Microsoft's latest operating
system is now readyforthe
world to explore firsthand.
Before you decide whether or
not to download it, check out
our first impressions.
BY MICHAEL MUCHMORE
he tablet- and touch-centric operating system
would seem to be a hard sell to users of good old
PCs, but Microsoft claims the re' s no need for the
"tyranny of or"-Windows 8 can serve both ta blet and
desktop us ers without compromises. Th at' s the party line,
anyway. We'll get a better idea of wh ether the general public
agrees after this Consumer Preview is more widely adopted.
Microsoft's mission with Windows 8, whose final version
is expected by the end of the year, is not an easy one to pull
off: Crea ting an opera ting system that works equally weil on
both a touch tablet and a traditional PC with keyboard and
mouse. Apple, by contrast, has expanded iOS for tablet duty,
as weil. Microsoft' s take is that Windows 8 will deliver a fullpower
OS, without compromises, for both types of users.HOW IT COMPARES TO OS X LION, CHROME
In sorne ways, Windows 8 resembles OS X Lionand
Mountain Lion- more than iOS, with swiping
to switch between apps and a fully accessible filefolder
system. Where Apple has migrated features
from its mobile OS to its desktop OS, Microsoft
has created a hybrid that should be comfortable
in bath settings, and though Windows 8 lacks the
final polish and sturdiness of iOS, Microsoft has
made admirable progress toward that goal.
An even doser comparison might be Google's
Chrome OS (remember that?), except that, with
Windows 8, you don'tjust get the Web-app-like
Metro apps, but also the full body of Windows
apps, too. And unlike Chrome OS, on which
everything lives in the cloud, Windows 8 gives
you both the cloud and powerfullocal apps and
accessible storage.
For this hands-on report, I used the same
Samsung ta blet that was handed out at
Microsoft's Build Conference last September.
My first quick impressions are that it does an
even better job of smoothing out the transition
between the Windows Phone-like Metro tile
interface and the more traditional Windows
desktop mode that will be more familiar to
longtime Windows users. It also makes even
smarter use of touch gestures.
SETTING UP, SIGNING IN
When you first run the Windows 8 Consumer
Preview, you need togo through a four-step
setup-Personalize, Wireless setup, Settings, and
Sign in. Each step is very simple and uncluttered.
Next cornes signing in. In order to download
apps from the Windows Store and take
advantage of the SkyDrive cloud service that
stores files and photos and syncs your settings
" WhereApple
bas migrated
features
fromits
mobileOSto
itsdesktop
OS, Microsoft
hascreated
a hybrid that
shouldbe
comfortable
inboth
settings. "
with other machines, you need to sign in with a
Windows Live ID.
After this, you finally get your first look at the
Windows 8 Metro start screen! This gridlike
display ofbrightly colored rectangular "live tiles"
is where you launch any apps, control settings,
and enter the more traditional Windows desktop.
After a shutdown and restart, you'll see the lock
screen ( which will be familiar to any smart phone
user). On this you can see battery charge, Wi-Fi
signal strength, and notifications for e-mail and any other apps you've allowed. A new type of
notification for Consumer Preview is the "toast"
that pops in from the upper right if, for example,
you have an incoming instant message. The new
preview also adds the ability to boot from a USB
stick or other external deviee or dise.
PICTURE PASSWORD
There's a new way to get past this informative
lock screen-the picture password. I was a little
surprised that the setup process didn't allow me
create a picture password, since Microsoft has talked about this feature a lot in conferences and
on the Building Windows 8 blog. It's a elever
feature that saves you from having to type on your
touch screen. To crea te a picture password, Tap
Settings, then More PC Setting, and choose Users.
From here, you can not only create the picture
password, but also switch to a local account
(without SkyDrive benefits), change your regular
password, or crea te a 4-digit PIN that lets you
quickly start, muchas you can with iOS deviees.
The first step is to actually choose your picture.
Something with several objects and shapes is
best. Y ou then sim ply draw any combination of
three circles, taps, or lines. Y ou then repeat the pattern to confirm it, and, voilĂ . The first time I
tried to sign in, my "password" wasn't accepted,
but it soon became second nature. The feature
shows how deeply Microsoft has been thinking
about touch interfaces, letting you log in with
gestures rather than character entry. And for those
worried about security, Microsoft has done the
analysis that shows there are over a billion possible
gesture combinations for this type of password.
NEW SWIPE GESTURES
A key Windows 8 concept for touch input is that
the si des of the screen are for Windows, while the
top and bottom are for the a pp you're running.
Swipe in from the right side, and you'll see the
Windows 8 "Charms" -or icons that give access
to basic OS functions, including Search, Share,
Start, Deviees, and Settings. These Charms have
been redesigned in the Consumer Preview, with the new Windows logo showing up for the Start
choice and the rest getting new polish. Using
the mouse, you get to the charms by moving the
pointer to the upper-right corner ofyour screen.
Swiping from the left edge of the screen
switches you to a previous running app, but
also lets you pin a sidebar showing the apps
content (formattedjust for this space). New in
Community Preview is the option to easily swap
the large and small views by swiping down from
the top and moving the resulting smaller window.
Swiping up from the bottom or down from the
top opens an app's own menu.
Windows 8 offers an advantage over both iOS
and Lion-the ability to use a swipe gesture to
give a peek at another running app. In iOS, you
have to completely switch out of one a pp to take
a look at another. The gesture of swiping to show
a sidebar populated with a second app works for
full-blown Windows desktop apps, too.
Semantic zoom is a helpful innovation. By using a pinch gesture on the Start screen, the a pp icons
shrink, but not in the simple way you zoom out
on a photo; the tiles resize to remain readable,
and your groups of tiles stay together, ali visible
on one screen. This lets you do things like moving
an app's tile from the first to the last page without
a lot of scrolling.
ENTERING TEXTWITH TOUCH
Windows B's on-screen keyboard springs up
from the bottom of the screen whenever you
touch a text-entry field. It's a very versatile tool,
more so than other mobile operating systems'
equivalent. Y ou can either use a full keyboard, a
split keyboard suited to thumb entry, or stylus a pinch gesture on the Start screen, the a pp icons
shrink, but not in the simple way you zoom out
on a photo; the tiles resize to remain readable,
and your groups of tiles stay together, ali visible
on one screen. This lets you do things like moving
an app's tile from the first to the last page without
a lot of scrolling.
ENTERING TEXTWITH TOUCH
Windows B's on-screen keyboard springs up
from the bottom of the screen whenever you
touch a text-entry field. It's a very versatile tool,
more so than other mobile operating systems'
equivalent. Y ou can either use a full keyboard, a
split keyboard suited to thumb entry, or stylus touch-screen keyboard. Now let's look at what
you can do with an actual keyboard and meuse.
NEW KEYBOARD AND MOUSE FUNCTIONS
Microsoft's philosophy for meuse interaction
with the OS is that the corners are key. Previous
versions of Windows' Start butten were in the
lower-left corner, every app's X to close its
win dow was in the top right corner, the most
important menu item was at the top left, and the
Aero Peek butten in Windows 7 is in the lowerright
corner.
An important improvement to using Windows
8 with a keyboard is that now you can scroll the
Metro Start screen's tiles sim ply by nudging the
mo use cursor against the right si de of the screen.
With Developer Preview, you had to move the
cursor dawn to the bottom edge of the screen
and grab the scroll bar, or hit Ctrl-Right Arrow.
Y ou can still scroll the Start til es with the meuse
wheel, which is nice.
Fans of keyboard shortcuts won't be
disappointed: Windows 8 in eludes a ton of very
useful shortcuts, many of which take advantage
of the Windows key. Hitting this by itself at any time takes you back to the Metro Start screen,
and hitting it again returns you to your running
app. The venerable Alt-F4 now closes any kind
of Windows 8 app (as does slowly swiping to the
bottom of the screen). Of particular interest to the
techjournalist is the new screen-capture feature,
Windows Key+ PrtScn. A final very useful option
is Ctrl-Shift-Esc, which opens the task manager.
I'll do a separate article going into more depth
on what you can do with keyboard shortcuts in
Windows 8.
NEWAPPS
At the Build Conference launch of Windows 8
Developer Preview, the new operating system
launched with a couple dozen Metro apps coded
by college interns, in an effort to show how you
don't need a PhD in computer science to write
for the system. With the Consumer Preview,
we get severa} new polished apps programmed
by professionals. There are actually far fewer
included apps this time, but the Windows Store's
grand opening means even more choice. Since the
store didn't go live un til February 29th, look for a
separa te article detailing that soon, too. The Consumer Preview's included apps
are limited to a dozen orso essentials-mail,
photos, weather, finance, Maps, People (for
social updates), Calendar, Video, Messaging,
Photos, Music. Y ou also get a couple gamesgood
old Solitaire and a pinball game. This last is
connected to Xbox Live, which you're encouraged
to get an account with, to sync your gaming on
different deviees. I appreciated that the Photos
a pp let me view pictures on Flickr, Facebook, and
SkyDrive as weil as on the local deviee.
Ali of the utilitarian apps are very dean
and minimalist, but they still offer most of
the features you want. The Mail a pp gave me
no problems hooking in a Gmail account and
composing messages with attachments. The
messaging a pp let me connect through Facebook
and Windows Live Messenger, but it's not an
SMS replacement like Apple's iMessage, spellcorrection
wasn't working, and there was no
video chat. The People a pp did a nice job of
aggregating my Facebook, Twitter, and Live
feeds, but its use of space wasn't very efficient,
with each tweet taking the full screen height. A lot
of the quibbles are certainly things Microsoft will
address before release.
NEW FOR THE DESKTOP
It's true: The beloved Start button is gone. Oris
it? The Start button is still there in the lower-left
corner; it just doesn't take up any screen spa ce
until you move the mouse there. When you do
so, you'll now see a thumbnail view of the Metro
Start page- a good visual indicator of where
you're going when you click. My only problem
with this is that it behaves differently from most
Web apps that use a similar interface techniqueinstead
of letting you click anywhere on the
" TheStart
buttonis
still there in
thelowerleft
corner;
itjust
doesn't
takeupany
screen space
untilyou
movethe
mouse there. " thumbnail, you'll only be taken to the Start screen
if you click with the mo use cursor all the way in
the lower-left corner.
Despite this detail, the thumbnail on-hover
start button is another example of Microsoft's
having made the transition between Desktop and
Metro views smoother in the Consumer Preview.
The Desktop workspace is for what Microsoft
folks call "power users," even though it's what
every Windows user has been using for the
past 20 years. Windows Explorer's new File
management tools, complete with rib bon, have
been tweaked since the Developer Preview. Now
you can hi de the rib bon (just as in Office 2010 ),
and there are a bun ch of new file-moving and THE CLOUD CONNECTION
SkyDrive is Microsoft's online storage service that
offers anyone a free 25GB. The new OS makes
SkyDrive cloud storage and synching service
available to any Windows 8 a pp that wants to use
it and that you allow to use it. In my test ta blet,
the SkyDrive a pp itself got a small Start screen
tile, and the app's own interface used pages of
tiles. This makes sense for touch interface, but
l' d like to be able to switch to a more concise list
view-there wasn't even a semantic zoom view.
But Windows 8's cloud capabilities go way
beyond this simple SkyDrive Metro app, and,
indeed, you can always hop onto the more
powerful Web interface of SkyDrive. The system
integrates messaging and sharing throughout,
using whatever communication services you've
enabled. As with Chrome OS, wh en you sign into any Windows 8 PC, you'll see ali your same
personalization, settings, and even Metro apps.
DEVICE MANAGEMENT
The Deviees charm is accessible by swiping in
from the right on a touch screen or moving the
mouse cursor to the upper right corner. From
here I only saw the multi-monitor setup choice,
but heading to the Deviees section of PC Settings
let me check for new hardware and connect
Bluetooth mice, speakers, keyboards, and the
like. It also lets you prevent deviee software from
being downloaded wh en you're using a metered
mobile connection.
When I plugged a USB memory stick into the
Windows 8 ta blet, a notification asked me to
decide how to handle it, but my only option was
to view files in the desktop mode- there was no
Metro UI option for dealing with USB memory. I
would like to have seen a new tile giving access to
the USB memory, at any rate.
INTERNETEXPLORER10
IE10 becomes a more integral part of the system
with Windows 8, and it offers two guises: the fullscreen
Metro view and the more familiar desktop
verison. The former follows ali the Metro a pp
behaviors. Instead of tabs, you drag down from
the top of the screen (or up from the bottom) to
reveal your open browser pages in thumbnails
along the top. Upon this same gesture, along the
bottom appear the standard browser address bar
and icons for page reloading and pinning ( which
adds the page to your Start screen).
Y ou can also unpinch to zoom, and swiping
a finger left or right moves you forward or
backward in your browsing history. A double tap
will also zoom in on the page.
Like the iPad's Safari browser, the Metro version of Internet Explorer 10 doesn't support
Flash (or other plugins, for that matter), but
should you encounter a page that uses those
technologies, you can simply switch to the
desktop version of IE. The modern replacement
for Flash is HTMLs, and there's good news on
that front with the IE10 that cornes with Windows
8 Consumer Preview. On the HTMLsTest.com
site, which measures the number of HTMLs
features, it gets a score of 314. This is up from 301
in the Developer Preview, and a mere 141 for
IEg. Chrome, Firefox, and others have recently
scored above 300, so it's niceto see the IE is
finally in the mix.
A wrench icon lets you search within the page
or switch to the Desktop browser mode, which is
indistinguishable from IEg. Ali these options also appear if you right-click your mo use button. A
final helpful touch is the "Clean up tabs" option,
which closes ali except your current page.
In a very quick and dirty performance test, IE1o
posted a 427ms Sunspider result on the 1.6GHx
Core is tablet with 4GB RAM. This compares with
259ms on a Core 2 Duo 2.53GHz Windows 7 (32-
bit) laptop with 3GB of DDR2 memory and 686
with Google Chrome on the same Samsung ta blet.
SOME STABILITY ISSUES (AS EXPECTED)
The build of Windows 8 I tested wasn't as final
as what's available today for download, and I
did run into minor glitches. At one point, the
PC settings page stopped responding, instead
drawing blue boxes around my choices. At one
point I even got a shutdown message with a
frowny-face emoticon. The Developer Preview
I tested months ago didn't have any similar
issues. When I tried to shut down and restart, the
accessibility voice started announcing whatever I
touched, without performing the action I wanted. And when I was configuring a wireless mouse,
the screen switched to portrait orientation,
though I was viewing landscape. And the screen
would occasionally brighten to full intensity
unprovoked. But this is why Microsoft released
a preview-to get this kind offeedback and fix it
before it goes on sale.
A PARADIGM FOR THE FUTURE?
I was initially dubious about Windows 8's split
personality, but it is making more and more
sense tome. For on-the-go Web browsing,
Facebooking, emailing, and casual gaming, you've
got the touch tablet interface. But you can then
plug the same ta blet into a dock, turning it into
a full-blown desktop PC, with keyboard, mouse,
and even a larger external monitor. And you
also have ali those Windows apps you've been
using for years. l'rn sure l'rn not al one in that my
primary work PC is a docked laptop with a large
external monitor. The Windows 8 scenario just
takes this a step further in portability.
This is far from the end of the story for
Windows 8. Now that the Consumer Preview
installer software is available, we'll be testing
on more machines and running benchmarks
and other comparative performance tests. We'll
also take deeper dives into the included apps,
the Windows Store, and the best third-party
apps. And we'll be keeping you informed about
Windows 8 till its expected launch later this year.
Microsoft is diving into the deep end with this
one-size-fits-all tablet and desktop OS, and only
time will tell whether it's a strategy that resonates
as weil as the more bottom-up iPad system from
Apple. And the contrast with Mac OS X Mountain
Lion's approach is equally stark, with Apple
keeping its desktop and mobile OSes completely
"I was initially
dubiol1S
about
Windows
8'ssplit
personality,
butitis
makingmore
and more
sense tome.
PC" separate, while increasing synergy and feature
overlap between the two.
Windows 8 introduces sorne really innovative
touch-input options suited to thumb interactions,
and it will benefit the desktop user as weil, with
faster startup and better file management. So
don't count Microsoft out: Windows 8 is evidence
that the old tech company is qui te capable of bold
moves and impressive innovation.
PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 1 APRIL 2012