Windows 8

In Windows 8 and Windows RT, Microsoft is aiming for a pleasant out-of-the-box experience. There's an app store for filling in gaps and adding functionality that isn't provided up front, but the core apps to power your communications with friends and colleagues come bundled with the operating system. There is Mail, Messaging, Calendar, and an innovative “People” app that brings all your contacts from various sources together into one central, interactive hub.

Microsoft has blocked a popular work-around that let users boot directly to the Windows 8 desktop, a co-author of an upcoming book on the operating system confirmed today.

"Microsoft made some changes to Windows that prevent the .scf hack from working correctly," said Rafael Rivera in an email reply to questions. Rivera blogs at WithinWindows.com and along with Paul Thurrott, is the co-author of Windows 8 Secrets, a book slated for release next month.

At this year’s Hack in the Box conference in Amsterdam we’ve had the opportunity to speak to Steven Seeley regarding his research on heap managers. Since the topic was highly interesting, and since part of expert’s work was based on prior analysis made by Chris Valasek, we decided to do a follow-up on the subject by talking to Valasek himself.

Chris Valasek, who works as a security research scientist at Coverity, is highly passionate about the topic and as soon as Windows 8 was released, he started studying its heap manager to learn what improvements have been made.

Backing up your data is an important task that most of us neglect to do. Windows has included backup software of some kind for a long time now, but few people actually use it, because they forget, or don't understand it, or don't know it's there, or simply can't be bothered.

Microsoft's latest attempt to get Windows users to back up their files is Windows 8's File History. File History is an automatic point-in-time backup system that periodically saves snapshots of your data to a separate location (either a network file share or a directly attached hard disk).

Microsoft claims Windows 8 is "a better Windows" than Windows 7. In particular, the company has focused on improving security to ensure users of Windows 8 tablets can securely connect to corporate networks. It is building antivirus (AV) and secure, role-based authentication into Windows 8 to make the operating system (OS) enterprise-ready.

We're here live at Microsoft's press event in Los Angeles, where it just unveiled not just the rumored tablet you were hoping for, but two tablets: Surface for Windows RT, which has an NVIDIA chip inside, and Surface for Windows 8 Pro, which runs off Ultrabook-grade Ivy Bridge processors. (Yes, Surface here is the name of a tablet line, not software optimized for large touchscreens.