A Look At Today's Operating Systems: Part 1 - Windows 8 Release Preview (on a Desktop/Notebook)

Disclaimer: Windows 8 is still in development at this time. This is a release candidate, and any existing bugs or complaints may possibly be fixed by the time of its release.

In 1995, Microsoft came up with a way to improve multi-tasking, and that was the taskbar. They've included it in all of their desktop operating systems from Windows 95 to Windows 7, and it's still there in Windows 8. It included the iconic Start Menu, the optional Quick Launch toolbar to... quickly launch an application, a task switcher to switch between running applications, and the notification area for system features like volume or the network utility, or application features like security software. In Windows Vista, The Start button was changed to just an orb with the Windows logo. Windows Vista also gives a window preview when you hover over an item in the task switcher. Windows 7 changed the functionality of the taskbar to group applications together by default, replaces the Quick Launch toolbar with the ability to pin applications to the taskbar, and moved the Show Desktop button to the far right with the additional ability to get a quick peek at the desktop by hovering over it (Aero Peek).

But with the development of Windows 8, Microsoft decided it was time for a change.

This is Windows 8's Start Screen, which is the first thing you'll see when logging into your user account. The Start Screen is where you'll have all of your application shortcuts which appear as tiles, which you can customize somewhat. Some tiles can only be set as a square, while others can also be set as a two-space rectangle. The start screen is a little picky about where you can place the tiles, for example, you can't place a tile by itself below another one, it needs to have two horizontal spaces taken before you can put something below it, and even then, you can only place it on the left unless you have another tile next to it at which point you can switch them. You can create new columns of tiles following a space, but sometimes you can start a column immediately after the last one. I think that requires the previous column to be full. It's a bit hard to explain, and as I said, rather picky.

Windows 8 has two user interfaces, the new Metro UI and the Classic Desktop. Seeing as the Metro UI is the main "attraction" of Windows 8, that's what I'll start off with.

Metro Interface

A few years ago, Microsoft came up with a new design concept called Metro, which was a simplistic design made up of few colours and large fonts. They used it in Windows 7's Media Centre and the Zune's interface, and it's evolved into what's currently used on Windows Phone (7 and 8), the latest XBOX 360 Dashboard, and Windows 8.

Windows 8's Metro user interface looks and handles a little bit differently than the classic desktop. First of all, everything is huge, and all apps are full-screen, and it's obviously designed for touch screens. With that said, it still works with a keyboard and mouse, but functions slightly differently than it does on a touch screen.

Start Screen bottom bar

The Start badge and left sidebar hides itself whenever I try to take a screenshot, so here's my workaround.

The Previous App badge and left sidebar hides itself whenever I try to take a screenshot, so here's my workaround.

Charms bar

Whether you're on the start screen, or in an app, you'll likely notice that there's only so much you can do. When you right-click, it'll bring up a context sensitive bar at the bottom of the screen and sometimes on the top too. Windows 8 also uses hot-corners, which is where something will come up when you bring your mouse pointer to a corner of the screen. If you bring the mouse to the lower left hot-corner, it'll show a label of the start screen (with a basic model of your personalized start screen, nice touch) and take you there if you click it. Or if you're already on the start screen, it'll show your currently running app (if any). Bring your mouse to the upper-left hot-corner and it'll show your last used app, which you can click to switch to it. If you bring your mouse there and slide it down, then it'll reveal a bar with more of your recent apps. If you bring your mouse to the upper-right or lower-right corner and slide it toward the centre-right, it'll bring up the charms bar (and show the time, date, and wifi signal in the lower-left corner).

Searching Apps

Searching the Windows Store

Sharing from Internet Explorer

Devices charm

Settings Charm in the Maps app

The first option on the charms bar is a universal search option that acts as the search bar for any app that needs it. Looking for an app in the Windows Store? Use the search from the Charms Bar. Want to search through your email? Use the search on the Charms Bar. Want to search for a city in the Weather App? Use the..... yeah you get the idea. Below that is share. The only apps I've found that can share are Internet Explorer and Maps (Weather says share is coming soon), and they could only share to the Mail and People apps. Below that is the Start button, which is the second way to bring up or hide the Start Screen (The third way is with the keyboard's Windows key, as it's been since that button was added to keyboards). Below the Start button is Devices, which I've only seen show Second Screen and Microsoft XPS Document Writer. Second Screen allows you to choose what shows on a connected screen. Microsoft XPS Document Writer prints to a file. I guess if I had an actual printer connected, it would show up under Devices. And last, there's Settings. Settings shows the settings for the current running app, as well as some other stuff, like Wireless set-up, Volume Control, Brightness Control, hide notifications for a few hours, the stupidest place for a Power button, and an option to switch any installed keyboard layouts. At the bottom is the link to the PC Settings app.

There are two ways to close an app. Bring the pointer to the top of the screen until it changes to a hand, then click and drag the window to the bottom of the screen. You can also right-click on an app in the recent apps bar or the upper-left hot-corner and choose close.

Snapped Weather and Internet Explorer

Weather and snapped Internet Explorer

An interesting new feature is app-snapping. If you have a widescreen 16:9 or 16:10 display, you can snap an app to the side of the screen. It'll take up about 1/5 of the width of the screen with the other app taking up 4/5 of the width (similar to a 4:3 ratio). To snap an app to the side, you can either drag the top of the screen to the left or right side of the screen, you can drag a recent app to the left or right side of the screen, or you can right click on a recent app and choose Snap Left or Snap Right. It works well for some apps like Weather, Mail, and Messaging, but then there's some where I wonder why they even bother. Snapping PC Settings only shows the categories, but when you click on one, it expands the app and shrinks the other one. Snapping the Desktop app (I'll get to that later) only shows window previews, but when I click on one, it expands the desktop and shrinks the other app. But worst of all is Internet Explorer. When I snap it to the side, it scales everything so small that it's literally unreadable. I really don't get the point of those. Why give them the functionality if they don't actually function well.

And those are the basics of the Metro user interface in Windows 8.

Metro Apps

Start Screen

Right-clicking an app on the Start Screen

A minus icon shows at the lower-right hot corner

Start Screen zoomed out

As I said before, all of your shortcuts are on the Start Screen, as long as you put them there or they were there by default. They appear as tiles, and some of the tiles are live tiles, so they change to show different news stories, switching between pictures, showing your progress in a game, etc. By bringing up the lower bar, you can click All Apps and you'll see all of the apps installed on the computer. To pin one to the start screen, right click one and choose Pin To Start from the lower bar. To unpin, right-click an app on the Start Screen and choose Unpin From Start on the lower bar. And you can search for your installed apps, settings, or files by using the Search charm. Or even easier, just start typing on the Start Screen. You can zoom the Start Screen outward by clicking on the minus icon in the lower-right corner of the Start Screen.

At the upper-right is your user account name and picture. Clicking on it gives options to change your account picture, lock the computer, sign out of your user account, or switch to another user account.

Windows Store

Windows 8 includes a whole bunch of apps, but before I get to those, I need to point out the Windows Store, because that's the only way to get Metro apps. The Windows Store is pretty simple. The home page has categories, and to search, you use the Charms bar. In order to download any apps, you NEED a Microsoft account, which is the new name for the Windows Live ID. If you have a Hotmail account or something similar, you can use the store. I've always found it a bit silly when you need to create an account to download a free app. Apple does it, Microsoft does it, Google does it. I guess it's for statistical purposes, I don't know. Right now, there aren't all that many apps, but it'll probably fill up by the time Windows 8 launches.

Maps

The Maps app is a basic version of Bing Maps. You can look around, search for a location from the charms bar, show traffic, change the map between Road View and Aerial View (no birds eye view here), go to your location, and find directions. That My Location button I mentioned, surprisingly accurate. Almost too accurate. I think it's like Windows Phone 7 where it uses a database of WiFi access points (and mobile cell towers if your computer has mobile internet).

Internet Explorer for Metro

Windows 8 has two versions of Internet Explorer 10. The Desktop version, and the Metro version. The Metro version is pretty simplistic. The top bar holds the tabs, has a button to let you add a new tab and a button to add a new inprivate tab or close all tabs. For whatever reason, you can no longer move tabs around, and there's now a limit of 10 tabs. The bottom bar has the back and forward buttons, the address/search bar, a button to pin the website to the Start Screen, and a Page Tools menu that lets you get an app for the website (if available), find on page, or view the page on Internet Explorer for the desktop. Clicking on the address bar lets you see your recent websites and your pinned websites. The Charms Bar's Bing search seems redundant since you can already search Bing from the address bar. As explained before, you make the upper and lower bar appear by right-clicking on a blank space, although a context sensitive menu will come up if you right click over a link or image. There's also a hidden back and forward button at the left and right side of the screen that shows up when you move the mouse pointer near them.

IE for Metro does not have a compatibility mode, toolbars or plugins. Since you can't use plugins in IE for Metro, the Adobe Flash Player is now included, but it uses a whitelist so it only works with a few sites like YouTube.

Mail

Where to begin? Probably by entering your Microsoft account and password, because Mail won't let you use the app without one. You are REQUIRED to have a Hotmail account to use Mail. Mail works with Hotmail accounts, Gmail accounts, or an email account using Microsoft Exchange. Have an email address that's not from any of those three types of accounts? Too bad. Oh, and after adding a Gmail account, you still can't remove your Hotmail account from Mail, but you can remove the Gmail account if you want.

Mail is very basic. On the positive side, it syncs your email, so for example, if you make any sort of change in your Hotmail or Gmail account like sending an email, it'll sync that to your sent messages folder in Mail. So that's nice. All of your usual email folders are the same as in the browser. You can move emails to different folders, mark emails as unread, sync your account, and for some reason pin a specific email account to the Start Screen.

And then, while you can change the font, bold, italic, underline, font colour, highlight colour, add emoticons, add bulleted or numbered lists, and even undo or redo. For some reason, you can't add custom hyperlinks, which is weird because the default signature (Sent from my Windows 8 PC) has a custom hyperlink in it. I've found that I can add a hyperlink by creating one somewhere else like in Gmail in Internet Explorer, and then copying and pasting it into Mail. Now what's the point of doing that?! And even though you can't create hyperlinks, you can still see hyperlinks that are already in your email thread. But if you're editing an email, nothing happens when you click on a hyperlink, you need to hold control and click to go to the linked page. There's nothing telling you that though, I found it out from a google search while trying to figure out how to create a hyperlink in Windows 8 Mail (which I didn't manage). I later discovered by myself that if you highlight the full hyperlink, you can find an "Open Link" option in the "More" menu of the bottom bar. Again, not that obvious. Also, you can't change the default signature. If you don't want people to see that advertisement for Windows 8 when you send an email, you'll need to remove it manually every time you send one.

Messaging

Messaging is pretty basic and a pretty big downgrade from Windows Live Messenger. Like with Mail, you NEED a Microsoft Account to use it. Although this isn't as big a deal since the only other service it integrates with is Facebook Chat. Starting a chat is a little silly. To start a chat, you click Add, then it brings up the People app, you choose who you want to chat with, and then it goes back to the Messaging app. Also, there's no obvious way to sign out. If you bring up the lower bar and click Status, the only options are Online and Invisible. To sign out, you need to go to the Settings, then Options, then under Turn On Messaging, set it to Off. That's really silly, and bad design. And unless I missed it, I couldn't find a way to change my display name.

People

People is an interesting mix of things. On one hand, it combines your contacts list from Hotmail, Gmail, Exchange, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. On the other hand, it lets you see the feed from some of those services like Facebook and Twitter. You also have your own page showing your contact info and feed. And you can click on a post to see responses and that stuff. But the crazy part, is that you can't make your own post unless you share to People from another app like Maps or Internet Explorer.

(I'm not posting a screenshot of the People app because it's full of personal info)

Calendar

It's a calendar. It integrates with Hotmail, Gmail, and Exchange. That's it.
Oh, and guess what you need to use it. Go on, guess!

Weather

This is much of what you'd expect from a Weather app, and it's powered by Bing Weather. You get current, daily, and hourly forecasts, weather maps, and historical weather statistics. You can set your home city, add other favourite cities, and search for other cities.

My only major complaints about Weather is that the hourly weather seems to be inconsistent with the current weather, which is odd. Also, because scrolling down has the functionality to scroll both horizontally and vertically, once you scroll towards the hourly forecast, the screen stops scrolling right and starts scrolling the hourly forecast down, and vice versa.

Music and Video

I didn't try these much. Both of these integrate with XBOX Live, but they can also handle playing local media.

XBOX Live Games

Crazily enough, while the Windows 8 Consumer Preview included Solitaire and Pinball as Metro apps, the Windows 8 Release Preview does not. The XBOX Live Games app shows a bunch of games in the Windows Game Marketplace, but they all have a caption saying "Coming Soon", and clicking on Windows Game Marketplace shows... nothing, literally nothing.

Photos

Photos can show your pictures from your Pictures Library on your computer, Facebook, Skydrive, Flickr, and whatever "Devices" Microsoft is talking about. Maybe it syncs with Windows Phones. You can import photos from a camera or other removable media like a CD/DVD/Blu-Ray disc or USB drive.

PC Settings

As I said before, you can get to PC Settings by going to Settings in the Charms Bar. PC Settings allows you to personalize your lock screen, start screen, or add/change your account picture. You can also configure user accounts or convert your local account to a Microsoft Account (more on that later). You can customize notification and search options, sharing options, time, spelling options (including the dreaded auto-correct), recovery options, privacy options, devices, ease of access (with options like High Contrast and "Insanely Giant" mode), Syncing options, Homegroup, and Windows Update. With some things like Windows Update, if you want to do anything beyond checking for updates and installing them (which is automatically done by default), you'll need to go to the desktop Control Panel for that.

Other Apps

That's enough for now. There are other apps like Skydrive, Camera, Travel, Finance, News, and Sport.

I also downloaded a few apps from the Windows Store. Cut The Rope is available for Windows 8 for free, but... it's just not the same without a touchscreen, although they do have the option to click the rope when the pointer is nearby. The Weather Network's (Canadian weather channel) app is decent enough, even if it's still buggy and cuts off the stuff at the right side, but at least their weather doesn't conflict with itself. The Wikipedia app... well let's just say it fully conforms to Microsoft's Metro design standards. Everything in the app scrolls sideways, which is just weird. But worse than that in my opinion, is that everything is formatted into blocks that are about as narrow as you'd expect to fit on a smartphone. I find it really hard to read something laid out like that.

Classic Desktop and related stuff

Even though Microsoft is practically shoving Metro in our face, the classic desktop still exists in Windows 8, and you can access it like any other app. Just click the Desktop tile on the Start Screen.

Desktop

The Start Menu is gone. The Start Screen is accessible from the lower-left hot corner, the charms bar, or the Windows key.

A bland looking menu of utilities

Desktop Settings

Aero Peek (disabled by default)

Now, at first, the Desktop looks practically identical to Windows 7's desktop, aside from one major change and some less noticeable changes. There's no start button or start menu. Instead, you'll need to use the Start Screen, which as I said earlier, you can access via the keyboard's Windows key, the Start button on the charms bar, or left clicking at the lower left hot-corner. You can also get quick access to a few utilities by right-clicking the lower-left hot-corner. You can also quickly access the Control Panel, Personalization, PC Info, and Help through the Settings charm. Aero Peek (which is disabled by default in Windows 8) and the Show Desktop button are still at the lower-right where it was in Windows 7, but it doesn't stand out like it used to because it blends in with the taskbar. The Flip 3D feature that was heavily advertised for Windows Vista is now gone. Pressing (Windows Key) + Tab now switches between Metro apps. There were also some minor changes to the desktop theme, giving everything flat Metro-styled icons, and apparently they're changing the theme again for the RTM/Final Release (see near the end of that post). Internet Explorer 10 for the desktop is practically identical to Internet Explorer 9 aside from an improved rendering engine, the Windows Explorer file manager now uses the Ribbon toolbar that's been used in Microsoft Office since 2007, and the task manager had a redesign as well.

Internet Explorer 10 for the Desktop

Windows Explorer file manager

Otherwise, it's very much like the Windows 7 desktop.

Some other stuff

Windows 8 has a new "fast startup" mode which is enabled by default and can be changed in the Power Options. It takes a few seconds longer to power off the computer, but it boots in about half the time compared to when the option is disabled.

Windows Automatic Updates work a little differently than they used to. It'll hold any updates that need a restart to sync them up with the monthly security release (the second Tuesday of the month, called Patch Tuesday). The exception is for any critical updates released out of schedule. Once the monthly updates or out of schedule critical updates are found, Windows will give 3 days to shut down or restart the computer while the updates install during the shutdown process. When you're on the lock screen or login screen, you'll see how many days are left before Windows automatically restarts the computer. After 3 days, Windows will restart, but will delay it until the next time you log in if your screen is locked or if you're running a critical application (whatever it decides those are). If you're running something in full-screen like playing a game, watching a movie, or showing a presentation, then it'll delay the restart until later. With that being said, this stuff will only happen if you have Windows set to automatically install updates. If you have Windows set to notify before install or before download, then the login screen or lock screen will tell you that "Important updates are ready to be installed".

By default, Internet Explorer for Metro and for the Desktop have Bing as the default search engine. And while it doesn't seem like you can change it on Metro, you can... through the desktop version. Hopefully they make it easier to change that from Metro by the time Windows 8 goes final.

If you choose not to use the included Calendar, Mail, Messaging, and People apps included with Windows 8, you can still use Windows Live Essentials. Although, unlike Windows 7, there isn't a link or installer included to install the Windows Live Essentials applications, so you'll need to hunt down the Windows Live Essentials installer on Microsoft's website.

Windows Defender got a HUGE overhaul and looks very similar to Microsoft Security Essentials. Not only does it defend against spyware, but it also defends against malware and viruses. In fact, it's intended to be a replacement for MSE on Windows 8, and therefore, MSE isn't recommended. I think MSE might not even be installable on Windows 8, I haven't tried though.

Windows 8 lets you create a user account either as a Local Account (the old way), or with a Microsoft Account. Logging in as a Microsoft Account lets you sync some of your settings across computers with Windows 8, and automatically logs you into a few apps like Calendar, Mail, Messaging, and People. If you use Hotmail, you've already got a Microsoft Account, so there's no need to create a new one.

Windows 8 has three versions for consumer use. Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, and Windows RT. Windows 8 Pro adds a few features for business and IT like encryption, virtualization, PC management and Domain connectivity, and the strangest one of all, the ability to install Windows Media Centre. For whatever reason, Windows Media Centre isn't included with Windows 8 or Windows 8 Pro, but it's only available as a paid add-on for Windows 8 Pro called the "Media Pack".

The third version is called Windows RT, which is only included with ARM-based tablets that run Windows RT, and it uses the same architecture that's used on mobile phones. For the most part, the feature set is similar to Windows 8, but you're not able to install any additional desktop apps, you can only install Metro apps from the Windows store. Also, Microsoft Office is included with Windows RT, so that's new. Chances are, you won't be finding any internet browsers on Windows RT other than Internet Explorer. While you can install other internet browsers in Metro on Windows 8 (although for some stupid reason you need to set it as the default browser to run it in Metro), browsers on Windows RT won't get access to the Win32 APIs that Internet Explorer gets to use.

Windows 8 doesn't include DVD codecs. As mentioned above, you can pay for Windows 8 Pro and the "Media Pack" for Windows Media Centre which has DVD codecs. You can also buy the DVD codecs from a company like Cyberlink. I think Cyberlink PowerDVD is often included with computers and DVD drives, so it's probably not a huge deal.

While the Windows Store lets you buy Metro apps, it also shows a few Desktop apps, but it just directs you to the developers website where you can download it. At least it's better than nothing. It makes it easier to find stuff.

Bugs and other weirdness

As I mentioned in the disclaimer, this isn't a final build of Windows 8, and there are bugs, most of which I found in Metro. Sometimes, Metro apps would crash and go back to the Start Screen when I opened them up. One time, after creating a new user account, and then switched back to my main user account, there was all kinds of weirdness and some stuff like the hot corners and start screen wouldn't function properly. I managed to press (Windows Key) + L to lock the screen, switch back to the other account and log out of it. After that, it worked fine. Sometimes, the Metro version of Internet Explorer just decided that it won't copy any more text, but would paste stuff from a few hours before. Sometimes, when pressing Ctrl-F in Metro IE to search the page, the search box wouldn't light up and update, but rather still showed the previously searched term. The functionality worked though, as it would search for what I typed. Clicking the search box fixed that display bug. And for whatever reason, Metro IE wouldn't open up my router's settings page, which is weird because I was able to access my modem's settings page, and I could access both in desktop IE and Firefox. And IE rendered Blogger a bit oddly. It rendered orange buttons (like the publish button or the Blogger logo) with only an orange outline, but unfortunately white on white is a little hard to read.

But the weirdest bug I came across, was one that I think is related to blogger. If I used Blogger in Metro or Desktop Internet Explorer, after a bit, most of the functionality of the Mail, Messaging, and People apps just stopped working. Mail wouldn't sync to fetch new emails, Messaging acted like it was offline and wouldn't go online when I set it to, and while People was able to get new tweets and facebook posts in its feed, it acted like nobody was online much like Messaging. Logging out and back into my Windows user account would fix it, but I don't know how something so ridiculous can happen in the first place. It's really really weird.

My Thoughts

Windows 8 is interesting. It has some old stuff, and some new stuff. Unfortunately, the new Metro user interface is awkward to use on a desktop computer, especially with a large screen. I'm sure it would be great running on a tablet, but the fact of the matter is that there are still tons of desktop and notebook computers being sold. Similarly, the Desktop isn't ideal to use on a tablet. In my opinion, Windows RT and Windows 8 tablets should use the Start Screen, as it is now, while for Windows 8 running on a desktop/notebook, the (now obsolete) start menu should be available.

While the Classic Desktop uses the old volume and battery applet in the taskbar, for some reason, the one for Wi-Fi brings up the Metro-style Wi-Fi configuration. They really need to fix inconsistencies like that.

Metro aside, the Windows 8 desktop is very similar to the Windows 7 desktop, with some changes to a few utilities, some changes to the driver model, the replacement of the Start Menu for the Start Screen, and some performance improvements. I don't know what's going to be changed for the final release, but based on the Release Preview, I don't see it as a necessary upgrade from Windows 7. The classic desktop works great, so as long as they stabilize Metro, it could be manageable for those computers that include it as long as you stick with the desktop, as I feel that Metro is very much a, you do things Microsoft's way, or not at all sort of thing.

This post was written using the Windows 8 Release Preview