Upgrading to Windows 8 was relatively painless, I have to say. It helped that I was going from Windows 7 – if it had been from anything lower then there would have been issues. But hey, it was plain sailing.
My initial impressions were – What the actual fuck is going on here?
My fears died down once I’d found the hot-corners and the desktop. The Charms menu is a nice touch, context sensitive options appear depending on which app you are using, and lets you get to the Start menu quickly. I actually find it quite funny that the desktop is treated like an app. You can grab the top of it and pull it down off-screen to close it like you can with (for example) the Marketplace or Minesweeper. I was initially confused by the lack of the familiar Start button – but where I spent most of my time in the Desktop, if you hover down where the Start button used to be, you get a nice little clickable Start screen tile pop up, which takes you to the Start screen (surprise!). After a while, I saw the Start screen for what it was – a full screen version of the Start menu. You can pin your favourite programs to it, just like the Start menu, and after a bit of tweaking, you can access all the stuff you used to get to from the Start button, like My Computer, the Control Panel and your documents.
I don’t think I’ll bother with most of the apps apart from the games – they are mostly just different versions of a web-site, which are kind of redundant, as I have a fully fledged browser which is more than capable of displaying the true versions of web-sites. Speaking of Internet Explorer 10, it’s really quite good – the desktop version, I mean. It’s just like Internet Explorer 9, but faster and prettier. I had a little tinker with the tablet version (as I like to call it), but it seems better suited to touch-screens. I’ll definitely use that version on my Surface though, as well as use apps rather than the browser. I think that’s the difference between apps and programs for me. Using a mouse, keyboard or graphics tablet/stylus is perfect for programs, whereas apps are for touching.
One minor annoyance – it treated my Bamboo tablet as a mouse when I was using the stylus. But the annoyance was destroyed when I flicked “Touch on” on the Bamboo, and I could swipe, pinch and do all the gestures. That still didn’t convince me that I’d ever use the Modern aspect of Windows 8 on my desktop PC though. Not swiping or pinching stuff I could see was a little disorienting. Another mild annoyance – pushing the mouse pointer against the right edge of the Start screen made it scroll. Pushing against the right edge of the Marketplace or Xbox Music or Minesweeper didn’t make it scroll.
Overall, I can see why the Windows team did it this way. Rather than splinter their operating system into hundreds of desktop, tablet, touchscreen, Pro, Home, Family and Extended variants, there are simply two versions, and they are very distinct – essentially, one has a desktop, the other does not. One can run Windows programs, the other can only run apps. This puts Microsoft in an arguably very strong position for the future, if they can somehow merge the two into a cohesive whole. At the moment it does seem a little schizophrenic, it feels like Windows 7 with a new layer on top of it. It would be annoying if desktop users had to miss out on all the fun apps, whereas someone who just wants a new tablet doesn’t necessarily need a “proper” or traditional Windows experience. From my experience with tablets, they are just technologically advanced toys, and the top layer of Windows 8 with the apps and tiles is perfect for them.
All in all, it’s made me want a Surface even more – a Pro version – so I can get some proper Art programs on there and not be limited to Art apps, while using that gorgeous pressure sensitive screen.
