Windows 8 review
By Dana Wollman posted Oct 30th 2012 1:00PM
It's unusual, to say the least, for us to spend a year with a product
before publishing our review. In the case of Windows 8, we've written
thousands of words already, starting with our first hands-on in
September of 2011, followed by deep dives on the
Developer Preview,
Consumer Preview,
Release Preview and
RTM build.
Even our readers have had ample time to get acquainted with the OS --
it's been available as a public download since February. And yet, we've
never tested a final version of the software running on brand new,
made-for-Windows-8 hardware. With the OS now on sale (alongside dozens
of new PCs), it's finally time for us to double back and revisit
everything we've previously written in the form of a final,
comprehensive review.
And what a challenging assignment this
was: it's hard enough to give an OS the full review treatment without
burying the reader in minute details. It's even tougher when the
software was built for so many different kinds of hardware. Combining a
traditional desktop with Windows Phone-inspired Live Tiles, Windows 8
was designed to be equally at home on traditional PCs and more
finger-friendly devices, like tablets and hybrids. In addition to
walking you through the operating system's various gestures and
built-in apps, then, we'll spend some time talking about which form
factors are best suited to this redesigned version of Windows. Read on
to see what we found out.
Table of contents
Getting started
It's all about the cloud
The whole boot-up sequence takes not a minute, but just 20 seconds in some cases.
We can remember when we first started using Windows 7; the start-up
sequence wasn't that different from Vista, which in turn wasn't unlike
versions of Windows that came before that. The chain of start-up
screens could be long, sometimes taking more than a minute to complete.
Depending on how slow the system was, it could have taken a while
longer for the desktop to fully load. Here, booting Windows feels like
turning on an Android tablet, or some other mobile device. The whole
process takes not a minute, but just 20 seconds in some cases -- a
short sequence marked by a brief splash screen and redesigned Windows
logo. If this is your first time starting up your Windows 8 machine,
you'll see a 30-second video tutorial explaining some of the controls
that otherwise might not be so obvious -- the so-called Charms Bar
which you pull out from the right side of the screen, for example.
(We'll circle back and explain all those new user interface elements in
just a moment.)
From there, getting set up is a quick, painless
affair. When you first boot up Windows 8 you'll be prompted to sign
into your Microsoft account. Yep, the same one you might already be
using for Hotmail, SkyDrive and Xbox Live. That means that every time
you sign into a Windows 8 PC, your settings and custom tweaks will
follow you to that new device. Additionally, because your Microsoft
account is linked to your SkyDrive storage, you'll be logged into
SkyDrive on any Windows 8 device where you've logged in using your
Microsoft ID. So, because Office 2013 backs up to SkyDrive by default,
it means any document you edit on your Windows 8 device will
automatically upload to the cloud.
If you didn't already have a
Microsoft account, you can create one while you're setting up your PC.
You can link your account at any time, really, and you also have the
option of disconnecting it (in Microsoft's words, "switching to a local
account"). Naturally, too, you can add multiple user accounts, as you
could on previous versions of Windows.
If you like, you can also
cherry-pick which settings do and do not get synced across your various
Windows 8 devices. Go into the settings menu, for instance, and you can
use on-off switches to sync your settings for desktop personalization,
accessibility, language, app and browser settings. You also have the
option of syncing your lock screen, account picture and other Windows
settings, like those relating to File Explorer or the mouse. Note: to
have your passwords follow you from PC to PC, you'll need to "trust"
the computer through an online verification process.
Security options
Obviously, if you log into Windows 8 for the first time using an
existing Microsoft account, you've already got a built-in password for
your PC. But in addition to a standard password, you can use a
four-digit numerical pin to unlock the device. What's more, with
Windows 8, Microsoft is also offering a new "Picture password" option
that allows you to pick any photo and make a series of gestures on it.
You can make as many gestures as you want, but they do have to be taps,
circles or swipes. In addition to the order, though, you'll have to
remember where on the picture you're supposed to make each gesture.
We had mixed success here. On the one hand, when we set our password to
be one tap in each corner of the picture, we were easily able to
replicate this pattern, even if we didn't hit the exact same pixels
each time. Still, when our password was a diagonal slash across each
corner, we struck out trying to draw the lines in the same spot we did
initially. Fortunately, as you're configuring your picture password
you'll be asked to repeat the pattern, so if you can't do it then, that
might be a sign you need to come up with something else.
User interface
Redesigned Start Screen, and the end of the Start button
Everyone can, and will, figure it out.
It's safe to say the Windows Phone-esque Live Tiles have been the
single most polarizing thing about Windows 8. Which makes sense: the
new, mobile-inspired Start Screen looks wholly different from anything
we've seen on previous versions of Windows. What's more, you can't even
interact with these apps the same way: they run at full-screen, and
can't be minimized or re-sized like the windows you're used to. In
short, these tiles are the cornerstone of the Windows 8 experience, and
they're impossible to avoid, even if you plan on doing much of your
work in the traditional desktop.
As you've probably heard by
now, the Start button is no more. Well, it's there, but you'll have to
hover with your mouse in the lower-left corner to make it appear. So,
it's exactly where you'd expect it to be; it's just hidden until it's
clear you need it. And what if you're using a touchscreen PC, like a
dockable tablet? Your device will almost certainly have a dedicated
Start button, the same way every Windows-compatible keyboard has a
Start key. You can also find a shortcut to the Start menu in the Charms
Bar, which you expose by swiping in from the right side of the screen.
Not being able to click on the Start button is an adjustment, to be
sure, but we're also confident you'll fall into a rhythm pretty
quickly. After all, hovering where the Start button used to be isn't
that different from clicking it, and hitting the Start key with your
pinkie feels natural as well.
When Windows users say they wish
Microsoft hadn't axed the Start button, what they're really nervous
about is the fact that the Start Menu is presented so differently. When
you hit the Start key, you'll no longer see a stack of fly-out menus;
instead, you'll be whisked away from the desktop to a full-screen
assortment of finger-friendly Live Tiles, which you scroll through from
left to right. In other words, that minimal, unfamiliar screen
is the new Start Menu.
Back when we first tried out the Developer Preview, we said it felt
jarring to switch back and forth between the traditional desktop and
this more tablet-optimized Start Screen. And it is -- if you've never
used Windows 8 before. What we can say now that we didn't appreciate
back then is that while the learning curve is steep, you do get
comfortable after a while. No one is a dummy: everyone can, and will,
figure it out. It just takes a little time before using Windows 8 feels
truly effortless.
Universal search
We'd add, too, that once you master this new layout, there are lots of
useful things about the OS that feel like clear improvements over
previous versions of Windows. If you make the same pinch-to-zoom
gesture you'd use to zoom in and out of web pages, you can shrink the
Start Screen so that you can see all your pages of apps at once. As you
can imagine, that's useful if you have a large collection of apps and
don't want to page horizontally through eight home screens.
Additionally, once you bring up the Start screen you can start typing
to search for something. As any Windows user will tell you, you can
already more or less do this in Win 7, except here you don't even need
to find a search bar. The results will immediately pop up on the right
side of the screen. From within the search results pane, you'll see the
results are divided into files, settings and applications. Admittedly,
this method of search isn't obvious to new users, but again, you only
need to learn it once. After that, it's quite convenient.
Charms Bar
The Charms Bar is at its best when you have some sort of touch device at your disposal.
We already mentioned the Charms Bar, which appears when you swipe in
from the right side of the screen. Here, you'll find shortcuts for the
Start Screen, settings menu, a list of connected devices, search and
sharing. Lingering on that last point, sharing works much the same as
it does on other mobile devices, which is to say if you've got some
piece of content -- say, a Word document or a batch of photos -- you
can share them in all sorts of way. This includes email, as well as
Facebook, SkyDrive, Twitter and any other applicable service you've
linked to your Microsoft account. Again, we're used to doing this on
our smartphones and tablets, but it's a pleasure to be able to use a
Windows PC the same way.
What's more, it's nice that all of
these sharing and settings menus are easy to reach with your thumbs,
even if you're using a large 11-inch tablet or a 13-inch convertible
PC. The Charms Bar is one example of this: you can reach the settings
and sharing menus while still cradling your tablet in a natural
position. Moving on to the left side of the screen, you can swipe in
from the left to toggle through open apps -- a feature known as
Switcher. Each time you swipe, a different program slides into place,
taking up the whole screen. Here, too, it's easy to control your
device, even if you're holding a large-screen tablet and have your
hands full.
You can also expose the Charms Bar using a mouse,
though it's a less smooth experience. You'll want to hover on so-called
hot corners at the upper- and lower-right portions of the screen. This
can be frustrating, and definitely has a learning curve. If you're
using a PC without a touchscreen, there's a good chance the trackpad
has fresh drivers that allow you to replicate key Windows 8 gestures,
like swiping in from the right to bring up the Charms Bar. We've also
seen accessories like the
Logitech Wireless Rechargeable Trackpad T650,
which bring this functionality even to people whose older PCs don't
support these gestures. Point is: this feature in Windows 8 is at its
best when you have some sort of touch device at your disposal. Whether
that ends up being a touchscreen or a gesture-enabled trackpad doesn't
matter as much.
One other, potentially confusing thing: the Charms Bar holds the shortcut to
system
settings. If you're inside an app and want to see some options specific
to that program, you'll need to perform a different gesture entirely:
swipe the top or bottom of the screen to bring up that menu.
Multitasking
When it comes to switching apps, you can use that Switcher gesture, but
there are other built-in features designed to make multitasking a bit
easier. For starters, Snap allows you to dock a window or app so that
it takes up either a third or two-thirds of the screen. That leaves
room for a second app, which you can snap into the remaining space.
That's actually quite similar to Aero Snap from Windows 7, except here
the dimensions are in thirds, instead of half the screen. As in the Win
7 version of this feature, you can't manually re-size these windows:
once they snap into place they're going to take up a predictable amount
of space (i.e., one third of the screen).
Also, in Windows 8 you
can mix up the proportions by sliding the border of a window across the
screen. Say, for instance, you're working on a Word document on
two-thirds of the screen, with IE 10 sitting off to the side. You might
be spending most of your time typing in Word, but if you need to do a
web search, you can just put your finger on the border between the two
windows, and drag it over so that now the web browser takes up more
space. It's also worth noting that you can mix and match traditional
desktop programs and Modern (formerly known as "Metro") apps. In some
cases, this can mean fewer jarring jumps between the desktop and more
touch-friendly apps.
Snap is a trick you can pull off if you're
using a touchscreen device or a traditional mouse and keyboard. Whether
you're using your finger or a cursor, you need to drag down on the app
from the top of the screen before it can be docked into place. If you
are using a mouse, you can also hover in the upper-left corner of the
screen to expose open apps. What you'll see isn't a list, per se, but a
series of preview thumbnails -- miniaturized versions of whatever's
going on in that window (your Outlook.com inbox, your SkyDrive home
screen, et cetera). From there, you can click on a thumbnail to switch
to that app, or you can right-click to close one. Like so many other
features in Windows 8, this feels less clumsy with practice, though
even after months of testing, we find the swiping Switcher gesture
feels smoother, more intuitive.
Personalization options
To some extent, you can control the look and feel of Windows 8. No,
there's no bringing back the Start button, but you can select different
color themes for your Start Screen. Toward the end of the Windows 8
development process, Microsoft added so-called Personalization Tattoos
-- essentially, Start Screen backgrounds with patterns and borders. So
long as you're signed into your PC using a Microsoft account, this,
too, will follow you to other Windows 8 devices you might log into. Get
another Win 8 PC down the line, and it will show your paisley
background as soon as you sign in for the first time.
Lock screen
In addition to the Start Menu, you can customize the look and feel of
the lock screen. This includes the background photo, as well as which
notifications are displayed. For instance, even without entering your
password, you can see upcoming calendar appointments, as well as a peek
at how many unread messages or emails you have. In the PC settings, you
can also choose to display detailed information for one of two things:
your upcoming calendar appointment, or the weather forecast.
Desktop
For the most part, the desktop should feel familiar to Windows 7 users.
For the most part, the desktop should feel pretty familiar to Windows 7
users, especially compared to that redesigned Start Screen. Still,
there are some differences here, too. For starters, the Aero UI is no
more, which means windows no longer have a transparent border.
Everything here is flat and two-dimensional, not unlike those new Live
Tiles.
In a move that will please power users, Windows 8 also
ushers in improved multi-monitor support, with the ability to display
different desktop backgrounds on multiple displays, as well as have a
single picture span those various screens. You also have the choice of
expanding the Taskbar across those monitors, or setting it up so that a
pinned program only appears on the same screen where that app is
running. All told, it's a welcome improvement, though it would be nice
if you could run Modern UI-style Windows 8 apps on more than one
monitor at a time. Also, if you do have a multi-monitor setup, you'll
find it's trickier than usual to pull up the Charms Bar using a mouse.
Other changes: Windows Explorer is now called File Explorer, and bears
the same Ribbon UI already used in Microsoft apps like Office and
Paint. There's also now a File History feature, which stores versions
of files similar to Time Machine in Apple's OS X. The Task Manager has
also received a makeover so that when you first launch it, all you see
is a list of open apps. Nothing about processes or memory usage; just a
list of programs, and an "End task" button. Click "More details,"
though, and you'll see a half-dozen tabs, showing you everything from
performance graphs to CPU usage to running processes. In the processes
tab, in particular, there are four columns showing CPU, memory, disk
and network usage, with the resource hogs highlighted in a darker color.
One thing that hasn't changed: the keyboard shortcuts. The same ones
you relied on in Windows 7 will work here, which should take some of
the sting out of getting used to a new user interface.
Built-in apps
Mail
Setting up the Mail app is easy: if the Microsoft ID you use to
initially sign in is tied to Gmail, or some other service not run by
Microsoft, it automatically prompts you for your email password. In the
case of Gmail, we had the option of syncing our Google contacts and
Calendar as well (we said yes). There are also easy setup options for
Hotmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo and AOL, though you can add accounts from
other services too. Even if you don't link a Hotmail or Outlook
account, the Mail app will import all your folders and labels --
everything, really, but your starred items, in Gmail. Those folders
take up just a narrow pane on the left side of the screen. Next to that
is a wider window where you can see each individual message, along with
previews and, when applicable, thumbnails of the contact who wrote to
you.
The email itself takes up the most space, stretching across
the entire right third of the screen. Up top, above the message, you'll
find icons for creating a new message, replying / forwarding and
deleting. (We always did like the in-line delete button in Outlook.com,
so we're glad to see that design touch carries over here too.) If you
swipe the top or bottom edge of the screen for the options menu, you
can refresh your inbox, or move a message to another folder. Also, if
you have more than one email account hooked up, you can pin a
particular inbox to the Start Menu.
All told, it's easy to use;
we just wish there were easy-access buttons for archiving and marking
junk mail as spam. Unfortunately, too, you don't have direct access to
certain of Hotmail and Outlook.com's finer features, like the ability
to "Sweep" newsletters and other so-called gray mail into
out-of-the-way folders. However, if you set up Sweep on Hotmail.com our
Outlook.com, the Mail app in Windows 8 will still follow whatever rules
you have in place.
Calendar
As promised, when we chose to sync our Google contacts and Calendar,
our appointments all promptly showed up in the built-in Calendar app.
(If you're not a Google user, you can also link your Hotmail,
Outlook.com or Exchange / Office365 calendar.) The default view is by
month, which is a bit too busy for our tastes -- you can only see two
appointments per day, even if there are many more. We highly suggest
selecting the daily or weekly view in the menu options hidden at the
bottom of the screen. If you're creating an appointment from scratch,
you'll have the same options as if you were doing this online:
everything from date to time slot to reminder alerts.
People
The People app doubles as an address book and a one-stop shop for
social networking updates. Using the settings menu in the Charms Bar,
you can link all sorts of accounts -- things like Google, Facebook,
Twitter and LinkedIn. Obviously, the more of these services you
connect, the more contacts will pop up in your People Hub. All told, it
works similarly to the People Hub in Windows Phone, which is to say
everyone you know gets a contact card that pulls in all available forms
of contact -- everything from email to a Twitter handle. Open your own
contact card and you can update your Facebook status as well as post,
favorite or reply to tweets.
When you open People Hub you'll see
your contacts arranged in alphabetical order, and you scroll from left
to right to move through the list. As with the Start Screen, you can
use pinch-to-zoom to shrink a long list. In this case, you won't see
every contact onscreen; just a tile for each letter of the alphabet,
making it easier to jump to a certain part of your list.
Also
in the People Hub are Live Tiles for social networking / messaging
notifications, as well as a "What's new" page, showing a horizontal
feed containing your friends' recent Facebook and Twitter updates.
Though the People Hub is easy to use in general, we tended not to rely
on the "What's new" stream, as a long list of social updates is easier
to view in a vertical list than a horizontal one.
IE 10
In Windows 8, you get not one, but two versions of the IE 10 browser:
one for the desktop, and a more touch-friendly one that lives on the
Start Screen. Both versions have a Chrome-like setup, with a single bar
for URLs and web searches. The two also sync with each other, which
wasn't the case in earlier builds of the OS.
There are, as you
can imagine, some UI differences. In the desktop version, though,
adding a tab is as easy as pressing a plus sign. In the more
touch-optimized version, you swipe from the top of the screen to expose
open tabs, or open a new one. IE 10 also has a feature allowing you to
either swipe or click an onscreen arrow button to proceed to the next
page, whether that's the next page of search results or the next page
in a news story broken up into nine pieces.
As far as content
goes, IE 10 is HTML5-based, though the desktop version supports Flash
and Silverlight as well. In the touch-friendly version of the browser,
only certain sites on the Compatibility View list support Flash. So, we
can't promise you'll be able to run the site you want, but that Flash
exceptions list at least includes popular sites like YouTube and Vimeo.
And besides, with HTML5 being as ubiquitous as it is, you really
shouldn't run into any issues.
From a privacy standpoint,
Do Not Track
comes enabled by default, which means sites can only track and collect
your private data if you go out of your way to turn off "Do Not Track."
Camera
Windows' built-in camera app is simple: a full-screen frame (if you
choose a 16:9 resolution), with a few options always visible at the
bottom. These include a timer, video mode and a "change camera" toggle
(assuming there are front and rear cameras). There's also a "camera
options" icon, but from there you can only switch the resolution or
choose another audio recording option, if applicable.
Right now,
at least, there are no photo filters, like sepia, and nothing in the
way of HDR or panorama mode. The camera app is also missing
tap-to-focus, which can be a minor nuisance or an unfortunate problem,
depending on the tablet you're using. Still, as we saw on the
ASUS VivoTab RT,
PC makers have the option of adding secondary camera apps that mimic
the look and feel of the stock camera application, but add a few more
special effects. Without any of these additional features we've come to
expect, the native camera app feels like a bit of an afterthought.
SkyDrive
In addition to creating a dedicated SkyDrive app for Windows 8,
Microsoft made over the browser version of its cloud storage service.
As ever, people signing up for a new Microsoft account get 7GB of free
lifetime storage. However, if you recall, folks who had previously
uploaded files as of April 22 of this year had the option of
opting into
25GB of storage. If you're already enthusiastic about Windows and the
Microsoft ecosystem at large, chances are this describes you.
Whether you log in online or use the Win 8 app, each folder or file
takes the form of a tile. When using the browser, these tiles sit as a
grid, with the various thumbnails stacked on top of each other. In the
Windows 8 app, you scroll through them horizontally by default, though
you can also view them in list format. Whichever app you use, you can
upload or download files, as well as create new folders. With the web
version, though, you can also create a new Word document, PowerPoint
presentation, Excel spreadsheet or OneNote workbook -- something you
can't do in the Win 8 app.
Messaging
Messaging is your native IM app. For now, you can link it with
Microsoft Messenger (of course) or Facebook chat. Though it would be
nice to add Google Talk, the way you can add your Gmail address in the
Mail app, we're not surprised that Microsoft has excluded the
competition here.
Photos
Similar to the People app, Photos pulls in pictures from all sorts of
sources: Facebook, Flickr, SkyDrive and your PC's local storage. As a
portal for viewing and sharing photos, it's great. You can run a slide
show, and use the context-aware sharing feature in the Charms Bar to
easily upload pics to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and other websites. You
can also pull in pics from another PC you may own -- so long as you
install the SkyDrive desktop client on that system and select the
checkbox next to "Let me use SkyDrive to fetch any of my files on this
PC."
Additionally, you can also share photos through email. It's
also easy to select photos to upload in batches: just swipe the top of
the screen to expose the app settings, and then hit "Select all." If
you want to remove an item from the list, just uncheck it. All in all,
the app is easy to use, though more editing tools would be nice. Also,
we kept trying to select photos by pressing down on them with our
finger. The fact that you can't do this feels a bit unintuitive.
Games, Music and Video
We'll just lump these together since they all fall under the Xbox
ecosystem. Through these apps, you can buy music, movies and Xbox Live
games, with the additional option of renting some movies. For now,
Windows Phone games are not supported in the way you can play some iOS
games on both iPhones and iPads. It would seem logical of Microsoft to
eventually make its Windows Phone games available on Windows 8 devices,
but for now, you'll have to download different sets of apps for your
tablet and smartphone.
Out of the box, Microsoft's Music app
includes free, ad-supported streaming, available in 15 markets to
start. Though the games compatibility is still somewhat
compartmentalized, this music streaming feature will work across
Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and Xbox. Obviously, Microsoft has been in
the business of selling music for some time, so by now its catalog is
quite voluminous at 30 million songs. If you like, you can purchase
Xbox Music Pass, an ad-free subscription, for $10 a month. Under this
plan, your songs will follow you from device to device, just like the
rest of your settings. Here, you'll also get the option of downloading
music and listening to it offline, which you can't do with the free,
ad-supported service. Similar to iTunes, too, Music includes a matching
feature that takes music you already had stored on your computer and
finds the cloud-based version.
Though it's not installed on
Windows 8 machines out of the box, you can download Microsoft's
SmartGlass app, which lets you stream music and video to an Xbox, using
your Windows 8 device as a remote. All told, it's not unlike Apple's
AirPlay, though SmartGlass has the added benefit of not being limited
to multimedia playback. You can also use it with Internet Explorer, in
which case you also have the option of using an on-screen keyboard
within the app.
Bing Apps: Search, Map, News, Sports, Weather, Finance and Travel
Peppered around the Start Screen, you'll find a handful of Bing-powered
apps: Search, Map, News, Sports, Weather, Finance and Travel. Starting
with search, the screen is so minimal that you have to tap to expose
the search bar. At the bottom of the screen are a handful of trending
topics; you can always click more, and then scroll through them from
left to right, as you would with anything else in Windows 8. Maps has
aerial and road view options, with a street traffic option. By default,
it will show your current location, though you can of course search for
any point of interest you like. There are also turn-by-turn directions,
which appear as a banner at the top of the screen that you can scroll
through from left to right.
Scroll from side to side in the travel app and you'll see featured
destinations, panoramic photos and travel-related news stories. If you
want more personalized information, though (and you probably will), you
can swipe down from the top of the screen to choose a specific
destination, or focus on a different part of the travel-planning
process, like flight- or hotel-booking.
It's a similar story for Bing Sports: when you first open the app,
you'll see a featured story, followed by other articles. You'll also
see schedules for every in-season sport. Swipe from the top of the
screen, though, and you can pick a certain sport. You can also pick
favorite teams, and view news stories and schedules that only relate to
them. Bing News, meanwhile, is personalized in the sense that you can
view specific sources, in addition to a main home screen with top news
in every category.
The weather app is a geek's haven, with a mix
of hourly forecasts, maps and graphs. You can add a location manually,
or let the radios on your device figure it out. Finally, Bing Finance
does just what you'd expect: it shows top market news, along with
overviews of the major indices, though you can also create a
personalized watchlist making it easy to check on your stocks at a
glance.
Windows Store
This is Windows we're talking about. Developers like Facebook would be wise to come up with something posthaste.
When Windows 8 went on sale a few days ago, Microsoft said the Windows
Store was home to thousands of apps, though it declined to provide a
precise number. For now, there are no first-party apps for Facebook and
Twitter, which remains true on Windows 7 as well. (Twitter, at least,
says it will have an app in the coming months.) Other missing biggies
include: Foursquare, Mint, PageOnce, TripIt, NPR,
Draw Something,
Words with Friends,
Temple Run,
Spotify, Springpad, Remember the Milk, Instapaper, Pocket (formerly
Read it Later), Flipboard, Steam, Instagram, Nook and Rdio. Still,
there's reason to think many of these will arrive soon enough: in the
weeks we spent working on this review, Netflix, The New York Times,
Skype, Hulu Plus,
Fruit Ninja,
Angry Birds, Zinio
and Bank of America all went live in the store. Dropbox, ESPN and
PayPal are all coming soon, according to Microsoft. Other notables,
like the AP, Box.net, Pandora and Slacker, have been available for
quite some time already. And besides, who are we kidding? This is
Windows we're talking about. The operating system that's going to ship
on millions and millions of new PCs. Developers like Facebook would be
wise to come up with something for Windows 8 posthaste. Still, in the
first few weeks or months of owning your Window 8 device, you might
find yourself making do with less familiar alternatives, or just
loading up the browser version of the app.
Navigating the store
feels like using any other Windows 8 app; you'll start off by seeing
recommended apps, along with tiles for new releases and the top free
apps. Keep scrolling to the right and you'll see apps broken down by
category, such as social or entertainment. If you're less in the mood
to meander and more in the mood to find something specific, you can
search in one of two ways: you can swipe the Charms Bar and select the
Search option, or you can just start typing. Yep, in the same way you
can start typing to find something on the Start Menu, you can start
typing to look up an app. If it's in the app store, it'll show up in
the search results as a recommended pick. As convenient as that is,
though, you can only do it on the main page of the Windows Store.
Select a page like "Top Free Games" and that search method no longer
works; you'll have to use the Charms Bar instead.
Once you find
an app that strikes your fancy, you can read an overview, along with a
summary of permissions you'll be granting the developer. You can also
see a list of supported languages and check which processors are
supported (this is especially useful if you have an ARM-based device
running Windows RT and aren't sure it will run the same apps as an
x86-based Windows 8 machine). Lastly, there's a tab for reviews, which
you can sort by newest, oldest, lowest rating, highest rating or most
helpful (yep, you can weigh in on specific comments). Payment methods
in the Windows Store include credit cards and PayPal. Once you buy an
app, you can install it on up to five devices at once.
Accessibility
In addition to all the new apps and UI elements, Windows 8 brings some
enhancements for people with limited vision or other disabilities.
Windows chief Steven Sinofsky gives a detailed overview of these
improvements
here, but for the purposes of this review we'll stick with a quick summary. Updates include:
- A redesigned Narrator that's quicker to read selected items out loud.
- Expanded language support in Narrator, with more voice options available.
-
Updated UI Automation with more text patterns and document content so
that Narrator can use it to read the outputs from applications.
System requirements
According to Microsoft, Windows 8 requires 1GB of RAM and 20GB of free
disk space. Other system requirements include a 1GHz processor that
supports PAE, NX, and SSE2; 1,366 x 768 resolution; and DirectX 9
graphics. If you're upgrading your current machine, you can be running
an OS as old as XP with Service Pack 3. Heads up: Microsoft warns that
if you're upgrading from XP or Vista, you'll need to re-install your
apps.
What's less clear is whether your current laptop's
trackpad will support Windows 8 gestures. Some existing PCs will
benefit from updated drivers that let you perform all the Windows
8-specific motions from your trackpad, but of course, we can't make any
guarantees there.
Pricing and versions
Though you can buy a PC with Windows 8 or Windows 8 Pro installed, Win
8 Pro is currently the only version of the OS available for purchase as
a standalone piece of software. (The main differences, in a nutshell,
are that Windows 8 Pro includes business-oriented features like Remote
Desktop Connection, Domain Join for corporate networks, and Device
Encryption, which is based on the company's BitLocker technology.) From
now until January 31, Microsoft is charging consumers an upgrade price
of $39.99, provided they download the software. If you'd rather buy it
as boxed software, the price is $69.99. Microsoft says it will provide
additional pricing information at some later date.
Finally,
though this is a review of Windows 8, the new version of Windows for
traditional, x86-based PCs, it's worth acknowledging Windows RT for
ARM-based devices, and also summarizing the differences. In short, the
two operating systems have the same look and feel, with the same UI,
gestures and native apps. The chief difference is that Windows RT can't
run apps written for x86-based PCs. Additionally, not all the apps in
the Windows Store can run on both Win 8 and RT devices. Fortunately,
all Windows RT devices come with a version of Office 2013 modified for
Windows RT. With that major hurdle out of the way, we're hard-pressed
to name
that many other x86 apps you'd want to run on an ARM-based tablet.
Wrap-up
Though you
could
install Windows 8 on an older Win 7 system and use it solely with a
mouse and keyboard, the market is filling up with touch-friendly PCs
designed to be used with Win 8. These include traditional notebooks
with touchscreens, as well as dockable tablets, all-in-ones with
articulating displays, slider PCs and convertible laptops whose screens
can twist and fold back into tablet mode. In general, we'd strongly
recommend any of these over a PC that doesn't have a touchscreen.
What we've learned -- and what we couldn't fully appreciate before
testing some of these new devices -- is that Windows 8 is at its best
when you have the option of interacting with it using your fingers. It
doesn't matter so much if you have a touchscreen, a modern touchpad or
an external trackpad that supports Win 8 gestures. The point is, many
of Windows 8's most enchanting features (the Charms Bar, etc.) are easy
to use this way, but frustrating if all you have to work with is a
mouse. If you have an older system whose touchpad won't support Windows
8 gestures, you might want to stick with Win 7 until you're ready to
buy a new PC -- without that touch input, many of those new features
will be lost on you. For people with more touch-friendly hardware,
though, Windows 8 is easier to use than you may have feared. Its
tablet-style apps, multitasking features and desktop enhancements add
up to a balanced mix. It's an OS you can use seamlessly on a tablet,
but with features like Snap, Switcher and File Explorer you might well
be more productive than you ever were on an iPad or Android slate. Just
don't lose faith as you're climbing your way across that learning curve.