IT and Society: Microsoft shows off its Windows 8 tablet

At the D9 conference in the United States, hosted by All Things D portal, Microsoft gave an early demonstration of the new look and capability of the next generation of Windows, the release of which is due in a year. The new product was unveiled by the President of Windows Steven Sinofsky. For now it's called Windows 8, but he says that's just a code name which will probably change.

The first noticeable change is the start menu, which has been drastically altered to look a lot more like Windows Phone, rather than traditional Windows. As for other changes, the system requirements for Windows 8 won't be more than what's required for a PC to run Windows 7.The President of Windows officially announced that the OS will run on Intel, AMD processors, as well as on ARM chips.

The development platform is based on HTML5 and JavaScript. “Any applications created for a touch (tablet) interface can also work with a mouse and keyboard. When using existing desktop applications, the interface goes to a very Windows 7-like desktop”, he says.

By the time of Windows 8’s final release, the corporation is planning to unveil its Internet Explorer 10, which will take advantage of touch interface for tablets using the OS.

Microsoft doesn’t announce the details of how the tablet OS will run with office and corporate applications.