Taking on Windows 8

You might be asking yourself if Windows 8 is going to be the OS that you've been waiting for; with all of it's new productivity and efficiency upgrades, or, is it, with it's "Metro" UI, an incomplete transition into touch based desktop and laptop computing, which represents little of what Windows users liked about the previous OS and then also not that much of what the future may hold for Microsoft's next generation of OS?



A New Concept
Well, the answers are not simple, but the concept behind the OS, which is revealed to any relatively experienced Windows user, is actually quite simple and is a broad aim of Windows 8: To be the best OS out there and to be a consistent user experience across a wide variety of modern devices. Windows 8 is designed to be deployed on PC workstations, laptops, home desktops, netbooks, tablet computers and smart phones.

We're looking at an OS that has been built, from the ground up, for even wider deployment than it's widely used predecessors. The main controversy that this has brought up is the removal of the "Start" menu, and what people perceive it's replacement services to be.

The UI formerly known as Metro

The new touch style UI (the UI formerly referred to as Metro) you see when you log into Windows 8 (picured above) is, to all intents and purposes, the start menu in a new form. From here you have access to a customizable list of applications that you use. On a PC that includes apps designed with that UI in mind, which all open full-screen with large UI layouts and "buttons" you might expect to see on your tablet or phone. The kind of stuff that is supposed to be inaccurately jabbed at with a finger or thumb. It's not the best way of going about things for most advanced or power users, with screens around the 24" mark, because it does look a little clumsy.

Shortcuts
You're also left thinking "where are all of those powerful tools I used to use, like run and command prompt and the control panel? For God's sake where is the control panel?

The answer after a little Google was that you can right click in the dead spaces on the UI and that brings up a panel at the bottom which says "show all programs". Ok, good so that's still a long way of doing things, but it's all there. It's not good enough I hear you cry... well the OS opens up with a couple of very well organised keyboard shortcuts based around the Windows Key. There's a massive list of them if you Google it. The most useful ones that I'm consistently using are:

Settings menu

Win + I  - brings up a side bar titled "Settings" (pictured, right) which contains a lot of useful key things that a normal user would probably want to interface with. You can get to most of your daily tools from this menu. This is also, seemingly the best possible way to get to the old power button. Click power and a drop down menu lets you select any one of power off / restart / sleep.

Win + E  - brings up the traditional "My Computer" window with all the same features as Windows 7. Useful as by default there is no desktop icon for My Computer unless you specify it from the Control Panel.

Win + D  - So your in the big UI and you want to clear it to your traditional desktop. done. Win + D. You want to clear everything on your screen and look like nothing is going on at all. Win + D. Want to get back what you just cleared? Win + D. It's handy.

Win + X  - This is how you take the power back. Win + X brings up your complete range of Windows power tools. (pictured below). Run, Search, Command Prompt, Disk Management and so on, all right here

Power Tools

Once you've got those down to memory, you'll be using Windows 8 faster than has ever been possible on any previous incarnation of a Microsoft operating system.

The thing is that keyboard shortcuts like these have always been around; but it always seemed easier to click through menus. Knowing your shortcuts has been a major part of professional workflows in their programs for a long time. It's just a way of using your computer more efficiently when it has your full attention and both of your hands.




Tekkers
Whether you like it or not Windows has been taking care of your computer without your knowledge for quite some time. Windows Vista and 7 actually performed de-fragmentation operations in the background to keep your hard drives loading as fast as possible. Windows 8 does this more regularly, and even with heavy data traffic the drives remain virtually fragmentation free. Windows 8 also has the most advanced interaction with SSD drives in an OS today. Fragmentation of files is reduced by the OS pre-mapping the drive so it writes in as large a fragment as is possible. This also has the effect of reducing the number of times that any segment is written to, increasing the lifespan of your SSD.

The whole thing is written for multi core processors too. Everything works more smoothly and more efficiently with fewer jumpy lags. Under Windows 7 conforming multiple video streams to different screens often resulted in jerky fame rates and under performance from high end systems, especially when dealing with flash and html 5 based web video technology based around MPEG 4 compression. Now no such thing. The system, which should be way beyond capable of doing so, happily plays back multiple HD Youtube, Vimeo and Netflix streams without breaking a sweat. Why you'd want to run all three at any given time simultaneously is beyond me... but you could... if you wanted... so there!

The new task manager is a vastly improved visual experience (screenshots below). The statistical breakdown of what every program running on your system is doing and a full rundown of what performance levels are like, including some features previously only revealed by additional programs you'd have to download and install separately. This includes fast access to startup tasks, with a breakdown on what they are costing your computer in boot time.

MSE
... or Microsoft Security Essentials, has ascended into the root of the OS. As such, it is now a key part of Windows 8 rather than a slightly afterthought bolt-on, as it was for Windows 7, Vista and then later released for XP too. Users of Windows 8, no longer need to download anti-virus software. Unless you are doing some pretty nefarious dealings with some really dodgy sites, that spam you with pop-ups, and your email filters allow a lot of spam messages through, I don't think there will be any problems. For business users the same thing applies. Get a better hardware firewall, better filter running on our email server. Finally we can say good bye to the money grabbing bloatware which are Norton, McAffee, Kaspersky, AVG and all the rest. You're defunct, please leave and tell your IT company to stop re-installing it just because they get a commission for installing it and referring you.

Second Monitor?
No problem. One irritating little gripe with every previous version of Windows was the fact I couldn't just  use two different images as my background across two screens without quite a lot more messing about with imaging apps. I'm a lazy man, and frankly made do with having the same image on both screens... Now though, just pick the two images you want and bang, you've got one different image on each screen.


So it's good?
To a very great extent this does seem to be better than Windows 7, which was, until now, I thought, the best version of Windows yet. It really outclasses anything else out there in terms of sheer usability, while also staying relatively compact. I think what I'm looking for is a suitable superlative to describe it's scalability. I can hear everyone who's bothering with this to say "you have this installed on really super high end Desktop Workstation machine, and the performance is amazing. Well that's great, but what's it going to do for my £300 laptop?" I actually had the latest Release Candidate of Win 8 installed on my laptop for a while. That is a 6 year old machine that I bought so I could write University work on the train (and play Football Manager occasionally). It's a 1.6GHz Core Duo with 1GB of RAM and frankly I think my Galaxy S3 has greater overall computing power! It's always taken about 20 mins to boot into Windows XP, but that, even with it's decrepit 100GB IDE hard drive boots in about 2 mins and is usable and pretty smooth considering it's age...

Could my mother use it?
I don't know. The removal of some key historical Windows features does mean that the initial shock of booting into that huge UI and then, once you've navigated to the desktop, not having a start button and menu to use, is going to alienate quite a number of older users who just aren't that adaptable to changes. Us young'uns have it easy; with our constantly changing technological environment we have all become used to adapting our knowledge of current systems to suit a new environment. My worry is that my mother is not very tech savvy, and has learned to use her computer (Windows 7) in a very specific way, involving a huge number of clicks. The start menu and button is key to the usage of that computer. It's the same scenario in my workplace. As the only really technologically informed person on our staff I really do see people doing the most incredibly simple tasks in the most round-about fashion ever attempted. If I had to teach people the ubiquitous shortcuts for copy and paste, I don't think an upheaval like the removal of the foundation of their understanding of their operating system is going to work for them, not without at least two hours of training.


Anything bad?
Well as usual there's still a few missing drivers for some of my ludicrously specific hardware, like my five year old audio interface, which is only working through an unstable Windows Vista driver which does seem to have some problems. But it's early days for this sort of thing.

It's only been out for a few weeks at this stage and the experience has been overwhelmingly positive. I'll do an update when the whole thing comes crashing down around me; but for now that's it.