Living with Windows 8: First Impressions
September 16, 2011 in Features, Highlights
Windows 8 has been a long time coming. Running on from the success of Windows 7, the last of the desktop-focused operating systems, Microsoft have been planning the next big leap behind closed doors since 2009.
Whilst there are a lot of exposés and articles on the features and changes with Windows 8, I’m a bit too hardcore for that. My hard drive has been wiped, and Windows 8 will be my primary and only OS for as long as I can put up with it. This series of articles will cover what life is really like with the Developer Preview of Windows 8.
It’s important to stress that this is a very early iteration of the OS – it’s still very similar to Windows 7, but quite a few individual things have changed, both on the surface and underneath. I’m running this on an i7 2600k box with 12GB of RAM and a range of hardware and accessories, and I’ll be running everything from essential apps to games and a range of legacy and third-party software to give it a thorough test.
Windows 8 is also much more tablet-focused, but it’s absolutely critical that it works well on standard desktop setups of a keyboard and mouse. Not everyone will be buying a brand-new touch laptop or monitor for the upgrade, certainly not businesses. So whilst I may not be getting the best experience, I’ll be getting the same one that most Windows 8 users will get.
Read on to see my first impressions….
For this preview, the first half of installation is virtually identical to Windows 7. At first boot after sysprep, a new setup takes user details. This is the first example of the new style of full-screen touch-friendly UI that is becoming the norm for Windows 8. I first tested this in a VM with a tiny 640×480 resolution, and the UI had some bugs there, but all was well when I tried on my main monitor at 2048×1152 (who needs dual screen?!). Everything worked fine with a keyboard/mouse, although it didn’t use the whole screen, and combined with the large font and wide spacing of elements, and it meant scrolling was required.
One key new feature is the introduction of Windows Live IDs (email addresses) for creating user accounts. When finished, this will enable your account and some settings to be downloaded from the cloud, including themes, browser history, shortcuts, languages and passwords. In this preview, it just takes your Windows Live Messenger icon/avatar and uses that as your icon for logging in.
Despite selecting my country three times during setup, after installation it kept a US time zone, which messed several things up when it was changed, including Gmail and Skype. Unless I did something wrong, I’ll put this down to an early bug.
Start Menu
The most predominent feature of Windows 8 is new Start Menu (shown at the top of this article). This follows the ‘metro’ user interface from Windows Phone 7, and functions very similarly to the WP7 home screen.
The Start Menu is full-screen and starts up at logon, replacing the desktop as the focus of Windows instead of being an optional menu brought up when needed. The main screen contains grouped tiles, some of which show additional data such as images from the program. This is the primary method of accessing all applications.
This also retains the search features from Vista and Windows 7. From the start menu, start typing and a sidebar opens up. By default it just searches apps, but you can press the down arrow to select to search settings or files instead, or search within compatible apps including Internet Explorer.
The Other Start Menu
As well as the full-screen start menu (shown on the right), there is also a menu that pops up when you mouse into the bottom-left corner, in the position of the old Start Menu. This contains only four links: Settings, Devices, Share and Search. Each of these opens a side window on the right of the screen, allowing quick access to common functions.
The settings sidebar contains network, volume, brightness, notifications, power and language settings; Devices contains print and display-selection options; Share allows quick sending of files and screenshots; whilst Search opens the same search sidebar as when typing in the start menu – however it searches the internet by default, rather than apps.
Opening this menu, going to the devices sidebar and selecting power seems to be the only way to shut down, unless you Ctrl+Alt+Delete or log off by clicking your user icon in the Start Menu.
The Desktop
The standard Windows desktop is still completely present (shown below). Any app that doesn’t open in the new UI opens in the desktop environment. There is also a desktop icon in the start menu, and pressing the Windows key alternates between the desktop and start menu. Apart from the lack of a traditional start menu, the desktop is pretty unchanged.
In upcoming editions of Living with Windows 8, I’ll be looking at Explorer, Internet Explorer, the new HTML5 apps and some of the under-the bonnet changes. Also check out our article on the boot speed of Windows 8, which is really magnificent.
First Impressions: Summary
Windows 8 has a completely new focus, but it’s still pretty much Windows 7 underneath. I can definitely understand the reasoning behind the new UI, and it really is a huge step for bringing the power of a desktop OS to tablets. But is Windows 8 still suitable to be used as a desktop OS? From my first impression, the potential is definitely there – there are some really awesome changes even in this early build – but Microsoft need to ensure that everything in the new UI can be done from the desktop side too. It can be a little off-putting to switch between the two UIs, and I can imagine this being very confusing for new users. It’s simply not going to be the case that EVERY application a user uses is converted to the new HTML5 format, so all but the most basic of users will have to alternate between UIs. So long as Microsoft bear that in mind and make it perfect for all users, Windows 8 will be awesome. If they forget about real people, and make Windows 8 for some mystical non-existent user that uses non-existent HTML5 apps instead of Windows applications on a non-existent high-performance high-resolution expensive Windows 8 tablet, then this will fall flat on its face, and that is a real risk.
Coming up in the next edition, the important stuff: Minecraft 1.8 works!
