Microsoft Collaborates With PC Makers And Ecosystem Partners To Deliver Windows RT PCs

The Building Windows 8 blog’s Steven Sinofsky says that since RTM on August 1, PC manufacturers have been using the released software to ready new PCs designed for Windows 8, and that engineering collaboration has been better than ever as the partners work to bring better performance, reliability, and battery life to new PCs designed for Windows 8. A post by Mike Angiulo, vice president of the Ecosystem and Planning team, details how Microsoft’s Windows 8 team have collaborated on development of Windows RT and new PCs designed for the operating system with ecosystem partners, including PC manufacturers, Silicon partners, and other component suppliers, to complete high quality Windows RT and Windows 8 PCs.

Mr. Angiulo says you can expect to see everything from ultra-thin sleek designs with stunning high-resolution displays, to All-In-One PCs with large immersive displays complete with touch, to high-power towers with multiple graphics cards and high-performance storage arrays at a wide range of price points.

He says they’re particularly excited about the new low power x86 Windows 8 PCs that will take advantage of Intel’s SoC platform innovations to provide an always on and always connected experience (known as connected standby), noting that recently, Lenovo announced the ThinkPad Tablet 2, which offers a combination of new features built on the latest Intel ATOM processor.

Windows RT begins a new era of ARM-based PCs, explains Mr. Argiulo, where Microsoft is working with its Silicon and PC manufacturing partners to bring a whole new set of innovations to market.

He notes that Windows RT shares significant code with Windows 8 and that they’ve achieved theor goal of one Windows binary for all Windows RT SoC platforms from NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments, each of which has developed innovative ARM CPUs that form the basis of a complete system, and that PC makers will provide Windows RT PCs as integrated, end-to-end products that include hardware, firmware, and Windows RT software. Windows RT software will not be sold or distributed independent of a new Windows RT PC, just as you would expect from a consumer electronics device that relies on unique and integrated pairings of hardware and software. Over the useful lifetime of the PC, the provided software will be serviced and improved.

He adds that if you’ve following the trajectory of Windows RT, perhaps you have taken note of the Asus Tablet 600 (Windows RT) announcement or Microsoft’s own Surface RT news, and says that along with Asus, there will be ARM-based PC designs from Dell, Lenovo, and Samsung running Windows RT, and that collaboration on these PC efforts has been different than for in any other Windows release, resulting in Windows RT PCs that will have consistent fast and fluid touch interactions, long battery life, connected standby, and are beautiful, thin, and light designs to make the most of the capabilities of Windows RT.

One marquee feature will be “connected standby” – having your PC always on and always connected in the new connected standby state without excessively draining your battery. When a Windows RT PC is not in use, it will move into a new low-power mode that allows it to keep your data fresh and current while also not requiring a battery charge for days. And when you need your system, it will turn on in less than a second at the touch of a button, which is a mobile phone experience but in a full PC.

Graphics cores have also gone through extensive optimization around power-efficient HD video playback, achieving the design goal of core Windows RT UI animations at 60fps. Also, by simply tapping two NFC-enabled Windows RT PCs together, users can easily share photos, URLs, map directions, and anything else that Microsoft’s software partners have designed into their Windows apps.

As an ecosystem, Windows, the PC manufacturers, and the Silicon partners have been engaged with developers around the world to design application experiences that will light up the capabilities of this new PC hardware.

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