Articles about Windows 8

I lost hope for Windows 8 last night, after visiting my local Best Buy store and seeing gads of cheap computers vying for customers' attention and losing it to tablets and smartphones. The prices are insanely low, which is more surprising because Microsoft has a new operating system that's supposed to generate demand and lead to market innovative touchscreen and convertible designs that offer real benefits to buyers and higher margins to manufacturers and retailers. Ba! Humbug! Gimme Grinch. There's no Santa coming to this island of misfit toys. There, have I mixed enough metaphors to make the point?

This morning, I looked at PC prices from other retailers and the shock is greater still. I'll look first at Best Buy, which has some terrific bundles, starting at $299.99, for Windows 8 Dell or HP laptop, case, mouse, USB stick and security software (with 12-month subscription). Is that too much for you to spend? Best Buy has a Toshiba model for $269.99 with AMD dual-core processor, 15.6-inch LED display, 2GB RAM, 320GB hard drive, DVD burner, WiFi and all the ports you'd expect. For $329.99, you can move up to Intel processor, 4GB RAM and 500GB with a Samsung Series 3 laptop. At my local store, boxes fill the main aisle adjacent to the tablets. Meanwhile, Best Buy tucks expensive Ultrabooks further back, in a smaller side-isle display area almost anyone could miss.

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SlimWare Utilities, makers of SlimCleaner, is hosting a special-access beta for its newest software product, SlimImage, and BetaNews readers are invited to be among the first to try it out.

SlimImage integrates directly with Windows 8 to preserve and safeguard a computer’s operating system, applications, files and documents independently. SlimImage is like a time machine for Windows 8 devices, incrementally backing up personal documents and files through versioning, while simultaneously, but separately, imaging the Windows 8 operating system and installed applications. In this way, SlimImage solves the problem of users losing data and personal documents when reinstalling their operating system in order to correct a system malfunction or crash.

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Seventh in a series. Welcome to another episode of what's hot and new in Windows Store. This week we have seen the release of a couple of official apps, Adobe Reader and Yahoo! Mail for instance, that made an appearance in store.

Other companies like Google or Facebook are monitoring the development of Windows 8 before they commit resources to building apps for the operating system. It is likely, however, that we will see additional official app releases for Microsoft's operating system in the weeks to come.

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I won't lie and say I didn't see this coming -- after all, Microsoft's Live Mesh app has been on life support for some time. Still, it hurts to see it go.

Back in August, Microsoft began overhauling its Live services, along with other changes in its transformation to prepare for Windows 8. When it released the latest iteration with a name change from "Live Essentials" to "Windows Essentials 2012", it was a scaled back array of apps that did not include Live Mesh. The writing was on the wall.

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Lenovo on Tuesday announced the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch, the Windows 8-optimized version of the X1 Carbon Ultrabook it debuted in August for the 20th anniversary of the ThinkPad.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch has a 14-inch touch display, weighs 3.4 pounds, and has a thickness of 20.8mm. Like the non-touch version, it includes a Lync-optimized 720p face-tracking camera, fingerprint scanner, an eight-hour battery, and optional 3G mobile broadband.

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Microsoft might want all users of Windows 8 to use its new tiled interface, but if you really don't like it, or it's the one thing that's preventing you from switching to the new OS full time, there's a clever hack which will disable it for good -- or until you want to switch back, at least.

Ex7ForW8, or "Explorer 7 for Windows 8", is a wrapper created by a developer named Tihiy which basically allows Windows 7's explorer.exe to run on the new OS. Once installed and activated it will take users straight to the Windows 7 desktop upon boot up, and when I say "straight to" I mean it. The new UI doesn't load at all. The wrapper doesn't modify any system files or system protected registry entries, and you can switch back to the Windows 8 UI at any time.

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Sixth in a series. Every seven days we look at some of the best new app releases for Windows 8. This week's releases include Amazon and Nascar official applications, as well as a selection of mostly media-orientated offerings.

Microsoft has added a top-paid category to select localized stores that displays top-rated paid applications. It is likely that this will be rolled out eventually to all stores.

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On the heals of yesterday's smartphone forecast, the soothsayers at IDC are back with another bold, brash, and probably foolhardy prediction -- this time for tablets. Once again, Microsoft plays third fiddle to Apple and Google. In a market so fast changing, no one should take any 2016 forecast seriously. But, hey, clients don't pay IDC for doing nothing. Is there a refund policy, because few analysts (okay, none really) get the numbers right. IDC has revised its forecast at least three times this year. Now what does that tell you?

Let's start with the newest revision and then look back at how IDC got the numbers wrong and why those four years hence are probably worthless, too. For this year, the firm predicts 122.3 million tablets shipped, up from 117.1 million forecast in September. Yeah, three months ago. That number revised 107.4 million made in June. You can see where this is headed, right? No surprise, 2013 is higher, too: 172.4 million, up from 165.9 million in September and 142.8 million in June. For 2016, new forecast is 282.7 million, up from 261.4 million in September and 221.1 million in June.

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HP revealed the pricing for its initial Windows 8 line-up in late October, and today the company introduces another model designed to run Microsoft's latest consumer operating system. The EliteBook Revolve is described as a convertible tablet/touch-enabled notebook, aimed at business and government use, and with support for legacy applications.

The company is evasive when it comes to detailed specifications, though, giving very little away. Not overly surprising considering the same thing happened with the ElitePad 900. However, HP does say that the EliteBook Revolve comes with an 11.6-inch HD display protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 2 (with the resolution likely to be in the 1366 x 768 territory). Processing power comes from third generation Intel Core processors, suggesting Core i3 to Core i7 CPUs. Solid state drive options, coupled with Intel Rapid Start Technology, are available in a choice of sizes up to 256GB. There’s also a 720p HD camera onboard; WWAN (Wireless Wide Area Network); USB 3.0; DisplayPort and NFC (Near Field Communication).

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Microsoft recently announced 40 million Windows 8 licenses through the end of November 2012. The verdict is not in yet if that is a big, an okay, or disappointing number. It is also not clear what is meant by that. Are the 40 million licenses retail sales or business to business sales? Or both?

We need to look elsewhere for now to evaluate the success of the operating system.

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With the advent of advances in technology and the increasing power of process, we are witnessing a tremendous transition in the design of user experiences and interface design in software development. Of particular interest in this article is the culmination of natural user interface design as it relates to the current crop of touchscreen laptops made possible by Windows 8.

One of the things I have noticed as more and more tech sites review touchscreen laptops is the increasing amount of comments such as, "I would never touch a screen on a laptop" or "why would anyone ever need to touch a screen on a laptop?" The problem with the comments, the thinking is limited by mouse and keyboard. Windows 8 is the first operating system to force us to move beyond this thinking when it comes to using traditional computing devices like desktops and laptops.

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Fifth in a series. Welcome to this week's look at some of the best apps released over the past seven days for Windows 8.  Before we start, I'd like to quickly explain how you can browse the newest applications in Windows Store as the question came up recently.

All you need to do is open Windows Store, type * to search for all apps, tap on the enter key and change the sorting for relevance to newest. This displays all apps sorted by date they have been added to the store starting with the newest entries.

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Every time Microsoft launches a new operating system there’s one phrase you’re guaranteed to hear: "This version of Windows is outselling its predecessor". Microsoft claimed Windows Vista got off to a fast start, shifting more than 20 million copies in two months -- some three million more than XP sold in the same time frame. Windows 7 of course comfortably outsold Vista, and recently Tami Reller, finance and marketing head of the Windows business, announced that Microsoft sold 40 million licenses for Windows 8 to date, adding, "Windows 8 upgrade momentum is outpacing that of Windows 7". Of course, of course. The message here is clear: every version of Windows is a success. But how successful is Windows 8, really?

We don’t know. That’s the bottom line. When Apple says it’s sold X billion apps we know that’s true because sales go through the App Store and are counted. When Microsoft says it’s sold 4 million copies of Windows 8 in the first few days, or 40 million licenses to date, we have no idea what that means in terms of actual sales. Consumers activate Windows when installing it, so Microsoft will know how many activations it's had, and yet that figure, the one we know to be trustworthy, has yet to be revealed. There’s a lot of talk about how poorly Windows 8 is doing. An activations figure, if decent, would silence the critics. But there’s no sign of it.

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Yesterday Microsoft officially unveiled the price of Surface with Windows 8 Pro. Shortly after the Redmond, Wash.-based corporation revealed another bit of key information which was previously missing from the spec sheet -- battery life.

Unlike it's Windows RT sibling, which actually manages to deliver relatively decent battery life, Surface with Windows 8 Pro only lasts roughly half as much according to Microsoft. Prospective buyers can expect between four to five hours of cordless operation if the former's results are of any indication. The reason for the unimpressive performance is undoubtedly the Intel Core i5 processor and high-definition 1080p display.

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No sooner had Microsoft revealed the cost of self-branded tablets running Windows RT than doomsayers started crying pricing foul. The 64GB model will sell for $899, starting next month, and the 128 gigger for $999. I've seen several blog posts gleefully whack Surface Pro pricing as being way too high. They're wrong, in part by the Apple device comparison they make.

I asked Stephen Baker, NPD's vice president of industry analysis, about Surface Pro pricing, whether it's just right, too high or too low. "Interesting question though because most of what I have seen has compared it to the high-end iPad". But Microsoft has higher competitive ambitions: MacBook Air, and even Windows ultrabooks. That's the comparison I make and told Baker so. There, the tablet sits just fine. The company priced Surface RT against iPad. Surface Pro squares against Apple's thin-and-light laptop with 11.6-inch display.

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