Windows 8 will set the stage for greater things to unfold at Microsoft, company co-founder Bill Gates said on Monday, stressing too that the new multi-platform operating system represents "the big time for us."

In an interview with Microsoft's video blog Next, Mr Gates pointed to the integration of touch and voice recognition with the software giant's core product, Windows, which by itself is a leapfrog innovation for the OS that analysts said last prompted so much excitement and anticipation when Windows XP was issued more than a decade ago.

Microsoft has been touting Windows 8 as representative of the major architecture overhaul implemented by the company if only to catch up with dominant players in the now lucrative mobile computing market.

This fresh take on Windows, Mr Gates said, will deliver to global consumers the best of both worlds - that is of traditional computing and mobile computing, the latter's dominance explicitly shown by the millions of smartphones and tablet computers sold in the last half-decade.

"It takes Windows into the world of touch, low-power devices, really giving people the best of what we think of as a tablet experience and the PC experience," Mr Gates was quoted in the video blog as saying.

What has been achieved so far is the smooth synergy between conventional computing tools and mobile gadgets, made possible by Windows 8, which Microsoft said will eventually develop into a single working platform that would power all the computing requirements of global consumers.

This singular platform will fuse Windows 8 with Windows phone, both of which to function in the near future relying on a sole Windows kernel that according to Mr Gates would provide for seamless cross-platform developments and shared user interface.

The key, Mr Gates said, is Microsoft's closer engagement with developers, leading, he conceded, to a relationship that benefits the industry as a whole and the consumers.

The former Microsoft chief supported earlier declarations by his successor, Steve Ballmer, that Windows 8 and other new products from the tech giant are pushing the company into new focus, becoming devices and services centric in the immediate years ahead.

"People will be pretty amazed at the energy Microsoft is putting behind this new wave of products," Mr Gates was reported by PC Magazine as saying on Tuesday.

One of these new Microsoft products has evidently brought the company co-founder into high level excitement, which is the Surface tablet that simultaneously will be launched with Windows 8 later this week.

Mr Gates said he already got the Windows RT version of the surface and he's all praises for the device that now he uses "day and night."

"Surface is an unbelievably great product . . . It embodies this idea that, can you get an even better tablet that also has what you expect in a PC," the tech icon said, adding that the Microsoft product will surely wow consumers during hands-on trials.

"You can't appreciate it without seeing it. The way you take the keyboard on and off , the richness of the swiping, just the beauty of the device," Mr Gates insisted.