Ballmer Shows Off More Windows 8 at Dell World - The UpStream

Ballmer Shows Off More Windows 8 at Dell World

posted Sunday Oct 16, 2011 by Nicholas DiMeo

Ballmer Shows Off More Windows 8 at Dell World

If you haven't heard by now, there's this really great new product coming out soon called Windows 8. It pretty much will unify the tablet, PC and smartphone and make them all one big happy family that talk to each other every day (don't forget about the Xbox 360, too).

Just last month at Microsoft's //build/windows Conference, we were given the Windows 8 Preview for developers to get a sneak peek to start building some new applications. Quickly recapping, we were given a glimpse into some new features, a new Metro user interface and many other things that really make Windows 8 one of, if not the only platform, to develop on in the future.

However, the preview also left us with more questions than answers. Good news for my curious ones: Dell World 2011 was this week and Steve Ballmer himself was able to show off a couple of new, cool things that we can get excited about and look forward to.

We have the details after the break.

One of the questions on everyone's mind was how well Win8 would handle notifications and task management. Ballmer let us in on a little secret called the Lock Screen. This concept displays your alerts such as new emails, messages and social network updates as neat little icons with a count of how many of each.

He also showed off the much-talked about Metro UI, which we've all come to know and love as either the Zune HD or WinPho7-inspired design. Ballmer played around with the Start Screen and the things you can do with it. The 2,000 attendees at the event saw how easy it was to make any and all information you want appear as quick as possible in its own tile.

From there, he went on to demonstrate Windows 8 Server concepts. We saw Live migration go to a whole new level from where it began in Windows Server 2008 R2. For those who do not know, Live migration is the ability to move most of the application, operating system and data of a virtual machine to a new physical location ahead of time, all without you needing to do anything. From there, the remaining parts at the initial location are paused and moved to the new location in less than a second. It optimizes virtual machines to the point where skilled VM admins aren't the only ones who can do these functions anymore, as Windows Server 8 looks to make these tasks easier. Basically, the demo made it seem that any Windows Server admin could handle the process of finding a virtual machine, selecting a new host and moving it in just a few clicks.

All in all, that's more exciting news and features for Windows 8. With us getting closer and closer to seeing the beta release, what features are you most looking forward to? Let us know in the comments.

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