The new Metro user interface will indeed light up computer screens in late October as Microsoft confirmed in a blog post on Wednesday that Windows 8 will roll out starting the 26th of July, likely reinvigorating the world's flagging interest on personal computers.

Windows Division Chief Steven Sinofsky initially announced the release date at Microsoft's yearly sales summit, which was shortly followed by a company blog that provided more details on arguably one of the most exciting debut in the tech world for 2012.

Both the full version and the upgrade install of the multiplatform operating system will hit the market, Microsoft said, increasing the likelihood that majority of existing Windows global users would allow the new software to enter their personal machines.

Doing so, the software giant said, would only cost $US40 for all previous Windows version - from XP to 7 - but users who purchased Windows 7-powered PCs after June this year will enjoy higher discounts from Microsoft.

They can avail of a Windows 8 upgrade by forking out only $US15, according to The Associated Press (AP).

The marketing tactic is expected to increase the chances of migration by old Windows users, thereby shooting up too the immediate sales that Microsoft can expect from the new product that it touted as its most significant release in a decade, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The jab on that area promises to bring in incredible results as the U.S. publication noted that to date, Windows users number at about one billion the world over.

But beyond the PC market, Microsoft is also gunning to capture considerable shares in the tablet and smartphone markets, which have become the toast of the tech world since Apple and Google deployed their mobile platforms that have been powering millions of mobile gadgets.

Windows 8 commenced development three years ago as Microsoft endeavoured to put together a multi-platform OS that would allow it to effectively play on conventional computing environment and its mobile counterpart.

Its new product, Microsoft said, will attempt to chip away from the lucrative market turfs that presently were labelled as either Android or iOS territories.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer was bold enough to predict earlier this year that Windows 8 will eventually reside on half-a-billion machines and gadgets over the next few years following its release.

He admitted though that first, his firm must build up a viable ecosystem to match that of Apple's and Google's, both of which have been constantly nurtured since the first iPhone and Android handsets were introduced to the world.

That is about half-a-decade of timeline for Microsoft to catch up, but the software giant is unfazed by the challenges and convinced at the same time that it holds just the right formula to collide head-on with the competition.

Along with Windows 8, Microsoft will also issue fresh products to support its future business thrust, among them the cloud computing-configured Office 2013 and the Surface tablet, which obviously is the company's answer to leading tablet computers manufactured by Apple and Samsung.