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.

The Intel Corp’s plan to expand the market for their low-power processors meant for the tablets and smart phones, a segment dominated by ARM, couldn’t impress ARM Holdings plc, the head of British chip designer.

Though ARM considers Intel to be one of their chief competitors, they don’t find them impressive in their power efficient products. Warren East, ARM CEO confirmed at the CES 2012 that successfully ended at Las Vegas yesterday.

East regards the efforts put forward by Intel as “good enough” but not at all competitive to their designs.

“They (Intel) have taken some designs that were never meant for mobile phones and they’ve literally wrenched those designs and put them into a power-performance space which is roughly good enough for mobile phones,” East told the media at the CES.

Intel used the CES platform to announce their entrance into the smart phone and tablet chip market and unleashed their plans for Lenovo phones and Motorola Mobility using Google’s Android System based on new ‘Medfield’ chip from Intel.

ARM with their design licenses for 275 chip makers as well as hardware & software firms almost rules over the market and has nothing to fear from Intel’s market plans.

In fact, ARM has got Microsoft Corp running their all new Windows 8 OS on the tablets based on ARM chip designs coming up in the near future and is pretty happy to have the deal with the company that has been an important ally of Intel.

It was at the CES 2011 where Microsoft has announced their plans to come up with AMR compatible Windows 8, however no release date for the system was declared. ARM hasn’t any problem and is ready to wait as much as may be required.

“We’ve waited a long time for this to happen. Another six months, another 12 months doesn’t matter. “I’d much rather wait however long it takes to get a quality experience than compromise,” said East.

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.

A latest report suggests that many popular PC manufacturing companies like HP and Dell have decided to use Windows 8 as the operating system for their tablets. With the coming up of Amazon’s Kindle Fire at a considerably lesser price, the competition among the Android based tablets have got quite tighten making it pretty tough for the devices to continue in the same segment. This has made most manufacturers to leave out Android and start on with a fresher take with Windows 8.

Recently at the Dell World 2011, Michael Dell, the CEO of Dell told that the Android tablet segment didn’t do that well as was their expectation, this made him consider their decision and go for associations with Windows for the development of their new devices. Though, Mr. Dell didn’t say any thing in a clear cut way, it appears somewhat apparent that they will get into this association with their latest tablet by developing it on Windows 8 operating system.

Again, HP is looking forward to go for an entirely new tablet segment after the discouraging performance of its TouchPad.

Dell and HP are expected to release their new tablets around the third quarter of 2012. And as Windows 8 has just touched the market, this time selection seems quite appropriate.

Microsoft is expecting its Windows 8 to perform well with its presence in most of the Microsoft devices that include computer systems, mobile phones, and the tablets. It is believed to be giving a perfectly seamless and quite comfortable performance which will surely be well liked by all the Windows users. Windows 8 will make it possible for the users to work using their keyboard and mouse as well as touch screen.

Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. are few of the names which are looking forward to make their presence felt by getting a place competing with Kindle and iPad with the Microsoft’s newest presentation. Meticulously speaking, it won’t be wrong to say that Windows 8 is Microsoft’s essentiality for the moment in order to make its presence prominent in the table segment where Apple is yet the king.

It is speculated that if this operating system proves itself successful in giving all that it has promised, it will surely make a special place for itself in the segment.

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.

The HP TouchPad tablet got its place partly because Palm was acquired by HP and partly because HP was fervent enough to bring out a hardware competing against iPad, primarily because Microsoft wasn’t in a hurry in bringing out its own tablet.

HP TouchPad is built on WebOS which raises a question that if Microsoft plans to use HP in the making of its tablet, will this persuade HP to drop out using WebOS? Or will HP look forward to bring out TouchPad along with Windows 8 Tablet?

Let’s have a look at the various systems:

WebOS

It is a graphical user interface especially made for being used on the devices that have touchscreen.  It uses multi-touch gestures for the purpose of navigating on the touchscreen.  Virtual keyboard application is natively included by WebOS as these devices even have slide out keyboards. But one can surely think of getting hold of virtual keyboards with the help of patching. Multitasking is managed by the interface with the help of “cards”. One can surely consider WebOS to be a good operating system for using at the tablet level. WebOS has its own worries as it may be chucked out when Window 8 will come out as it even offers touchscreen capabilities.

Microsoft & HP

First of all, one needs to look at the kind of relationship that HP and Microsoft has. In the field of PC making, HP stands as the biggest PC maker, and even if it is denied to be at the top, it is certainly among the top three and will surely be in the considerations of Microsoft for being used in its Windows 8 deployment. HP made its place with Microsoft when XP tablet stalled and Microsoft still considers it to be the most reliable hardware manufacturer. This makes us question, what will HP’s action toward its TouchPad? Will it support two competing tablet products, one of which is its own WebOS and the other is Microsoft’s which has plans to use Windows 8?  The mystery persists!

How’s the Present System?

When HP brought out its TouchPad, it purposely didn’t use Android in its OS, as it had purchased Palm, from where WebOS came into existence. Right now HP is happy to have the OS structure on its computer system. First it has WebOS on a tablet, then Windows 7 on its present PCs and next it has Windows 7 on Slate which happens to be its present Microsoft tablet. It has Windows 8 coming up next year; will HP be having a similar scheme again, i.e. WebOS on a tablet, Windows 8 on the PCs and finally Windows 8 on some other tablet? Well, this only the future will say till then one can only have the speculations done.