Microsoft has officially taken the wraps of Windows 8 at the BUILD conference and given a detailed preview of things to come. Windows 8 introduces a beautiful new user interface (UI) designed specifically for touch.
The company also highlighted several new features in Windows 8, including the following:
Touch-First User Interface
- Windows 8 introduces a new Metro style interface built for touch, which shows information important to you, embodies simplicity and gives you control.
- Touch-first browsing, not just browsing on a touch device. Providing a fast and fluid touch-browsing experience, Internet Explorer 10 puts sites at the center on new Windows 8 devices.
- More Ways to Engage With Powerful, Connected Apps
- Powered by apps. Metro style apps built for Windows 8 are the focal point of your experience, filling your entire screen so there are no distractions.
- Apps can work together. Apps communicate with each other in Windows 8. For example, you can easily select and email photos from different places, such as Facebook, Flickr or on your hard drive.
- Your experience syncs across your devices. Live roams all the content from the cloud services you use most — photos, email, calendar and contacts — keeping them up-to-date on your devices. With SkyDrive, you can access your files, photos and documents from virtually anywhere with any browser or with Metro style apps in Windows 8.
Enhanced Fundamentals
- The best of Windows 7, only better. Windows 8 is built on the rock-solid foundation of Windows 7, delivering improvements in performance, security, privacy and system reliability. Windows 8 reduces the memory footprint needed — even on the lowest-end hardware — leaving more room for your apps.
- Preserving power-user favorites and making them better. For those who push the limits of their PC, Windows 8 features an enhanced Task Manager and Windows Explorer and new, flexible options for multimonitor setups.
Hardware
- One Windows — many shapes and sizes. Support for ARM-based chipsets, x86 (as well as x32 and x64) devices, touch and sensors means Windows 8 works beautifully across a spectrum of devices, from 10-inch tablets and laptops to all-in-ones with 27-inch high-definition screens.
- Always connected. With Windows 8, new ultrathin PCs and tablets turn on instantly, run all day on a single charge and stay connected to the Internet so your PC is ready when you are. Next-generation system on a chip (SoC) support will also enable greatly extended standby and low-power states.
- It will support 256 TB of hard disk.
Here are a few screen-shots of Windows 8.
Your personalized lock screen shows you unread emails and other app notifications. The image shown here is a photo of the road leading to Mt. Cook National Park in New Zealand. If you like this wallpaper, you can download it here.
See your apps and content in a glance on the start screen.
Pick the files you want to send or share from one place.
Touch browsing in Internet Explorer 10 is fast, fluid and intuitive.
Large buttons help you type on the touch keyboard.
The thumb keyboard feels natural and comfortable.
Go here to download the complete Windows 8 Fact sheet. Go here to download the Windows 8 Developer Preview build.
