17 New Confirmed Features with Windows 8

As the release date of Windows 8 (beta) gets closer, many new features of it end up being leaked and people couldn’t wait to get their hands on it. Microsoft couldn’t stop the leakage of Windows 8 screenshots and features, but I guess they’re now releasing information more willingly.

Here is a list of Windows 8 features, and these are confirmed ones, not rumors.

What’s new in Windows 8?

• Windows 8 (beta) aka Windows Next(beta) is confirmed to release in September (that’s just a few weeks away), although the stable version will be available in 2012.
• Windows 8 will support Tablets too, just like Android and iOS. So, the mobile OS wars won’t be boring anymore.

• Windows 8 will feature a customizable start screen showing tiles of most of used apps (as in the picture above), so you don’t need to keep those shortcuts on your desktop.
• Windows 8 will support web technologies like HTML5 and Javascript. These apps will run just like the normal ones. If you haven’t experienced HTML5 yet, check out Beat The Boot, it’s a game from Google, powered by HTML5.
• Windows Explorer will get a ribbon UI just like Paint, MS Office and other Microsoft products. It will also get a ‘up’ button beside the forward button.

• Windows 8 will come preloaded with Internet Explorer 10, even though most of them might not be interested in it.
• You can integrate Windows 8 with your Live ID, this means all Microsoft products like Hotmail, Live Mesh etc will be easier to manage. Although, this is optional.
• The ‘Time Machine’ feature which is present in the Mac OS is available as History Vault in Windows 8. With History Vault you can backup important files to another drive.

• Another feature ‘System Reset’ will let you to restore system settings to default ones (factory settings). This is useful especially when you find your system unstable and unable to find which software is the culprit.
• If you’ve a Pen drive of at least 16GB size, you can run Windows 8 from it! This feature named ‘Portable Workspace’ let’s you run Windows 8 from a USB (which contains the setup files).

• Compared to Win 7, Windows 8 will take less time to boot with ‘Hybrid Boot’. With Hybrid Boot, Windows 8 keeps certain files pre-loaded, thus, it takes less time to boot.
• Another improvement in the interface section is ‘Aero Auto-colorization’, with this you can predefine the color of the elements like Taskbar, Start menu, Windows Explorer etc.

• You don’t need to use file copiers like Teracopy etc on Windows 8 as the File copying process is optimized, check the full article.
• Windows 8 will support USB 3.0 which promises super fast file copying, as fast as 1 GB/ 5 seconds!

• Windows Appstore is now confirmed, this also means that installing and uninstalling apps will be as easy as pie!
• Built in PDF viewer, no more sluggish Adobe Reader. This is another feature Microsoft took from Mac OS.
• Native ISO and VHD files support, you will no more need 3rd party tools to create and manage ISO files.

Those are the confirmed Windows 8 features with leaked screenshots.

Will Windows 8 be another Vista? Do tell us what do you think.

Source: Building Windows 8