You no longer need to visualize the changes coming to Windows in Windows 8.1 inside your head, in a new released video, one of the executives in charge of the operating system update, guides users through what they can expect.
While the video doesn’t reveal anything completely earthshattering that we weren’t already informed about last week, it does lend some sense of how all of the changes Microsoft is making will alter the experience for today’s Windows 8 users. Microsoft will release a preview version for us eager beavers on June 26th during its BUILD conference, though users won’t get the free update until sometime later this year.
Microsoft has also announced that tablets Windows RT tablets like the Surface Pro, and Dell XPS 10 will get their own version of the company’s personal information management client, Outlook as part of the update to Windows RT. Windows RT devices already ship with their own versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote free of charge.
I wonder what that means for the built-in “Mail, Contacts, Calendar” app in Windows 8; and if Outlook RT will support Google calendars (not sure about the full version of Outlook 2013, but Outlook 2010 doesn’t really support them).
I don’t think it really means a huge change for those apps as Office RT is still a desktop application, giving them those apps some slight breathing room. Personally, I was more hoping for one Metro version to full on replace those apps.
I think that Outlook RT fills in a check box for potential corporate users.