Dubai: Microsoft held an event for corporates and organisations inside and outside of the UAE to give their user experience on its new operating system — Windows 8.

Emirates airlines will be rolling out Windows 8 tablets for its 900 aircraft from January with an Emirates built-in app.

“We have signed a deal with HP for its ElitePad 900 tablet and we will be rolling out in the first four months of next year starting from January. The senior cabin crew member will have the tablet and will have all the details of the passengers as well as the crew,” Kevin Griffiths, senior vice-president — cabin crew, service delivery, Emirates, told Gulf News.

“I think the user experience is very good, intuitive and I was the first one to use the tablet on Sunday. The cabin crew was using the tablet also without prior experience on the new platform.”

“We have just rolled out Windows 7 on our corporate desktops and we will be sticking to it for some time as we have made a huge investment. We will be using Windows 8 on tablets and in mobile computing space,” he said.

Dubai was one of the six cities in the world to have the privilege of launching Windows 8 on October 26.

The other five cities are Paris, Shanghai, New Delhi, New York and Hong Kong.

The advantage for an end user is to have the same features for their desktops, laptops, Xbox, smartphones and media tablets. They have an option of touch user interface or keyboard and mouse option.

Not only Griffiths, Fathima Ali, deputy director general of UAE smart learning and head of IT department, Ministry of Education, were all praise for Microsoft’s new platform and its simplicity.

She said, eight out of the 400 plus schools are currently testing Windows 8 tablets from September and by January, 15 schools will be running on Windows 8 tablets.

“The Ruler of Dubai has given the MOE five years for schools to completely move to tablets. Already one year has passed. But it will not only be on Windows, it can be Apple, Android or Microsoft,” she said.

“We have developed a Smart Learning app by local partners for the students and in that single app it covers more features for teachers , students and classmates. It is like one umberella,” Khalid Ahmad, development director, UAE smart learning, said.