Build Keynote Odds 'N Ends -- Visual Studio Magazine

Onward and UpwardKeith Ward, Editor in Chief, Visual Studio Magazine

Build Keynote Odds 'N Ends

Anaheim, Calif. -- Here are some interesting tidbits that came out of this morning's Build keynote presentation that caught my attention.

I was very impressed by Windows 8's limited resource usability. One demo had a three-year-old netbook loaded with both Windows 7 SP1 and Windows 8. According to Task Manager, Windows 7 used 404 MB RAM and 32 processes; Windows 8 used 281 MB RAM and 29 processes. Microsoft has learned that bigger isn't always better.
The boot times for Windows 8 are staggering. The OS loaded in under 10 seconds on both a laptop and tablet. Wowzer.
As with all demos, take these numbers with a grain of salt. They'll likely be highly optimized, to make people like me go "oooh" and "aaahhh". Which I did.
I really liked Metro's ability to dock apps at the side of the UI. My iPhone and iPad can't do that type of multitasking. Would love it if they could.
One company is holding a "Recruitment Party" tomorrow night at the show. Unemployment may be more than 9 percent nationally, but not for developers.
Not much talk of Silverlight. At all. Hope there's more coming. It wasn't ignored completely, but not highlighted either. It looks like it'll be easy to port it to Windows 8 -- one demo showed a Silverlight app being converted to Windows 8 with the addition of something like 20 lines of code -- but from what I saw, they didn't announce much to move it forward as a technology. That may change over the week, though, so stay tuned.
XAML will be easy to convert as well. According to the speaker during the demo, "It's mostly namespace changes" and different "using" statements. Really easy -- at least for the demoed apps. Again, see the previous point about optimized demos.
Once again, I point out with no bitterness, journalists ARE NOT eligible for the free tablet giveaway. Oh, well, guess I'll have to struggle through with my iPad 2.

More Windows 8/Build coverage from VisualStudioMagazine.com:

Posted by Keith Ward on 09/13/2011 at 3:48 PM

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Reader Comments:

Tue, Sep 13, 2011 Chris Gomez

Why is it so hard to figure out the story with Silverlight? I honestly can not understand the hand wringing over this. Silverlight is a technology for the web. Sure, it has a ton of cool features for desktop style deployment, but it is a web plug in. This is very clear and was made very clear at Mix, when Silverlight 5 was announced. Today we saw, very clearly, that the skills learned for WPF or Silverlight are being retained but being called "XAML". It's not really Silverlight nor WPF and we're targeting new namespaces in .NET. This wasn't abundantly clear? I'm not here saying Silverlight is here to stay and it will last forever, but the next stop in the roadmap is crystal clear. Today was a discussion about the desktop, the client, the tablet, the laptop. Mix has emerged as MSFT's premier web conference. There may be little discussion tomorrow as Azure takes the stage. There was just a drop of Silverlight 5 RC. Why would anyone think it is not going to go RTW? If anything, the skills that were used to build Silverlight apps are being preserved and enhanced in new ways. They even tried to show an example of porting (and of course it won't end up being THAT simple, but the point is taken). I just can't fathom how anyone for the last six months and after today is still saying "uhh, no mention of Silverlight." Isn't it clear by now?

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Onward and UpwardKeith Ward, Editor in Chief, Visual Studio Magazine