exclusive luxury for Microsoft's boss, but Shaw said the company eventually plans to sell the device, though he wouldn't name the manufacturer, the price or a release date.

Microsoft lists 27 inches as the largest common screen size it expects for Windows 8 PCs, envisioning these large touchscreens as “family hub” devices. “Families might opt for an all-in-one desktop with a huge touch screen to view and organize all of the family photos,” Microsoft senior program manager David Washington wrote in a March blog post.

Much larger Windows 8 touchscreens would likely be aimed at commercial uses, at least at first. "It's not a consumer thing now, but we know historically that that's how all things start," Shaw told Wired UK. "The idea that there should be a screen that's not a computer, we'll laugh at that in two years.”
Microsoft Surface at a Harrah's casino.

Microsoft experimented with large touchscreens as tabletops when it introduced Surface five years ago. Harrah's Entertainment offered video games on the tabletop touchscreen in its casinos. We haven't heard much about it for a few years, but apparently Ballmer found an application for the big touchscreen.

Of course, in two years Windows may not resemble its current form. Though I don't doubt that Microsoft wants to get gigantic Windows-based touchscreens into people's homes, my bet's on some type of convergence with Xbox for that purpose instead of the straight-up PC software that Ballmer currently enjoys.

Windows 8

 

 Windows 8 is the codename for the next version of the Microsoft Windows computer operating system following Windows 7. It has many changes from previous versions. In particular it adds support for ARM microprocessors in addition to the previously supported x86 microprocessors from Intel and AMD. A new Start Screen interface has been added that was designed for touchscreen input in addition to mouse, keyboard, and pen input.

History and development

Early announcements

In January 2011, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Microsoft announced that Windows 8 would be adding support for ARM microprocessors in addition to the x86 microprocessors from Intel and AMD.

Milestone leaks
A 32-bit Milestone 1 build, build 7850, with a build date of September 22, 2010, was leaked to BetaArchive, an online beta community, which was soon leaked to P2P/torrent sharing networks on April 12, 2011.Milestone 1 includes a ribbon interface for Windows Explorer,a PDF reader called Modern Reader, an updated task manager called Modern Task Manager,and native ISO image mounting.

A 32-bit Milestone 2 build, build 7927, was leaked to The Pirate Bay on August 29, 2011  right after many pictures leaked on BetaArchive the day before. Features of this build are mostly the same as build 7955.

A 32-bit Milestone 2 build, build 7955, was leaked to BetaArchive on April 25, 2011. Features of this build included a new pattern login and a new file system known as Protogon.

A 64-bit Milestone 3 build, build 7959, was leaked to BetaArchive on May 1, 2011.This build is notable for being the first publicly leaked Windows Server 8 build, as well as the first leaked 64-bit build.

A Milestone 3 build, build 7971, was released to close partners of Microsoft on March 29, 2011 but was kept under heavy security. However, a few screenshots were leaked. The "Windows 7 Basic" theme now uses similar metrics to the Aero style, but maintains its non-hardware accelerated design, and also supports taskbar thumbnails. The boxes that encase the "close, maximize, and minimize" buttons have been removed, leaving just the signs.

A 64-bit Milestone 3 build, build 7989, leaked to BetaArchive on June 18, 2011 after screenshots were revealed the previous day. An SMS feature, a new virtual keyboard, a new bootscreen, transparency in the basic theme, geo-location services, Hyper-V 3.0, and PowerShell 3.0 were revealed in this build.





Official announcements

At the Microsoft Developer Forum in Tokyo on May 23, 2011, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced that the next version of Windows would be released the following year.

    "And yet, as we look forward to the next generation of Windows systems, which will come out next year, there's a whole lot more coming. As we progress through the year, you ought to expect to hear a lot about Windows 8. Windows 8 slates, tablets, PCs, a variety of different form factors."

However, Microsoft quickly amended Ballmer's words in a statement issued that afternoon:

    "It appears there was a misstatement. We are eagerly awaiting the next generation of Windows 7 hardware that will be available in the coming fiscal year. To date, we have yet to formally announce any timing or naming for the next version of Windows."

On June 1, 2011, Microsoft officially unveiled Windows 8 and some of its new features at the Taipei Computex 2011 in Taipei (Taiwan) by Mike Angiulo and at the D9 conference in California (United States) by Julie Larson-Green and Microsoft's Windows President Steven Sinofsky.The main feature that was shown was the new user interface.

On August 15, 2011, Microsoft opened a new blog called "Building Windows 8" for users and developers.

 Build conference and developer preview
Microsoft unveiled new Windows 8 features and improvements on September 13, 2011, day one of the BUILD developer conference.Microsoft also released a Developer Preview build (Build 8102) of Windows 8 for the developer community to download and start working with. This developer preview includes tools for building "metro style apps", such as Microsoft Windows SDK for Metro style apps, Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows 8 Developer Preview and Microsoft Expression Blend 5 Developer Preview.

Microsoft has shown a development roadmap at the BUILD conference stating that the coming milestones will be Beta, Release Candidate, RTM, and general availability.

According to Microsoft, there were more than 500,000 downloads of the Windows 8 Developer Preview within the first 12 hours of its release.
New features

Windows 8 will contain a new user interface based on Microsoft's design language named Metro. With the new change, the Start Menu was replaced in favor for the new Start Screen, where there are tiles that contain shortcuts to applications, Metro style applications, and updating tiles, similar to Windows Phone.

A new authentication method allows users to sketch in three different places over the picture to login, instead of typing a password.

Windows Explorer now uses a ribbon interface, similar to those used in Microsoft Office applications.

Another feature expected to be introduced in Windows 8 is native USB 3.0 support, without the need to load drivers.

Windows 8 will come with Windows Store, an online marketplace for buying, selling, and advertising applications.

Windows 8 can be run from a USB-connected drive, such as a flash drive. This feature is called Windows To Go. It is intended for enterprise administrators to provide users with a Windows 8 image that reflects the corporate desktop; pricing and licensing details were not discussed when the feature was announced. WTG is not included in Windows 8 previews.

Windows 8 will support multiple monitors with the new ability to natively display different background images on each display and customized taskbar(s) on each of the connected displays.

The Developer Preview comes with two new recovery functions.Refresh and Reset, which both make a complete restore easier than a re-installation. The former keeps all the settings and files of the user intact and only reverses all changes to Windows files to its original state while removing all installed programs and apps. The latter deletes all files and effectively re-installs Windows, but without any additional user input such as agreeing to license agreements or selecting a hard disk required. After a reset completes, the user will be asked for the product key and will then proceed to account creation.

One big change is that user accounts do not have to be local-only (or from an Active Directory domain) anymore but can be linked up to one's Windows Live ID. This has the advantage that users will not lose their settings and files as they move from their home computer to their work laptop or to any other computer also using Windows 8.

Other new features include a new Welcome screen,a new packaged application model called AppX that is based on Silverlight,and Open Packaging Conventions,as well as a setting to automatically adjust window color to fit the wallpaper.

There is also a stripped down "Immersive" version of Internet Explorer, using the similar Metro-based user interface of the mobile version of Internet Explorer 9.The Immersive Version of Internet Explorer 10 does not support ActiveX plugins, in order to be an HTML5-only browser. The Desktop version of IE10 does support ActiveX plugins.
A new "Hybrid Boot" option that uses "advanced hibernation functionality" on shutdown to allow faster startup times.
A new version of Task Manager with a redesigned user interface is also present in pre-release versions of Windows 8.

Hardware requirements

Microsoft say that the Windows Developer Preview (a pre-release version of Windows 8) works well on hardware suitable for Windows Vista or 7.

Minimum hardware requirements for Windows Developer Preview Architecture 


                                                                    
Architecture                        IA-32              x86-64             ARM

Processor       1 GHz       TBA
  Memory (RAM)           1 GB     2 GB       TBA
Graphics Card     DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver       TBA
HDD free space     16 GB     20 GB       TBA
A multi-touch screen is required to use touch input. For Metro applications, a screen resolution of 1024x768 or higher is required.

Microsoft may also require new PCs to have the UEFI secure boot feature enabled by default to be given Windows 8 certification. There has been some concern about this, that it could lead to machines that do not support alternative operating systems.The manufacturer is free to choose which signatures are accepted by the feature and to offer the ability to turn off the secure boot feature.Microsoft has addressed the issue in a blog post.

Microsoft has revealed the following maximum supported hardware specifications for Windows Server 8 at the BUILD conference.
                                 
Logical processors               640 (was 256 in Windows Server 2008 R2)

Random-access memory       4 TB (was 2 TB in Windows Server 2008 R2)

Failover cluster nodes          63 (was 16 in Windows Server 2008 R2)

Compatibility
Windows 8 for x86 processors will run much software compatible with previous x86 versions of Windows, with the usual restrictions: 64-bit Windows will run also 32-bit software but not 16-bit ones; 32-bit Windows will optionally run 16-bit software if installed to do so, but will not run 64-bit software. Either 32- or 64-bit Windows can be installed on x86-64 processors. Some expertise in manipulating compatibility settings may be required to run, for example, 16-bit software for Windows 3.x under 32-bit Windows 8, in cases where it is possible. In particular, applications compatible with 32- and 64-bit Windows 7 will run in the same way on Windows 8.

Windows 8 for ARM processors will not run software created for x86; software will have to be ported by its developers to create ARM executables from source code.

Windows 8 Developer Preview is incompatible with some virtualization platforms, such as Virtual PC. A blog post by Microsoft notes that the setup process is error-prone when installing in a virtual machine, and installing without hardware virtualization support can be particularly problematic.It is reported to work under VMware Workstation and VMware Player — detailed instructions for installing in these environments have been published.

Windows 8 Embedded

 
Windows 8 Embedded Technical Preview In the Works for Q1 2012
We might not see the Windows 8 Final release before the second half of 2012, but Microsoft is planning to release the Technical Preview of Windows 8 Embedded Operating System next year,as early as the first quarter of 2012, Winrumors reports.




This embedded version of Windows 8 operating system is tailor made for special kinds of devices like the kiosks, medical products, construction machinery and other such devices and not the usual desktops or laptops.This operating system like the general version of Windows 8 will support X86 and ARM based processors.Though there are no details available about the Windows 8 Embedded Operating System but it is said to be supporting different kinds of user interfaces.So it would feature Touch Screens as well as Speech Recognition Feature.


The embedded edition of Windows 8 will be fully compatible with  all Windows Application and will be as powerful as the Windows 8 desktop operating system.The Final version of Windows 8 Embedded Operating System will be released after the official launch of Regular Windows 8 Operating System which is expected in the Q3 2012.

ARM Based Windows 8 PC Running on Snapdragon

 Qualcomm is going to introduce the new Qaudcore Snapdragon processor by the end of 2012, the company CEO has stated. This processor will be designed to run the ARM version of Windows 8, which is expected to release the same time as the full version — sometime in the second half of 2012. With this step, the mobile chipmaker intends to step in to the PC market.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon is currently the most commonly used high-end mobile chip. It’s current version can clock over 2.0GHz and is a dual-core processor. All of this without creating a severe drain on the battery — something that ARM specializes at.


Steve Mollenkopf, CEO of Qualcomm, said that the PC business will come much close to the smartphone segment in this manner. According to him, developers will be better invested if they are developing for the phone. That’s because the current growth is in that sector. Windows 8 will have its own app store where people can buy Metro apps. Windows 8 on ARM will only be running on Metro, unlike Windows 8 on Intel where it can also run legacy apps. So what Mollenkopf seems to be saying is that developers can now develop the same app to be used on desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones because they’ll all be running Windows 8.

A lot of experts have commented on how Windows 8 on ARM will be crippled initially by the lack of support for legacy apps. However, most companies working on ARM based devices for Windows 8 aren’t very worried about it and neither is Qualcomm. What these makers are looking at is what the future will hold for the platform. They are not looking to woo those who are already entrenched in the current Windows experience. Instead, they are trying to capture the crowd that would be happy to buy a cheap and affordable Windows 8 PC running on ARM and has access to its own apps. This would be a solution for those looking for a way to bridge the gap between the netbook and the tablet. It will also be welcome by people who think that the iPad is too expensive and the other tablets are not functional enough.

In meantime, Qualcomm’s financial statement shows bullish predictions of growth through 2015. This means the company is pretty confident in whatever it is that they are planning.

ARM Based Tablet’s to have Only Metro Based Apps

 
Couple of days ago we reported about plans for ARM based Notebooks would go mainstream by the year 2013.Now to add to the list here’s one more developing story,this time around its for the ARM based Tablets. According to Mary Jo Foley from ZDNet , Microsoft would probably do away with the desktop apps as far as the ARM tablets are concerned and would only go with the Metro Based Apps.


Earlier in the Build Conference couple of months ago it was completely a different scenario altogether,ARM tablets in the conference were demonstrated featuring Desktop apps running on them,but now it seems that they are rethinking about their early plan of porting desktop apps on ARM tablets.

    If Microsoft does do away with the Desktop App on ARM, it also would mean — unless Microsoft also changes its strategy for x86/x64-based Windows 8 tablets — that Windows 8 will be different on different hardware. The Developer Preview Samsung tablets Microsoft gave to attendees of its Build conference include the Desktop app, which allows non-Metro, legacy apps to work on these machines.


If at all they do go with this idea,it would put some limitations on the usage of ARM based Tablets not running Desktop apps while the other counterparts with x86/x64 based tablets would run them will give a setback to ARM tablet makers.