Windows 8 is so conceptually and paradigmatically different from its predecessors that it’s actually quite hard to mentally grasp. Is it a desktop OS, tablet OS… or both? What about phones; it runs on ARM tablets, so what about ARM smartphones? Will it eventually replace Windows Phone 7? Windows 8 really is a re-imagining of what Windows is, and something of a rebirth for Microsoft, so you would be forgiven for not knowing the answers to these questions. There’s a slew of really cool features that have been drowned out by the introduction of Metro — security improvements, power consumption tweaks, cloud integration… and more!
Read on, and we’ll do our best to explain exactly what Windows 8 is, and more importantly what it isn’t.
- Windows 8 will not run equally well on ARM and x86
Yes, Windows 8 will run on both ARM (Snapdragon, OMAP) and x86 (Intel, AMD) processors, but the experience will be very different. Microsoft isn’t expecting Desktop (Win32) software developers to port their programs to ARM; instead, ARM devices will be almost 100% Metro-centric, with apps written in platform-agnostic C++, C#, and JavaScript, and utilizing the new “Windows Runtime” or WinRT for short.</p>There’s also the simple fact that ARM chips are only a fraction of the speed of x86 Intel and ARM CPUs. Even the fastest quad-core Nvidia Kal-El processor is still a few years away from being comparable with Core i or Fusion APU processors. 
The Windows 8 Metro, tile-based interface is designed specifically for low-power tablets, and touch-enabled computers
Despite Microsoft’s reassurances that the new, tiled Start screen will feel at home on keyboard- and mouse-driven computers, the entire interface was designed from the ground up to be a tablet- and touch-first interface. To this end, except for some nice screen transitions, there are actually no fancy graphical effects in Metro — no drop shadows, no transparencies, no 3D elements — perfect for the low-power ARM chips that (thus far) dominate tablets.
Windows 8 will be the most secure Microsoft OS ever
In Windows 8, Windows Defender — the anti-spyware service that is installed by default on all Windows 7 machines — is being bumped up to a full anti-virus/anti-malware suite, and in fact it looks almost identical to Microsoft Security Essentials. If you install another anti-virus or anti-malware suite, Windows Defender will turn itself off.Internet Explorer’s “SmartScreen” technology, which blocks known malware from running, now protects the entire system by default, irrespective of what browser you use.
The move away from BIOS towards UEFI — Unified Extensible Firmware Interface — means that Windows 8 also provides anti-malware protection at boot time: if you try to boot while an infected USB memory stick is plugged in, Windows 8 will warn you and refuse to load.- Windows 8 will boot in just a few seconds
The combination of UEFI and some other slipstreaming to the boot process means that Windows 8 will cold boot in just a few seconds. This is fairly inconsequential, though, as Microsoft wants you to hibernate Windows 8 rather than shut it down; especially if you’re on a tablet where instant-on is a necessity. - Windows 8 will have built-in “Factory” Reset and Refresh
In an another delightful twist, Windows 8 will have two features that will amaze and delight everyone: Reset and Refresh. Reset restores Windows 8 to its base, just-like-new state. Refresh is similar, but it preserves all of your documents. The idea is that Reset is perfect if you’re about to sell your device, or if it’s completely unusable — and Refresh is designed for Windows 8 computers that are a little buggy; a driver conflict, a malware infection, and so on. In both cases, you just hit the Refresh or Reset button from the Control Panel, and a few minutes later you have a shiny-new computer. 
Windows 8 (or at least the Server version) will feature Windows To Go, a bootable “live CD”
In Windows 8, you’ll be able to plug in a blank USB stick and simply push a few buttons to turn it into a bootable Windows 8 installation — including a copy of your files, and possibly a copy of your installed programs too. This is likely to be a Server feature — it would be great in the enterprise — but it would be very cool for power users (Windows 8 Ultimate) who want the ability to turn any computer into a secure workstation.
To learn more about Windows To Go, check out our hands-on video review.- Windows 8 Metro will be powered by Internet Explorer 10
The Metro interface is powered by the Trident rendering engine and Chakra JavaScript engine from Internet Explorer 10. The runtime stack has also been rejigged so that full, “native” apps can be written in HTML and JavaScript. This means that there’s actually three instances of IE10 in Windows 8: Metro and Metro apps, Metro-style IE10, and full-blown Desktop IE10.
Read more about Windows 8, Microsoft’s browser-based OS. 
Windows 8 will feature the Windows Store, which is just like the iOS or Mac App Store
Metro apps are all secured by a sandbox with severely restricted functionality — and that makes them perfectly suited to a safe-for-all-the-family, moderated-by-Microsoft Windows Store. Metro apps will only be available from the Windows Store — you won’t be able to download them from the internet — and you’ll also be able to buy old, legacy, Desktop apps from the Store too.
Read how the Windows Store is better than the iOS App Store.- Windows 8 will sync all of your photos, files, and settings to the Windows Live SkyDrive cloud
Further cementing its status as a mobile OS, and no doubt taking a cue from Apple’s iCloud, Windows 8 will feature very tight integration with the cloud. In Windows 8, you log in with a Windows Live email address and password — then, whenever you edit a file, take a photo, or get a new Angry Birds high score, it’s synced with the cloud. From Microsoft’s demos, the synchronization occurs almost instantly.
The idea is that you will have multiple Windows 8 machines — a tablet, a laptop, a couple of desktops — and your files will always be kept up to date via SkyDrive. As a corollary, this means you’ll be able to access your files and photos from any computer with a web browser, too.
Is the world (and our internet connections) ready for a cloud-oriented OS, though? - Windows 8 will be more power efficient and resource-friendly
Taking another leaf out of Android and iOS’s playbook, Windows 8 introduces a new “suspended” state for applications. After losing focus, an app becomes suspended, which keeps it in memory but prevents it from using any CPU cycles — in other words, it saves power. Apps — like background music players — will be able to signal to the OS that it shouldn’t be suspended, too.
Windows 8 as a whole has also received tweaks that lower resource usage, which will decrease overall power consumption — and there’s a bevy of new power management options that you can tweak, too. 
Say goodbye to the Start menu, and hello to Windows 8′s “Charms”
Along with the Metro Start screen (which completely replaces the Start menu), every app, page, or screen now has a unified “Charms” menu. On touch devices, this menu pops up from the right; on mouse-and-keyboard computers, Charms emerge from where the Start menu once was.
From the Charms menu you can access Search, Share, Start, Devices, and Settings. Share is probably the most interesting option: depending on your context, it lets you send URLs, screenshots, contacts, and so on, from any app… using any app. It’s very similar to Android’s Share feature, but it works from any Metro page. Devices gives you access to any connected device (allowing you to easily print from any Metro page, for example), and Settings sends you to the current app’s configuration panel.- Windows 8 will have hundreds of other features that bring it up to parity with other OSes
Finally, there are tons of changes might not seem overly significant, but that might flourish into entirely new use-cases and form factors over the next year. Windows 8 supports NFC, for example, and Wi-Fi Direct. Task Manager and Explorer have been significantly revamped, but Control Panel now resides inside the Metro interface, rather than Desktop. Windows 8 supports native mounting and reading of ISOs and VHDs — and Hyper-V, the virtualization suite, is now a standard feature in non-server versions of Windows 8.
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