The tweets go as follows:

WP8 running smoothly on protos. The key point for corporate users is tight ms office integration in OS

— Eldar Murtazin (@eldarmurtazin) April 26, 2012

WP8 aka Apollo also have a very smart way to sync data with tablets and keep all data up to date. Plus skydrive here

— Eldar Murtazin (@eldarmurtazin) April 26, 2012

Win8 will be available in three reference design – for each one dedicated chipset vendor. Later they will launch more chipsets

— Eldar Murtazin (@eldarmurtazin) April 26, 2012

WP8 tablets is near perfect in terms of hardware. Right now they are on par with android/iPad. Same specs or almost the same

— Eldar Murtazin (@eldarmurtazin) April 26, 2012

About reference design of win8 I couldn’t share a lot of info :( sorry

— Eldar Murtazin (@eldarmurtazin) April 26, 2012

Win8 tablets – end user price on the same level as android flagship devices, but vendor margin is lower (licensee fee for ms; same hw)

— Eldar Murtazin (@eldarmurtazin) April 26, 2012

MS main focus – tablets, second one – phones. That’s in mobile space. We will see interesting proposal – tablet plus phone in one bundle

— Eldar Murtazin (@eldarmurtazin) April 26, 2012

I said it several times before but going to repeat once more. You couldn’t get wp8 for mango devices. But it will be some kind of update

— Eldar Murtazin (@eldarmurtazin) April 26, 2012

It’s to early for a15 CPU. Wait CES 2013 and tegra4. Wait February 2013 and HTC/LG. wait may and sgs4. But Huawei show it in nov/dec12

— Eldar Murtazin (@eldarmurtazin) April 26, 2012

Showing a15 products it’s a kind of pr for Huawei, they wont deliver product on shelf before first half of 2013

— Eldar Murtazin (@eldarmurtazin) April 26, 2012

Beginning from Apollo and win8 MS will have for a first time real ecosystem and connected vertically devices. That’s good thing

— Eldar Murtazin (@eldarmurtazin) April 26, 2012

Another good thing that wp8 handsets will be more interesting for developers. More info coming in next months :)

— Eldar Murtazin (@eldarmurtazin) April 26, 2012

As none of this has come from directly from Microsoft none of it can be treated as fact but some of this backs up rumours and some of this is new and it should all be taken with a pinch of salt. So the key bits of information from these tweets seem to be that the hardware for Windows 8 should be good, apparently iPad quality good which is what Microsoft needs. At launch there will only be three different chipsets available for the three main chip manufactures, however this will increase over time. Windows 8 tablets are at the same price points as Android tablets however the OEM gets less profit due to the license fee.

Office is going to be shown to enterprise customers as a reason for getting a Windows Phone and SkyDrive will be added to the mix to offer a seamless experience across all of a users Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 devices. In addition to SkyDrive Windows Phone 8 which will have some “smart ways” to sync with Windows 8 devices. This will lead Microsoft to offer tablet and phone bundles when the two come to market with Microsoft’s main focus being on selling tablets.

Murtazin says that Windows Phone 7 Mango devices wont be able to upgrade to Windows Phone 8 but there will be updates for Windows Phone 7, much like I think will happen. Apparently come CES 2013 we might see some devices packing ARM’s A15 chip and Tegra 4 however it’s thought that Huawei will show off a device before the end of 2012 with the new powerful internals. It’s unclear if this is for Windows Phone 8 or Windows RT devices. There will also be new features for developers to take advantage of in Windows Phone 8 which will be announced in the coming months.

I think it is good to see that Murtazin has recognised that Apollo and Windows 8 will be a single ecosystem that offers vertical devices within it. This further backs up rumours that Windows Phone 8 will be based on Windows 8 and that apps will run on both platforms.

Below are tips I have found and am using to organise my SkyDrive folders and how to use the power of Windows to make the most of having SkyDrive on your PC.

Use Favourites

I have two folders that I am in and out of all the time on my PC, they are “My Microsoft Life” and “University – Postgrad” and pre-SkyDrive app they were just saved in “Michael Gillett”. Because I accessed them so much I had added them to the favourites list so that whenever I was in the Windows Explorer I could quickly get to those folders.

I have now copied “University – Postgrad” to SkyDrive using the new app and all I then did was remove the old “University – Postgrad” link from favourites and then dragged the new one to the list. Therefore, this means that there isn’t really any difference in the way I have to work or access the folder but I know that all my university files will be stored in the cloud and on all my other PCs, it good piece of mind if nothing else.

Additionally I have started copying some of the subfolders in “My Microsoft Life” over to SkyDrive, I plan to delete a lot of content from the folder that I am just going to need again. This means that I currently have two folders pinned to the favourites list, one being the local folder and the other being the SkyDrive folder. I am only adding new files to the SkyDrive folder. Again this doesn’t really change how I go about accessing files from the MML folder.

Use Jumplists

My use of jumplists is very much like my use of the favourites list so I have pinned the SkyDrive version of the “My Microsoft Life” folder and also the “University – Postgrad” folder. Previously these had been pinned here but were only local files.

Use Libraries

So the above 2 methods are how I am dealing with individual folders but on SkyDrive I have several picture folders. I have curated a folder called “My Pictures” on SkyDrive that has lots of photo folders within it but there are also two other photo folders on the top level of the folder structure; they come from my Windows Phone and are “Twitter uploads” and “SkyDrive camera roll”.

Now I don’t necessarily regularly access these photos folders but I don’t really want to have to trawl through the SkyDrive folder to find the folder that has the photo I am looking for in. Instead I want to be able to go to one place where I know all the folders will be; the Pictures Library.

It’s very easy to add a single folder to a Library to then have easy access to all of its contents. Just go to the SkyDrive folder and right click the folder you want to add to a Library, click “Include in library” and then choose which library you want.

I’ve added three folders to the Pictures Library so now I can access quickly any photos from my local PC or ones that I have saved to SkyDrive. Over the coming weeks I plan to move all the photos off my PC to SkyDrive. It will give me the same piece of mind as having all my university files saved in the cloud and on all my other PCs too.

Use Shortcuts

With all my methods I am just making use of some of the great features of Windows 7 and Windows 8, but there could well be times when you don’t want a folder pinned or favourited and it doesn’t make sense to include it in a Library. At this point I think the only option is to use a shortcut. I’m not really a fan of shortcuts but I can see how in this instance they could prove very useful to maintain an existing folder structure but using SkyDrive to store all the files.

Creating a shortcut is very easy, just right click on the folder you want to create a shortcut for and select “Create shortcut”. This then makes a shortcut and places it in the folder that it was created, you can then drag this to the actual location you want it to be.

For example I have dragged this shortcut to the desktop.

Use Windows

I’m now moving away from how to organise folders on a PC but am now moving on to have to use Windows to get the most out of having SkyDrive directly accessible from Windows.

It is currently possible to search within the contents of a file on SkyDrive and there are some advanced search options too. But Windows Search offers more advanced options such as selecting when a file was last modified, the kind of file it is and it’s size. These kind of parameters could prove useful as people use SkyDrive more and more and people to start to share move files with each other.

Files can also be viewed in the “Preview pane” before being open which alongside the search functionality should allow users to the exact file they were after before opening it.

Have you got any tips for making the most of SkyDrive on Windows? Leave them in a comment below and I’ll add some of them to this post. Also you can read what other features and additions Microsoft should make to SkyDrive to further improve the service.

All these features have been long rumoured and even longed requested and it is great to see that Microsoft has made them all available. Some would argue that these features are long overdue and that Microsoft should have worked on these a long time ago but I think the most important thing about when these features were released is that they are out before Google announced it’s G Drive service. It’s like that the services will be very similar and it seems that from reading the rumours there wont be anything particularly innovative with G Drive. For what its worth DropBox is currently the closest competitor to SkyDrive and it’s debatable which service is better, however Microsoft does provide a chart to help highlight which is better.

So with an increasing amount of competition how is Microsoft going to keep improving SkyDrive? I have a few idea already.

First up I think Microsoft needs to release an Android app. There are more people using Android than any other mobile OS, however I do see that there might actually be iOS users who are interested in using SkyDrive, there might be many users of Android who aren’t bothered about cloud storage at all. Once SkyDrive does come to Android it would then have official support on all major platforms, something Microsoft would be keen to trumpet.

The second thing I think that needs to be done is to offer excellent music and video capabilities through SkyDrive. Currently there is excellent support for Office documents both through being able to view only documents and also through being able to access the Office Web Apps. Additionally there is a great picture viewing experience through SkyDrive and the ability to view only photos. I feel that music and videos are the next logical file types that should be well supported with a great player and the ability to just view the music or video files stored on SkyDrive. I also think, and have done for some time, that Microsoft should offer a seamless way for users to play music from SkyDrive in Zune (or whatever it’s replacement is going to be). You can be sure that

Next up are more controls for the desktop apps; I get that Microsoft is trying to keep the apps as simple and easy to use as possible but there is quite a major issue in the way that the apps currently work. Once installed the apps download everything from SkyDrive to the user’s PC but if people can have 125GB of storage and only have a small SSD then they are going to have an issue. Instead I think Microsoft should allow user to choose which folders should be downloaded to the PC, it will save space and for some people reduce the duplication of files on their PC.

An other idea, but this would require the previous idea to be a prerequisite, is to allow users to have more than just 125GB of storage. There will be people who would be happy to just have absolutely everything stored on SkyDrive so they don’t need to worry about any of their files. When thinking about how Windows 8 syncs users’ settings across all their PCs it would be great if it was also possible to have all of a user’s files also shared so on whatever PC they were on they could have the same experience. It would great if Microsoft offered 1TB of online storage for users who were willing to pay and I bet there would be a fair few people.

One final idea I have had but it’s one that I am less inclined to expect to see is for an Xbox app. As people will no doubt use SkyDrive more and more there could well put music and videos on the cloud storage. Users are likely to want to access these files from their Xbox to watch/listen to them on the big screen so it would make sense that Microsoft would offer a SkyDrive app for them to access their files; it could be a platform that only Microsoft could put a cloud storage app on.

Have you got any ideas of what could be next for SkyDrive?

There are many potential reasons why this might be the case, maybe due to hardware demands of the upcoming Windows 8 based version of the phone OS, maybe demands from carriers, etc, etc. I don’t want to get bogged down in the whys and wherefores as I don’t know and I’d only be able to offer some uninformed speculation. Instead what I am more interested in is the current state and position of Windows Phone 7 with regards to the impending release of Windows Phone 8.

Assuming that Windows Phone 8 will require new hardware then what will happen with the Windows Phone 7 software and devices? You might assume that it will just disappear from retail and that is probably true for a lot of the world but considering Microsoft has just spent a lot of time and effort in lowering the specs of Windows Phones and allowing them to run on lower-end hardware I can’t see Microsoft dropping the OS in about 6 months.

Instead, I think we are about see a significant, yet constructive, fragmentation of the entire Windows ecosystem.

If Windows Phone 8 is based on Windows 8 and Windows Phone 7 apps can run on Windows 8 then I think what we see here is the future of the Windows ecosystem. A single runtime and app environment that will also make its way over to the Xbox within the next few years. There is likely to be the same minimal hardware specification for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 (ok, screen size and things will be different). This will be Windows everywhere and will be a seamless experience for developers and consumers to create and use apps.

But I also think Windows Phone 7 will remain, perhaps under a new name, for lower-end hardware aimed squarely at the emerging markets. Apps for Windows Phone have already been fragmented with there being a difference in the apps that can run on the regular hardware and those that can also run on the lower-end hardware allowed by the Tango update. This fragmentation can be seen with the new Skype app as it wont run on devices with 256MB RAM but only the more common devices with 512MB RAM.

So with all this information and speculation I think that Microsoft will offer 2 significant Windows Phone app ecosystems over the next year or so; Windows (Phone) 8 and Windows Phone 7 (including the Tango subset of apps). The Windows Phone 7 ecosystem will be a subset of the Windows Phone 8 ecosystem.

The key difference is that the Windows 8 based version of the phone OS will have high hardware requirements, such as dual core processors, where as the current Windows Phone 7 OS will remain for lower-end devices. I think this will enable Microsoft to offer ecosystems and devices to a wide range of customers and at a wide range of price points. I believe Windows Phone 7 will be for the emerging markets where cheaper devices are needed where as Windows Phone 8 will be focused more on the developed world.

I doubt users in the UK will be able to buy a Windows Phone 7 device this time next year as they will all be Windows Phone 8 devices, however that could well be the opposite in some markets around the world.

I expect that developers will be able to make “Windows apps” which will all run on Windows 8 by default and with a minimal amount of work on Windows Phone 8 too. However, I imagine there will be quite a lot to consider to offer the same app on Windows Phone 7 which will wont have access to such powerful hardware. I don’t imagine that relatively there will be many apps for the Windows Phone 7 as developers will be looking to make full use of the hardware available in Windows (Phone) 8. That’s not to say that there wont be any apps for Windows Phone 7 hardware, there will be well over 100,000 apps for the OS when Windows Phone 8 is released.

There are two significant reasons why I think Microsoft would pursue such a course of action the first is that there is a lot of money and market share to be made in the emerging markets. Windows Phone 8 hardware might just be too expensive for Microsoft to successfully compete with Android in those markets and so they will want to offer an OS that can run on cheap hardware. The second reason for offering an OS focused on the lower-end devices is Nokia. Nokia has been pushing Microsoft to make Tango so that they can make cheaper hardware to sell and I imagine they don’t want to stop doing that anytime soon.

I imagine that the future of the Windows app ecosystem is a series of subsets as shown below.

It’s clear that the Windows Phone app ecosystem is fragmenting and I think that is it only going to continue to do so going forward but I don’t necessarily think it is going to be a bad thing. What I think it will do is make Windows Phone available to a massive audience. Microsoft will continue to limit the effect of this fragmentation by specifying what hardware OEMs can use to make their Windows Phones and this can of fragmentation shouldn’t really be a problem. After all iOS is fragmented too as the iPhone 3GS can do everything that the the iPhone 4S can do. Android on the other hand has no measures to negate the effect of fragmentation which is why it is such a mess.

The fragmentation should allow for cheap hardware where it’s needed but offer high-end hardware where its wanted.

I’m don’t see myself buying a Tango Windows Phone and I expect to get a Windows Phone 8 device fairly soon after they are available as I will want the more powerful hardware that they will offer therefore I don’t think I will be affected by the fragmentation of the Windows Phone ecosystem. I think for most people the effects of the possible fragmentation will be minimal.

The beauty of this potential scenario is that an app could be made for the Tango and run on all other Windows devices without a problem but at the same time an app that required the hardware only available in higher-end hardware could make use of that.

What are your thoughts on this idea of how Microsoft might be planning to fragment the Windows ecosystem?

Update: Forgot to see that I expect Windows Phone 7 to be updated when Windows Phone 8 comes out to add more features to the OS.

Basically Microsoft dares you to challenge the Windows Phone.

The idea of the contest is for consumers to try and beat a Windows Phone in a speed test for a range of different activities. Microsoft suggest some of the activities as being “finding the last message a friend posted on both Facebook and Twitter or locating a nearby place to eat”. Microsoft have predetermined the challenges that a consumer could have to compete in.

If a challenger’s phone completes the task faster than the Windows Phone then they will win £20 cash on the spot. However, if the challenger’s phone loses out to the Windows Phone then they can take part in a “dare”. Basically Microsoft will be providing a heart pumping activity to try out such as “tackling a high ropes course or being flung into the air by a reverse bungee”. An additional benefit commiseration prize to help ease the pain of losing out is the opportunity to take a £100 Phones 4 U cash-back offer if the challenger upgrades their current phone to a Nokia Lumia 800.

If you are brave enough to Dare to Live then you can find the Windows Phone team at a range of venues across the UK over the coming weeks, check out their schedule. People can keep up to date the campaign by following @WindowsPhoneUK and the hashtag #WPDaresYou. More information can be found on their Facebook page.

Are you going to be taking on this challenge? I don’t really see how you could lose.

In addition to this fairly substantial new feature it is now possible for users to upload files up to 300MB in size, quite an increase on the limit that I believe was only 100MB before. Another new feature is that it is now possible to share files direct to connected social networks and not just Facebook, therefore users can now share to Twitter from within the SkyDrive UI.

The final new feature is one that affects Windows Phone users as photos shared from the phone via SkyDrive will use a new URL shortener, sdrv.ms, instead of the much longer skydrive.com ones that have been used previously. It does seem weird that this new URL shortener is only available to Windows Phone users but perhaps this is way of limiting the number of users of the service to test it before adding it to the full SkyDrive experience. I hope it does come to the full version of SkyDrive, it would be silly not to.

The SkyDrive team added at the end of their announcement that they “have some really big things coming soon” which is likely to be along the lines of what Liveside has been reporting.

Now this news is a massive case of good and bad. The good news is that Microsoft has seen sense and has reduced the number of SKUs available for its operating system to, practically, 2 (Windows RT will be an entirely different thing). This is great and should reduce the confusion in the market and help consumers get the right version for them. I imagine it will still be easy for people to upgrade their version of Windows if they feel they need features from Pro that they didn’t initially anticipate.

However, for me, the bad news comes from the Windows RT choice of name, to me it’s just backwards as should actually be Windows Metro.

There are quite a few reasons why Windows RT is a silly name to have chosen, especially since Microsoft hasn’t come out and given its reasoning for the name. At least with Windows XP the “XP” stood for experience, what does RT even mean? If it’s runtime then it’s ridiculous to have called the consumer facing name of the operating system after something so boring to consumers. Let’s not forget the main purpose of Windows RT on ARM, it’s to appeal to consumers, it’s got to compete with the iPad on that front. What do you think the RT stands for? I am wondering if it stands for “Really Trippy” as I can only assume the people who selected this name were tripping out.

Assuming we don’t really need to know where the “RT” part of the name has come from we then have to consider what consumers will think of the name. The name certainly doesn’t sound cool, it’s not aspirational and it’s certainly not something people are going to want to say. iOS on the other hand is a great name, it’s simple, clearly shows that it’s Apple’s and its an operating system; this kind of thinking is why I think Microsoft should have chosen Metro.

If we now stop analysing the name we have another issue and that is that Windows RT will probably be shortened a lot of the time to WinRT and here’s the problem; something with that name already exists. It’s the Windows RunTime which is the new environment for Metro apps to run in. You can bet that there is going to be confusion about this. Maybe it can be argued that Windows RT and WinRT are technically the same thing but then we are back to my first point about naming a consumer product after a fairly boring underlying aspect of the operating system. Additionally Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro will both also feature Windows RT which could become confusing too.

Of course there have been names from companies chosen before for their products that first get slated and then people just accept them. FaceTime and iPad both being two of the most significant ones. However, at least FaceTime is very descriptive as to what it is and iPad is clearly an Apple product and is easy to say. Windows RT whilst being obviously Microsoft has none of those traits. I also wonder that because Windows RT is so obviously Microsoft if it will hinder the product in the consumer market, Microsoft doesn’t exactly have the best mind share with consumer. Seeing as Windows RT will not be able to run pretty much any apps from previous versions of Windows it doesn’t make a huge amount of sense to keep calling it Windows.

Technically Windows is the wrong name to use for Windows RT, windows aren’t really present in the Metro UI; however tiles are.

There was some additional news to come out of this announcement and that is that Media Center will no longer be a main part of Windows but will be something that will have to be purchased separately. It’s not clear on what version of Windows 8 Media Center will be available.

What are your thoughts of all this news?

The first few images I wanted to share we of the possible look and feel and of the Metro browsers that both Mozilla and Google are building. There have been some people who think that companies will struggle to differentiate their app from another one if their conform rigorously to the Metro UI. However, I think these designs show that whilst using the Metro guidelines it is also possible to have a unique looking app.

First up is the Firefox Metro Style App. The app takes some of the design elements of the current desktop version of Firefox but blends it nicely with the way in which Metro Style Apps should be designed and copies the design that the Metro version of IE will be using with the tabs at the top and navigation bar at the bottom.

Following this is a concept image for Chrome. The concept below again incorporates some of the designs from the current desktop version and follows the same layout as the Firefox concept. Perhaps there could be a greater difference between these two concepts but both look good to me and are along the lines of what I expect to see from the companies when they are released later this year.

The final concept image for Metro browsers is actually an extension to Metro IE which shows how a downloads page could appear. The concept looks good to me and shows a way of offering features that aren’t currently available in the Metro version of IE (or at least not that I know of).

Another concept image was what a Bing/Microsoft Translator app could look like for Windows 8 and I think it looks very elegant and simple.

The final image is of what a single Xbox app could look like. Whilst there wont be a single app for all the Xbox entertainment marketplaces some of the aspects of the below design seem better than the design of Xbox apps currently available for the Windows 8 Consumer Preview.

What do you think about all these concept images? I have seen many others but these are the best ones I have seen, however, please do let me know about any other images you have seen.

This got me thinking not about what apps third party developers have created but actually about the Windows Phone apps Microsoft has already made for Windows Phone. One of the most talked about subjects with regards for Metro Apps for Windows 8 is whether Microsoft will make a version of Office available for the Metro interface or whether users will just have to use the desktop to access Office.

Well if the rumours are true then potentially the Office apps that are currently available on Windows Phone could run on Windows 8; therefore I wonder if they are kind of preview versions of what Microsoft plans to use on Windows 8. It wouldn’t require much work (if any) from Microsoft to get a Metro App version of Office on Windows 8 as they can just use the Windows Phone version.

I expect that the Office apps will get new features in Windows Phone 8 compared to the versions found in Windows Phone 7, if that is true then the apps might be designed to run on Windows 8 as well as Windows Phone 8. It would certainly make sense considering how much overlap there is likely to be with the underlying OSes of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8

I really do hope there are Metro app versions of the Office apps and not just desktop versions. I know that Office 15 is expected to have a more touch focused design but aside from the design of the apps they wont be able to make use of the new Charms in Windows 8 which I think will be an excellent aspect of the OS.

However, if Microsoft aren’t planning to release a Metro version of the Office apps it seems a bit ridiculous. Microsoft will have to have Office apps on Windows Phone 8, probably just an updated version of those found on Windows Phone 7. A lot of rumours suggest that Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 will share the same, if not a very similar app platform, so if Microsoft build Office apps for Windows Phone 8 why not just let them work on Windows 8 too.

Do you think Microsoft will make Office Metro Apps? If so do you think it could just be the ones from Windows Phone?

Microsoft describes DreamSpark as:

DreamSpark is simple: it’s all about giving students Microsoft professional-level developer and designer tools at no charge so you can chase your dreams and create the next big breakthrough in technology—or just get a head start on your career. DreamSpark gives you the chance to develop world-class software, Web applications, cool and creative designs as well as amazing games. Microsoft believes that students can do amazing things if they only have the right tools. Our company was started when many of the founders were still students, so we know what anything is possible. To make this happen, we are aligning with universities, associations, and other communities around the world to make sure that DreamSpark reaches everyone as fast as possible. So, get a head start on a career, do better in class, or even show the world new things that technology can do…all with DreamSpark.

But there is more to DreamSpark than just free software, it’s also possible to create and submit Windows Phone apps to the Windows Phone Marketplace for free. That’s right students, through DreamSpark, don’t need to pay the normal fee to be a developer for Windows Phone.

In addition to students signing up for DreamSpark it is also possible for educators and even institutions to sign up. This grants staff and the faculty access to many of the benefits which allows them to run competitions on campus and assist with their students’ learning.

All you need to do is sign up to DreamSpark and verify that you go to an academic institution (usually through your email address from your institute).