Windows 8 Takes Your Settings to the Cloud
By Ed Oswald | Wednesday, April 27, 2011 at 9:36 pm
A popular theme among Microsoft’s Windows 7 commercials has been this idea of the cloud, and it appears the cloud will play an even more integral role in the next version of Windows. Some astute beta testers have found settings called “Roaming Options” in the User Accounts settings of Windows 8.
While I don’t have a copy of this beta build in hand, this is what I’m gathering: these settings would be sent to the cloud and would be retrievable on a friend’s computer or on another device.
The word “device” is used in the settings description, which would lead me to believe Microsoft might be angling to provide a more seamless experience between Windows PCs and Windows Phone with minimal work on the user’s end.
Windows 8 will apparently put personalization, accessibility, language, application, and system settings on the cloud, as well as credential information. This means you could walk up to a friend’s computer, obtain your desktop profile from the cloud, and it would essentially be like being in front of your home computer. Pretty neat if you ask me!
One more cool feature? Windows will give you the option to kill this functionality when either on a paid network or one that has low bandwidth. I’m not sure how it may be able to discern this, but this could be vital for those of us increasingly on mobile connections and subject to those hated bandwidth caps.
(Image from istartedsomething)
7 Comments
Read more:
7 Comments For This Post
April 28th, 2011 at 6:28 am
That's fine, as long as I can opt out. I want nothing to do with "the cloud". As Sony has demonstrated, no one should trust these companies with our personal information, even if it appears as benign as configuration settings.
April 30th, 2011 at 8:12 am
Cool! Windoze will get even more security holes you can drive a planet through.
July 6th, 2011 at 12:51 pm
Hey how about truly faster computers with faster memory and everything that
can run in ram runing in ram now that we are using x64bit OS’s that can handle over 100Gb of ram.
How about less and or ultimately no Yuppy Libtard Features example Aero
all Windows Aero stuff sucks, also the annoying Super-Bar has has got to go the plain Task-Bar is not annoying and just fine
July 26th, 2011 at 11:31 am
Yeah, I looking forward to this feature of working with your desktop on friend's computer, cool.
November 4th, 2011 at 12:48 pm
This has been possible for over a decade by just putting it on your flash drive. Nothing new here, we've been doing it in disability areas for nearly 10 years. Just putting the 8kb file in the cloud now. But don't forget, no Internet, no settings…
February 9th, 2012 at 4:54 am
How about less and or ultimately no Yuppy Libtard Features example Aero
all Windows Aero stuff sucks, also the annoying Super-Bar has has got to go the plain Task-Bar is not annoying and just fine
February 21st, 2012 at 1:42 pm
Windows Aero sucks, not visually, but in terms of the amount of computer resources that it consumes, THIS CANNOT BE ARGUED.
Have an old Hp with 256GB discreet vid card in it, NO AERO–graphics score 5.9
Bought a new computer 2/20/2011 WITH AERO–my index score is 5.4, even though my graphics score is 6.3 with a 1GB AMD Radeon HD 7470M discreet card in it, I7-2670QM, 8GB DDR3 RAM.
There is no way around it, ANY computer is faster without AERO!!!!!!!!!! IF they are going to include it, at least give us a way to uninstall it completely if not wanted, this totally screws people who are using their notebooks for performance like, gaming, graphics, and music!