iApprove

A bit odd, really, that Windows 8 would be released at the end of this year when we’ve only had Windows 7 for only about two years. While Vista has been around, nobody cared too much unless it was pre-installed on your computer. Netbook users, on the other hand, avoided Vista like the plague. It was quite a hopeless OS from the get-go. Windows 7, on the other hand, is like Vista without all the problems. It is actually quite a step forward from XP.

Learning from this mistake, Microsoft has decided to do it the safe way with Windows 8, a new Windows that will look a lot like Windows 7 Phone, but with the trappings of a computer OS. It has a very interesting interface, with extremely big buttons that look like the default start page on Google Chrome or IE9. And as with all big interface changes, you’d wonder how much time you need to get used to it.

But then your hardware won’t have such problems. Windows 8 was built from the ground up to be compatible with hardware that can run Windows 7. That means that if your netbook came with Windows 7 Starter, it will probably run Windows 8.

Tami Reller spoke of Windows 8 as an OS that will run basically anything that 7 does, and they are keeping with their philosophy of retaining the same minimum specifications of, or less than, the previous iteration of Windows.

The way Microsoft hopes to achieve this is to allow a more sophisticated scaling intelligence to decide how much fanciness you should get in Windows 8. In this light, Windows 7 also has such an intelligence, though it would be much more complex in Windows 8.

Conjecture Time

Perhaps Windows 8 is even more resource heavy with its effects full-on than Windows 7 with Aero Glass and all that, and you might just get a very plain interface at the lowest of specs, and with Windows 8, with its radically changed desktop, you ought to think about this, because the user interface is probably the biggest piece of thing you’ll notice everyday. Or you can revert to the traditional UI… in Windows 8.

Watching the video (below), it seems that Windows 8 actually is principally meant for the touchscreen, and 8 does lose a bit of its glitter if you’re forced to use a mouse and keyboard. But the greater integration between different programs and the ability to scale Windows side-by-side in different sizes is a very welcome function, although its use on a netbook can be limited due to our crappy resolutions. You’d benefit if you had 1080p, but not 600p.

Though impressive, I’m holding off until I get a new computer, which inevitably will have the latest Windows installed on it. It needs to be proven that it is not a tablet-focused OS and that I won’t be using a similar-to-Windows 7 user interface most of the time if I am a mouse-and-keyboard computer user.