Microsoft has revealed on their blog that the Window for the devices running on ARM chips or WOA will be based on Windows 8 code base which itself happens to be in developmental stage right now. Replication of some of the Windows design features like including desktop interface component will also be a part of the plan.

But at the same time, WOA will also be unique in many of its features like the need of system-on-a-chip design usage for the devices to use the platform.

“WOA enables creativity in PC design that, in combination with newly architected features of the OS, will bring to customers new no-compromise experiences,” Steven Sinofsky, the President of Windows & Windows Live Division wrote in the blog post.”

He also informed that the main aim behind the creation of WOA is to bring an entirely new class of PC featuring unique capabilities and form factors, and be supported by new set of partners to expand the Windows ecosystem.

Microsoft is expecting the shipping of the WOA PCs to be based on hardware platforms like Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments from ARM licensees to be shipped sometimes around the time when Windows 8 PCs for x86/64 processors from Intel and AMD will be shipped.

Just like Windows 8 PCs meant for the x86/64, the WOA devices will also be supporting the Metro-style applications created by Windows Store with the help of WinRT APIs. But, it is notable that WOA PCs won’t be running, emulating or porting the existing x86/64 desktop apps.

User will also get support for hardware-accelerated HTML5 with IE10 with WOA which will also be including desktop version of all the Office 15 apps (to be launched soon) that includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, all of which will be especially designed for touch based interfaces and will be consuming minimum possible power.

Microsoft does admit that re-engineering of Office application to be used on the WOA hasn’t been an easy task but it was done so that the machine can be tagged as “no compromise” product, as written in their blog.

In the making of WOA PCs, Microsoft has to work closely with all their partners. “Every WOA PC is a new engineering effort that starts with the selection of components and continues through with firmware, drivers, final assembly, and unique apps from PC makers”, their blog further says.

You’ll find WOA PCs pre-installed with the operating system, drivers, and needed software. It is again noticeable that one won’t be able to purchase OS alone. One will be able to get the WOA fixes and applications through Microsoft Updates and Windows Store.

As Windows 8 beta is releasing sometimes by the end of this month, Microsoft is also looking forward to make their WOA PCs also available for test distribution, obviously to some of their developer and hardware partners and not to every common user.

Now onwards you can’t start your Windows anymore, if you happen to use Windows 8. Did that astonish you? Well, Microsoft has decided not to have a start button on the Windows 8. So, now if you try to start it up, you’ll keep searching for a start button and will never get to find a one.

Microsoft has really astonished by its bold move of doing away with the Windows Start button from the “Consumer Preview” of the Windows 8. This button has been existing for around 15 years now as Microsoft had introduced the Start button and the Menu in its Windows Platform with the release of its Windows 95. If the Consumer Preview is to be taken seriously, both of these will not be present in the final version also.

Some of the screenshots of the almost final version of the Windows 8 “Consumer Preview”, named as build 8220, got leaked on the Internet recently, which displayed that build 8220 will be offering a Super Bar which doesn’t include the Start button.

In the previous test builds of the platform, button had been flattened by Microsoft in order to match with its Metro style interface, and now in its latest builds, the company has gone still further and removed the Start button completely.

But don’t think that the Start button functionality will be completely dead as is being feared. Company insiders have confirmed that a special hot corner will be there in the place of the Start button. Users will get a special thumbnail-like user interface in the Metro or desktop mode, which will be offering a consistent access to the Windows desktop and Start Screen in the Windows 8 whether you have a touch or mouse input.

The new interface is activated when you hover from Windows 8’s lower-left corner and you get a thumbnail preview of the area where you are going to navigate once you have clicked on the new visual element. This very element appears even when your system is on the touch mode, and it is believed that it gets activated when you swipe over it. And when you are using the Windows 8 in the desktop mode, you’ll get a preview of the Metro mode.

You’ll also get the Super Bar, which Microsoft had first introduced with its Windows 7. This pins in with it all the desktop applications offered by Microsoft and of course it’s Internet Explorer 10. Now, with the absence of the Start button, Super Bar will be acting like a shortcut dock for you when you’d be using the desktop mode.

Microsoft may even go for reintroducing the Start button when the Windows 8 actually gets launched by the later part of the year, if it finds a lot of demand, but nothing can be confirmed before the final release and moreover, the removal of the Start button hasn’t been announced as the final decision of the company.

Here’s an exciting piece of news from Microsoft, the U.S. based multinational company that started hitting the electronics and computing world early this morning, i.e. Microsoft has started up with the technical preview of their upcoming venture Office 15.

Office 15 is the codename for the next generation version of their about to release Microsoft Office Suite. The Company has started up with the Technical Preview of the product and it is notable that it is for the first time that the company is sharing their work, though with a group of selected customers and that too under non-disclosure agreements or NDAs.

This invite only program will let a selected few to use the upcoming Office Suite and it aims at getting improvement ideas from the users which will prove beneficial in the development process of the Suite. However, one can expect the Public Beta version of the same to be available sometimes in the coming summers.

“These [technical preview] customers play a key role in our development process by testing early builds and providing feedback, which we incorporate into the final release,” said P. J. Hough, the Chief Vice President of Development in the Office Division of Microsoft.

If you are feeling left out and want to taste the earlier version of Office 15, you’ll have to wait till this summer, when the first Beta version of the software will be launched. Hough promised that everyone will get a chance to taste the flavor then; however, he didn’t give any details about it yet.

“At this early point in our development cycle, I’m not able to share too much about Office 15, but I can tell you Office 15 is the most ambitious undertaking yet for the Office Division.” Hough furthered.

Microsoft released the Office 2010 in the April of 2010 after bringing out its Technical Preview in July 2009, followed by a Public Beta in mid-November. If the company follows the same trend, one can expect to have the retail release of Office 15 sometimes in the first quarter of 2013.

Important to note that along with the bringing up of the latest version of Office 15, Microsoft is also coming up with updates in lots of their products like in their cloud services, servers, Office mobile & PC clients, Exchange, Office 365, SharePoint, Lync, Visio, and Project.

The next generation version of their Office Suite may have a name like Microsoft Office 2012 or 2013 when it finally gets released as Office 15 is just the codename.

The Consumer Electronics Show – 2012 or CES-2012 is all set to be open in Las Vegas for the consumers tomorrow, this 4 day long international electronics exhibition will be showcasing host of Ultrabooks, laptops, mobiles, TV sets, and  other digital products.

Microsoft is looking forward to have a really “dazzle” at the show with their all new Windows 8 operating system working on number of tablets. The company is said to be utilizing the platform to try out capturing the market which is already dominated by Apple.

Windows 8 is the effort of Microsoft to bring together their offerings for phones, tablets, desktops, and all in a single and uniform way and throw a challenge for Apple as well as Google with their suite that will attract both businesses and consumers.

Consumers are equally interested in the CES with 50 to 60 latest ‘Ultrabook’ laptops getting launched in the show.

The latest keyword of the show is “Smart” with the coming up of smarter digital and electronic products which will be seamlessly getting involved into your lives and replacing all the old-school products you had been using till now.

According to the surveys made and the preview of the CES 2012 yesterday, it is found that all the gadgets and gizmos that are going to see the world in these four days are going to be smarter than before and will even outsmart you in many cases!

About 140,000 people across the globe are expected to attend the tech exhibition with its opening in the Las Vegas Convention Center tomorrow. Similar to Apple’s iPhone & iPad, Amazon’s Kindle Fire, Microsoft’s Kinect and other latest tech gadgets, that have recently got launched several others are going to get showcased and even launched in the show.

CES 2012 is also expected to stimulate the growth of the tech market. The estimated tech device spending across the globe is to hit $1 trillion this year, something that has never been estimated before.

Microsoft is engrossed in the development of a special version of its Office Suite to be used on Apple’s iPad which is supposed to have power to compete against Cupertino’s own productivity improving applications. It is estimated that when it will have got rolled out, applications such as Word, Excell, PowerPoint will be available at reduced prices as low as $10 each.

It is notable that Microsoft is already offering several apps in Apple’s App Store which includes Bing, MSN Onit and MSN OnPoint. Interestingly, Office is going to be the highest revenue getting application from Microsoft till now.

It is a fact known to all that Microsoft is already working pretty hard in the development of Windows8 and special tablets that would be running on this operating system but one can’t ignore that iPad rules the tablet section currently.

With so many users using iPads and more people familiar with the Microsoft’s Office Suite, there couldn’t have been more suitable time for bringing out a special Office Suite for iOS.

When Apple rolled out its iPad in January 2010, Mike Tedesco, the senior product manager of Microsoft told the media about their plans of looking for any possibility of introducing Office to iPad; however, just a few months after this, Stephen Elop, Microsoft executive told that they hadn’t any such plans.

Had they brought their plan into reality, both Microsoft and Apple would have well profited from it. Microsoft would have earned ounce upon ounce of money and Apple would have gained a much larger customer base especially comprising of enterprise users.

However, over the time Apple brought out over sophisticated versions of iPads offering their iWorks programs and it is now when Microsoft has announced its plans of developing a special Office Suite for iOS finally.

Microsoft gave an elaboration about the some of the changes that it is going to bring to Explorer in the upcoming version of Windows. Alex Simons, the Microsoft Director of Program Management announced about the company’s plan of bringing the “ribbon” UI to its permeating file manager tool in order to provide with an easy access to lot many great features and emphasize some “hidden gems” at the same time paying regards to the heritage of the Explorer for being a powerful file manager, in a blog post for the Building Windows 8 official blog.

The redesigning of Explorer is decided on the basis of opt-in data coming from hundreds of people using Windows which shows that even when there are 200 commands, about 81.8% of the total Explorer usage includes only ten out of those and again only two out of those top ten commands get featured in the command bar in Vista and Windows 7 more distinctly, explained Simons.

Microsoft aims at doing away with all the inefficiencies in the upcoming version of Windows that the present version of Windows is facing. Simons even believes that the power users of the Explorer may oppose the changes and redesigning but still redesigning is going to have its own benefits.

He has also promised to offer some exciting features like keyboard shortcuts for each of the commands in the ribbon, customization for UI along with quick access toolbar, collapsible ribbon in the Explorer just like it is for other Microsoft products in order to save the save the screen real estate when required, etc.

HP has recently made up their mind to scrap work on webOS devices; this opportunity is being utilized by Microsoft in making the most out of these abandoned webOS developers taking interest in their platform simply by providing them something that will make them successful.

Brandon Watson, the director of the company’s Windows Phone 7, tweeted last Friday that they will be providing the phones, tools, dev, and training to “any published webOS devs” who are willing to make a switch.

As was expected, thousands of developers banged into his inbox thanking him for his offer saying, “Thank you so much for reaching out to the Windows Phone team to signal your interest in bringing your talents to our platform. To be honest, we didn’t expect this level of response, so we were caught a bit flatfooted.”  Answering their responses, a special message sent to the developers said, “We are psyched to have you aboard and to see what your imagination can do on the Windows Phone canvas.”

Watson didn’t go straight away to meet the developer crowd to promote his platform for the first time. He made similar offers even in the past. He even made his offers to quite high profile developers that included the ones from iPhone and PS3 jailbreaker George “geohot” Hot.

He was also found to be offering hardware for free to the celebrities publicly when he found them annoyed with their iPhone or Android devices. One can even find his personal cell number on his Twitter profile which he has especially given out so that one can field questions related to development process.

Right now, around 30,000 apps from Windows Phone 7 are available in the marketplace. Though on comparing the figure with iOS or Android, one will find it pretty less but Microsoft is seen to be growing quite steadily and moreover, it is also doing a real great job in bringing the developers in, which plays a really crucial role in the success of Windows Phone 7. Even though the platform is not yet doing well with the sales, it’s not going to stuck out here and will soon be moving out toward success.