Calling it a ‘modern user interface’, Microsoft on Thursday launched Windows 8 for both end consumers and enterprises.

The company has been developing this operating system (OS) for the last one year and since its announcement of preview availability in June, there have been 16 million downloads worldwide, the company said.

The new OS has the advantage of being used in all kinds of devices from smartphones to laptops and desktops. However, for migration into existing devices such as smartphones, there should be Windows 7 as minimum requirement.

“It is deeply personalised, great for keyboards and mouse, and optimised for touch. We have huge number of applications and more are added every day,” Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft India said.

The company said Windows 8 will be available on 250 devices including desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones from Friday across 100-plus cities from 2,500 stores of Microsoft in India. It will also do road shows in 20 cities for marketing the product and 500 employees of the company will be dedicated just to help the stores on first set of sales, said Bhaskar Pramanik.

The company has around 14,000 partners in sectors including retail, banking, financial services, media and entertainment in India and is expecting them to move to the latest version in the near future.

SECURITY

Keeping in mind security, Windows 8 will come with ‘Windows defender’, an anti-malware, which is designed to scan infected systems even while one’s OS are offline from a bootable disk. It is also totally a new version of Windows from Microsoft’s stable. From using it on a traditional desktop, it has a new-style interface that enables it for use with touch-screens – whether in laptop, tablet, smartphones or all-in-one computers.

>ronendrasingh.s@thehindu.co.in

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