It is concerning to hear of Microsoft's intention to have a single operating system for embedded devices and PCs.

If Windows 8 is geared towards being an embedded platform, how is it going to run Visual Studio and perform as a development environment on a PC?

Windows 8 is due 2013 by which point Android will be a very sound embedded OS. Microsoft has gone the wrong way – instead of trying to compete with a well established embedded device industry they should go after the enterprise needs. They should be going the route of IBM. We software engineers need a strong and functionally rich OS to code on. XP and Windows 7 do this well - we wouldn't consider another OS platform to code on. This is Microsoft's strength.

The light-weight efficiency requirements for embedded devices and the functional richness necessary for a development environment are mutually exclusive. This long term strategy of trying to please all people on all devices is going to compromise the quality of the OS. This is a bad long term strategy decision by Microsoft IMHO as nobody wants an embedded device too hot to touch and a battery life half that of the competition, but that's the only way a full blown OS is going to get on a tablet/mobile.