Microsoft Displays Surface Tablet At Windows 8 Launch

Microsoft Corp launched Windows 8 in Hong Kong on Friday (October 26) and also displaying its soon-to-be released Surface tablet.

On show were a range of devices running Windows 8 from PC makers such Lenovo and Acer Inc.

The Surface tablet, however, stole the spotlight.

Microsoft is hoping the sleek new device, which will be available in Hong Kong in early November, will be able to compete with Apple and Google.

"It is a software that supports all these new computers coming into the market today. So it will support different types of computers, from ultrabooks, an all-in-one convertible type of computer, touch devices, as well as tablets. So basically there are multiple different types of models coming to the market and then for the individual consumer you can choose whatever kind of device fits your needs," Microsoft's Hong Kong Marketing and Operations director Joelle Woo said.

Windows 7 was introduced three years ago, but Windows 8 represents the biggest change in Microsoft's user interface since Windows 95 came out 17 years ago.

"From the design point of view all the tiles that we have, all the applications that we have, are based on a live tile design. The beauty of it is that you don't need to enter into the application, to launch the application but you can know what's going on. Say for example if it is a weather forecast application, the weather news will push to your live tile. So you have only the front page you know everything, from like, stock market trends, to the weather, to your friends' news, etc. So you can have everything on your fingertips," Woo went on to say.

The radical redesign, which eliminates the Start button and features square tiles for apps, is built on the base of Windows 7, Microsoft's best-selling software that recently passed 670 million license sales.

Microsoft is offering several versions of the new system.

The basic Windows 8, the full Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8 Enterprise for large organizations will all run on traditional PCs, laptops and new tablets using Intel Corp chips.