As good as Windows 7 is, it mostly just tried to repair some of the damage done by Windows Vista, Windows 8 by comparison is very ambitious. Nearly every corner of the OS has been touched, and it shows from the boot.
Windows 8 is highly inspired by its cousin running on phones, Windows Phone 7, and uses the same UI style called Metro. Metro is a big and central part of Windows 8, it's hard to escape and likely it won't be something you can turn off even in the final release. It's not just about the UI but also the work that has gone into creating a new way for developers to create Windows applications using even web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript.
We immediately downloaded and tested Windows 8 on a desktop computer so our experience is mostly based on the how it works on a non-touch environment. However some of the major new additions to Windows 8 actually have to do with Tablets. Windows 8 is essentially meant to be an OS that can run on tablets, netbooks and desktops, with Windows Phone catering to smartphones.
Let us first dispense with the rumours that Windows 8 will only have the toned down Metro UI, and the familiar Windows desktop is gone. This is not true, the familiar old Windows 7 UI and desktop is still there (mostly). So the question is not of what is lost by in Windows 8, but whether what is added (Metro) is worthwhile, or just gets in the way, that question however will be for you to answer once you have used it a bit. For that purpose we will divide our attentions between the new Windows Metro UI and the "classic" UI.
Metro
Metro is a complete departure from the classic Windows UI, and is optimized heavily for touch screens. Touch screens need big targets, and that isn't just true of the OS, but of each application as well. Windows 7 came with support for multitouch screens, but no one made much of it because neither the Windows UI, nor the UI of most Windows apps was very conducive to a good multitouch experience. Windows 8 rectifies this is with a fresh new tile-based Metro UI.
Windows 8 Metro start screen
When you first boot Windows 8 you are greeted with this UI which shows your installed applications as a collection of tiles. What's great about these tiles is that they are not only a way to launch applications, but also small windows into the application. A tile for your email app could show you your unread email count, your social networking app could show the latest posts, and your image management app could show a slideshow of images etc.
We say "could" because right now apps don't support this functionality - remember this is the preview that is supposed to get developers started developing apps for Windows 8 - but the sample apps included showcase it quite well; the news app shows news from configured feeds, the Twitter apps shows tweets and the stocks app shows stocks. Apps launch in full screen but can be made to share space as well. Applications whether they are Metro apps or traditional apps or web apps can be pinned into the Metro start screen.
Traditional apps pinned on to the Metro start screen
In this Metro start screen, if you start typing, you will immediately see a filtered list of installed applications, but you can search in settings and files as well. And here comes the awesome part, you can search from here within applications as well! Applications expose their data to Windows which can then search within that data as well. A hypothetical example would be, if Amazon's Kindle eBook reading app supported this feature you'd be able to search for eBooks directly from Windows.
Searching for applications, results from settings, files and installed applications can also be browsed from here
Windows 8 comes with a version of Internet Explorer 10 with a Metro interface that doesn't allow plugins such as Flash and Silverlight. This UI is highly optimized for tablet devices, but is functional on desktops / laptops as well.
The Metro version of Internet Explorer 10. Currently the desktop version looks the same as IE9
The login / lock screen has received some Metro love and now finally displays the current time and can even be extended to show data from some applications - another useful feature for Tablets.
The Windows 8 lock screen.
A completely new Metro-styled control panel is also available that offers a simpler way to configure most common settings.
The new Metro-styled control panel
Even the boot process has finally been revamped to use a Metro-style UI. You can select which OS to boot using your mouse / touchscreen. This makes sense for tablets where there would be no keyboard to make an OS selection.
All of this is available in addition to the more traditional Windows UI, which we talk about next. However you needn't use the traditional UI if Metro is all you want. What is great is that these two can coexist and even cooperate by sharing screen space between metro and traditional apps.
A Metro application is docked to the right of the screen while you work on a normal Windows application.
Hovering near the edge of the screen shows a preview of other running applications; this preview can be dragged onto the screen to make it share space with the current app, or take over the screen.
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