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Gadgets & games [Northern Echo (England)]
[September 17, 2011]

Gadgets & games [Northern Echo (England)]


(Northern Echo (England) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Windows 8 WINDOWS XP has been declining steadily for several years, but its demise can't come soon enough for Microsoft.

Now ten years old - an absolute age in PC-terms - XP was supposed to do the decent thing and die off when Windows Vista arrived. But that was back in 2007 and Vista was such a resource-hungry dog of an operating system that it failed to oust the ageing XP, forcing Microsoft to continue support far longer than it wanted.



It wasn't until the advent of Windows 7 that XP finally met its match. Thanks mainly to new PC sales, Windows 7 now commands 27.87 per cent of the market.

If you've just bought a new computer, you're probably feeling pretty chipper about the operating system on your PC, but Microsoft is set to wipe the smug smile from your face.


This week the company unleashed a new version of Windows - the catchily titled Windows 8 - at its annual Build conference, held in Anaheim, California.

And the interface will come as a massive shock to anyone used to Windows on a PC, because it's almost a carbon copy of the new Windows Phone operating system.

It should be stressed that the version of Windows 8 that Microsoft showed to the press was the tablet version, with features designed for a touch-screen interface, but there seems little doubt that the next version of Windows will be the most radical yet.

The start screen, for instance, does away with the start button on the left hand side of the screen in favour of large, colourful titles. If you want to launch an application, you just touch its icon.

Depending on the screen size, this interface can display about a dozen applications. If you want to see more, you have to swipe with your finger. Yo u can swipe from the left, the right and from the top (or bottom) of the screen.

One unique feature of the tiles is the way they can display constantly updated content. Unlike the phone interface, they can be grouped together (so you could have a productivity group, a media group and a gaming group, for instance) and the screen sticks momentarily as you swipe your way through them to prevent overenthusiastic users from overshooting.

The operating system tries to make multi-tasking easier by displaying two running applications side-by-side, but the screen split isn't even (it's one third, twothirds) and you'll need a big screen to make use of it.

Swiping from the right brings up a small overlay with tools for searching, changing settings, sharing media or returning to the start screen. The search feature is application specific, so it's possible to hook into Tw itter to search for a tweet from here without digging into the application itself. The idea is that developers will create applications that can seamlessly share information with each, making it theoretically possible to access media, music and data pulled from various apps from one common interface.

Microsoft also showed off Internet Explorer 10, which has been designed around the Windows 8 interface and maximises screen size by running edgeto-edge webpages. A swipe reveals your address bar, stop/ refresh buttons and a tab switcher.

To be fair, there's a lot of work still to be done before Windows 8 is ready for prime time and right now it's good to know that Microsoft has finally got to grips with a tablet interface.

Come in Windows XP, your time is finally up.

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