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One of the more keenly debated tech-nerd issues is that of the ARM-compatible version of Windows 8 and what it will/won’t let us do. We already know it’ll come with a locked bootloader, but we’re still waiting on news as to whether desktop apps will run on ARM tablets. And it’s starting to sound like they might.
A post over on Microsoft’s Window 8 blog talks about the issues of power management in always-on hardware, mentioning the challenges of running the mobile Metro-style of app and standard desktop apps on the sorts of “System on Chip architectures” found in ARM tablets and mobile devices.
The key fact there being that if Microsoft is testing desktop apps in SoC environments, then that answers the question. There could well be the option to run standard, boring old Windows desktop-style apps in ARM after all. [Building Windows 8 via ZDNet]
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Yay! This would be great, I’m sure they should be able to implement a system like what Apple used with ‘universal’ executable files that would run on both architectures?
be very nice in the Windows tablet world, to run some real software.
If anyone really thinks this means there will be binary compatibility between existing Windows (as in pre Windows
apps and Windows 8 on tablet, they will be sorely disappointed.
DO NOT FEED THE TROLL