Early Windows 8 details reveal plans for fancy new features

Over a dozen of leaked slides reveal some of Microsoft's plans for the next big release of Windows. It appears Microsoft is toying with several innovative ideas, like the use of sensors and cameras to adapt Windows 8 to changes in ambient light, or to detect your presence via facial recognition and log you on automatically. Other new features include much faster bootup times, a new hibernate mode, the use of cloud services to focus more on the user, in-house hard disk encryption, higher energy efficiency and a Windows Recovery feature that aims to provide you with a clean slate while retaining all your configuration settings and user data.

Also interesting is the Windows Store, a concept for a new cloud-based software platform. Users would be able to download free and commercial software through the Windows Store, and save application settings in the cloud so these programs can be used on any Windows 8 device.

Francisco Martin, a Microsoft Enthusiast, posted several confidential pieces of information to his blog on Monday revealing improvements that Microsoft is aiming for with Windows 8. Microsoft is planning to enable next generation high speed connectivity solutions such as USB 3.0 and Bluetooth 3.0 within Windows 8. Microsoft's key area of focus appears to be performance and instant-on systems. "Windows 8 PC's turn on fast, nearly instantly in some cases, and are ready to work without any long or unexpected delays. When customers want to check e-mail, sports scores, or play media they love to reach for their PCs because they can get to what they want quickly."

In what appears to be suggestions to OEMs, Microsoft details Windows 8 investments under consideration. Focusing on POST performance, S3 resume performance and general performance optimizations for each of the Off states are the key areas of improvement that Microsoft is aiming for with Windows 8 and Windows 8 enabled PCs.

Source: NeoWin