Windows 8 review

Windows 8: Getting started, ARM and x86

Windows 8 offers options on lock screens and more

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 styles

There 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 style

Much 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.

• Windows 8 on ARM: Steven Sinofsky speaks

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 here

The 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 screen

The 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 up

Start, 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 pane

This 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 groups

This 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 list

Moving between screens

This 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 is

You 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 time

The 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 space

Much 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 use

You 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 notifications

Windows 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.