Stefan Mileschin

Microsoft has pulled its founder Sir William Gates III from the jungle where he is at war with the evil Dr Mosquito to talk up the miracle of Windows 8.

For those who came in late, Windows 8 will be in the shops in a few days. It is the first version of Windows which we will not be running on the day it comes out since Windows 95.

Clearly having got this message, the team at Vole central has pulled out the big guns to talk it up. In a YouTube interview with Microsoft executive Steve Clayton, Gates calls Windows 8 an "absolutely critical product" that would help extend the Windows franchise's reach to lower-powered and touch devices. We would expect that he praise Windows 8, given that he had a nice word or two to say about ME at the time,

He did mention some interesting things about Vole's operating system direction over the coming years. Gates said that Windows was evolving to be a single platform with Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 sharing a kernel, file system, graphics support, and other elements.

This means that developers can port apps from the desktop/tablet OS to the smartphone OS with relatively little work. The two operating systems will share the same design aesthetic, with Start screens composed of tiles linked to applications so users will not notice much difference

Gates said that people want to consume their mail, reading, video anywhere, and they want it to be awfully simple. But touch needs to be incorporated without giving up the kind of mouse and keyboard capabilities that are natural in most settings.

He said that the major selling point of Surface, the Windows 8 and Windows RT tablets is the flexible keyboard that clicks into place along the bottom of the device.

http://news.techeye.net/software/gat...bout-windows-8