TechStuff Looks at Windows 8

the Microsoft computer operating system. Well, actually that's sort of a misnumber, but we'll get into that in a second, or what we know about it since it's so far from release. By the developer release it's Windows eight, which is actually just a code name. It may not be called that once it hits the market sometime in the year. I'm hoping it'll be called Susan, but I doubt it. Um. Mr Ballmer said, get away from him and os named Sue. Yes. Nice a little man in black action right there. Um

so yeah, we're just trying to cash in. Thanks. We don't even really know a whole lot about this upbring system. We know bits and pieces. Um ha ha bits. I see what I did there, but it's really a lot of it will be revealed further down the line. And of course you may be listening to this, in which case you're thinking, oh, wow, boy, did they get that wrong.

It's not our fault. We still we still get every once in a while we'll get a comment on our challenge for people to tell us what all seven versions of Windows were. Yeah, because there are more than just seven. And it's funny because we always get messages like no, no, you're wrong. I'm like, no, I'm not wrong. I took this directly from Microsoft, So I mean, if I'm wrong, Microsoft's wrong, and they're the ones naming it, so take

it up with them. So Windows eight right now, we're just calling it that we know it's because it's the Windows after Windows seven. Yes, but who knows what wacky name it will have when it comes out. But it's really if you've if you've seen any pictures of it or seen any video of it, it's actually a pretty significant departure from the way the Windows operating system works

right now. I mean it's it's like Windows seven wasn't such a huge change from the previous versions of Windows that you felt like you were looking at something totally different. But Windows eight kind of is. Oh yeah, well, I'm actually surprised you didn't quote Berlin at the beginning of this um, because it would be appropriate in this particular instance. Now see Windows eight is right now, uh sort of

going back to one of Jonathan's old favorite words, convergence. Yeah, because it's really uh apparently isn't as say, apparently, of course we're we're still going on what we know of the operating system and things change, you know, but it apparently is designed to be sort of a go between for Windows mobile devices, not Windows mobile devices, but no mobile devices that use Windows and computers that run with desktops and laptops. Yeah, it's actually really interesting to me.

I'm glad that you brought that up, because you could argue that up to a certain point, the smartphone operating systems that you encounter, and even the tablet operating systems you encounter, are trying to emulate the operating systems you find on desktops and laptops, at least as much as they can, given the limitations of the form factor of

smartphones and tablets. Right, I mean, you want you want something that's acting as a foundation for programs, and you want something that's easy to navigate and to you know, you want a certain UH file system built into their A lot of the the models for the operating systems for these mobile devices are based, at least in part off of desktop systems. And here we're seeing a fully fledged operating system that presumably will be on desktops and laptops that is starting to emulate what we find on

mobile devices. So the two are coming together. It's just that, you know, while you might have expected the operating systems for mobile devices to get more and more sophisticated and approach the what we have for desktops and laptops, it looks like it's more like, at least when Microsoft's approach is to make the desktop laptop more like the mobile. And it might be because we are entering this post PC era where people are getting more used to interacting

with an operating system in this sort of mobile model. Yeah. The when I was making my comment about Berlin that's the band, not the city, um yeah, earlier it's because they had a hit with a song Metro and the if you've seen if you've not actually held one of the UH more recent Windows phones using the latest version

of Microsoft software. Um, if you see the commercials at least where you see the little different colorful boxes that you use to operate the operating system, that's what they call the metro interface, and Windows eight appears to be trying to bring that to the desktop and laptop as well. Now I think from what I've read, it looks like you will have the option to go to a more

traditional looking Windows interface, but they're really pushing the metro look. Yeah, so if you turn on a smartphone or or tablet something like that. UH. And you know, every operating system has its own own features and its own UH traits, but in general, they all have a very similar kind

of approach. And that You've got these icons that are on the green, and you select an icon by touching it, and that opens up an app and then you use various gestures to uh to execute commands within that app and UH and you know, this is something that people grasp pretty quickly. And in fact, I've heard a lot of anecdotal evidence that kids pick up on this really really fast. Oh I can, I can. Yeah, it's more than just anecdotal. Yeah, I could say this from personal experience. Well,

that's still anecdotal. It's pretty well you didn't. I didn't do a double blind test, did you. Well that's true, okay, okay, so but yeah, no, I get it. You've got personal experience now for me. For me, it's all secondhand because you know, my dogs still don't get a touch interface.

My cats do. Yeah, uh no, my dogs just don't care the But yeah, the point being that this interface seems to be very intuitive, very easy to pick up, and the louring curve is so easy that unlike traditional brain systems, especially old operating systems, you know, you don't have that huge barrier to be able to pick up a device and just start working on it um And that's kind of the approach with this metro system. And in fact, the Windows eight operating system is built with

touch screens in mind, at least partially. Now that you know, it's pretty safe to assume that we're going to see a lot of different devices you touch screens in the in the near future, including things like desktops and laptops that you can find them already on the market, right. Yeah, So you've got these these devices that traditionally did not use touch screens. You're just worried about using a keyboard

and a mouse. Well, now you've got some out there that have touch screens, and Windows eight is meant to leverage that and make that a a pivotal part of your experience on Windows eight. Now that's not to say you can't navigate through Windows eight with a keyboard and mouse. You you can. It's just that you're not going to have you know, the gestures that you would use on a screen are going to translate into different commands that

you'll use with a keyboard and mouse. So the stuff that would be really intuitive if you had a touch screen might be a little more complex if you're using the traditional mouse and keyboard set up. So, but but since we're moving towards that touch screen world, it's not really something to be concerned about, especially since Windows eight is not gonna be released until when we're gonna have

even more products out there with touch screens. Yeah, I was going to uh, I was gonna say too that um uh, you could tell that they're they're they're just the paradigm. The whole entire paradigm is designed for that too, because, um, where the doc used to be on the traditional interface, it's actually moved over to the left, but I think it's silly. Well I don't know that this is the actual proper word, but i've seen those, uh the icons

referred to as charm. Yes, no, that's that's the official was the set of icons on the Edge user interface which disappears right and you actually use a gesture to move it over. You swipe the screen from the edge toward the interior, and that will bring up the Edge user interface, which has a set of five icons called charms, and those charms have relate to specific commands like search.

So let's say you're in your inside an app. You know, it's not just when you're in the operating system, although it works that way too. Let's say you're inside an app or inside a document and you want to search that document for something. You could do that swipe gesture and it would pull up those basic commands and you can search that way. Um, but you it also works within the operating system itself. So you're just looking at the OS view and you do that that swipe and

you can search for something just like you could. You know, and Windows that has the Windows Search that's in the operating system. It's the same basic thing. It's just built in a a different the interface is different, but the the actual application does the same thing. It's always done. UM. You can also swipe to get a menu bar UM.

You get different different sets of information from UH. Well, actually if you do from the top or bottom of the screen, you should get a list of commands basically contextual commands that you can use in that particular instance, depending on what it is that you're doing. And the apps are full screen, so you know, you're that's that's what you're gonna see when you're using the Metro and you're using there are two different basic types of apps.

They're there are metro apps, which are kind of what we think of when we think of smartphone or tablet apps. You know, these are they tend to be lightweight. They're designed to run within something called Windows run time, which is a virtual environment. UM. And they're written in HTML five or or dot Net programming language. I believe, Yeah, I was gonna say, you can. You can also use the C family see C plus plus, C sharp, UH

and Visual Basic. So these tend to be a little more lightweight in the sense of, you know, they're they're not going to have the full, huge amount of features that you're used to with what the second type of app is called, which is the legacy apps. Legacy apps would be things like if you wanted to use the full Microsoft Office suite with all of the features that come with Microsoft Office, that's more of a legacy app because it's got a lot more depth and breadth to

it than a typical UH app would have. You know, you might be able to get like a simple word processing app as well, which would have limited features compared to all the ones you would get with Microsoft Office. But Windows A will be able to run both of them. It's just that the metro one that's kind of what it's tuned to. And in a way this makes sense to me because, as we've talked about so many times in this podcast, UH, cloud computing is is not going

away anytime real soon now, right. So I mean, so, if you build an operating system that can take advantage of cloud computing, and that the apps on the operating system itself are very lightweight and don't require a lot of resources, you can offload a lot of the heavy lifting to the cloud, and you don't need as many really heavy duty programs on the device. Itself, right, you know, you just have like a very thin client that works

with this cloud computer system. And um, I think it's interesting that Windows eight really seems to be embracing that because when you think about Microsoft, I mean, that's a software company. They're all about making those really uh rich software applications. I was going to use the word compelling, but it's kind of hard to talk about spreadsheets being compelling the average person. Well, yeah, I mean the operating system and the Fist suite are Microsoft's meat and potatoes,

if you will. Um, so, I mean they they have every reason to uh continue to update in and protect those products because they are they bring in quite a bit of income. But it is interesting to note though that there that it appears at this point that there's going to be just one version of Windows moving forward, rather than the multiple versions we've seen in the last couple of iterations. And that version is going to be is going to have to work on both Arm and

Intel's process Yeah. That that is new. Um, before the Windows were just run on anything that's running on x A D six architecture, and uh now it's gonna be running on ARM processors, which are that's that's new that's

kind of interesting. Um it's it's actually that coused a little bit of stir when it was announced because uh, there was there was a lot of discussion about Google working with Intel and Microsoft maybe getting away from Intel a little bit, and it just it's one of those things where everyone's looking around wondering what's happening next in this in the world of of computers, because these are

relationships that span many years. Um. But anyway, they there are there some some other interesting things about Windows eight that I thought kind of you know, just like other versions of Windows, you can run multiple processes all at the same time. You can multitask in other words, and you can flip between the processes, so with a gesture you can go from one to another, which you know for those old time Windows users they're you know, doing all tab all tab to go between. That still works

on the keyboard. And you can also snap, oh sap. Snapping. Snapping though is kind of like flipping. Like flipping would be a little casual uh flick from uh the leftmost edge of the screen and you flick it over and you've got a new um um app showing up. Snap is where you hold your fingers against the screen while you do this, and it will pull up a side by side view of two apps. So that way you can have multiple apps on the screen at one time.

Because yeah, the apps, like like Chris said, these are apps that are designed to go full screen. But if you want to have multiple apps on your screen at once, you can do that. Um. I've seen people who are really good at this, who have you know, They'll have multiple screens, multiple monitors, and then I'll have multiple applications open on each monitor and they're like doing this weird uh minority report thing where they're just looking at all that. I can't do that. I have to have a single

app per screen. I cannot have. I can't stand to have multiple apps in view on a screen at the same time. I want as much screen real estate per app as I possibly can get. I don't. It's just the way I'm wired. I can't. I can't handle it otherwise. So like if you see someone working in a smaller window in a word processor and they've got another window open with other stuff, and I I don't understand you. You must be from a different planet because that is not how I work. Um. But anyway, so you can

still multitask on Windows eight. Uh, it's the developer one has a beta version of Internet Explorer ten included, which upon the beta launch did not support extensions, so you could not run flash in it. Yes, and I'm told, well, okay, I've read some information about that that suggests that that may not go away. Yes, So that might not because they haven't put it in yet. It might be intentionally

left out. It might mean that Microsoft, like another big computer company that rhymes with Shmapple, has decided to really back HTML five over the various UH platforms that extend ht ML's usability. UM like like flash. Flash should be the big example. There's so many websites out there that depend on flash to deliver the content to you. And Uh,

there's a problem with these extensions. The main problem is that they introduce the possibility of security vulnerabilities because they are beyond the control of the the company that is providing either the operating system or the browser. Yes. So if you've introduced vulnerabilities through these extensions, then you are

putting your customer base in danger. So the idea behind HTML five is that HTML five will natively support these features that previously were not supported in HTML, thus the need for extensions, and then you don't have to worry about mucking around with your web browser and adding in elements that could create vulnerabilities. Mucky mucky muckey. So Internet Explorer ten may very well not support flash. It's very interesting. Won't stop you from downloading Chrome? Well at work with

silver Light? Yeah, that's a good question. Really. I mean, I'm amazed that silver Light is still around, tell you

the truth, but it is. I know it is. But even even when it tried to push for uh, you know, massive market acceptance through things like wasn't it the Olympics that Yeah, that that you could watch Olympic footage by by installing silver Light, which is a different video component player well not not just video but rich Internet interface and and again just it's similar to Flash in that respect. It's something that is not natively supported by HTML. You

have to incorporate it into it. It's just that silver Light happens to actually be developed by Microsoft. Another interesting feature is that they have decided to change the way your computer handles things when it's not being used. Um, there's a video I saw when I was doing my research on Windows eight from a Microsoft employee. I think it's actually on YouTube somewhere. Um, and she has a laptop. She's holding a laptop and in one hand in the

battery for the laptop. In the other hand, she said, okay, you need to watch this, and so she plugs it in. And that's a paraphrasing. She didn't say that exactly. I don't think plugged in the battery, flips open the laptop, turns it on, and blamo, it's on. Basically, this is because Windows eight hibernates it. It actually doesn't do it actually doesn't store information the same way um that previous

versions of Windows did. So you're when you're booting, it's not a cold boot, uh you know, like it would be for previous versions of the operating systems. And when it boots up, it boots much faster, um than previous versions didn't. Yeah, there's there's part of the whole process is preloaded, so it doesn't have to go through the

whole uh, the whole routine. Um. Yeah. It's also got the Connected Standby feature, which is a power management mode for the for ARM based versions of Windows eight, so that not not all chips, not all devices are going to take advantage of this, but the arm based ones will and that allows the PC to operate at a very low power level for for long periods when you're

not using it. So, in other words, UM, you don't have to worry about shutting down your system completely if you need to, Like you're gonna go on a car trip or whatever, and you want to be able to to whip the a particular app or map up or something at a moment's notice, but you're not going to

have it on all the time. It should, at least in theory, keep that power level uh nice and stable so that your your battery doesn't just drain away while your computer is in sleep mode or whatever the other devices. You know what, I'm sorry you're gonna say something. Well, I was gonna say that I had read an article by Chloe Albnsius and PC mag in which he had interviewed Gave All, who's the director of program management for Windows, and basically he was talking about how it how it works.

It writes the information to a a hibernate file or hyber file i think it's what they called it, UM, and it just keeps all that that information in the kernel so that it's it's handy that basically the system, the entire system state, is sitting there in the kernel, so as soon as it gets to that point in the boot, it just goes, oh, here's where you are and puts it back up and makes that noise to yep,

it does. I think that would be a little off putting for people who are you know, wait, Windows seven didn't go Actually it doesn't make that noise, but Chris will come up and stand next to you while you turn on your device and make that noise for you personally. Yeah, just let me know when you get When does eight installed? Actually,

that's interesting a sign up sheet? Yeah, uh there. There is a developer preview available and you don't have to sign up to be a developer to get it, so members of the public are free to download the developer preview. What you gotta remember, the developer preview is not fully implemented. It's it is an early build, and there's not all the functionality, is there. Yeah, you could say, try to install a copy in your virtual machine and it could

never actually work, right. I admittedly only tried it a couple of times. One of the two of us had that happen the other one didn't bother to try. Yeah, so not that I won't keep trying, and just so. Another another interesting feature which is again creating something of I don't know that controversy is the right word, but it's creating conversations, is the early load anti malware feature. Oh yes, so Windows eight is going to have built into it an anti malware function that will UH that

will load early in the operating system boot process. And the idea here is that the anti malware will load up before uh some sort of other malware can be initiated during the startup sequence, because a lot of malware that's when it attacks, right, It's when your your machine is booting up. The code has been put into your

machine but hasn't been activated yet until you reboot. So this would be uh sort of like an anti virus software package that boots very very early in the process so that it can try and capture that malware before it can do anything bad. And UH, of course, what this really means is ultimately means that the people who make malware are going to revisit how they make malware and try and make some that can even beat the

anti malware to the punch. I mean that's the nature of you know, creating a security versus the AntiSec movement. I mean, it's it's constantly a battle between the two sides. Uh So. But it is interesting also because it's it's raised questions about, well, if Windows eight incorporates this anti malware directly into the operating system, what does that mean for third party UH computer security firms that that create

anti malware software. Does that mean that Windows eight is essentially saying, hey, you know, you don't need those guys because it's built directly into the operating system. And does it negate that business model for those companies? And uh because you remember, you know, we've said on on this podcast a few times it may seem like a good idea to install multiple uh anti malware programs because you're like, well, this way I've got you know, it's like it's like

hiring five really really sharp guards. They're on the lookout for anything, and and this one guard he's really good at looking at people who are sneaky in the dark, and this other guard he's really good at stopping people

who are really big and brawny. And you know, the idea is somehow being that by by incorporating more anti malware feature programs, we are you know, creating a tighter net of security, when in reality, it means that we have all these different programs that are competing for the same computer resources to run and often will interfere with one another, sometimes identifying each other as malware and causing

your system to crash. So if this is built directly into Windows eight, what happens if you prefer a specific type of anti malware program? Is it going to run smoothly within the Windows eight environment without interfering with this anti malware layer. I don't know. Yeah, of course, Uh it's it's a good idea. You know. Let's say you've booted your computer into Windows eight and it's got the

anti malware functionality and so everything should be okay. Um, that doesn't mean that you can't download a virus and have a non running copy. Uh, So it would be nice to have something go on and lean that off. You know. People who uh use other operating systems in a corporate environment are often asked to put um anti malware software on their computers and they'll, you know, maybe because if you are running say Lenox, and you share

email with a bunch of people whore running Windows. That doesn't mean that just because the the particular malware doesn't affect Linux computers doesn't mean you can't be a carrier and email that either knowingly or unknowingly to Windows people and infect their computers too. So, you know, there's any time that you uh that you can clean off of virus before transmitting it to somebody. And there will be many, many, many millions of computers that are still running older versions

of the Windows operating system without that anti malware feature. Um. You know, so the malware people are not going out of business just for this, at least not right away, not right away. But it's it's one of those things where they're like, well, did Microsoft just put an expiration date on our company? Yeah? Still, they will also have something to do, even if it is completely impervious to

being beaten. Yeah. Well, the to get back to what you were just talking about with with you know, rebooting your computer without having to worry about malware. There are a couple of other features and again this makes it sound a lot more like a mobile device than an operating system for a for a desktop or laptops. We just don't see this that frequently. But the refresh your PC and reset your PC features. Yes, so refresh your PC.

Windows eight will automatically back up all of the data on your machine, um, all your personal files and and if you've customized Windows eight in anyway, it saves all those settings. And then what it does is it reinstalls Windows from scratch and then ports all those settings over into your new installed version of Windows eight. That's really nice. Yeah. So so if for some reason something has become corrupted and you need to be able to refresh your your

PC for some reason, sometimes that happens. Uh, This does it automatically for you, so you don't have to worry about porting all that information over to some external drive so that you can pull it back over once you've reinstalled. And reportedly this only takes a few minutes, like five

minutes to do, which is that's pretty incredible too. Um I guess And now granted that process is probably gonna take longer the more data you have, but but the basic process of reinstalling Windows is about a five minute long process. Now reset your PC. This is a lot like the setting you see on a lot of mobile devices, which is essentially restore factory settings, so you know, you press this little command and it's gonna wipe everything off that computer and started as if it just came out

of the box. That will also be nice. Yeah, I mean there are times again when you want to be able to do that, especially if you've had, you know, some sort of corruption or malware infection. Assuming that the reset old take care of that, you might be able to to go back to a point where you weren't

being plagued by problems. Another hint that the mobile and non mobile worlds are are colliding violently is the Windows Store UM, and which might bear a certain resemblance to another app store by a company that rhymes with Schmapple. That's true, the Schmack Schmap store. Well, that's and I think though, UM, regardless of of who came up with the idea, because I know people will complain now, I mean, I think it's a I think it's a great idea

for UH, for all the operating systems. Frankly, I mean just to have to have a place where developers can put their their apps up there for people to define and download. UM. That's one of the things that I liked way back when we did our Lenox episode. I really like the the ability to find application for Lenox in a feature built into the build of Linux itself. And I said, man, it would be really great if Windows and Matt can do this too. Well, now they can do so. UM Now I think it's I think

it's fantastic to be able to do that. UM. But yeah, they are coming out with a Windows Store that from which you will be able to buy applications. UM. And I'm sure that that will it will be sort of like the UM the other application stores, but it will have you will have the ability to run these apps on your Windows mobile device and your Windows eight computer as well. Yeah. And one other thing that I thought

was really interesting to me. Um, it's very similar to the way operating systems like ubunt to allow you to Uh, you know, you can run Ubuntu from a flash drive. Yes, you can just be thumb drive so you know, you don't have to replace the native operating system on your device. If you want to run Ubuntu, you can just plug in a USB drive and you can either boot it. You know, you can boot Ubuntu instead of your operating system,

or you can even run it side by side. Now, uh, there are a lot of different reasons why you want to do that, but we won't. We don't need to really get into that. The reason why I bring it up is that Windows eight actually has a Windows to Go feature that will allow you to boot into Windows eight from a USB drive. That's really useful as well. Yeah, it's kind of a it's a new approach for Microsoft.

It's not something that you would I would not have expected it from from Microsoft, which that's a great compliment to give a company as as old as Microsoft. Microsoft, of course is like you think about, that's one of the companies that defines the standard. Yes, so when Microsoft does something innovative, that's big news because you don't really think of it as an innovative company really. You think of it as like the dependable company that is sort of the measuring stick that you use it to to

judge other companies by. And when Microsoft, which you know, you think of it as this big, monolithic company that you know, it's really hard to get stuff, uh moving. When something like this happens, you're like, oh, okay, you know what, that's my fault. It's a misconception in my mind of what this company is and what it's capable of doing. It's nice to see that. Now. Whether or not it ends up being a feature that a lot

of people take advantage of, that's another matter entirely. But it does mean that people will potentially have the opportunity to test out Windows eight and see if they like it before committing to that system. Now granted, of course, just like any other Microsoft operating system, eventually, this will

be the standard. Essentially on launch day. That's when you're gonna start seeing it, like all the all the PCs that run Microsoft from that point forward are going to have at least the option of running Windows eight, and then within a year or two it's not even an option,

it's standard. Um to that. To that end, it's it's hard to say since uh, and if you're you're intrigued by this other than the developer preview, you're you want to get your hands on a real copy of Windows eight, It's gonna be about a year from the time of recording this apparently, which is in uh, getting to the end of September two eleven, UM, so it's it's gonna

be probably late summer, early fall somewhere in there next year. UM. It'll be interesting though to see if they if Microsoft decides to release the operating system on a flash drive or some other medium other than DVD. Uh. I would imagine they might even do something similar to what mac os does, where you can download it directly, uh and then install it that way. Yeah, I think that that would be very useful, uh for a lot of people.

Of course, not everyone has a broadband connection. I think you're still they're still gonna have to offer some kind of physical medium, sure, uh, from which they can you know, they can load it onto a computer, but you know it, I'm curious to see whether they're going to adopt something different, um when this actually comes out in stores. Yeah. And I can actually see a time where, you know, we've

talked about again the post PC era. I can see a time where we get to a point where where instead of laptop computers that's what Chris and I tend to use at work, Instead of laptop computers, you get a tablet and you have a docking station at work, and you just dock your tablet when you get to work, and you've got a you know, a keyboard, Bluetooth keyboard

or you know, maybe it's wired to the dock. It doesn't really matter uh that you use and you you use your tablet as if it were a desktop while you're at work, but then when you're done, you can just pop it out and then it's it makes that noise to pop it out, and then you've got your tablet and you still have access to all the information, or maybe you don't, depending upon how they create the system.

I mean, and maybe it's like you have access to some apps while you're at work, and then in order to a you know, secure that data, you don't have access to it when it's not in a stocking station. But I can easily see that happening because again we're talking about a future where cloud computing is taking over. So you don't necessarily have to worry about creating a device that's going to have a massive hard drive, which you know that's that's one of the things that takes

up a lot of space. Even with solid state you know you eventually that's gonna put extra space in a in a form factor that as we've all seen, people prefer the slim, sexy version of the tablet. They don't want just because just because something is capable of doing more stuff doesn't mean that people will go out and buy it because it might look a little clunky to them. You and and depending on what you're doing, you may

not even need, you know, a syrit more serious powerful computer. Um. You know, people who do a lot of video editing and heavy graphics and uh that kind of stuff are still going to prefer desktop computers because they can use that the extra processing power. I mean can't You still can't put a high end processor as high end a processor let me, let me clarify that in notebooks simply because of the heat. Yeah. It generates so much heat that it will actually make the the components within the

device start to malfunction. Uh you have. That's why you've got like these. That's why when you hear about gamer rigs, like the really super advanced ones, you'll hear about things like water cooling or nitrogen cooling. I mean you can talk about some pretty crazy cooling systems in order to keep a handle on the heat. Yeah, just and not just because of the main processor, but also for the graphics processors as well. Um, and also the uh amount

of power that it draws. And of course from there you go down to the tablet and you you have to take another cut because uh, you know, it can't the form factor will not allow you to use as powerful processor. Yeah, you don't even have You may not have any way of cooling that tablet other than you know, waving it around in the air, right, because it's not you know, the form factor doesn't allow you to have

a fan. Right. But depending on what you're doing, you may not need all that kind of power, and an operating system like Windows eight could take advantage of, uh an environment where you say, you know what, I only want to carry this, you know, two pound device or one and a half pound device with me. I don't want to carry a full size laptop. I don't need

a full size laptop. Yeah. I can definitely see this being the future of computing, and not necessarily when I say the future for everyone, but that's not going to be for everyone, and it's not necessarily going to be the Windows eight model because uh when Microsoft is not the only company doing this. So I'm not saying I don't mean to suggest that Windows eight is the future of all computing, but that this model, this approach to computing, to me, looks like a pretty good bet that this

is the future. So it may not be have the Windows brand name, but it'll probably have a very similar approach. Yeah, so I think that wraps up this discussion. Yeah, we might revisit it in the future when we know more detail, maybe when it when it finally comes out, when we when we're actually using Windows eight, which will be sometime around Um. Yeah, my Windows ninety five is growing really

slowly today for some reasons. So guys, if you have any suggestions for topics we should tackle, then I think you should email us that addresses text stuff at how stuff Works dot com, or drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter. You can find us there with the handle text stuff H S W and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuffwork staff as we explore the most promising

and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you