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Windows 8 will support future applications: Ballmer

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CIOL Bureau
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MUMBAI, INDIA: According to Steve Ballmer, the launch of Windows 8 later this year will be a big milestone in the history of Microsoft since the launch of Windows 95, which first brought computing into the mainstream.

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Windows 8 is a huge event and we are really re-imagining Windows from the ground up,” Ballmer said, while addressing the Microsoft India Technology Summit 2011 in Mumbai today via a video conference.

He called, “Windows 7 as the best ever product release of Windows by Microsoft.”

However, post-Windows 7 release and shipment, according to Ballmer, the company took on the next challenge to start again from the hardware level to all the way to software and interface.

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We wanted to support not only Intel's powerful processors but also very low power consuming chips. We wanted to support not only PCs but also small form factors devices and tablets. We wanted to support screen sizes that would go from very small like phones to room-size displays,” Ballmer said.

He further added, “We wanted to make sure that we support not only the mouse and keyboards that have been the hallmark of Windows 95 but also touch and pan. We wanted to support applications like Windows that are highly functional and productive but also applications that are just beautiful that you want to sit around and relax with your tablet computers.”

We wanted to support current applications and a new generation of future applications that you guys (developers) will build and distribute through our new store. We wanted to support our users in their professional as well as personal lives,” he stated.

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Giving the overview on how the new Windows 8 will be available across range of devices and applications, Ballmer pointed that Windows 8 will be pushed into new form factors such as phones, data centers with virtualization capabilities through Windows server version 8 and will be moved to cloud with Windows Azure.

Addressing the developer community, Ballmer said, “We have moved from Win32 and .Net to make HTML and Java scripts best suited for first class programming concepts in Windows 8. So when we talk of this re-imagination of the system it's really pretty comprehensive and this re-imagination of Windows 8 will create unprecedented opportunities.”

For Windows 8, Microsoft will target over 500,000 installed base of Windows 7 licences in the first year with the help of partners. The Windows application store will be ready and globally available to offer applications for Windows 8 and Windows Azure.

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Developers will be able to use programming language of their preference to build applications for private and public clouds using Windows 8 platform. Also programmers will able to develop cloud based applications that will support full range of Windows 8 based devices in future.

India, obviously is an incredible bastion of software developers. On a global scale, a huge percentage ideally suggest that 25-30 percentage or more of the all software written in the world is written by people from India — living here and abroad as the talent base is rich and unbelievable,” Ballmar commented on India's role in software development.

He asked the developers across India to re-imagine Windows 8 and see innumerable possibilities for pursuing dreams to build next generation businesses. “I think there's no better opportunity on the planet than Windows 8. I encourage you to download our consumer preview, to start building applications, play with Windows 8 on varieties of different devices,

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It's going to be the best piece of advice, you get this year and biggest opportunity is ahead for you,” Ballmer concluded.







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