Windows 8 gets a new task manager and USB booting

By Jeffrey Van Camp Published April 18, 2011

Someone (or people) at Microsoft leaked an early build of Windows 8. Now everyone with hacking skillz seems to be digging around in it. Two new rumors have popped up in the past few days. We’ve got details on the new Windows 8 task manager and a new Portable Workspaces feature that lets you backup your version of Windows to a USB drive.

Advanced Task Manager

WinRumors believes that Microsoft is working on a new task manager interface for Windows 8 and has the screenshots to back it up.

windows-8-rumors-advanced-task-manager — Image used with permission by copyright holder

This screenshot is of the Advanced Task Manager, which shows CPU usage, running processes, and other detailed information for users who can understand it. In the lower right of the picture you can see another part of the new task manager that indicates how much memory and power an application or process is using up. This type of information is currently available in Windows 7, but like all task managers since Windows 95, even Windows 7 fails to label all apps and .exe’s properly or explain what they do. Microsoft may be finally attempting to simplify this messy, necessary interface in Windows 8.

windows-8-rumors-touch-task-manager — Image used with permission by copyright holder

The screenshot above, which was posted by a user in the Mydigitallife forum, shows a larger, more touch-friendly interface for the basic task manager. Applications can be killed by simply pressing the X button on the right, while categories can be minimized or maximized by clicking on them with a mouse or, presumably, a touch of the finger.

Recommended Videos

Portable Workspaces

windows-8-rumors-portable-workspace — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Finally, Windows 8 will have a Portable Workspace feature, which lets you install a fully bootable, usable version of Windows onto a 16+ GB USB drive. This feature could help IT folk diagnose problems with PC installations. Ideally, business users could also pop in a USB drive with their setup on it into a client’s computer and safely share sensitive information. Portable Workspaces is currently only in the Enterprise (and probably Ultimate) edition of Windows 8.

Topics

Jeffrey Van Camp

Former Digital Trends Contributor

As DT's Deputy Editor, Jeff helps oversee editorial operations at Digital Trends. Previously, he ran the site's…

Computing

New AMD laptop GPUs have leaked, and Nvidia might be in trouble

A woman sits by a desk and plays a game on a laptop equipped with an AMD processor.

AMD has recently launched some of its best graphics cards for desktops, what with the arrival of the RX 9070 XT and the non-XT model -- but laptop gamers haven't had anything to look forward to. That might be about to change, as a new leak tells us that AMD is preparing a whopping six laptop GPUs, and that list includes an unexpected model.

The scoop comes from All The Watts on X (Twitter), who -- in their usual manner -- shared a rather cryptic message containing GPU specs. Each model is followed by an "M," indicating that this is the RX 9000 series for laptops, and it's actually bigger than the desktop lineup is so far. What's more, it's actually larger than the desktop lineup might ever be, seeing as that one is only supposed to get three new GPUs at some point.

Computing

Outlook typing lag will finally get a fix from Microsoft

A Dell laptop connected to a hard drive on a couch.

If you use classic Outlook to handle your emails, then you're most likely familiar with the annoying bug that causes huge CPU spikes while typing. It can be difficult to finish emails when your system resources jump by as much as 50 percent (and increase power usage with it), but Microsoft has finally announced that a fix is on the way. The downside? It won't arrive until late May for most users, although some might see it in early or mid May if they're part of the beta program. Until then, there is a workaround.

Rolling classic Outlook back to version 2405 seems to fix the issue, but it comes with a not-insignificant tradeoff. Updates since version 2405 have patched several security flaws, so if you opt to go this route, be aware that it opens your system to vulnerabilities.

Computing

YouTube’s AI Overviews want to make search results smarter

YouTube App

YouTube is experimenting with a new AI feature that could change how people find videos. Here's the kicker: not everyone is going to love it.

The platform has started rolling out AI-generated video summaries directly in search results, but only for a limited group of YouTube Premium subscribers in the U.S. For now, the AI Overviews are focused on things like product recommendations and travel ideas. They're meant to give quick highlights from multiple videos without making users look at each item they're interested in.