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

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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


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