A huge share of the credit for a major part of today’s population using convenient CD and DVD features, goes to the Microsoft cooperation, as they integrated these essential features in their 2001 release of windows XP. The convenience and ease of use that the users enjoyed in their burning interface included effortless drag and drop. With the introduction of Blu-ray technology, Microsoft was quick to integrate that too in their interface in the final release of windows vista service pack 2. Till the launch of windows 7, this feature had already become prevailing.
In the process of making this process even more convenient and easy for the users, Microsoft is rumored to have introduced certain amendments in the CD DVD disc burning interface in its latest operating system windows 8, changing the way we have been burning our discs until now. Such speculations arose after the unveiling of official screenshots of Windows 8 available on the firm’s website.
The concept of a “ribbon toolbar”, which was first unveiled to the world by Microsoft in the release of Office 2007, is supposed to be getting a major role in this release. Amongst the various interface transforms that are being introduced in this latest version of windows, this particular “ribbon” concept is speculated to be integrated in the whole of Windows Explorer, as reported by technology news site AfterDawn.
The whole idea focuses on increasing the efficiency of work by the user, as a system of organization would make it more convenient for the user to navigate around and perform several tasks. The most commonly performed operations would be grouped together in the form of tabs, making their accessibility trouble-free and effortless.
In this release, Microsoft has also paid heed to the increasing number of netbook and tablet users, in a clear attempt to establish itself in the android and apple dominated club. Due to portability needs, such devices are devoid of any built-in CD/DVD disc drives. However, the need of discs still remains, as users have to frequently reinstall software, or play their preferred games, or maybe just listen to a track from their favorite artist. Till now, this was being achieved by the use of ISO mounted CD/DVD image files, which were created using third party disc burner software. ISO disc stands for a handy file that has all the contents of any solid disc duplicated in the form of a single convenient file.
But now, Microsoft has taken an appreciable step by appending this feature as a component in windows 8, hence eliminating any need of a third party client. Users can now conveniently save their favorite discs in the form of image files as a onetime procedure on their portables, and can access them using this inbuilt feature at any desired time.
This maneuver by Microsoft can be seen as a clear indicator of the fact that the disc formats are far from extinction in the computing domain. However, their portability can be increased manifolds by the use of such integrated components, which would be very helpful especially in the case of tablets and netbooks.
How to Burn a CD/DVD in Windows 8
■ Burning CD/DVD is relatively easy. To get started, insert a writable media, CD-R, DVD-R, CD-RW or DVD-RW into your CD/DVD drive. Windows 8 will detect the external media and from the autoplay notification box that pops up(you will notice that the notifications have had a UI makeover too),go for the option “Burn files to disc using WindowsExplor
■ From the burn a disc dialogue box, fill in the details such as disc title and click the next button. You might be prompted to format the writable media. Now, select the files which you want to burn to the CD, and drag them over to the disc folder. By doing so, they are automatically copied over to the disc.
■ End the session by removing the writable media after you are done with the copying files.
■ And if you are planning to burn an iso file, right click on the file and choose burn iso option. Thats it!
