While information about Windows 8 remains almost non-existent, blogger Mary-Jo Foley has reported some interesting slides that tend to indicate that windows 8 will feature your “desktop as a service”.
So what does this mean? Well it’s a strong pointer towards more virtualisation support for the desktop OS. Already Windows 7 allows you to boot into a VM containing a copy of Windows 7 Enterprise or Ultimate just as you would book into a normally installed copy of Windows. I’ve done this and you simply cannot tell that you’re working inside a virtual machine.
The virtual desktop takes things one step further with applications and data being centrally managed and “delivered” to your computer rather than being explicitly installed on it.
There’s precious little information at the moment but it’s been clear for a while that more virtualisation would be key to Windows 8 (referred to in the slides as Windows Next) and it’s also worth noting that a great many future features for Windows products never make it past, or even into, the beta.
It’s an interesting concept though to allow complete virtualisation of an OS, especially where stability and compatibility issues are concerned. Microsoft should be applauded for taking this issue so seriously for the next version of Windows.
So what does this mean? Well it’s a strong pointer towards more virtualisation support for the desktop OS. Already Windows 7 allows you to boot into a VM containing a copy of Windows 7 Enterprise or Ultimate just as you would book into a normally installed copy of Windows. I’ve done this and you simply cannot tell that you’re working inside a virtual machine.
It’s an interesting concept though to allow complete virtualisation of an OS, especially where stability and compatibility issues are concerned. Microsoft should be applauded for taking this issue so seriously for the next version of Windows.
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