Brace yourself, Windows users. Microsoft's operating system is poised for stunning, dramatic change.
Developers have had a chance to play with Windows 8 since last September, but today Microsoft releases its public preview of the OS, free to download in beta form (we'll provide a link as soon as it's ready). Windows 8 is a radical departure, not just for Microsoft, but for everything we know about so-called desktop computing.
The new OS may be based on Windows 7 underpinnings, but Microsoft’s sleek, block-based Metro interface is clearly the star of the Windows 8 show, highlighting how the developers in Redmond are giving the traditional desktop a complete mobile-influenced makeover.
Whether you operate Windows 8 via touch controls or a mouse, it’s an innovative, dare we say cool, platform for accessing tools and information. We only wish Microsoft had maintained a high degree of Metro styling across the board. The traditional Windows 7 desktop is actually hidden behind a single tile of the Metro interface, and when you eventually hit the desktop layer, you'll find a UI that would benefit from a much greater Metro influence.
For this hands-on, Microsoft lent us a tablet loaded with the "Windows 8 Consumer Preview" -- essentially an "early look of the full Windows 8 user experience," according to our Microsoft contact. The tablet is an x86-based Samsung 700T model that pairs with a docking station, Bluetooth wireless keyboard and wireless mouse (the tablet also has a USB port for wired peripherals). The hardware boasts an 11.6-inch, 1366 x 768 resolution display -- large enough to realistically perform like the display of a notebook when docked. We’ve been testing Windows 8 for five days, in both touch-based tablet mode and docked keyboard-and-mouse mode.
Microsoft kicks off your Windows 8 experience by ditching the Windows Live ID -- it's now simply called your Microsoft account. After logging in, you’re taken straight to the Windows Metro-influenced Start Screen, an interface that will be immediately familiar to anyone who uses a Windows Phone. This is your new home screen, and it's your first signal that the traditional desktop is now wearing angel wings.
The Windows Metro Start Screen has no tolerance (or even opportunity) for randomly strewn document and application icons. All elements are organized and efficient, but also personalized. You can rearrange tiles at whim, and live tiles display constantly updated, streaming information at a glance -- for example, local weather information, calendar updates and your latest email headers. You don't even need to open an app.
It's likely your email client, calendar and web browser are already at the center of your daily computing experience, so Microsoft places those tools -- as well as other staples like People and the Windows Store -- prominently in the main Metro Start Screen. You can rearrange these and other live tiles however you like, but Microsoft has pre-configured Windows 8 to immediately present you with a combination of useful information and the apps that matter most. Secondary apps are shunted off screen to the right, but are accessible with a drag of your finger or mouse (or sometimes completely hidden until you hit the Search button).
The lock screen is photo-based, and is unlocked by drawing a three-part gesture directly on top of the photo. From there you hit the Start Screen, and these two screens will always be the first screens you see when using Windows 8.
But how exactly will you use Windows 8? There are two distinct use cases: Windows 8 on x86-based tablets and Windows 8 on traditional notebooks and desktops. We’ve broken down the merits and new features of the operating system based on these two scenarios.
Windows 8 on a Tablet
Windows 8 as a tablet interface is a home run. It’s got everything you would want in a touch-based mobile experience: large, tappable icons; settings (including volume and brightness) only a swipe away; basic app information readily displayed on the home screen; and intuitive touch gestures that make navigating through the UI speedy and efficient.
On our demo tablet (which is just a reference design, says Microsoft), overall touch-based responsiveness was great, and we also appreciated the novel physicality of the OS's gesture controls. For example, when you flick quickly to the end of a page and it hits the border of your device, the page almost springs back into place.
When you swipe from the right side of the screen, you open up what Microsoft calls its Charms menu, a docked strip of icons that includes Search, Share, Start, Devices and Settings. Swipe from the left, and as fast as you can deal a deck of cards, you can switch between open apps.
When you’re in an application, swiping from the top or bottom of the screen opens up the app’s unique controls. This a departure from iOS and Android, which typically have persistent on-screen menu buttons taking up screen real estate. Indeed, in Windows 8 Metro apps, controls are absent until you need them, and this makes for a more pleasant full-screen experience.
The on-screen Metro keyboard is available in a few different iterations depending on how you're using your Windows 8 tablet, but all keyboards are aided by system-wide spell-checking. There's a full-screen keyboard (for when the tablet is on your lap or a flat surface), but if you’re holding it in both hands, you can switch to a split-screen keyboard (which, conveniently, has three different key sizes to accommodate different finger sizes).
Though it wasn't included in the Windows 8 developer build, the consumer preview has a new feature called semantic zoom. When you’re on the Start Screen as well as in some apps, you can pinch to shrink down the U.I. in order to easily navigate to a specific area.
For example, in the Finance app, a pinch collapses the app to eight topic areas, including News, Watchlist and Rates. You can then tap to jump to one of those sections rather than scroll horizontally through the app’s contents. By swiping down from the top of the screen to the center of the screen, you can also shrink an app to semantic zoom size and either dock it on one side of the screen for a split-screen view (when applicable), or close it by flicking downwards toward the bottom of the screen. This last gesture was a little unfamiliar at first, but after repeated use it become more natural than hunting around for a close button.
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 10 browser is a hallmark of the Windows 8 touchscreen experience. It’s been re-engineered and reskinned so heavily, you’ll pretty much forget you’re using IE. As in other Windows 8 apps, IE's "chrome" elements (for example, the address bar, thumbnail views, function buttons, etc) are hidden until you swipe them into view.
The new IE supports multi-touch panning and zooming, as well as double-tap to zoom. Although a back button is located next to the address bar, you can much more easily drag a page to the right in order to go back in the browser. We also appreciate Windows 8's new take on bookmarking: Your favorite web destinations can be pinned as favorites directly on your Start Screen.
Windows 8’s other Metro apps, like Mail, Maps, and Calendar, are all optimized for a touch interface and have that signature Metro look. The Windows Store was not live during our demo, so the apps we were able to check out were limited to the ones that came loaded with the OS. Most ran smoothly, but we did experience occasional crashes and bugs, particularly with the Solitaire game, which had graphics rendering issues at times.
So that's the Windows 8 Metro UI as it behaves on a tablet. But let's not forget that a traditional desktop interface hides beneath the surface, at least on x86-based tablet hardware. (When running on ARM-based tablets, desktop features will be limited.)
The familiar Windows 7 desktop is accessible from the Start Menu through a specific live tile -- unceremoniously named Desktop, and marked by blocky, 3D-modeled fish, a cheeky reference to the old desktop screensaver. Although you can use the desktop with touch gestures, we don’t recommend it. Sure, you can pull up the onscreen keyboard if you’re typing in WordPad, and, sure, you can even draw in the Paint app with your fingers.
But all these so-called desktop experiences are frustrating (if also unnecessary) on a tablet. Most of the icons are just too small to successfully operate with a finger. Sure, we imagine some Windows 8 tablet users will switch to desktop mode in order to run arcane, specialized, legacy software. But given that touch-optimized, Metro-based apps will be available for all the most common mobile use cases, we doubt that Desktop live tile will be tapped very often.
Windows 8 on a Notebook or Desktop
Not everyone will use Windows 8 on a tablet, and for these people, the OS supports keyboards and mice.
Having used the touch-based Metro interface on a number of Windows Phones, we thought navigating the tile-based UI with a mouse would be awkward. But, surprisingly, mouse-based navigation was much more natural than we first assumed.
There are a few navigational quirks to get used to. Using your mouse, you can scroll sideways through home screens using a scroll bar along the bottom of display. The wheel on your mouse provides scrolling as well. To pull up Metro's Charms menu on the right-hand side of the display, you drive your mouse pointer to the top-right corner of the screen and then swipe it down. This is a completely new way approach to getting around a computer's home screen (let alone app listings and desktop settings), but it works swimmingly.
To switch from app to app, you click the upper-left corner of the screen. To see thumbnails of open apps, just hold your mouse in the upper-left corner and move downwards (this particular navigation feature is actually more intuitive with the mouse than with touch). With a mouse, you can also right-click a Start Screen preview in the lower left to quickly access desktop features, such as the control panel. We just wish the pop-up menu of the control panel was styled in Metro, rather than in Microsoft’s traditional grey boredom.
The consumer preview of Windows 8 includes a bounty of keyboard shortcuts, proving that Microsoft has vision beyond newfangled touch navigation. There are 36 key combinations unchanged from Windows 7, plus 23 more that are new to Windows 8. You can hop around from app to app, dock windows onscreen, and open the Charms bar, all without lifting your fingers from the keyboard. Some key combinations are Metro or desktop-specific, while others can be accessed system wide.
As for using the desktop interface on a Windows 8 notebook, you’ll be right at home. You'll find largely the same Windows 7 UI, plus a few tweaks for power users, such as fancy new features and tools in the Task Manager. Also, the taskbar along the bottom of the screen ditches the Start button in the corner in favor of a Start "preview" that's hidden from view until you execute a mouse gesture.
For Internet Explorer on the desktop, you can adjust your Internet Options settings, and choose whether new links or files are automatically opened in IE 10 for Metro or IE 10 for desktop, or you can just let the browser decide (the default).
The upshot: If you absolutely loathe Metro apps, you can spend all of your time in the desktop section of the OS, with the exception of your lock screen and Start Screen. But, seriously, if you're working on a notebook or desktop computer, and don't want Metro, you should probably just stick with Windows 7 in the first place.
Metro Is the Future, So Get Used to It
Windows 8 Consumer Preview is still a beta. Indeed, this is not a shiny, finished, bug-free product, but it’s almost there. Our demo tablet blue screened and restarted three times during the five days we were using it, and there were a number of app crashes, as well.
Looking at Windows 8 as a whole, we find the desktop implementation to be incongruent. Its style doesn’t meld with Metro at all. We understand the Windows 7 desktop absolutely needed to be included for legacy compatibility with x86 applications, and still has utility for business and enterprise users in particular. But, man, we wish it could have been painted with just a little bit of Metro chic.
And herein lies the double-edged sword of Windows 8: There are multiple different ways to accomplish the very same task, and while this provides for great flexibility, it also has the potential to confuse anyone who isn't computer literate. "Where does my mouse go again? How do I find the Start button? Should I browse in Metro or should I browse in the desktop?" These are the questions that legions of grandparents might soon be asking their grandkids.
Although we initially had qualms about using a tablet as a notebook proxy -- and without serious applications installed on the consumer preview, we still have room for doubt -- we have to say, it just might work. Metro is an entirely new desktop paradigm that puts your most commonly used tools front and center. Its UI is also remarkably effective, whether you use it on a touch device, or in a desktop setting.
And once you’re accustomed to Metro, it’s not a stretch to think you may want to pick up a Windows Phone to continue that experience on a smartphone.
Interestingly, Microsoft's Windows 8 approach is the direct opposite of what Apple is doing with its Mountain Lion OS X. Apple has vast legions of mobile users, and wants to ease them into the Mac experience. Microsoft has untold millions of desktop users, and wants to ease them into the mobile experience.
The next few years of computing innovation are going to be very interesting to watch unfold. But one thing's for sure: Microsoft is at least one step ahead of Apple in putting the desktop interface to rest.
