Windows 8 Tablet Requirements Released
Microsoft recently revealed a list of requirements in order for Windows 8 to run on a tablet in a document released by the company.
Tablets fit to run the new operating system need to include the five-finger mult-touch feature, 720p cameras and 1366x768 resolution screens. Rafael Rivera, a blogger at Within Windows reported some other key findings in Windows 8 hardware certification requirements.
All Windows 8 tablets and tablet-laptop hybrids must include five hardware buttons. These buttons would be for power, rotation lock, volume up, volume down and a Windows key. The devices must also support five touch points at a time, and include an ambient light sensor, magnetometer, accelerometer and gyroscope.
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The ambient light sensor would be used to adjust auto brightness, the magnetometer for compass applications and the accelerometer and gyroscope for motion controls.
The tablets will also require 10GB of free space, a 720p camera, Direct3D 10 support and 1366x768 resolution. The company has stated that Windows 8 would accommodate 1024x768 devices, but without support for side-by-side app viewing.
Rivera did not report on what the requirements would be for memory or processors, but Microsoft has said that any machine currently running Windows 7 would be able to use the new software. For those, a 1 GHz processor is required plus either 1 GB of RAM for 32-bit systems or 2 GB of RAM for 64-bit systems.
Some devices could have additional requirements in order to run the system. This would all depend on some of its unique features such as NFC (near-field communications) that will need to have touchmarks on the device it is on in order for Windows 8 to function properly on it.
And x86-based machines must resume from standby in two seconds. This requirement has been in place since Windows 7.
