Microsoft's Windows 8 Certification Requirements Revealed

Remember the 'Vista Capable' lawsuit from a few years back? Microsoft appeared to have learned its lesson and enjoyed a much smoother roll out with Windows 7, and looking ahead, the Redmond software giant has already determined what will be required on the hardware side to run Windows 8. Microsoft actually released its "Windows 8 Hardware Certification Requirements" documents last month, but for the most part, it went largely unnoticed, by us included.

In any event, there are quite a few interesting tidbits included in the documents that have nothing do with the recent happenings with ARM. For example, Microsoft requires that Windows 8 PCs joined to a domain and without keyboards implement a new CTRL + ALT + DEL combination, which will be Windows Key + Power.


Microsoft is also requiring a 2-second resume (except for ARM), driver upgrades without needing to reboot, digitizers supporting a minimum of five touch points for Windows 8 touch PCs, and calls for Windows 8 tablets and convertible PCs to have exactly five buttons:

1. Power
2. Rotation lock
3. Windows Key
4. Volume up
5. Volume down

Speaking of which, tablet and convertible PCs will have to sport at least 10GB of free space, UEFI firmware, WLAN and Bluetooth 4.0 + LE (low energy), a minimum resolution of 1366x768, a 720p camera, a various other hardware requirements.

You can check out the documents in more detail here.