Windows 8 - News & Updates

[Karthik]

RE: windows 8

It's Time To Download Windows 8!
Read more: http://maheinfo.blogspot.com/2011/09/windows-8-preview-download.html#ixzz1ZDyxSh00
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives

Windows 8 Preview is free to download from it official site. Microsoft unveiled its new OS at BUILD Conference and made Windows 8 preview download publicly. Check out the official link to know more about Windows 8 and download.

Windows Developer Preview with developer tools English, 64-bit DOWNLOAD 64bites (4.8 GB)
All of the following come on a disk image file (.iso). See below for installation instructions.
64-bit Windows Developer Preview
Windows SDK for Metro style apps
Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows Developer Preview
Microsoft Expression Blend 5 Developer Preview
28 Metro style apps including the BUILD Conference app


Windows Developer Preview English, 64-bit (x64) DOWNLOAD (3.6 GB)

Includes a disk image file (.iso) to install the Windows Developer Preview and Metro style apps on a 64-bit PC.

Windows Developer Preview English, 32-bit DOWNLOAD (2.8 GB)

 

[kramkumar]

RE: windows 8

I downloaded and installed last week, but my experience is bad. Before installing please follow these suggestions.

1. Back-up your C drive in a CD or any external device. Image back-up or back-up in other partitions will not work
2. Be patient to locate the applications. I spent 15 minutes to find shut down button.
3. There are many applications available in future through Windows store like Android. But now it is empty.
4. It is only developer preview, only few applications are working.
5. I could not install adobe and other necessary applications. May be I am not aware.

I tried to uninstall, but system asks for Windows original CD. So if you don't have original CD of your existing OS, please don't try Windows 8. Luckily I have Windows 7 installation CD.

I formatted my C drive and installed all applications again, like MSOFFICE, Adobe, Winzip, rar etc

So, my advice is wait for official launch. This is only for developers not for normal users.

 

[ssparikshya]

RE: windows 8

ohh so bad

do u original win 7 cd ?
whts the price?

 

[Biswajit.HD]

Microsoft to Deliver Windows 8 Upgrades Online

Microsoft wants to make upgrading to Windows 8 from older Windows versions easier and faster through online delivery, no product key entry for at least one installation method and a process that involves 82 percent fewer screen clicks. "Our aim in improving setup is to reduce the time from start to finish," Microsoft's Windows chief, Steven Sinofsky, said in a recent post on the Building Windows 8 blog.
Windows installations have always been a pain, and even when they're easy the process can still take as long as four hours as mentioned during the Windows 7 launch. Microsoft hopes to improve its upgrade process to convince the more than 450 million Windows 7 PCs capable of running Windows 8 to upgrade. Not to mention the large number of users with modern PCs running Vista and XP that may be finally willing to try a new Microsoft OS.

Digital delivery
To make it easier to get started, Microsoft will favor selling downloads of Windows 8 instead of having users purchase a physical disc at a local retailer. This is similar to what Apple did with the release of OS X Lion. If online downloads aren't your thing, you can still purchase a Windows 8 DVD, but Microsoft is hoping more people will opt for the download option. Microsoft did not mention whether there would be a pricing difference between online downloads and physical DVD purchases of Windows 8.

If you opt for online delivery, you will still be able to create a bootable thumb drive or DVD to install your new version of Windows. This might be your preference if you plan on backing up your files on another hard drive and then wiping your system to do a clean install of Windows 8.

No annoying product keys
If you want to take the easier way out, you can start the upgrade wizard online and then complete the move to Windows 8 on your desktop. Microsoft claims this process will be "one continuous integrated experience from beginning to end." Even better, the easy install option doesn't involve entering an annoying 25-digit product key to activate your copy of Windows. Microsoft says it will embed the product key into the disk image you download during the setup process.

Before you get to that point, however, the first thing Microsoft does if you start your installation online is to scan your PC to determine its compatibility with Windows 8. You can then read a simplified or detailed report on whether there are any upgrade problems with the apps and peripheral devices on your system. The compatibility scan also allows Microsoft to automatically determine which language to deliver the new OS in and whether you can support a 32- or 64-bit version.

After that, Windows 8 starts downloading to your PC to complete the installation process. Once it's ready to go, you can choose to retain your complete Windows profile including your account settings, personal files and apps, or you can choose to keep just your personal files. You could also choose to keep nothing at all and start with an empty version of Windows 8.

In general, Windows 7 users will be able to retain their apps, Windows settings, user accounts and files when upgrading to Windows 8 using the simplest upgrade wizard. Vista users will be able to keep their settings, user accounts and files, while XP users will only be able to retain their user accounts and files.

Windows 7 upgrades required four different installation wizards including the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor and Windows Easy Transfer and up to 60 screen clicks to complete. Microsoft says it has dramatically reduced the number of maximum screen clicks during a Windows 8 upgrade to 11. But whether cutting back on screen clicks will actually result in a faster and streamlined upgrade process remains to be seen.

source : pc world

 

[Biswajit.HD]

HP and Dell Ready Windows 8 Tablets for 2012

PC makers Hewlett-Packard and Dell are turning to Windows 8 as their next tablet operating system, thanks to fierce competition in the Android tablet market spurred most recently by Amazon's Kindle Fire.
With the iPad dominating the field at more than 70 percent of the tablet market, and Amazon starting the Android price wars at a low US$199, it makes sense that HP and Dell would turn to Windows 8 and try to carve out a new niche.

At Dell World 2011 in Texas last week, Dell CEO Michael Dell said the Android opportunity hasn't developed to expectations, but a wide range of Windows 8 products is planned, according to the The Inquirer.

Windows 8 boasts a new touch-friendly interface that’s ideal for tablets. A tablet running Windows 8 may also better complement your home or office computer setup, since Windows 8 promises a streamlined experience across tablets, laptops, and desktops.

Dell will most likely target its Windows 8 tablets to business users, but I could see the appeal of the tablet for home and personal use as a secondary device if you’re a Windows laptop or desktop user. The success of the Windows 8 tablets, as with the rest of the tablet market, however, may come down to price and timing (The Motorola Xoom Android tablet recently got a price cut, but it seems too little, too late).

Digitimes reports that HP and Dell are expected to launch their Windows 8-based tablets in the third quarter of 2012.

source : pc world

 

[Biswajit.HD]

Microsoft Discusses Windows 8 Tweaks After User Feedback

In an incredibly long and detailed blog post, Marina Dukhon, a senior program manager on the Windows 8 Core Experience team, discussed upcoming changes to Windows 8's apps screen, start screen customization, and a replacement for Windows 7 jump lists in Windows 8.
Microsoft's Windows 8 developer preview has been out for about a month, and the software giant is ready to discuss some new changes to Windows 8 based on user feedback.

If you'd like to read the whole post for yourself that goes deep into Microsoft's telemetry data gathered from users and other design considerations check it out on Microsoft's Building Windows 8 blog.

Here's a look at the highlights from Microsoft's recent blog post:

New Apps Screen

The biggest change announced so far is a redesigned apps screen for Windows 8. The apps screen is the replacement for the "All Programs" menu option in Vista and Windows 7 that lets you see all your programs at a glance. The new redesign does away with Windows 8's original alphabetical list of apps for a hierarchical one organized by program group. So instead of seeing all your Windows programs organized by their names, the new apps screen groups programs by software suite such as Microsoft Office or Adobe Creative Suite 5.

The new apps screen is also denser, fitting more app icons onto the screen than the previous version. Dukhon says the new redesign improves "the scannability of your system, giving you confidence about what is on it at any given time."

Jump Lists and Start Screen Customization

Some users are clamoring for jump lists -- a feature in Windows 7 that allows you to navigate to a specific file -- to be added to the Metro-style start screen interface. But Microsoft is reluctant to do that and is instead relying on what it calls secondary tiles. These tiles allow you to create what is basically a quick launch icon to a specific part of an app such as The New York Times world news feed in an RSS reader, a playlist in Media Player, or your best friend's profile page on Facebook.

It's not clear if Microsoft has a different solution in mind for users who may want to access recently used document files from the start screen. As one blog commenter pointed out, "The beauty of the jump-lists is that not only you can ‘pin files,’ but it also keeps track of your recently used files. That saves a lot of time, which the start screen still misses."

Microsoft also said it will be adding more customization options to the start screen. You can already do things such as unpin tiles and resize wide tiles into square tiles, but Microsoft said more customization is coming. "In the Beta, you'll also be able to use other improvements based on this dialog, in addition to creating, naming, and rearranging groups," Dukhon said

source : pc world

 

[Biswajit.HD]

Windows 8 Security: Stronger But Gentler

The Metro GUI is the most visible representation of Microsoft's coming operating system. While the release of the tentatively named Windows 8 is still a year away, the company has not been shy about putting the multicolor tiled interface front and center.
Windows 8's security improvements will be much less visible, and that's just the way Microsoft wants it. The company has added a number of protection features to Windows 8 to better protect the system, all the while making the security less intrusive by limiting the number of notifications a user may receive.

For example, the company's SmartScreen technology for detecting potentially malicious sites -- introduced with Internet Explorer 8 -- will be built right into the OS to allow any file downloaded to a Windows 8 computer to be checked out by the system, yet the protection should not alert the average user more than twice a year, Microsoft says.

The higher signal-to-noise ratio will likely make users pay more attention to the truly dangerous incidents, Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live division, writes in a blog post on Microsoft's Developer Network. "When they do see (a notice), it will signify a higher risk scenario," he says in a description of the feature.

Using its telemetry data, Microsoft has found that 95 percent of Internet Explorer 9 users do not run malicious software when they receive a SmartScreen warning. Once a user receives a SmartScreen warning, their chance of getting malware if they run the suspect program varies from 25 to 70 percent, according to Microsoft. Some 92 percent of applications downloaded by users already have an established reputation, so SmartScreen does not issue a notification.

Allowing SmartScreen to check applications downloaded by other browsers and applications is not the only feature Microsoft has added. Here are the ones currently announced.

Improving Windows Defender
Microsoft noticed a disturbing trend among Windows 7 users: While almost all users had antivirus protection following the purchase of Windows 7 -- due, most likely, to trial subscriptions shipped with new PCs -- almost a quarter of them let those subscriptions lapse in the ensuing months.

The company plans to make Windows Defender a baseline security solution, which will block all commonly used malware, worms, Trojan horses, and other attacks. Microsoft plans to use a file system filter to better protect critical files.

Making Windows 8 harder to exploit
Like Apple did with its security improvements to Mac OS X Lion, Microsoft plans to harden the operating system to attack. With each release, both Apple and Microsoft have bolstered a key anti-exploit technology known as ASLR (address space layout randomization). Windows 8 is no different: More components of Windows will use ASLR, and the memory randomization will be better.

Microsoft will bring a lot of secuity improvements to the kernel and a dynamically assigned area of memory known as the heap. Finally, the company plans to add defenses to Internet Explorer to eliminate "use-after-free" vulnerabilities, which make up three-quarters of the flaws reported in IE in the past two years. Basically, we can expect Internet Explorer to do a better job of cleaning up after itself and flushing away sensitive data after it has been used.

Supporting UEFI Secure Boot
Finally, Microsoft will use the UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) to implement a secured boot process. UEFI Secure Boot allows the firmware to cryptographically verify the integrity of the computer's envrionment, preventing malicious software from executing before the computer boots into the operating system.

Secure Boot uses the Trusted Platform Module, a piece of hardware that has shipped in millions of systems, but largely remains unused. Microsoft had planned a similar feature, dubbed Secure Startup, in Windows Vista in 2005, but faced industry concerns that the company could block the installation of other operating systems on PC hardware.

Hardware OEMs will be required to support the architecture, but otherwise, Microsoft claims it will be vendor neutral. While the company aim is quiet security, expect this feature to create a fairly loud debate.

source : pc world

 

[Biswajit.HD]

Windows 8 App Store: What You Need to Know

As Microsoft readies the debut of Windows 8 beta code for February it's sharing more about one of the biggest additions to the upcoming operating system, a brand new app store. Microsoft is calling it Windows Store and it will feature what are called Metro-style apps designed for both Windows 8 tablets, laptops, and desktop PCs. Metro-style apps are primarily for managing photos, entertainment, social networking, and messaging on Windows 8 devices.


The Windows Store, Microsoft said Tuesday, will be the only way for consumers to purchase and install Windows 8 Metro-style apps.

In other words, Microsoft will have complete control over what you can put on your PC when using apps in the new touch-friendly Metro interface. This is a dramatic departure from Microsoft's previously more open philosophy that let anyone download to their PC any software they wanted from any source they wanted.

Microsoft is making this change to ensure Metro-style apps are better protected from malware, bugs and other typical PC problems. The end result, however, is that you must rely on Microsoft's judgment about which apps are and are not appropriate when using Metro-style apps. But in a nod to Microsoft's past, traditional PC software applications for Windows will still be available from third parties in the same way they are available today for Windows 7.


source : pc world

 

[ssparikshya]

RE: Windows 8 App Store: What You Need to Know

ya i read the news in times of india 7th dec
is it the logo windows8 :skd

 

[Biswajit.HD]

RE: Windows 8 App Store: What You Need to Know

yes its the windows 8 logo... :tup