Today at Computex 2013 in Taiwan Microsoft delivered their keynote address and made a few announcements relating to the upcoming Windows 8.1 release and Windows based tablets.
They also publicly demonstrated some of the features of Windows 8.1, which was formerly know as Windows Blue, for the first time.
Here is a short demo video by Jensen Harris from the Windows User Experience team that highlights some of those updates we will see when the public preview of Windows 8.1 arrives on 26 June 2013.
Here are the key announcements made during the keynote:
- Outlook 2013 RT will be added to the Office suite of software on all RT devices including Microsoft’s Surface RT. According to Paul Thurrott this program will run just like the other Office RT programs on the desktop and that this version of Outlook 2013 RT will be just like the version you see on x86 devices.
- Small screen devices running Windows 8, such as the recently unveiled Acer Iconia W3, will come with Office Home and Student 2013 out of the box. This suite comes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and usually retails for $139.99 so it makes for a great deal if you choose to purchase one of the smaller form factor Windows 8 devices.
- They reiterated the announcements made earlier this week at TechEd North America about new business related features in the Windows 8.1 update as well.
I am thrilled, as I imagine many are, about Outlook 2013 RT coming to my Surface RT. We heard reporting that they had been working on a version of Outlook for RT devices a few months ago but it was never confirmed until today.
Of all the updates coming in Windows 8.1 Outlook 2013 RT is competing for status as my favorite part of the upgrade.
What about you?