When Apple first announced the iPad, Steve Jobs said in the keynote address that the great thing about it was that it ran on OS X. Microsoft is doing something similar with Windows 8. They said at the last Microsoft Build conference that the new operating system was intended to be just the one OS for both tablets that ran Windows and PCs. Which is quite a step away from how Microsoft usually does things. They usually like at least 10 different versions of the same thing. Well, if you routinely tune out when hearing about the new Windows operating system, perhaps you should listen now. There's a lot to like in Windows 8. It does things that the iPad and the MacBook should, but can't. Suffice it to say that when it comes out sometime next year, you'll be a frantic to upgrade Windows 8.
Every successful computing device out there gets that way because it has a unique feature that people need that no one else has. The MacBook air has its anemic profile, of course. But apart from that, since it's a machine that runs on a solid-state drive, it has (almost) instant-on. You press the button and a couple seconds later, it's completely ready for anything you want to throw at it. There are lots of people who want to upgrade to a MacBook Air just for that one thing. You'll want to upgrade to Windows 8 just for this one thing too. Running on a regular laptop with a regular hard drive, Windows 8 starts up in under 10 seconds.
Certainly, no one really thinks to compare iPhone's iOS with Windows Phone 7. However, there is one thing everyone loves about Windows Phone – the interface that's tile-based. It’s strange thing for a full-blown PC operating systems to mimic a phone operating system, but there it is – Windows 8 borrows the successful tile interface from Windows 7. If you're using this on a tablet, it's far more usable than simple icons. Multitasking becomes very easy too. If you're for instance looking at your Facebook newsfeed, you can just dock it to one side of the screen and switch to something else like a music video on YouTube. At the Microsoft conference, they showed a cool way to set a password without a password. You just have to set parts of the screen that you have to touch in the right sequence to unlock your computer.
Heard more about how the cloud is going to take over our computing lives than you’ve actually seen happen? Well, upgrade to Windows 8 and you’ll actually see it happen. Every Windows user gets to tap into Microsoft SkyDrive. Come to think of it, this should be a great way to control piracy.
The best sign that an upgrade to Windows 8 is a great idea? Remember how journalists always simply hate Microsoft? Vista was barely a twinkle in Microsoft's eye (eww!) when the entire journalistic community joined hands to dismiss it altogether. Well, every story that's been done about Windows 8 so far has been a very gushy one.
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