Windows 8 First Look Review - Part 1

Yes yes. In a land of the internet where everyone has opinions and reviews, mine is coming sort of late. But that's ok, because I know that only a small portion of my friends have Windows 8 and the larger majority of them probably haven't even bothered to think about upgrading their OS yet. I sort of did it at a whim and I wanted to give myself a full 10 days or so before I gave my full-out opinion on it.

Now, before I begin, let me explain how I generally use my computer. When I'm at home, I generally am not so much a "power-user". That is to say, I don't do any hardcore benchmark testing, I don't do graphic design work, I'm not programming anything, there are no models rendering in the background while I'm doing other things. No. I very much do "normal" stuff. I'll watch some movies. I tool around on youtube. I watch streams on twitch.tv. I jot down some mental notes on notepad or Word. I keep track of deck ideas for MtG in excel. I game. I game on Cockatrice, MtGO, and any other game I feel like playing at the time whether it's some MMO, FPS, RPG, or what have you. And then I surf through facebook and check emails and listen to music on Spotify. I feel like I'm a fairly average geek-type normal computer user. More of the review to follow after the jump.

First and foremost, I want to say that I actually dig W8 quite a bit. It does many things extremely well and the things that aren't intuitive are just because they are new features and functions. Now, my reason for upgrading and switching over were twofold. First, I knew that W8 handled resource management better and more efficiently. Tests and benchmarks basically showed that W8 performed tasks either faster (by seconds, not milliseconds) or at equal speeds than W7. Second, I just wanted to explore it and not be left behind while more people switched over. I've been there where my reluctance to switch OS's left me behind the mark for a year or so longer than I should have. And that was from XP to W7! Talk about an upgrade. I didn't want to wait to accept change for W8. I just figure I'd go for it.

The largest difference that W7 users will have to get used to is the "Start" screen. Admittedly, this is also the largest gripe that I have about W8. Let me be the first to say that I love this Start screen. I like it enough that my gripe is that processes are not run natively through the Start screen. More to come about this later. Other than the Start screen and the widget-like apps that reside on the Start screen, the method of searching for "things", whether they be files, application programs, or settings is a bit different and this takes some getting used to also. That Windows key on the keyboard that I never really used before? I use it all the time now. Again, more to come about this later. Finally, after you get over these differences, you'll begin to realize that anything you run off of your Start screen are more like "environments" than they are programs. And then after all of that, there's the Desktop screen - which is almost an exact clone of what you're used to looking at as W7 users, sans the Start Menu on the bottom left. Let's tackle each change and my thoughts on them.

Start Screen
This is a screen that is meant to essentially run any/all programs from here on out. Everything resides on this screen that you need; it is meant to replace the desktop that you're used to from W7. Think about this almost like your home screen on your smartphone. It can have widgets on it (live tiles that update), it can have shortcuts to all of your programs, and it is highly customizable. This is easily the part that I can talk about the most. I love this thing.


Not my Start screen; maybe I'll take a
screenshot of mine when I get home, but still gives
you a good idea of what a Start screen looks like.

So what's my gripe? My gripe is that nothing is integrated into this screen! What do I mean by this? Ok, let's say something as easy as Notepad is what I want to access. I have a Notepad tile on my start screen. I click on it. What happens? The Start screen minimizes, the Desktop screen comes to the front, and then Notepad opens up... Why? Basically, the Start screen is a mask for the Desktop screen, an overlay that doesn't do anything other than let you interact with it and look pretty. But everything very much occurs through the Desktop screen still! An analogy. What if you went to your favorite sushi restaurant and realized that the menu was replaced with a sleek and sexy new digital display, where you just tapped on stuff you wanted. However instead of this going to the chef directly, the waiter still came over, took a look at your digital order, wrote it down, and then delivered this to the chef... What the hell is the point of this awesome looking digital display?! I want my order to do the logical thing and go live in front of the chef. The same with this Start screen. If you're going to give me something awesome to look at, integrate programs to it! I feel as if this was a small step toward what it could be in the future. As if Microsoft is taking baby steps toward a new OS but stopped halfway and said "good enough for now." If it were up to me, I'd get rid of that waiter altogether -- err, I mean the Desktop screen.

Here is what my own Start Screen actually looks like.

 
As far as personal experiences, let me tell you how awkward it was to not have the time constantly displayed on the primary screen. I'm used to glancing down at the time on the lower-right hand side of my taskbar often and plenty. Well, the Start screen doesn't have this plastered anywhere easy. You have to hover your cursor either at the top-right or bottom-right most corner of your screen, and some "Login" type screen will show you the time. I can't lie; I haven't really figured out what this screen is useful for yet other than showing the time. Maybe I would see it more if I had password-protected my login, but I haven't. So for now, it's a useless screen.

Windows 8 Store
"WELL", I say to myself, "I need a clock on this screen for sure." I navigate through the control panel and the settings of the Start screen in a slow and combing manner like the W8 nubile I am only to find nothing useful for getting the time to show up on this screen. And so to the 'Windows 8 Store' I go. If nothing else, this will remind anyone of a smartphone app store, which is both good for flexibility and efficiency and awful because the last thing I really feel like doing is browsing what looks like a smartphone app store on my desktop. Still though. Having options for tons of apps either for free or for micro-purchases on a computer (and not on my phone) is interesting, so I'm just going for it. Heh. I surprise myself and just start browsing for a while.

I download a few things just to check them out before remembering why I was here to begin with. A clock app... I get lost. I mean really lost. I'm looking all over the place, but there's no 'search' function. I actually have to back up, go online, and google how the eff to search within this W8 Store! Winkey+q. Or, if I happened to have hovered to the top-right or bottom-right most corner of my screen, I could've seen the search button. These were not at ALL intuitive options, but I was happy I was not the only one completely lost, as these types of questions were all over the google hits.

...Search... search... ...search... WHERE THE EFF IS THE SEARCH FUNCTION?!

Ok. So I finally find a clock app I also like, get it onto my Start screen, and I'm good to go. All of this just to get the time to show up on my native screen... I tool around with a couple other random apps I got and within the first 10 minutes decide none of them are really worth my time. I'm a pretty hard sell and scrutinize pretty harshly whether something is worth it or if it is just adding extra unnecessary clutter. That's just my personality though.

WHEW. That's a heckuva lot that I talked about already. And this hasn't even really touched the surface of what I feel like I can talk about. So stay tuned as I give further thoughts on other functions of Windows 8 in the very near future. Until then, please leave comments on what you think about the functions I spoke about already and anything else you'd like me to cover in more depth later this week about Windows 8!