Taking a look at Windows 8
Windows 8 may well be almost a year from launch, but the developer preview is here already. We take a look at how it's shaping up.
06 October 2011
It doesn't yet have a scheduled shipping date, but the media is currently speculating that we'll see it towards the end of 2012. It runs on tablets, laptops, media PCs and desktop PCs - the same codebase; the same user interface. We're talking about Windows 8 - the latest in a long line of Windows releases.
Microsoft released a developer preview recently: we decided to download it and take a look at how it's shaping up.
With perhaps almost a year to go before it ships (so potentially over six months or more to go before the code is locked) Windows 8 is, as you'd expect, a work in progress. What's amazing, then, is how much of it is in place and working well.
Installing Windows 8
Installation is a snap - a few mouse clicks and you're there. Once installed, it boots quickly - very quickly. Our boot was around ten seconds compared to over forty with Windows 7. Windows 8 does this by hibernating the kernel and saving the contents of RAM to the hard drive - which isn't as time-consuming as you'd think.
Then to the login screen. Well, this is new - it has the ability to provide information before we login. The lock screen can be customised, to show the date, time, RSS feeds, information about your latest e-mails - in fact, most things you might want. Instantly, this is a more useful Windows. There's an interesting option to login without using a password - by drawing a shape on the screen, ideal for tablets.
The login screen
When you login to Windows, you're presented with the new Metro interface. And boy, what a change this is. The Metro interface is the default - which is probably the biggest change to Windows in years. The desktop is relegated to running as though it were an application. Metro uses a customisable arrangement of tiles - either to launch applications or display information.
The Metro interface is a mixed bag. It's slick, works quickly and works pretty well. But we couldn't help feel that - on a desktop at least - it's a solution looking for a problem; something that gets in the way rather than assists you. This may be a result of trying to get one OS to do everything. But, it's possible there's some sensible logic in this. Current sales trends show that the tablet is on the rise and the PC on the wane at the moment. What seems odd and clunky now may be exactly right for the predominately tablet market when it appears in a year. On a desktop, without a touch screen, it's something we wanted to turn off, initially at least.
The desktop
Clicking on the desktop tile takes you to - you guessed it. The desktop. But there's a change here too. Clicking on the Windows icon reveals that the start menu is AWOL - you're taken right back to the Metro interface. At the moment, the only way to get around this is with a registry edit.
Launching Internet Explorer shows the extent of how much Windows is changing. It launches full screen, within Metro, with few buttons and no menu. It's Internet Explorer 10, itself another work in progress. One of the buttons down at the right does what we want - 'use desktop view'.
And there we have it: the Windows which we're used to but not the one we're likely to be using for very much longer.
Finding Windows Explorer
Right-clicking on the Windows icon allows us to launch Windows Explorer. The file system is there, it's just been backed off a little. Explorer Windows now has an Office-like ribbon interface too, with lots of large buttons along the top. On a desktop, it's a real waste of screen space, but when you think of how Microsoft is aiming to bridge the gap between desktop and tablet, it makes more sense - these large buttons are far more finger-friendly. In most respects, Windows Explorer works the way in which you'd expect. However, it's most definitely a place for accessing the file system, not launching applications.
Working through Windows 8, it's clear that Metro is the way Microsoft is thinking for the future. Click on the Control Panel and it's the default view, although it's still possible to get from it to the old desktop control panel.
You can see this with some of the bundled applications - Paint Play, for example, is definitely made for finger painting not mouse drawing.
Automatic management of system resources
Windows 8 works harder to proactively manage resources. If you've not used a Metro application for a while, it shuts it down on your behalf, to proactively manage your system's resources - saving its current state before it does, making it quick to resume should you need to.
Backups without effort
Windows 8 has decent built-in backups - automatic ones, too - via File History. This allows you to backup whichever folders you want, to wherever you want, as often as you want. It's not as simple as Apple's Time Machine, but it's not far off - and it's far more flexible.
It's in this kind of detail that Windows 8 really scores. There's some very strong thinking gone into things which people do every day and could be done better. For example, files are automatically checked as they are downloaded, to make sure they're safe (if you're using Internet Explorer). ISO files can be mounted and accessed as if they are actual drives - files accessed just as easily as on a real drive. And, get this - if you're copying files, you can pause it part way, do something else, then go back to it.
Along the same lines is a really useful feature to refresh your PC - if you're having problems with a PC, doing this does a seamless reinstall of Windows, in most cases correcting issues.
A tablet-based Windows for the future
There are frustrations. There's no obvious way to close a Metro application, for example (control + escape does it). Annoying it might be, but this is a sign of things to come - Windows 8 is designed to embrace both the tablet and the desktop, but it's most firmly pointing towards the tablet, a device which is always on and applications are always running. Whether this is superb foresight remains to be seen. Apple's clearly working towards bringing its two operating systems together, but at this rate Microsoft could get to a unified tablet/desktop OS faster.
This review only just skims the surface of Windows 8. There are hundreds of changes. When Windows Vista was introduced, it's fair to say that it wasn't well-received. Windows 7 pretty much put things right - although there were new features, a lot of the focus was on getting Windows to be as solid and secure as possible - and, as a consolidation, it worked very well. Windows 8 is neither Vista nor Windows 7 - Metro is a far bigger leap than Vista's Aero interface and it has far more changes than Windows 7.
There is an awful lot to like with Windows 8. It's highly competent and has some great new features. The interface is the biggest change we've seen to Windows for a long time and currently desktop users are feeling a touch alienated. It's early days. Overall we very much like it, but we'd like to see it easier to drop the Metro interface when you're working on a desktop.
