Windows 8 Preview

Windows 8 Developer preview was released for download just a few weeks ago. This time around they are trying to make things even more intuitive and easier to use by implementing the Metro interface as opposed to the classic and well loved Start Menu. Metro is also the interface you’ll find on Windows Phone 7 and on touch screen devices it is simply wonderful. But how about a regular desktop or laptop computer?

Well get to that but let’s take a look at the install and use of Windows 8 as it is now and I should point out this is pre beta and not everything is included. First I chose the computer to test this on, my Asus netbook with a swivel tablet screen. I figured this would be the best option, best of both world so to speak. It was running Windows 7 32bit so I decided to try an upgrade install. Everything looked like it was right on track for an easy install with everything working like a charm, however once Windows 8 booted up I noticed that only one software program transferred, Mozilla Firefox. Thus Office 2010, Adobe CS4, iTunes, VLC, and others would have to be reinstalled.

Luckily while poking around the system I noticed that the installation of Windows 8 created a windows.old directory, so everything was still there but not associated with the OS and registry. I did create an image of the drive before installing Windows 8 as well. Thinking about these two gave me an idea. Would PC Mover work on Windows 8 and would I be able to bring over the software applications from windows.old or the image I created? Yes, like a charm! Using the image assistant feature of PCMover I selected the windows.old directory and bam I had all my programs back after a few hours.

 

And with that I have only had issues with Acrobat Reader and Acrobat pro CS4. Neither work correctly and constantly run an installer that is of course all automated, I may just have to remove and reinstall them. But that is not a main concern.

Now that I was up and running, I had to play with the system and one thing bugged me. There was no start menu, no easy way to reach all those software programs I had just migrated in! Luckily someone else found this to be annoying and found the registry key to toggle back and even created a small app to do it for you. Windows 8 start menu toggle is the name I believe. With this I was able to get the start menu back, but I haven’t been successful in toggling back to metro.

With Metro on my Windows Phone 7 I am extremely satisfied and find it a breath of fresh air, but on my desktop I found, at least in this build, it was almost useless. I couldn’t launch Internet Explorer nor many of the apps. I could access the control panel or the desktop without a start menu. I also found no easy way to turn off my computer. I had to select my account on the metro screen, log off, and then I could choose to shut down. Also just like Windows Phone 7 you have a home screen. Slide it up and now you can log on or shut down the pc.

In conclusion I think Microsoft is on the right track, but they are a long way from the train station. While the Metro interface has potential even on non-touch enabled computers-they must compromise and give users the option to choose or give users both the metro and start menu. Performance is pretty good and I found it to run pretty fast on this netbook with an Atom N570 cpu. It did slow a little after migrating my software back over, but not by much. There are numerous little improvements they had made under the hood and a few visual differences but nothing that stands out as ground breaking just yet.

At this point don’t go off planning to run this on any primary machine and I would recommend waiting a awhile. It’s good right now, but far from perfect and I expect to find many bugs and incompatibilities as I continue testing. One last odd note is that HP’s Officejet 8000 printer software would not install and just run a loop of doing nothing, but migrating it in with PCMover allowed it to work as it should. I can’t wait to see where they go with Windows 8!