Desktop Mode
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The desktop portion of Windows 8 feels largely unchanged
from previous versions, with some notable exceptions. The start button isnt
present in the Consumer Preview. In Windows Explorer, Microsoft has introduced
a version of the ribbon interface already present in other Microsoft products.
Those who hate the ribbona significant population, given the comments about it
on Microsofts official Building Windows
8 blogcan perhaps take consolation in how Windows engineers have
attempted to streamline it.
Despite those tweaks, the desktops placement behind the new start screen makes it feel like something of an afterthought. For tablet users
and those who only want Windows to run select apps, thats probably fine. It
remains to be seen how power users will react to this variation.
Certainly Microsoft has designed Windows 8 to play well on a
wide variety of machines. System recommendations for the Consumer Preview
include a device with a 1GHz (or faster) processor, 1GB RAM (32-bit) or 2GB RAM
(64-bit), 16GB available hard-disk space (32-bit) or 20GB (64-bit), and a
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 (Windows Display Driver Model 1.0) or higher driver.
During a keynote discussion at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo
in October 2010, a moderator asked Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer about the
companys riskiest bet. The next release of Windows, he replied. Around the
same time, now-departed Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie posted a
long note on his personal blog in which he described a coming inflection
point that would bring a future dominated by devices connected to the cloud.
Those devices, Ozzie added, would take forms beyond
traditional desktops and laptops: At this juncture, given all that has
transpired in computing and communications, its important that all of us do
precisely what our competitors and customers will ultimately do: close our eyes
and form a realistic picture of what a post-PC world might actually look
like.
Microsofts response to that post-PC world is finally upon
us. If the companys bets on a more mobile-centric interface pay off, then it
could sell hundreds of millions of copies of Windows 8. If not, then it has the
tech-world version of New Coke on its hands.
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Nicholas Kolakowski on Twitter
