The Windows 8 Consumer Preview (here's the Windows 8 download) updates the look of the Developer Preview, adds a lot of new features and revamps a few old ones.
The
round Start button is gone, the Metro-style Start screen remains and
yes, you can only pick from nine colours and five patterns for the Start
screen background.
But there's far more to the Consumer Preview
user interface than the Start screen, and far more to Windows 8 than
the user interface. Metro has a limited choice of colour schemes and stylesThere
are new ways of switching between apps, as well as more updates to the
desktop tools. There are changes under the hood to file copying, power
management, security, networking, hardware support and more. Two windows; when one is the desktop, it has thumbnails of all open apps And
then there are the first real Metro apps, so you can find out what it's
like to use Metro for more than just trying out Metro, and the Windows
Store for the first third-party apps from real developers. Swipe down on the start menu to see all your apps This
is the version of Windows 8 that's going to give you a real feel for
what the final operating system will be like and the first version you
could realistically use for day-to-day work. But will you want to?
Running the Windows 8 Consumer Preview
First
of all, it's worth noting that the Consumer Preview is only for x86/64
PCs; there isn't an ARM version that you can download and try out, since
there aren't any ARM devices that will run it.
That's because of
the extremely custom way that ARM devices are built, where not even the
way to control a physical button is standard. Microsoft isn't supporting
tablets built to run Android or WebOS, either. It's the windows 7 beta fish – metro styleMuch
of what we're seeing in the Consumer Preview will be the same on
Windows on ARM (WOA) systems. Most stuff - from the Metro user interface
to the touch gestures, to the Windows desktop and built-in Windows
tools such as Explorer and Task Manager - will be practically the same.
But until we see it in action, we don't know what WOA performance and
battery life will be like.
Consumer Preview doesn't include the
desktop Office apps that will be bundled with WOA either - and of course
it runs all the x86 desktop apps that won't work on WOA.
When
you download the Consumer Preview, installing is easier than usual with
a beta operating system. You can start the installation directly from
the web page, instead of having to download an ISO file and burn that to
an optical disc.
You can still burn an ISO if you want, and the
installer can also create a bootable USB stick so you can download
Consumer Preview once and install it on multiple machines. Windows 8 boots so fast you may miss the bios screen, so you can change the options for the next boot hereThe
tools for creating a Windows To Go USB stick aren't available yet, so
you can't run Windows 8 directly from USB, but you'll get a far better
feel for how Windows 8 performs if you can try it out directly on a PC.
Windows 8: Metro interface
The Metro interface doesn't look that different, but having your
email, photos, appointments and friends pinned to it livens it up
considerably - as does the new Metro tile for the desktop, which sports a
cute Metro-ified version of the Windows 7 beta fish.
You can
also pin libraries here as well as Explorer, but you have to do that
from Explorer set to view the desktop rather than from within a library
itself. Pin libraries as a top level link to the start screenThe
improved touch gestures also make it far easier to work with. Swipe
from the right edge of the screen and you get the redesigned charm bar;
Search, Share, Start, Devices and Settings.
You can do the same
thing by leaving your mouse pointer in the top or bottom right corner;
first the charms appear as white outlines, then if you don't move your
mouse they disappear. Windows assumes you didn't want to trigger them,
since you might be moving the mouse to scroll or closing a window at the
side of the screen instead. If you are, you don't have to wait for the
charms to vanish to do so. Move the mouse towards the charms and the
black bar and charm titles draw in on screen. Put the mouse in the corner to open the charms, move your mouse and they light upStart,
which is highlighted in the accent colour of the colour theme you
choose, swaps between the Start screen and whatever you were doing last.
Search is now context sensitive; if you're in IE when you choose it,
you get results from Bing first.
Swipe up from the bottom on the
Start screen to get a quick link to the All Apps view, which is now
neatly organised into program groups, arranged alphabetically.
As
you swipe across the Start menu, it stops with the group of tiles you've
swiped to line up under the word Start; this bouncing into place is the
promised 'speed bump' to help you navigate around. Scrolling with a
mouse works far better - if you push the mouse past the edge of the
screen, the tiles scroll as if you were swiping with your finger. Put your mouse in the corner and you see this thumbnail Drag your mouse down to see the thumbnails in the switching paneThis
works so well you'll miss it in apps that don't support it, such as
Photos, where you have to go back to grabbing the scrollbar or use a
touch pad or Microsoft Touch Mouse, which enables you to swipe sideways.
The Semantic zoom feature now works too; pinch to shrink the
tiles on the Start screen to tiny thumbnails so you can see everything
at once or move an entire group. Select a group and drag it down to get
the option of naming it. Zoom out on the start menu to see more tiles and name your groupsThis
is also the view you get when you drag a tile you're moving to the
bottom of the screen, which makes it easier to move an item a long way
across the screen without disturbing the arrangement of all your tiles
and groups.
As you drag a tile between two groups, when you
position it between them a vertical grey bar appears to show that you're
creating a new group to put it in.
Switching between apps is
now far easier. You can still drag in the next app in the stack from the
left edge of the screen to be full screen or to snap into a side
window, but when the icon of that next app appears, you can also drag it
back to the edge to get a vertical pane of thumbnails. Switch between current apps using this thumbnail listMoving between screensThis
only shows six thumbnails of recent apps (including the desktop if
that's open) plus the thumbnail for the Start menu. Tap a thumbnail to
open the app or drag it to choose where on screen it appears. Hover the mouse in the corner for this start button replacement You
can get the switching pane using a mouse by leaving the mouse pointer
in the top or bottom left corner of the screen until a thumbnail appears
(the next app at the top, the Start menu preview at the bottom). Drag
down with the mouse and the thumbnails appear. If you want to see all
current desktop apps and recent Metro apps, use Alt+Tab instead. Win+Tab
makes the switching pane appear. The new lock screen image; a coral reef where you might find a beta fish maybe?You
can close Metro apps without restoring to the task manager. Drag down
from the top of the screen until the app you're looking at shrinks down
to a thumbnail and keep dragging that off the screen to close it (it's a
longer swipe than when you use a quick finger swipe down from the top
or up from the bottom of the screen to get the menu bar inside an app).
That works with a mouse as well. Or you can use Alt+F4, just like with a desktop app. IE10 has a spell checker that works in any app that needs isYou
can type quite well on screen. The large touch keyboard is a little
better laid out now, and has predictive text and spelling corrections.
The
thumb keyboard layout still has the alphabet split between the two
sides of the screen where it's all in reach of your thumbs, but there's
now a numeric keyboard in the middle to make it faster to type passwords
(or indeed, numbers) and you can resize the keyboard. The split screen keyboard now has a numeric keypad all the timeThe
new notifications in Metro work well; they pop up in the top right
corner of the screen where they're not likely to be in the way and you
can tap for options. So the first time you put a USB stick in, you can
choose whether to open Explorer or do something else, and that will
happen automatically next time you insert it. Charms in the desktop bring up desktop tools
Windows 8: Accounts and more
If you use a Windows Live account (which can be a Hotmail address or
any other email address you've set up as a Windows Live account) to log
in, you automatically get your contacts, calendar and messages.
The two day calendar view
If you've already linked your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Flickr
accounts to Windows Live, Windows 8 uses that to put your Facebook
photos in the Photos app, your Facebook friends in the People app and
Facebook chat in Messaging. See the photos you save on skydrive from your phone The people app doesn't always make good use of the spaceMuch
like it did in the Developer Preview, Windows 8 uses this account to
take your settings, IE favourites and saved passwords to any other
Windows 8 PCs you sign into with the same account, but this is now
called a Microsoft account and it will enable you to download apps from
the Windows Store. Take favourites and colour schemes to other windows 8 pcs you useYou can easily switch accounts but only after you log in
If you use an account from a different provider, such as Gmail, as your
login, you'll get the information from that account in Windows but
you'll have to verify that before contact, calendar and message
information start arriving.
When they do, you can choose which of
them show notifications on the Lock screen. You can pick up to seven
apps that will run in the background when your screen is off and tell
you if you have new messages - one of them can show more detailed
information, but so far the calendar is the only choice. Choose what notifications you see on the lock screen; those will be the connected standby apps on new devices This
will be much more important on WOA and SoC devices that have connected
standby, since these are the apps that will get updates while the rest
of the system is asleep. Choose what apps can pop up notificationsWindows Live account or not, the first account you make on a Consumer Preview system is automatically an admin account.
When
you add a second account, there's no option to set it as being an
administrator straight away, as you realise the first time you try to
install an app and have to put in the password of the original account.
You can go into the control panel to change the account type, but it's
irritating not to get the option in the first place.
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