I’ve been waiting to write about the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, wondering if over time, the new user interface would grow on me. Now that I have spent the past couple of weeks trying it on a variety of machines, I still think the Metro UI looks quite good on a tablet. The operating system as a whole, however, is a bit awkward on a laptop and even worse on a desktop.
Microsoft has said that Windows 8 aims to be a “no compromise” operating system, focused on “and” instead of “or”—not a touch screen ora mouse and keyboard, but both together. It sounds great, but as I use it, I’m not quite convinced.
It’s certainly improved since the developer preview. You can now use it successfully on a desktop or notebook, but I’m not sure why a typical desktop or notebook user with Windows 7 would upgrade to Windows 8.
Metro UI
The new Metro user interface looks the same as it did on the developer preview and similar to the interface in Windows Phone (or the Zune), but it has undergone some important fixes that make it work better on a machine with a keyboard or mouse.
It’s still a tile-based interface with “active tiles” on the Start screen that bring up what are essentially full-screen applications. If you have a Metro application open, you can typically slide it over to one side so you can see two Metro applications side by side. One appears on a third of the screen, but it’s a tiled interface (as in Windows 1) rather than the overlapping windows we’ve gotten used to in more recent versions of Windows and the Macintosh.
With a touch screen, you press a tile to start the application, swipe down to get back to the Start screen, swipe left to right to switch applications, and swipe in from the right side to see the Windows 8 charms. (The charms include basic functions such as Search and Share that can work within any Metro application.) There are also options to return to the Start screen, see your devices, and edit settings. You can make applications appear next to each other just by sliding them to one side.
With a mouse and keyboard, you can click on the tiles to open applications, return to the Start screen by pressing the Windows key or clicking in the lower left-hand corner, and get the Charms menu to appear by moving the point to the upper right-hand corner. It’s different, but it certainly works. To get a Metro app to appear on the side of the screen, you need to select the top edge with your mouse, which brings up a little hand, then drag down and move it to the side you want. This is a bit less intuitive, but again, it does work.
In either case, one of the tiles brings you to the “desktop,” which looks essentially identical to the traditional Windows 7 desktop, except that the Start menu isn’t there anymore. Instead, you click on the lower-left hand corner and go to the Metro Start screen.
For a mouse and keyboard user, that’s a bit jarring; it looks completely different, of course. More importantly, while that’s great for moving to Metro apps or other things you have “pinned” to the first page of the start screen, it’s hard to see all of your programs.
Fortunately, there’s a new feature called Semantic Zoom. By pinching the Start menu with a touch screen or by selecting a tiny icon in the lower right-hand corner with your mouse, you can see the whole range of your Start menu, which makes it easier to arrange it or see an application that isn’t immediately visible without a lot of scrolling.
Perhaps even more useful for most desktop folks is an “all apps” screen that you can get to by swiping up from the bottom of the screen, right-clicking the start screen, or hitting Windows Z.
This gives you a view that’s reminiscent of the old Windows Start screen. It lists all your applications, segregated into groups, albeit not with the pop-up, cascading menus. Alternatively, you can think of it as full desktop of icons. It’s prettier than the old Start button, but involves more scrolling.
From the desktop, but not from a Metro app, you can move the pointer from your mouse to the lower left-hand corner to pull up an icon for the Start menu, and hold it in the upper left-hand corner to see the last opened Metro app. Pulling down on this icon shows you all your running Metro applications, but not your desktop ones.
The good news for mouse and keyboard users is that the familiar Alt Tab combination also shows you all of your running programs—both desktop and Metro apps—and lets you easily cycle among them.
All of this works notably better than it did in the desktop preview. So, why am I so skeptical? In general, for a desktop user, everything seems to require an extra step. There are new keyboard combinations to learn, and that means more retraining. I suppose that would be worthwhile if the Metro apps were compelling, but I’m a bit doubtful of that as well, at least for desktop users.
Metro Apps
It’s hard to judge the state of Metro apps, as most of what are on the consumer preview are also pre-release applications.
These include applications for Mail, Photos, Weather, Finance, Maps, People, Calendar, Messaging, Store, Video, and Music, as well as a number of games. In general, these seem fairly basic, but they work. For instance, the Mail app will connect to most Web mail services, as well as to Exchange. Microsoft really wants you to have a Microsoft account for the store, Video, and Music, but again, it works.
I’ve tried a number of third-party Metro apps and while there are few, they are interesting. USA Today, for instance, looks quite good, however I do worry about its habit of text moving off screen, even when there’s plenty of space available.
This is part of the design of the Metro UI: Applications are made to scroll from left to right, and usually indicate that there’s more if you scroll. This scrolling to the right makes some sense on a tablet (although I wonder if there’s a way to switch directions for languages that read right to left). On a desktop, though, where you’re likely used to scrolling by moving your mouse button up and down, it’s a bit awkward.
Perhaps the biggest concern I have with the Metro apps I’ve seen to date is that they all really seem designed for a relatively small screen, like a tablet’s. That’s ok on a laptop, but on a desktop with a large display, you often get a lot of wasted space. With a multi-monitor setup, at least right now, Metro apps only run on a single screen; a second screen gets the traditional desktop. As long as you’re mostly running desktop applications, with the occasional Metro app, that will work, but it seems a bit unfinished.
Another issue is the way most of the apps handle the “pinch and zoom” feature we’re used to on smartphones and tablets. It works fine with a touch screen, but on a desktop, you use the mouse with the control key and a scroll wheel. On a laptop, the only solution I can find is to use the Windows key and the plus and minus keys; it would be nicer if it supported gestures (like pinch and zoom) on the touchpad itself.
It’s also not immediately apparent how to close a Metro application, as the system was designed to have such applications simply suspended rather than closed. That’s what we’ve come to expect on smartphones and tablets, but on the desktop, we’re used to closing boxes in the corner of the window. Metro apps are full-screen (which can be quite nice), so you don’t have the Window outlines or the red “x” option. Bringing up the task-switching panel lets you right-click on an individual application and then choose an option to close it; alternatively the Alt F4 key combination works, as it has in Windows for years.
For desktop users, there are some workarounds. PCMag’s Michael Muchmore has a good list of keyboard and mouse shortcuts and ZDNet’s Ed Bott has some good ideas for customizing Windows 8 if you’re primarily a desktop user. But the need for such guides just proves that desktop users don’t seem to be the target here.
Perhaps upcoming Metro apps will change my mind, but for now, what I’ve seen isn’t compelling for a desktop user.
Browsing
Browsing on Windows 8 is a rather strange experience because there are actually two browsers, both labeled Internet Explorer 10, but with somewhat different features. Indeed, both Firefox and Chrome are planning Metro versions to complement their desktop browsers.
The Metro version of IE 10 is a full screen browser that runs without plug-ins and, as a result, is very fast. However, because it doesn’t have plug-ins, certain sites (such as those that use Flash) just don’t work and others end up with holes in them for the unsupported data. To see these sites correctly, you’ll have to choose a “display in desktop browser” option, which immediately puts you into the desktop version.
This aside, both browsers seem to work well, and they seem faster and more responsive than the current version of Internet Explorer.
Visit page two to read “New Features, Tablet Features” and more…
Copyright © 2010 Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc.
Source: Living With Windows 8 Consumer Preview
New Features
No matter what you think about the new user interface, almost every Windows user should be happy with some of the little changes Microsoft has made to the utilities within the desktop environment, particularly changes to the way the system moves and copies data.
Now, the new file management features can visually show you file conflicts, so you’re not mistakenly copying one file on top of another. Windows 8 should do a better job of displaying copy time remaining, but it will let you pause copying when you have other things going on, or just want to suspend the machine.
Many of these utilities now have a “ribbon” (as in Office 2007 and 2010) showing you all the features, but typically these are minimized unless you want to see the options. It’s interesting to see Microsoft move toward the ribbon in one way, and yet move completely away from such menu options (in the Metro interface) at the same time.
A number of other file management features have been updated as well; for instance, photos you view in Windows Explorer now are automatically rotated.
These make for convenient, though not exciting, enhancements. Similarly, the task manager has gone through a major update, now providing both a more visual display of which applications are taking the most CPU, memory, disk and network bandwidth; and also a history of how applications have been using system resources. One interesting thing you’ll note is that unlike most desktop apps, Metro applications, including the browser, typically are suspended when they aren’t running.
Another interesting new feature is that Microsoft SkyDrive is built in, giving all Windows users 25GB of free storage. This is a Metro app, and the interface seems very much tablet-oriented, but is a useful feature. Microsoft has a lot of different users with different needs here; enterprise users will almost certainly want to turn it off but the Metro app is a bit limited. I wonder if it would have been better for typical consumers if this and the synchronization app (what Microsoft calls LiveMesh) were somehow combined. This very much seems to be a work in progress; Microsoft is working on a new desktop version.
Another feature I like is a new “credentials” site where you can store all your passwords. Sure, there have been third-party products such as RoboForm (my favorite) and LastPass that do this, but it’s good to see it finally in the OS itself.
You now have the ability to show the estimated data usage on a connection (such as Wi-Fi or broadband wireless), and to “reduce data usage” on indicated connections, so as not to run up your broadband bill.
It has an improved “refresh” setting that lets you save user data and documents, while reverting the PC to its initial settings, which could prove quite useful.
Finally, I’m also impressed by a new feature called Windows To Go that lets IT departments more easily create a version of Windows that runs from a USB flash drive. I’ve tried this on an array of systems now, with varying results, and will write more on this later.
Tablet Features
Other features seem designed more for the tablet market, such as support for a gyroscope, accelerometer, and magnetometer; a new “airplane” mode; and a new “picture password,” which lets you tap and swipe parts of an image to create a password. Microsoft says there are about one billion possible gesture combinations for a picture password, though I still won’t be surprised if IT departments want to force more traditional passwords instead.
For tablets, Windows 8 offers an on-screen keyboard that pops-up from the bottom of the screen when you move to a text entry field. You can easily switch between a standard keyboard and a split keyboard designed for typing with your thumbs, with a couple of variations.
Alternatively, you can use a stylus with handwriting recognition, as on the old Tablet PC products. Over time, this has become surprisingly good, though my handwriting has proven a challenge.
Visit page three to read “Hardware Requirements, Pre-Release Issues” and more…
Copyright © 2010 Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc.
Source: Living With Windows 8 Consumer Preview
Hardware Requirements
From a hardware perspective, Windows 8 should run on any machine that can run Windows Vista or Windows 7. Microsoft stated minimums of a 1 GHz processor, 1GB of memory (for the 32-bit version; 2GB for the 64-bit one), 16GB of free hard drive space, and DirectX 9 graphics. While the speed is certainly improved on faster machines, I haven’t had any trouble thus far running it, even on somewhat older machines.
You will need DirectX 9 graphics (which includes almost everything made in the past seven or eight years), a 1024-by-768 display or better to run the Metro interface (with 1366-by-768 necessary to display two Metro apps or one Metro app and the desktop).
Pre-Release Issues
As is typical, the consumer preview is a pre-release version, and I did run into a number of issues. My issues are probably driver-related and I expect they will be fixed before a release candidate.
On a Lenovo ThinkPad X1, Internet Explorer initially did not display certain fonts correctly; an upgrade earlier this week seems to have solved the issue. While I have been able to connect wirelessly, I find it often doesn’t work initially and I need to run the “Network troubleshooter” to make the connection. This almost always works, but is annoying.
I had difficulty getting the Cisco VPN client to work properly, but a registry key change I found online fixed the issue.
I did note that you can’t upgrade the developer preview version to the consumer preview, although you could erase the drive and install the consumer preview, then add in tools such as Visual Studio. In addition, itdoesn’t run the Windows Phone development software, which isn’t an issue for me, but could be for some people.
None of these are big problems; they are the kind of issues anyone who installs pre-release operating systems ought to be prepared to deal with.
Conclusions and Suggestions
Overall, I’ve gotten used to running Windows 8, and while a lot of it is neat, I’m still a bit skeptical.
In short, it almost feels like two operating systems in one: Metro, which works quite well on touch screens and tablets but feels awkward in the desktop mode; and the classic Windows UI with a Metro Start screen for desktop users, where the new UI seems unnecessary at least for now. It makes a lot of sense on a tablet with an optional keyboard, or with a hybrid or convertible notebook/tablet, but those seem to be relatively small parts of the market.
I think there are a number of things Microsoft could do to make Windows 8 more appropriate for desktop users. I’m not expecting it, but it would be nice to see an option for desktop users to return to the classic Start menu, and even launch Metro apps from there. For laptop users, it would be good to be able to use a touch pad for the kind of gestures you would use on a touch screen (a similar feature is in Mac OSX Lion). And for desktop users, I would be interested in an option to run Metro apps within windows, so you could have a number visible at the same time, particularly for large or multi-monitor setups.
As it is, Microsoft is right in saying there is “no compromise” to utility. You do get both sets of features, but simplicity of operation is compromised, I fear that will make a lot of desktop users in particular rather unhappy.
Copyright © 2010 Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc.