Latest Microsoft Windows

Windows 8

  

Windows 8 is Microsoft's latest operating system. Windows 8 represents a dramatic change from the traditional Windows experience, and shipped on October 26^th, 2012. Microsoft introduced a different user interface, originally codenamed “Metro,” that is similar in style found on phones running Windows.

Installing Windows 8 is neither recommended nor discouraged by ResNet, and is down to personal preference. We expect that all prebuilt (OEM) PCs will be shipped with Windows 8. Only computers running Windows 8 Pro will be eligible to downgrade their installation to Windows 7 or Windows Vista. No versions of Windows 8 will be able to downgrade to Windows XP.

         

Windows 8 Requirements

The minimum computer hardware requirements for running Windows 8 as recommended by Microsoft are:

• 1GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1GB RAM (32-bit) / 2GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics processor with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

The minimum screen resolution for “Metro-style” applications is 1024x768. This may present a problem for netbooks, as their screen resolution is typically 1024x600.
 

There are three editions of Windows 8 currently offered to consumers:

• Windows 8 – The base version of Windows 8.
• Windows 8 Pro – Contains all of the features available on Windows 8, but also comes with the following additional features:
  • Windows Media Center via add-in
  • Remote Desktop Host – Ability to remotely control the computer from another Windows or Mac computer
  • BitLocker & EFS Encryption
  • Ability to join Windows Domains
  • System Virtualization – Full Hyper-V virtualization on 64-bit versions with compatible CPUs
• Windows RT – Comes preinstalled on devices with an ARM processor, like tablets. This version is only able to run applications from the Windows App store and will not run applications designed for any other version of Windows.