Well, maybe not "yesterday", but not all that long ago that I was downloading the first test beta of Windows 7, and anxiously installing it to try it out. That was back in January of 2009, which isn't that long ago.
Earlier this week, in California at a developers conference, the first parts of the new Windows 8 operating system were shown off. Here is a video from the first day of the conference, with Steven Sinofsky, the boss at Microsoft, talking about the new Windows 8. I should add that this is a two and a half hour presentation, so you may not want to try watching it at work.
A lot of us who use only the mouse and keyboard tend to forget that Windows 7 is also touch-enabled, and if you had an HP TouchSmart desktop, you could use the touch features instead of the usual mouse and keyboard. I don't have one of those HP TouchSmart computers myself, but I've tried one out at the mall, and they are a very nice machine. The phone company used to have a motto that went "Let your finger do the walking" and that's what happens on a touch screen. We're being told that the new Windows 8 will run on machines using Windows 7, and in this case, I tend to believe it. During that video and demonstration shown during that conference, they showed comparisons of the resources used during typical tasks on a Windows 8 machine compared to a Windows 7 machine, and it looked to me like the Windows 8 machine was using less resources than Windows 7 does now. But there's always a 'catch' of course - Windows 8 will have new features that require new hardware, so we will still be looking at buying a better computer if we want to use all the goodies.
But, isn't Windoz 8 more cloud based? If so, let's hope your connection doesn't go down.
ReplyDeleteFYI, I installed several of those HP TouchSmart computer in a vets office for viewing x-ray images. They are real nice...
Hi, Tommy -
ReplyDeleteYes, I think the cloud will be used a lot more in Windows 8, because all the apps in it will be able to interact with one another, and will be enhanced by each other's abilities, if I understood the lecture correctly. That's the aim anyway.
It will also be a lot quicker in both booting up and responding to inputs, they say. I'm just guessing, but I think maybe some of the technology used by Microsoft Research in their Image Composite Editor (I.C.E.) was adapted for the
Windows 8 system to handle the tiles for the apps and etc. - there's a lot happening in it.
I'd like a touch machine myself, but all I know now is the mouse and keyboard thing, and touch is a lot different, and it isn't always an advantage, for example with email.
We'd probably still do that like we do now.