Tag Archives: Windows 8 Beta

Windows 8 Store App Developers Speak Out

All of us know that Windows 8 beta is coming in February along with the release of Windows 8 Store which will also feature free apps at the launch of the store next month.

Last month while previewing the Store Microsoft also started a contest for developers who are eager to bring their creation first up to the Windows 8 Store.The developers who advance to the next levels of the competition would get a private version of Windows 8 build for testing out their apps with a NDA for the same.

ZDNet caught up with some of the developers working to bring the first breed of apps to the Windows 8 store to discuss about their experience with the Windows 8 development.Here’s what some of the developers had to say about it,

Tim Greenfield who has developed PuzzleTouch Jigsaw Puzzles said,

For Windows Phone, I’ve built three apps: (1 game, 1 “entertainment” app, and 1 LoB app). At Vertigo Software, we helped build some of the first Windows Phone apps so I’m very familiar with the platform. Besides building apps, I am also the technical lead for the Microsoft Media Platform Player Framework open source project which includes a version for the Windows Phone. Although the majority of my career has been building Windows apps (both commercial and line-of-business), I actually haven’t worked on many “Windows” apps in the last few years and have primarily been developing web based apps using Silverlight, HTML and JavaScript.

Beau Gunderson who developed Read it Later for Windows 8 store said,

I’ve been a Windows developer for a long time. I started out with a copy of Visual Basic 4.0 a friend’s dad who worked at Microsoft gave me when I was in middle school. I’ve written desktop apps (none of which are commercial) and have worked freelance on some ASP.NET web applications. Most of the Windows applications I’ve written are available on Github:

Some of the common issues the developers had is the lack of proper documentation and some things are documented keeping in mind only one specific computer language.With the updates coming to the windows 8 beta we can expect a vast improvement on the documentation front and some other minor issues to get fixed.

Skype Metro App for Windows 8 Coming Soon

1 Reply

Last year we saw a big acquisition with Microsoft capturing Skype for a hefty amount,Skype a popular VoIP Client for desktop computers has now been acquired by Microsoft.So it was only a matter of time for some latest development news for the Company’s own Operating Systems.We already know that Skype for Windows Phone is already in the works.

Now as spotted earlier by Long Zheng Skype is hiring C# and HTML 5 developers for its Metro App development for Windows 8 operating system.This is what the job posting read ,

“The Consumer Engineering team at Skype is looking for passionate, team-oriented and self-motivated developers to help us build Skype client software for new Windows 8 platform.”

The two separate listings are for C# and HTML 5 developers who will be working to develop the Skype client for the upcoming much hyped operating system.

Checkout the Official Job Listings Here and Here.

[Rumor] Windows 8 To be Released in the Month of October !

1 Reply

For what we all know at the moment is that Windows 8 is coming in the second half of 2012.Talking about more specific dates,if we have a look at the history of launches from Microsoft,October has always been one of the favorite spot to bring in new product,be it Windows 7,be it Window Phone 7.

To add some more to the recent history is a recent report by Pocket-Lint,as while talking with Janelle Poole, director of public relations of the Windows Business Group, said:

“We haven’t talked about the release date and we generally don’t. We are talking milestone to milestone, so for us right now we’re talking about the next milestone being the consumer preview happening in late February.

“One of the things that I think is a good guideline though is we’ve always said that Windows releases come round about every three years and this year will be three years in October since we launched Windows 7. So I think that’s a good guideline to consider.”

So with the manufacturers also lining up their Windows 8 based ultrabooks and tablets during the similar timeline,this might very well turn out to be a fact.We’ll keep an eye on the release of Windows 8,Watch this space for more Windows 8 Scoop.

Texas Instruments To Bring Windows 8 ARM Based Tablets

Some Easter Egg Fun for Windows 8 Developer Preview and Beta

5 Replies

How about some Easter Eggs for your Windows 8?Recently popular Windows 8 leak site Winunleaked revealed some of the hidden Windows 8 features which can be enabled by some tweaking,the AeroLite Glass mode can be activated with a small trick.

Here’s how it goes,

First of all browse through your Windows folders system 32 directory” \windows\system32\ ” to be precise
Then launch an exe file named WindowsAnytimeUpgradeResults.exe
That’s Pretty much it,you now have the Aero Lite Glass Activated on your Windows 8 system.

Checkout the Screenshots Below:

The first image shows the Aero Lite Basic version,while the second image shows up the Aero Lite Glass effect.

Image Courtesy [Winunleaked.tk]

This trick works on the Windows 8 developer preview build and the Windows 8 beta build,so all those who have their developer preview builds up and running on their PC’s can try it out ,for those who want to try it out on Windows 8 beta might have to wait for the month of February when Microsoft officially releases the Windows 8 beta.

Windows 8 Storage Spaces Feature Detailed

2 Replies

The Building Windows 8 Blog brings up new features coming to the upcoming Windows 8 operating system from Microsoft.The latest feature detailed in the blog is the new Storage Spaces feature.

This feature allows us to protect the huge amount of data withstanding the Hardware Failures.The Storage Spaces allow the organization of Physical disks into storage pools,which are easy to expand by adding disks.The interfaces supported are USB, SATA (Serial ATA), or SAS (Serial Attached SCSI),while the volume of the disks can be of any mixed sized combination.

The Virtual disks (read Spaces) also works like the physical disks with other more powerful capabilities like thin provisioning and protection against failures of physical media.

Pools and spaces:

Here’s how it works ,suppose there are a pair of 2TB USB Storage disks and both of them are pooled for subsequent usage,So using this pool we can create multiple Storage Spaces.So after Virtualizing the disks we can use them just like we use the physical storage and can perform operations like Partitioning,Formatting as well as copying the data to the disks just like we do it on the physical media.

Not just that,the spaces also provide some other benefits along with it as well,here are some of the interesting properties of Spaces:

Its logical capacity is listed as 10TB although the underlying physical disks in the pool have only 4TB of total raw capacity. As a result, you no longer need to worry up-front about the size.

Resiliency is built in by associating the mirrored attribute, which means that there are at least two copies of all data contained within the space on at least two different physical disks. Because the space is mirrored, it will continue to work even if one of the physical disks within the pool fails.

The 10 TB mirrored space is provided courtesy a new feature introduced named Thin Provisioning.This Feature reserves the actual capacity for the space only when one decides to use it, So when you are copying some files to Space,the previously allocated Physical capacity can be reclaimed when the files are deleted or whenever the capacity is of no use. This reclaimed capacity is subsequently available for usage by either the same space, or by some other space that is carved out from the same pool. We achieve all of this through architected cooperation between the underlying file-system (NTFS) and Storage Spaces.

Image Credits[Building Windows 8 Blog]

So with thin provisioning you can easily expand the physical capacity as and when required.Whenever the Spaces reaches the threshold of the available physical capacity the Storage Spaces will automatically pop up notification asking to ad more capacity,so then you can add the new physical storage in the existing pool with ease.

Checkout this nicely written article on Building Windows 8 blog for more detailed description of this Feature along with the FAQ’s.

Windows 8 Factory Reset and Refresh Detailed

6 Replies

After a hiatus of almost half a month the Building Windows 8 blog is back with yet another awesome feature of Windows 8 operating system.Detailing two new features in windows8 namely Reset and Refresh.

Most of us are aware about the factory Reset feature in our smartphones which resets the phone now Microsoft is bringing a similar feature for the devices which will be running Windows 8 system.So after a while if the system feels a bit slower than usual then you can use these features to get back to a “Good State”.

This is how the Resetting feature works on your Windows 8 PC:

The PC boots into the Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE).

Windows RE erases and formats the hard drive partitions on which Windows and personal data reside.

Windows RE installs a fresh copy of Windows.

The PC restarts into the newly installed copy of Windows.

So Reset option is for those who want their PC in the condition as it was when first purchased you just have to Reset the PC and you get a clean Windows 8 running on your PC after the restart.

For those who want to Refresh the Windows 8 based PC,Refreshing the PC will keep all the apps downloaded from the Windows 8 store will be kept intact while the other apps installed from other sources will be removed and all the information regarding the removed apps will be save on your desktop.

This is what actually happens when you Refresh your Windows 8 PC:

The PC boots into Windows RE.

Windows RE scans the hard drive for your data, settings, and apps, and puts them aside (on the same drive).

Windows RE installs a fresh copy of Windows.

Windows RE restores the data, settings, and apps it has set aside into the newly installed copy of Windows.

The PC restarts into the newly installed copy of Windows.

Image Credits Building Windows 8 Blog

The time required to complete the processes with different conditions and options chosen while performing the operations.

Checkout Building Windows 8 blog for more details.

Windows Server 8 Beta Setup Screenshots Leaked

10 Replies

A couple of days ago we reported about the Windows 8 beta build 8175 being signed off ,so it was only a matter of time till we get to see the screenshots leak of Windows 8 beta build,but how can we forget yet another release from Microsoft which is also one of the much awaited release are talking about Windows server 8 beta.

As reported earlier by the popular wind0ws 8 leak site Winunleaked.tk the newest screenshots coming from the Windows Server 8 Beta build installation images.

Image Credits[Winunleaked.tk]

According to Winunleaked the beta release comes up with a refreshed dashboard UI and many other features,CES 2012 is going to be the lase CES appearance for Microsoft,so we might get to see a glimpse of their upcoming version of Windows 8 beta build along with some other cool stuff like the Windows Phones.

Acer and Lenovo to Join the League of Windows 8 Tablet in Q3 2012

3 Replies

It’s been a while since we last posted about upcoming Windows 8 tablets slated for launch in the second half of this year.Earlier we reported about Dell,Asus and even HP for that matter planning on bringing the Windows 8 tablet along with Samsung.

According to recent reports from Digitimes two more biggies from the computer industry will be joining the league for the Windows 8 tablet in Q3 2012,Lenovo and Acer would probably bring the Intel’s Clover Trail platform based Windows 8 tablet in the later half of this year,if their upstream Supply Chain sources are to be believed.

According to the sources,

Intel is set to unveil its Medfield processor, designed specifically for Android-based smartphones and tablet PCs, in the first half of 2012. But as Medfield is eclipsed by ARM-based processors in terms of performance and power saving, PC players are putting more hope on Intel’s Clover Trail platform.

So it’s believed that the PC makers would bank on the Clover Trail platform to bring the Windows 8 tablets into the market which is currently held by Apple’s iPad in terms of tablet marketshare.So the launch of Windows 8 with multiple biggies like Dell,Acer,Lenovo,Samsung war of the Tablets is on the Horizon.

[Rumor] Windows 8 Beta Build 8175 Signed Off !

12 Replies

A few days ago we reported about some of the recent screenshots of the pre beta build of Windows 8 and along with that the Windows 8 beta build is nearing its completion by the end of the month of December.

Now as reported by Win7Vista via WZor the Windows 8 Beta build has been signed off and the final windows 8 beta build will be 6.2.8175.winmain.111217 -1215.The build is already doing the rounds on the devices of small close circle of testers from Microsoft.So there’s a chance that we might get a glimpse of it at the CES 2012 event if Microsoft decides to showcase the beta build to the attendees.

In a recent event when Microsoft revealed the Windows 8 store also revealed the tentative Windows 8 beta release slated for February 2012 along with the Windows 8 Store release,but now with this news of Winodws 8 beta already being prepared we might very well see the leaks floating around the web sooner rather than later.

Source: Windows8Italia