Windows 8 blog posted a massive article reflecting on user comments about the Windows 8 start screen. So reserve some time to read it

Making room in Windows 8. We made hundreds of specific changes to minimize OS memory use in Windows 8. I’m going to call out a few specific areas that resulted in substantial memory savings.

Nice visual timeline of the Windows 8 development process. So with Sinofsky’s reputation I expect that May 2012 can be a realistic RTM date.

Few operations in Windows are as scrutinized, measured, and picked apart as boot. This is understandable—boot times represent an effective proxy for overall system performance and we all know the boot experience is an incredibly important thing for us to get right for customers. Data shows that 57% of desktop PC users and 45% of laptop users shut down their machines rather than putting them to sleep. Overall, half of all of users shut down their machines rather than putting them to sleep.

The trend of incredibly large and small form-factor hard disks means we can store ever increasing amounts of data without worrying about running out of capacity. Windows 8 enables easy access to the contents of two important storage formats, ISO and VHD files. While we generally think of these formats when they appear on media, they are also very useful as files within a file system and that is where native support in Explorer comes in handy.

Copying, moving, renaming, and deleting are far and away the most heavily used features within Windows Explorer, representing 50% of total command usage (based on Windows 7 telemetry data). For Windows 8, we want to make sure that using these core file management commands, which we collectively refer to as “copy jobs,” is a great experience.

We have earlier seen the Ribbon UI in leaked builds of Windows 8, today Microsoft has officially posted on the Building Windows 8 blog showing the changes made in Windows Explorer. The telemetry data indicates that top 10 commands amounts to 81.8% of Explorer Command use, which includes Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, Rename, Properties, Refresh, New and Command Bar while according to the information only 10.9% come from the Command bar which is the most visible part in Windows Explorer in Windows 7 or Vista.

Today, at the All Things Digital D9 Conference, Steve Sinofsky demonstrated the next generation of Windows, internally code-named “Windows 8,” for the first time. Windows 8 is a reimagining of Windows, from the chip to the interface. Windows 8-based PC will become a new kind of device, one that scales from touch-only small screens through to large screens, with or without a keyboard and mouse.

The demo showed some of the ways Microsoft reimagined the interface for a new generation of touch-centric hardware. Sinofsky also revealed that Windows 8 will not require any additional hardware requirements above and beyond Windows 7.

We have earlier seen the Ribbon UI in Windows 8 build 7850 with orange circles everywhere. In Windows 8 build 7955 the folks at MDL Forums were able to get the new Windows Explorer Ribbon UI by removing the circles from the explorerframe.dll file. Here is how the Windows Explorer looks-

Windows Thin PC (WinTPC) is a smaller footprint version of Windows 7 that allows customers to repurpose existing PCs as thin clients without requiring the VDA license to access VDI desktops. WinTPC replaces WinFLP. In addition, WinTPC will offer: