Microsoft: Windows 8 Won't Require a New PC

Having learned its lesson the hard way with Windows Vista, Microsoft offered assurances Thursday that its upcoming Windows 8 operating system won't require users to buy a new PC.

"We've extended the trend we started with Windows 7, of keeping our system requirements either flat or reducing them over time. So Windows 8 will be able to run on a wide range of machines because it will have the same system requirements or lower" as Windows 7, said Michael Angiulo, the Microsoft executive who showed the new software at a press event in Taipei on Thursday.

"Another thing we did is build intelligence into Windows 8 to adapt the user interface based on what hardware you have. So whether you're upgrading or buying a new PC, Windows will adapt itself for your hardware," he said.

The new OS is designed to be touch-enabled, so people without touch screens obviously won't get all the benefits of the new OS. It will also work with a wider variety of sensors for detecting things like motion and proximity, and those sensors will not be present in existing PCs.

But Angiulo said the new interface, which has large colored icons and resembles Windows Phone 7, can still be navigated smoothly using a mouse and a keyboard. The page up and page down buttons can move through the application tiles on the screen, a mouse click will open applications, and the Windows shortcut key on a keyboard will take users back to the desktop.

To prove the point he showed Windows 8 running on a handful of existing PCs, including a Samsung Series 9 laptop and an L Series Sony Vaio.

"When you're reimagining a system that a billion people around the world use it's a big responsibility," Angiulo said. "Windows 8 is for hundreds of millions of computers with all different screen sizes, whether they're touch-enabled or not. Windows 8 is an upgrade for the entire ecosystem of PCs."

It's an important message for Microsoft to get across. If people believe they need to buy a new PC to run Windows 8 it would slow the transition to the new OS and hurt Microsoft's business.

Still, there are features in Windows 8 that won't work with existing hardware, and Microsoft is being more prescriptive than usual about how hardware makers should design their PCs for the new OS.

The optimal screen will have 16:9 aspect ratio and minimum resolution of 1366 by 768 pixels, Angiulo said. A 1024x768 display will also be able to show the new interface, he said. But a netbook with a low-resolution screen will have to switch to the standard desktop mode, he said.

Microsoft learned its lesson about system requirements with Vista. Many PCs in use at the time wouldn't run the OS properly. People reported a lousy experience with the software and it became about the most unpopular OS in Microsoft's history. The company will be keen not to let that happen again.

First Look of New Released Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview

Microsoft caught us entirely by surprise when it released the first platform preview of IE10 yesterday at MIX11. Let’s take a close first look at Microsoft’s new browser.

I recently speculated quite a bit what Microsoft might or might not do about Google and Mozilla’s upgrade pace. It has been no secret that fast updates, whether they deliver new features or not, translate into more market share. Microsoft repeatedly mentioned that it has no intentions to follow Google, as frequent updates do not necessarily deliver more value. That, of course, is only true in a legacy scenario, as those quick updates for have delivered more new browser features last year than Microsoft delivered over the past 10 years.

IE10 This & That

IE10 PP1 (download) arrives four weeks after the final release of IE9, or about 1 year after IE9 PP1. Also, Microsoft said that it will update the previews every 8 – 12 weeks, which is slower than Google and Mozilla – as Google delivers full new versions every 6 weeks and Mozilla delivers full new versions every 18 weeks. The IE10 release notes mention that there will be at least four platform previews. If our math is correct, then we will see IE10 PP4 in 32 weeks In November 2011 at the earliest and January 2012 at the latest. Add a beta and release candidate to the plan and you get a March 2012 release date of the final, if there will be just four PPs. This seems to be a reasonable assumption, as Microsoft appears to have cut its release schedule of 2 years for IE8 and IE9 in half .

The release notes of IE10 PP1, which, by the way, announces itself as version 9.0.6, also state that the software requires Windows 7 and it does not run with Vista. PP4 will even require an update for Windows 7 and we could speculate what update that may be. Our guess is as good as yours at this point, so we’ll stay away from that. But we do expect IE10 to be released in the time frame of Windows 8 to coincide with the launch of the Windows App Store, which is likely to target the hardware acceleration features of IE10.

If you want to try IE10 on Windows 7, please remember that this is a PP version and does not support many basic features of a browser – and does not include an URL bar. Microsoft also noted plenty of issues if the browser is run next to IE8. It may crash IE8 and show error messages. Expect this browser not to work in several scenarios and do not use it for critical tasks. From the perspective of Browserscope, IE10 PP1 has less features and less general support than IE9. It is a preview and should be treated as such.

New Features

The main changes are under the hood. This preview includes support for CSS3 flexbox, CSS3 grid alignment, CSS3 multi-column, CSS3 gradients on background-images and ECMAScript5 Strict Mode. If we were picky, we could say that the changes aren’t enough to justify a new version of IE10 and reflect exactly the criticism of Microsoft that those quick browser updates aren’t meaningful enough.

There are a bunch of new demonstrations on the IEtestdrive website that are designed to showcase the hardware acceleration capabilities in IE10 as well as the CSS3 features that only work in IE10 and not IE9. There is a good chance that you will be underwhelmed, even if Microsoft considers the changes as progress and “not just activity.”

We have looked quickly at some performance-relevant websites, but could not determine any meaningful differences to IE9. There is not a lot  to see. It is very much work in progress and we would expect to see more substantial feature updates later this year. For now, it is just an update.

Of course, our concern is Microsoft’s decision to drop Windows Vista support. here is a quote from the release blog post: “Browsers that compromise (by spreading across too many OSes and OS versions) face challenges. For example, building a new browser for the ten-year old version of Windows that came with IE6 didn’t make sense to us because of the limitations of its graphics and security architectures. Others have dropped support on Windows XP for functionality that we think is fundamental to performance. As Windows 7 usage exceeds Windows XP’s in more and more countries (link), the sense in building for the future of the Web rather than the past is clear.”

Our thought is that IE10 will deeply integrate with Windows 8 and attach to the Windows App store. If it does not, Microsoft will have to think about a bunch of other features to keep the development pace of IE9 going. By March 2012, we are expecting a totally different Chrome 20 and Firefox 8. the cloud computing race will largely be decided by the dominant browser maker and Microsoft needs a flexible and innovative browser to keep up with its rivals. A few CSS3 features just don’t cut it.

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