Windows 8 Review
Windows 8 review
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
-
User interface
-
Lock screen
-
Desktop
-
Built-in apps
-
Windows Store
-
Accessibility
-
System requirements
-
Pricing and versions
-
Wrap-up
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
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
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 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.
More Info
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..
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