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Windows 8 for tablet and PC detailed at Microsoft’s Build event

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Microsoft’s Windows operating system, which long ago won the war over desktop computers, didn’t even show up in the fight to be the dominant tablet OS.

Windows 8, the software behemoth hopes, will change that.

At the company’s Build conference Tuesday in Anaheim, Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft’s Windows team, offered an in-depth look at the next version of the omnipresent software.

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Windows 8 is important not only because Microsoft hopes to use it to extend Windows’ desktop dominance over Apple’s Mac OS X, but also because Windows 8 will be the company’s weapon to finally get into the tablet fight and take on Apple’s iPad.

The Build conference is about getting developers on board as much as a year early to get familiar with Windows 8 and to start writing apps for the new OS now. The idea is that when Windows 8 finally launches, its app store won’t look empty, as was the case for tablet-app offerings from Hewlett-Packard and Research In Motion. Even Google’s Android Market, which has hundreds of tablet-optimized apps, pales in comparison to Apple’s thousands of tablet apps.

In a closed-door presentation to reporters Monday, a day before Build officially opened, Sinofsky and other Microsoft executives detailed the elements of Windows 8.

The presentation, which I attended, ended with Microsoft lending tablets running Windows 8 to each reporter for a few days.

Video: hands-on with the Windows 8 tablet

I wanted to affectionately call this ‘not an iPad,’ ‘ Sinofsky said of the prototypes. ‘I’m also calling this not the first Windows 8 computer and not for sale.’

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Although Windows 8 will compete with the iPad, it takes a much different path. As Microsoft has been telling the world for months, in bits of information about the new OS, Windows 8 reject the app icon look of iOS and Android for its own ‘Metro style’ of live tiles seen on Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 OS.

‘We have a different point of view on how touch works and we have a different point of view on how apps work and it’s been deeply thought out,’ said Jensen Harris, the director of program management for Windows.

For one thing, Windows 8 on a tablet isn’t limited to a touchscreen. It works with a mouse, a keyboard and a stylus as well as your fingertips. The test tablets, handed out by Microsoft, are quick and responsive and offer true PC-like specs in a tablet body.

Windows 8 will run traditional desktop apps that will be better suited for a mouse, such as Adobe Photoshop, and touch-centric apps, a few of which were previewed Monday and which Microsoft hopes will inspire developers this week at Build.

Apps, of course, will be the key to making Windows 8 a success on tablets.

Since the iPad hit the market, Apple has sold more than 25 million of the blockbuster devices. Google’s Android operating system is Apple’s only serious competitor in the tablet space but hasn’t been able to slow the iPad’s growth much thus far.

Windows 7, released in 2009, has sold nearly 450 million copies thus far and as of last Thursday, is more widely used than the stalwart Windows XP, Sinofsky said.

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On PCs, Windows 8 will run all Windows 7 applications, according to the company. But Windows 7 applications may not run on Windows 8 tablets built with ARM processors.

‘All the existing desktop apps will continue to run in the desktop environment,’ said Julie Larson-Green, a Windows corporate vice president. ‘Metro apps will be a separate thing’ and run on all Windows 8 machines -- tablets and PCs.

Monday’s presentation offered a look at about 30 apps running on Windows 8 test tablets and on PCs. All of the apps were ‘written in 10 weeks by teams of two or three college interns,’ Sinofsky said. ‘That kind of gives you the idea of the power of the platform.’

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Twitter.com/nateog

Images: Screen shots showing, from top, the Windows 8 start screen, the operating system’s lock screen, and Microsoft Visual Studio, an app developers use to write other apps, running in Windows 8’s desktop environment. Credit: Microsoft

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