Ina Fried

Recent Posts by Ina Fried

Three Things We Still Don’t Know About Windows 8

Although we learned a bunch of things about Windows 8 on Wednesday, there is still a lot that we don’t know.

In an exclusive demo at D9, we did get a good look at the Windows 8 desktop as well as the guiding principles for the operating system as a whole. Microsoft showed an operating system that borrows much from Windows Phone 7 on the design side and aims to be equally at home on a tablet, desktop or laptop.

But there are many questions about Windows 8 that remain unanswered. Here are just a few key ones.

1. When will Windows 8 ship?

2. Where will competitors be by that time?

3. How well will these Windows 8 machines work when running a whole bunch of old programs?

There’s also the question of just how well–even when running on ARM-based chips–Windows 8 will do when it comes to characteristics like long battery life and instant boot-up that have been hallmarks of iOS and Android devices.

Also unclear is what else Microsoft has in store for Windows 8. In an interview, Steven Sinofsky stressed that this is a major release of Windows and there are a lot more changes being made throughout the operating system. Expect to learn a lot more about those at Microsoft’s mid-September developer conference in Anaheim, Calif.

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