Windows 8 4 key features for Tablets

Steve Ballmer was at the Dell conference last Friday talking about the future of Windows 8 and trying to get a crowd of 2,000 plus to get behind Windows 8 by focusing on 4 key features that may make Windows 8 standout from the rest.

While we have seen pretty much all of these features before either at the Build conference or in the Windows 8 Developer Preview, Steve focused on 4 main features.

Lock Screen

Ballmer demonstrated the new locks screen which pops up when you’re away from the PC. It displays a “peaceful mountain view” and even though the OS is locked, you can still see prompts for incoming email messages, social network updates as well as others so you know what’s waiting for you when you return to your desktop.

Metro Start Screen

Of course, you can’t demonstrate Windows 8 without showing off the new Metro UI. The new Metro start screen has aroused a lot of complaints and concerns from Windows users. Microsoft have done their best to address these complaints, by defending the Metro UI as well as commenting that Windows 8 is still in a developer preview stage and this Metro UI is by no means that final product that we’ll see Windows 8 ship with.

Metro Live Tiles

Ballmer was also demonstrating to the audience how you can “extract” specific data from a news feed or the stock market to display in a separate tile in the Metro UI. This means that you constantly get up to date information at your fingertips in the Live Metro Tiles.

Windows Server 8

The last thing that Ballmer focused on was Windows Server 8. He highlighted the live migration feature that will let IT administrators move a virtual machine to a physical server without any interruption to the business. Even though this feature did appear in Windows Server 2008, in the new server OS it’s “simpler and smoother”.

I am sure none of these features are a surprise to most of you but to Steve Ballmer these features will either make or break Windows 8. One feature worth noting is the ability to port Windows 7 programs and applications into Windows 8.