14 DAY TRIAL // On its way to the M3 milestone, the final step before moving into beta, Microsoft's Windows client has just got a new build leaked and made available for download via various sites.
BetaArchive, which broke the news on the availability of this new leaked build, also made available a series of screenshots to provide a glimpse at the latest changes Microsoft operated with it.
The said leak, Windows 8 build 7989.winmain.110421-1285.615974c7346f7374, has some nice surprises in store for us, including better Hyper-V 3.0 support, hints to an app store, possible support for SMS, and a new soft keyboard.
As far as the Windows 8 client is involved, this would be the first X64 build to have leaked, reportedly.
Thus, it offered info on some enhancements that were not spotted in other leaked builds of the platform, such as the inclusion of new features for Hyper-V 3.0.
Found in the Windows Features item in the Control Panel, the said features were related to Storage, Memory/Processor Enhancements, and Networking.
A recent post on windows-now mentions the newly spotted features and also links to screenshots that prove their inclusion in Windows 8.
The list would include: Virtual Fibre Channel Adapter, Storage Resource Pools, New .VHDX virtual hard drive format (up to 16TB, minus power failure resiliency), support for more than 4 cores, NUMA - Memory per Node, Cores per Node, Nodes per Processor Socket.
As for Networking Enhancements, they would be: Hardware Acceleration (Virtual Machine Queue & IPsec Offload), Bandwidth Management, DHCP Guard, Router Guard, Monitor Port, Virtual Switch Extensions, Network Resource Pools.
All these should result in better Windows Phone 7 Emulator support, while impacting other usage scenarios as well.
The leaked Windows 8 Build 7989 reportedly unveiled info on a metro-inspired virtual keyboard too, along with what appears to be support for SMS, which hints at the possible release of 3G-enabled devices.
And there are also the bits of info regarding a possible Windows App store integrated with the client. Apparently, Microsoft would be able to enable or disable various features within the OS through the said store.
