Windows 8 went RTM on August 1st, 2012 and was released for general availability on October 26th, 2012. It contains many new features and changes, the most noticeable being a new graphical user interface, know as Modern UI. It is available in four major editions, Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, Windows 8 Enterprise, and Windows 8 RT.
Windows 8 went RTM on August 1st, 2012 and was released for general availability on October 26th, 2012. It contained many new features and changes, the most noticeable being a new graphical user interface know as Modern UI. It is available in four major editions, Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, Windows 8 Enterprise, and Windows 8 RT.
Aside from the new Modern UI, some other notable new features and enhancements included:
- Support for ARM processors (low power processors found in many mobile devices)
- Native support for USB 3.0
- Support for, and in some cases, mandatory inclusion of UEFI SecureBoot
- New versions of existing Microsft products, including PowerShell v3.0, Internet Explorer 10, Windows Defender, and a redesigned Task Manager
- A Windows Store for purchasing Windows 8 applications
- New authentication methods, including local logon with a
Windows Liveaccount, picture based password and login via PIN - Two new boot options:
Hybrid BootandWindows To Go - Client Hyper-V
Minimum hardware requirements for the x86 and x64 of Windows 8 are:
- 1 GHz processor (with support for PAE, NX SSE2)
- 1 GB RAM (2GB for x64 versions)
- A graphics card capable of DirectX 9 and WDDM 1.0
- 20 GB of disk space
