Microsoft India held a launch event for Windows 8 yesterday marking the arrival of it's new OS that promises to bring a significant change to the overall computing experience which would be fast, fun and fluid, also enabling consumers to use Windows 8 beyond the PC.
Reliance Digital, one of the largest electronics stores in India also unveils New Windows 8 on 26th October, 2012, after the last version being announced a year and a half ago.Along with multi touch capability infused, and support for up to five touches, It will strike a chord with the present trend and act as a trigger to its sales. Besides, this integration will pave way for network of touch sensitive LCD monitors. It will also surprise its users with the new features, an in- built system applications that will serve as a quick access bar for most sought after features and apps. Be it sharing, accessing hard drives or your settings, charm is at your service. It also supports device integration enabling you to stream video from your computer to your Xbox and enjoy a great viewing experience on your HDTV.
(Information Source – Reliance Digital Stores)
What went on while preparing for Windows 8 launch?
Microsoft has being seriously overhauling a gamut of services it has launched over the past few years like Xbox gaming service that was being morphed into an all around entertainment source for the entire family, scrapping erstwhile music service called Zune and paving way for Xbox Music which has close to 30 million tracks in it's library (not available in India yet). Windows 8 OS for mobile phones is also scheduled to launch on October 29, Microsoft also organised an AppFest earlier this year in Bangalore hosting a coding marathon which saw 2,567 developers coding non-stop for 18 hours creating a Guinness record.
Efforts to attract developers for making apps on WP8 (Windows Phone 8) mobile platform is yielding results for Microsoft, surely it has a lot of catching up to do in comparison to Google and Apple when it comes to making inroads into building a credible app library, as per a company statement it has close to 1,00,000 apps and games as of now and it is surely to grow further with a committed support Microsoft has being getting from mobile manufacturers like HTC, Samsung and Nokia.
Surface tablet also aims to bridge the gap between a PC and Smartphone user already on the windows platform where a slew of android tablets already occupy the mid and lower segment of the tablet market and iPad still ruling the roost.
It's not just about the OS any more
Windows 8 has being designed and developed to change the way we work on our computing devices like doing away with the system tray we have being so accustomed to view all these years on the previous windows platforms, bringing in apps, live tiles to work on and a similar experience I would get using my Xbox service which also has tiled layout, a browser included as well on the console now.
An app called SmartGlass would be launched this month to enable this integration windows experience for consumers using Windows 8 installed on their PC, WP8 enabled smartphone (also extending support to iOS and Android phones) and the Xbox 360
Windows 8 is built to work on the ARM processing platform (read more about this here) that allows more vendors to manufacture hardware that supports adoption of Windows 8 OS, Microsoft has also strengthened the security on it's new OS with better anti-malware protection and improved windows defender performance.
Microsoft has also followed a very sensible approach in offering a discounted upgrade to genuine Windows OS users in India, who can move on to Windows 8 Pro for INR 1999 (Limited period offer), Looking forward to upgrading my laptop to the new Windows 8 experience today, just ran the windows 8 upgrade assistant, a little clean up to follow before the new install
