Windows 8 Release Preview

the Start Screen

On a few occasions some of my co-workers have asked me if I plan to upgrade to windows 8.  I am sure they are not the only ones who find themselves asking this question as I myself have been reading the reviews and wondering if I am going to upgrade when the time comes around. In order to make a more informed decision I decided to download windows 8 Release preview and try it for myself.

SET UP

First off I want to mention that I did not wipe away windows 7 to load windows 8.  Having done things like that when I was younger I decided to do my test on a virtual Machine.  After some failed tries to load up windows on the virtual machine I finally had success.  My recommendation for anyone trying to follow in my footsteps here is to download the install file for windows 8 from Microsoft instead of the ISO.  For some reason the ISO did not seem to work properly.

WINDOWS 8

The first thing that appeared when I got windows 8 up and running and got through all the set-up questions was the start screen pictured above.  This start screen is a replacement to the start-up menu that windows has had since windows 95 and as far as I can see it is the major difference between windows 8 and windows 7.

My Google Calendar as it appears in windows 8

The start screen has some very nice features including live tiles for email, calendar, weather, music and games.  For the most part these tiles were compatible with my Google account and I was able to easily get my calendar and e-mail working in the live tiles.  I can easily see how these live tiles can add a new sense of convenience to Windows and also seem as if they would boost productivity.

Google Chrome in Windows 8

Although the live tiles are nice for the most part I did find the new start screen to be inconvenient.  First off I am not a major fan of Internet explorer, so I quickly went to download chrome.  Although Google Chrome is functional in Windows 8 it does not work directly in the new screen (at least not right now) this caused a major inconvenience as in order to use many other apps I had to keep opening and closing the start screen.  Despite this chrome worked fine and seemed to run quite smoothly.

Another minor annoyance to me was how you scroll through the start screen.  I will just face the fact right now that the start screen will probably work better on a tablet or phone than on a regular laptop without a touch screen.  Using a scroll bar on the bottom just seems like a blast from 1995 and I really just wanted to move my mouse to the corner and see the tiles move along with it.

Despite these minor annoyance I do have to say that even for a release preview running on a virtual PC on top of another operating system windows 8 seems to be very snappy, I ran it running 2GB of ram and it work great which is something I cannot always say about Windows 7. 

In looking at recommending upgrading to Windows 8 in the future, my answer is really up in the air to me Windows 8 seems as similar to windows 7 as Office 2010 is to Office 2007.  So in other words it just seems to have more annoying and inconvenient menus but there are basically no major differences between the two versions.

I would also say that it might be worth waiting 6 months to a year to get windows 8 as well.  In a long term perspective Windows 8 will probably have more apps that are usable from their start screen in the future, such as Google Chrome.  

To conclude I think that I would recommend windows 8 to anyone who is still using windows XP or Vista as it is a lot better. However, unless you are a student and can get the student discount on windows 8 I would recommend keeping windows 7 as there doesn't seem to be any major tactical advantage to upgrading as of now.