question about desktop on windows rt.

Let me start by saying that I love windows 8, and mind you, I'm using it on my desktop. I'm really looking forward to getting an x86 tablet/ultra book.
My question is, windows rt tablets have a traditional desktop also. I've seen it in demos of arm tablets. But what's going to be there? If zero legacy applications work on arm, then what's the purpose of it? Will some programs work on it?

Windows RT will still have the traditional Desktop but only specially coded/modified Microsoft programs will run in it. I do believe the included version of office 15 will fall into that category.

Quite simply, Everything needs to be rewritten to run in the Metro RT (non-desktop) environment. However, Microsoft Office (and many important Windows components) have not been rewritten in time for Windows 8 launch. Hence, Desktop environment is still there so you can use Office and the Older Windows components.

I believe Windows 9 should have enough Windows components rewritten in order to eliminate Desktop on ARM systems.

Assuming it survives.

Might be that metro itself is abandoned in win9 , and ARM machines continue with a variation of metro as a different line.

FuturDreamz said:

Quite simply, Everything needs to be rewritten to run in the Metro RT (non-desktop) environment.

Click to expand...

Not necessarily. It should be possible to recompile desktop apps to run on ARM with little change (so long as they aren't using x86 assembly language). I don't know, however, if Microsoft will be providing a compiler for that.

Mystere said:

FuturDreamz said:

Quite simply, Everything needs to be rewritten to run in the Metro RT (non-desktop) environment.

Click to expand...

Not necessarily. It should be possible to recompile desktop apps to run on ARM with little change (so long as they aren't using x86 assembly language). I don't know, however, if Microsoft will be providing a compiler for that.

Click to expand...

Sorry but to me: Windows 8 RT, Windows RT (which is actually "WinRT"), and Metro RT are three completely different things.

By "Metro RT", I mean the Metro environment, which is on all Windows 8 computers. NOT ARM-only. For an application or anything to work in the Metro environment, it has to be rewritten to comply with Metro sandboxing, and to have a Metro application interface. Microsoft would LOVE to completely remove desktop from Windows 8 RT, but then they would have to rewrite all Windows components; from Regedit to dxdiag. And that simply cannot be done by the time Microsoft wants to launch Windows 8. But what they can do is ban any other non-metro applications, which should keep the operating system from being damaged or inflicted with malware.

In summary: If all WinRT components are rewritten for Metro RT, then the desktop can be taken out of Windows 8 RT.

And to summarize the summary: Good job, Microsoft. Brilliant naming scheme.