Tech Note: Windows 8

I got an iPad a while back for work and I love it. It's a lot of fun and very handy for me at work. Problem is that when it really comes down to it the iPad is essentially a media device. I could never see spending my own money on one as it is too expensive to just be a fun device, I would need it to replace my laptop. Well this leads me to Windows 8.

From what I've seen so far I think Windows 8 will be all about the hardware. The software is there. The OS is stable and works as advertised, but you will need a good bit of memory and some fast processing speeds to make it work the way people want it to. On top of that we'll all want the battery life that we are use to in an iPad. That's a tough order I would think, but I do believe the capabilities are out there. Let me explain how I see Windows 8 working and why I believe it can compete with the iPad.

Imagine getting up in the morning when the alarm on your Windows 8 pad wakes you up. You grab your pad and go downstairs. With some flip back cover similar to the ones for iPads you setup your pad and while eating catch up on the news, watch NBA highlights, etc all with the touch of your finger. You get dressed and hop on the train for your ride into work. You browse through your work emails to get ready for the day and look over some work documents. When you get to work you dock your Windows 8 pad and it gives you a full keyboard, mouse and dual monitors. You move out of the touch environment and into the desktop environment which looks exactly like Windows 7.

There you stay doing your work. At lunch you undock your device and head out to for a break. You sit down and watch an episode of Adam-12 using the touch interface and your Hulu app, then head back to work where you redock. At 2pm you head to a meeting. You undock and head down to the conference room. There you plug in to the overhead through your HDMI connection and using the Metro (app like) version of Powerpoint give a presentation. A coworker wants you to take a look at some documents they have stored on the network share. You connect to the network drive and open up the file with your Metro version of Word. You save a copy down to your device and work through some edits.

You head back to your desk, redock and finish up your day, putting the updated Word document back on the file share at the end of the day. You have a flight the next day so you print out your boarding pass on the company networked laser printer, download some documents you want to work on and put a copy of some stuff you'll need on a thumb drive for a backup. You undock and head home.

Once you're home your wife grabs your pad to take some quick video of the kids and then post them up to Facebook. After everyone has headed off to bed you put your pad into a portable dock with a touchpad and keyboard and do a little work to prepare for the next day, printing off some stuff you need on the home USB printer. Then you undock it and head upstairs where you and your wife can't decide between the next episode in your X-Files marathon on Netflix or watching the NCAA tournament.

Microsoft has built an operating system to let you live this life with a single device. The question is whether or not the hardware will exist to give you this life. How much would you pay for this hardware? How quickly would you throw your iPad out the window to get something that would let you walk through your day doing everything you need and want to do? If Microsoft can work with their partners to bring this vision to life it will not just follow the iPad, I believe it will be the true first step toward what our future will be.  If the hardware isn't their to make it competitive to current laptops and iPad combinations, then it will flop.

Just a quick note.  I've been running Windows 8 on an older computer with 1G RAM and a Pentium D processor.  It has performed as well and as stable as Windows 7.  This gives me hope to think that this OS will be even more stable and robust once it moves into production.  One decision I would like to see Microsoft rethink is the decision to pull the Start button from the Desktop mode.  From what I've experienced when I'm working I really only want to be in the desktop mode.  Over time as all the apps we use on a daily basis move into the Metro world I can see abandoning the Desktop environment, but for now I think it is the best environment for doing actual work.