Digital Home Thoughts: Where is Windows Going?

"For what it’s worth, the first 25 years of our lives weren’t that smooth, either. So forgive us for favoring words like “commemorate” or “contemplate” instead of “celebrate,” which feels like too rosy a word for an operating system that has given us so much frustration, confusion, and heartache. Hey, maybe now that it’s 25, Windows will behave like a grown-up."

In a world where iPad sales are burning up the charts, Google has released its own OS and notebook PC and everyone lives with instant updates on all their friends, it is easy to say that the computing industry is changing. Windows has come a long way, and it needs to keep changing in order to stay relevant and satisfy the needs of its users. I have to wonder if Windows 8 will be marginalized not because it does not keep up with the needs of its users but because desktop computing is not as important anymore.

If media hype is any indication, people are becoming much more outgoing, and lighter, smaller, more portable devices like smartphones and tablets will dominate the industry, at least on a consumer level. Sure, desktops and notebooks are certain to be around for a long time, but as people move more to cloud computing and services, how important is the underlying structure?

It does look like Windows 8 will potentially address some of those, as while there are a lot of great services and apps out there, there are a lot of great services and apps out there. Of the consumer oriented suggestions, Windows 8 appears to becoming more of a gateway to services regardless of being web or application based, bringing it all together for you. I just hope that with all this integration, consumers will still find time to explore new services and websites instead of staying with what they are comfortable with.