Articles about Windows 8

Microsoft's stock is off to a rocky start this morning, down 3.2 percent as I post, on news that Steven Sinofsky is out. Shares opened at $27.02, down from yesterday's $27.99 close. The stock immediately fell, to $26.75, in early trading.

Sinofsky's departure came suddenly late last night, in an announcement from the company. The high-profile divisional president is credited with salvaging Windows after the disastrous Vista release in early 2007. Successor Windows 7 launched in autumn 2009 and received reasonable reception. Team Sinofsky followed up with Windows 8, RT and Surface tablets less than three weeks ago. The suddenness of his departure, right at the start of such a big product launch, is uncharacteristic of Microsoft.

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Microsoft has a longstanding tradition of promoting executives responsible for Windows soon after a new version releases. But in a stunning turnabout, Windows & Windows Live president Steven Sinofsky is finished, gone effective immediately, according to a late-evening announcement by Microsoft. To say I'm stunned is an understatement.

Sinofsky is the architect responsible for Windows 8 and RT, which launched on October 26. The backstory here must be something. Consider the timing, less than three weeks later. There's no transition. It's typical for Microsoft senior executives to go gracefully over X number of months following an announcement like this. Yet he's gone, as if fired or departed following a power play. I have no inside scoop at the moment, but will seek answers to the question many people will ask: "What now?" Sinofsky's departure forebodes during a crucial product launch.

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Microsoft's premier VoIP, chat, and video call software Skype has received updates across the board for the new generation of Windows products. Monday, Microsoft released a new preview build of Skype for Windows Phone 8, following up on the app's announcement two weeks ago.

The new preview build includes all of the basic Skype functionality: free Skype-to-Skype voice calls over 3G and Wi-Fi, group instant messaging, free video calls to other Skype Users, and outbound Skype dialing.

Caveat from Microsoft: “Some capabilities listed…are work-in-progress and may not function consistently. This includes, but is not limited to: call reliability and the ability to receive incoming calls and chat notifications when outside of the app.”

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Second in a series. Welcome to this week's installment of the new "best Windows 8 apps" series here on BetaNews. The first post went live on Sunday but we decided to move the series to Friday instead, which means that there are only five days between posts this time. All posts of this series will be posted on Friday from now on.

The links point to Microsoft's Windows Store, which offers detailed information about each app. To get an application, open the Windows Store on your computer and type the name as listed on the store front to find the program and install it on the system.

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Launch Windows 8 and the first change you’ll notice is that it boots to the new Start screen, rather than the desktop. And, perhaps more annoyingly if you prefer the more traditional environment, there’s no standard option to change this.

A single click on the Desktop tile is all it takes to switch manually, of course, so this isn’t the biggest of hassles. But if you’d rather set up your system precisely as you like, and boot directly to the desktop, then StartOnDesktop is perhaps the quickest and easiest solution around.

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The Start screen is without doubt one of the major new features of Windows 8. It may come as a surprise that the Start screen's customization options are not as extensive as those made available on the desktop. There are, for instance, only 20 designs that you can select for the Start screen's background, opposed to an unlimited amount of custom wallpapers or desktop backgrounds that you can add to the Windows desktop. The color scheme too is limited to 25 different pre-configured schemes, while you are not limited to fixed color schemes on the desktop.

Stardock, the creators of Start8, a popular Windows 8 Start menu program, have created Decor8 to tackle the issue. Decor8 introduces options to change the appearance of the operating system's Start screen in a way that goes beyond what Microsoft has envisioned for it.

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The respected system benchmarking and analysis tool SiSoft Sandra has been updated to the 2013 version bringing not only support for Windows 8 but a raft of other enhancements. Of course, support for the latest version of Microsoft’s operating system is only to be expected, so it’s interesting to look elsewhere to see where updates have been made. Users of one of the commercial version of the program can take advantage of a new update notification system that provides details of available updates for drivers and BIOSes.

SiSoft Sandra is a valued benchmarking utility and the 2013 release includes changes to the way benchmarking is carried out. It is always possible that a particularly low or high benchmark result comes about as a result of a problem with a piece of hardware. A new Device Performance Certification compares the benchmark results for different devices with other Sandra users to determine average results, making it possible to weed out results which are unusual one-offs.

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Windows 8 ships with two versions of Internet Explorer 10. First, the regular version that runs on the desktop and packs all the features one would expect from a browser, and then the Start screen version of IE10, which is a plug-in free version that is limited in what you can do with it on the Internet and locally.

Microsoft has integrated Adobe's Flash Player natively into Internet Explorer 10, but there are again differences in the implementation between the desktop and start screen version of the browser.

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The Windows 8 Modern UI looks great at first, but start using it and you’ll soon notice a problem. No matter how large your display, there’s no longer any way to view and access more than two apps at any one time. The old ability to organize windows more or less as you like simply no longer applies in the app world.

If this feels like a step backwards to you, though, help is at hand in the shape of Toolbox for Windows 8, an interesting free app that provides 9 tools of its own, and allows you to arrange and use up to 6 of them on the screen at any one time.

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Microsoft Surface with Windows 8 Pro is a pricing mystery. The Redmond, Wash.-based corporation revealed the price for the ARM-powered branded tablet, but left its more powerful counterpart --the one equipped with Windows 8 Pro-- unpriced. But recently, information on the latter surfaced on a German website.

Microsoft Surface with Windows 8 Pro was introduced to the Notebook.de "Surface tablet" lineup, and it is currently available for pre-order in two storage options. Pricing for the entry-level model that comes with 64GB of internal storage starts at EUR809 including VAT (Value Added Tax), and the version with 128GB of internal storage runs for 909EUR including VAT. The 64GB Microsoft Surface with Windows RT runs for EUR699 on the same German website.

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AT&T has already officially told us of two new Windows Phone 8 handsets coming to their service with the Nokia Lumia 820 and 920, both of which will soon launch. Now the company has unveiled two tablets as well -- one running the new Microsoft operating system and the other Android. The company seems to be staying on the Microsoft bandwagon by adopting Windows 8 tablets and perhaps they see an opportunity to hitch their wagon to a growing platform. The mobile carrier today, not only announced it will launch the new Samsung ATIV Smart PC, but also hedged its bets with an Android tablet in the form of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1.

Samsung has been in the news a lot recently with the Apple apology and news of their sales numbers for the Galaxy Note 2. With all of the public attention Samsung has received it seems the devices could be hits for AT&T. After all, the Apple lawsuits really provided some PR for their rival and, as the saying goes, "there is no such thing as bad publicity". Then again, price is everything and AT&T isn't doing their customers any favors here. Here are some specs and the prices AT&T will be offering, as well as their release date.

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German remote-support developer TeamViewer GmbH has publicly released the first beta of TeamViewer 8, its cross-platform, free-for-personal use remote support and control tool.

Version 8, which is currently only available for Windows and Mac, debuts alongside TeamViewer Touch for Windows 8, a dedicated full-screen app for Windows 8 users wishing to connect to other machines, while the new desktop beta comes with support for multi-touch gestures, Mac Retina displays and the ability to record both sound and video during a remote session.

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Whatever you think about Windows 8, there’s no arguing that Microsoft has pulled out all the stops when it comes to pushing it. Cut-price upgrades, pop-up Microsoft Stores, TV ads, and a $500 million global marketing blitz (the largest in the company’s 37 year history) means it’s all but impossible to miss the new operating system.

And Microsoft is getting creative with its marketing too. Over the weekend the tech giant set up a giant slide at the Bluewater shopping center in the UK, providing shoppers with a "fast and fun" alternative to taking the stairs.

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First in a series. Welcome to this new series here on BetaNews where I'll take a weekly look at some of the exciting new apps released for Windows 8. The overview does not include games and will be limited to around 10 apps per week to keep things manageable.

Microsoft launched Windows 8 on October 26, introducing the new Modern UI. To get supporting apps, you need go no further than the built-in Windows Store, which also is the only place you can get them. To start off the series, here are 10 apps that were recently published to the Windows Store.

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Microsoft's BUILD 2012 conference began October 30th and ran through yesterday, November 2nd. While the event is mainly for developers and IT professionals, there is always some exciting news trickling out that matters to the end-user. This year we saw a lot of news surrounding the company's Azure cloud platform, as well as Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. Microsoft even held a "Hackathon" with prizes for developers present at the show.

In all, this was one of the more exciting and busier developer conferences that Microsoft has held in years. Perhaps that was due to the newly designed operating system that breaks the mold set way back with Windows 95 and the new ethos that everything should be capable of moving to the cloud.  So, what did we learn?

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