It’s not as sexy as today’s smartphones and tablet computers.

But Windows, Microsoft’s ubiquitous operating system, has been the backbone of consumer and business computing for several decades now. The venerable OS, throughout its various iterations, has quietly served as the ICT platform for millions of households and organizations that rely on Microsoft’s much loved and equally hated creation.

Although almost all users, at one or more points in their computing lives, would hate Windows, for a vast majority of them, the OS is something they cannot live without.

But like everything else that most people work or live with on a more or less constant basis, Windows can be easily taken for granted. We take notice only on those occasions when it crashes or hangs.

Windows 8

The latest version of Microsoft’s OS, Windows 8 promises to combine the best of desktop and mobile computing. Designed for use on conventional computers (desktop, laptops, and netbooks), Windows 8 will also run on tablets and other mobile computers, and will include touchscreen capabilities.

Windows 8, Microsoft hopes, will maintain the company’s dominance in the computer OS market, while expanding the software giant’s reach into the tablet territory currently ruled by the iPad and Android slates.

Some industry observers, however, are concerned that Windows 8 is burdened with too much of Microsoft’s expanded and potentially conflicting objectives. The OS, some say, might have bitten off much more than it could chew, in a manner of speaking.

Also, some parties who have had advanced access to the OS have expressed concerns regarding how it performs conventional computing tasks, as well as those more commonly associated with tablet computers.

While some issues approximate being mundane, such as the absence of a Start button (a constant for all of the previous editions of Windows), others have more substance and may potentially turn off some users, enough to drive them to try the Mac and Linux perhaps.

Electronic Arts and Windows 8

Electronic Arts, the number 2 videogame company in the United States, is currently in talks with Microsoft to bring its mobile games to the mobile version of Windows 8. EA says it sees Microsoft’s next-generation OS as quite important for its mobile gaming strategy.

Electronic Arts hopes that by expanding mobile and online games business, it will become less dependent on boxed retail.

Surface at $199?

Recent rumors about the Surface tablet computer have convinced me that Microsoft continues to learn marketing tricks from Apple. I guess, Steve Ballmer is quite lucky that his company and the Cupertino company have this “gentlemen’s agreement” not to sue each other over patent-related conflict.

Otherwise, Microsoft would be the apple of Apple’s legal eagles, just as Samsung currently is.

One of the crazier rumors currently making the rounds on blogosphere has to do with Microsoft’s alleged plan to sell the Windows RT version of its forthcoming Surface tablet with an SRP of $199, or about Php8,400.

It is insane, indeed. But that is one rumor I really would love to believe.

That’s all for the meantime, folks. Join me again next time as we keep on watching IT.