Steve Ballmer, leader of Microsoft has come out with the latest version of his company's operating system- Windows 8. It is going to be available from 2012. The announcement was made during the Microsoft Developer Forum in Tokyo. Ballmer said during the event that it has taken a lot of effort from Microsoft to produce Windows 8.

There are also reports in the PC Magazine that say that the company is also going to hit the tablet computers segment soon as well. As for the features, no such information has come out till now.

However, if one were to listen to the speech that was given by Ballmer then one can get a slight glimpse as far as the features go. He had said that someday in the future it is going to be hard to distinguish between phone, slate and a PC.

Ballmer further added that as the company keeps looking forward to the next generation of Windows systems, there is a whole new array of things that are going to come up.

A variety of rumors had propped up in the recent months regarding the Windows 8.