Windows 8 Consumer Preview Hands-On: No Going Back 
How To Get Windows 8 Right Now 
Designing Windows 8, Or How To Redesign A Religion 
All The Latest Tech Gear You Need To Know About 
The New Windows 8 First Touch: This Is Windows? 
I Just Controlled Windows 8 With My Eyes And It Made Me Believe In Technology Again 
Microsoft just announced what its Windows 8 lineup will look like. You’re going to have three options to choose from: Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro and Windows RT. But only two of those will be available as upgrades.
Intel’s released some new details on what its Windows 8 tablets will look like, either later this year or early next, at a conference in Beijing today. It’s going to have two different lines — a traditional 10-inch model and an 11-inch hybrid with a physical keyboard.
It’s Apple, not Microsoft, whose products have long been known for careful minimalism. However, Redmond is evolving, relying heavier on Metro, the simple, design philosophy marked by simple typography and big blocks of colour that is infiltrating most of its platforms.
We covered Bluestacks App Player when it was first released in alpha form last year; an interesting application that lets you run Android apps on the Windows desktop. A beta’s just been released that allows for — so they claim — some 450,000 apps to run.
Microsoft has been adamant that design is central to the development of Windows 8, and early builds have proven that to be true. But so far, we’ve only really seen Windows 8 on a couple of devices, and Microsoft promises the Metro experience will be uniform regardless of screen size or form factor. But how?
How do you predict the future? It’s easy: There’s going to be a Windows 9 in a few years. As for what might be inside Microsoft’s future operating system, however, that’s a whole ‘nother ballgame.
We know Chrome saw the pointy end of the hacking stick (they have those) just days ago at this year’s Pwn2Own conference, but it’s not the only browser at the event to have its insides spooned out, zero-day style. Not one, but two exploits engineered by French security company VUPEN allowed it to execute code outside of the browser’s sandboxed interior. The sad thing is, these flaws date back to Microsoft’s geriatric Internet Explorer 6.
The good news: Microsoft is loosening its strict spec standards to push some highly affordable Windows Phones to the market. The bad news? Those phones are going to be a little bit, shall we say, compromised.
What do you do with a new operating system? You roll up your shirt sleeves and jump elbow-deep into every part of the OS you can get your hands on. You make manual registry tweaks to open up hidden elements of your new OS; you navigate through all of the different configuration options to see what’s changed, what’s new, and what you can personalise to your liking; you devote hours to playing around with all the different features.
If you feel weirdly disconnected from your Facebook profile when you’re not logged in, try out the new Facebook Messenger application, which is available for Windows now. The new app follows the mobile Facebook Messenger applications released last year, and an a version for OS X is reportedly on the way as well.
