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Windows 8: Impressions

Windows 8 Review

I have been using Windows 8 on a daily basis since its launch on October 26th, so here are a few impressions about usability, performance and some other geeky stuff.

My test setup is a 21.5” iMac (2010) with 16GB of RAM. Yes, I know… but I have no other PC to do this, so this will have to do. I won’t cover the touchscreen stuff for obvious reasons, so from now on, assume everything I say is done with a keyboard and mouse.

Installation

To my surprise, installation was very simple. I had Windows 7 installed, so I went for the upgrade on Microsoft’s website. As I clicked the purchase button, it automatically downloaded the compatibility wizard and checked for potential problems. The recommendation it had was to unauthorize my computer in iTunes (mandatory if you are reinstalling the OS). All the other software were compatible with Windows 8.

After that, it proceeded to the actual purchase. I did it via PayPal then it started downloading and updating. Plain and simple.

Then the typical Windows behavior started. Reboot, reboot, reboot, reboot… and after a gazillion reboots later, it was ready to use. Despite the reboot fest, installation was painless and simple.

The first thing you will notice is that the boot process is now very fast. Then, the new things start to show up, starting with the new Windows 8 logon screen.

Logon and user accounts

We are all used to having an username and password in our computers. Windows 8 decided that it is better for the users to use a Microsoft Account (formerly known as Windows Live ID). This account is used for synchronizing your stuff (browsing history, preferences, etc) to the cloud and to all your PCs running Windows 8, like MobileMe used to do on Macs. It also provides access to all Microsoft services, like Skydrive, the Windows Store and Xbox Music. You may also create a local account, like old times, but given the cloud-centric nature of Windows 8, I am with Microsoft on this one — go for your Microsoft Account. If you think typing your account password will be a hassle, you may create a 4 digit PIN or a picture password later on.

After the first login, Windows shows a tutorial video teaching how to use the new UI. Hm… where have I seen this before? 😛

The new ‘Metro’ UI

Technically, the new tile-based user interface is not called Metro anymore, but due to the lack of an interesting and meaningful new name, I will call it Metro anyway.

The first thing you will notice is that it looks great and feels fast and fluid. Anyone familiar with Windows Phone will feel at home with the tiles on the Start screen. After the initial spell fades, you will also notice that there is no desktop, no taskbar and no Start button.

Navigating through this new interface is probably the thing that will make old users most angry. That is why Microsoft included the tutorial video after the first login, but hey… those are like software terms of use — no one reads them. There are a few basics everyone should know:

  • Moving the cursor to the top right corner activate the Charms, a set of icons that cover the basic features of Windows 8. These are content-aware, meaning the Settings charm, for instance, will show the settings for the current app. The PC-related settings are always shown on the bottom of the Charms bar.
  • Moving the cursor to the top left corner shows the active apps. Just click on the thumbnail to change to that particular app. Of course, the old alt+tab and Windows+tab keyboard shortcuts still work.
  • Clicking on the lower left corner of the screen brings the Start screen back.
  • Right click anywhere on the screen brings the context menu.
  • Moving the cursor to the top of the screen, clicking and dragging the cursor down to the bottom of the screen closes the app. This sucks.

Although it seems easy, old habits die hard. It took me a few hours to get used to this, pretty much like the experience I had when Apple introduced natural scrolling to the Mac on OS X Lion. So, go all Yoda-mode on this and ‘unlearn what you have learned’.

The Start screen can be completely customized. You can pin to the Start screen pretty much anything you want. For instance, I have a group of tiles with my closest friends, so I can see their Facebook and Twitter updates, messages and e-mail notifications in one place. By the way, this people-centric approach borrowed from Windows Phone is one of the best features of Windows 8.

The lock screen changed a lot as well and it shows a very good notifications system. Most Windows users will appreciate this, as notifications always sucked on Windows.

Cloud and web services integration

Windows 8 will easily integrate with all your accounts: Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, just to name a few. Contacts from all your networks will be intelligently merged in the Contacts app, e-mail accounts will be handled quite nicely in the Mail app and calendar events will appear on the Calendar app.

Sharing to social media support is still somewhat limited, when compared to Mac OS X. But I believe this will be addressed as native apps for the various social networks show up in the Store.

Skydrive works perfectly in the new Metro UI and provides an easy way of accessing your files across all your PCs.

Overall, Windows 8 brings Windows to the present, making it integrated with most internet services and the cloud. Needless to say, Windows 8 relies on a permanent connection much more than any previous version of Windows.

The Apps

The new Metro-style apps for Windows 8 are available from the Windows Store. As of today, there are only a few of them, but I suspect the numbers will grow very quickly. The new apps are gorgeous looking and feel much better than in the old window-based UI.

Internet Explorer has been redesigned for this new UI and it feels great. It also features a very limited support of Flash. Only pre-approved sites on a Compatibility List are allowed to run Flash (most popular sites are on that list, though). Since most sites I access don’t use Flash anymore, I don’t really care. But if you are a heavy Flash user, this can be annoying.

Another issue is that most of the Microsoft apps are too basic in functionality, like Mail. Hopefully this will be addressed shortly.

Your old Windows app will run on Windows 8 (assuming they are compatible, and most are), but there is a catch. They will open on the… desktop!

The Desktop

And now the problems begin. When you access the old desktop, it looks and feels just like the old Windows 7 desktop, except that there is no Start button. So, you may ask, how do I go back to the new UI? Well, the new interface ‘gestures’ work on the old desktop interface, so that is the way to do it. Mixing the old and new UI paradigms is a very bad idea and will only lead to confusion. This was a bad move by Microsoft. I can think of at least two ways of guaranteeing backward compatibility for apps, and neither require to keep the old desktop. They should have killed it.

The desktop windows also show some differences compared to Windows 7. The first thing are the ribbons on File Explorer (the new Windows Explorer), which any Office user will find familiar. Then there is File History, which any Mac user will recognize as a Time Machine-like utility. Another interesting thing is the support for restoring the computer to the original state while keeping the users’ files and settings (goodbye to formatting and reinstalling, maybe?). And last, Windows 8 now natively supports multiple monitors.

Performance-wise, the old apps run as fast as before. I didn’t do any formal benchmarks, but my games (which is pretty much everything I do on Windows) are running well. I didn’t notice any slowdowns.

Overall, the desktop experience is way better than in Windows 7. But was it really necessary to keep this? I don’t think so.

The internals

If you are not a geek, you may stop reading here and jump straight to the conclusions. I will talk a bit now about what is under the hood in Windows 8. Let’s start with the most controversial feature: app sandboxing.

Just like in Mac OS X, all apps that run on the new UI are sandboxed. This means that they can only read/write data to their own storage area. If an app needs access to anything else external to that (let’s say, your contacts), it must explicitly ask for permission. All apps submitted to the Windows Store must explicitly state all the types of capabilities they use (by default, they have access to none). Working around the SDK and using unsupported APIs is a direct violation of the Store’s terms. Hm… where did I see this before?

Sandboxing exists to enhance security, but it is not a way of completely stopping malware and it creates a headache for developers. But as in the Apple ecosystem, sandboxing is here to stay, so the developers will have to get used to this.

Another security enhancement is the introduction of forced Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR). If ForceASLR is enabled for a given process, the OS will try to load all shared libraries at random memory location. In previous versions of Windows (Vista and 7), ASLR is optional, that is, it can only be applied to libraries that claim to be compatible with it. In Windows 8, ForceASLR will enable ASLR even if the library claims it isn’t compatible.

One troublemaker is gone in Windows 8: processes can now be barred from accessing win32k.sys

And there are another couple enhancements under the hood: Windows 8 now uses less memory thanks to memory deduplication and it also consumes less energy thanks to a more efficient approach to app backgrounding in the new Metro apps (which is similar to the way iOS implements app switching) and a new feature called Connected Standby, which allows the OS to keep itself in a very low power state, while maintaining its network connectivity (operation seems similar to Mac OS X Power Nap feature).

Conclusions

Windows 8 is a nice operating system and a very welcome update to Windows 7. The new UI is excellent, sleek and beautiful. Its cloud integration is probably the best among all operating systems out there. There is much to like about this OS.

However, it carries the old desktop legacy, mixing two completely different UI experiences, which will certainly lead users to confusion. Also, the new Metro interface has too few apps in the Store, which spoils the experience. Plus, the new UI is a bit awkward to use with a keyboard and mouse. It was clearly designed for touch.

But in the end, it is still Windows. It is can be customized pretty much however you like, it still runs most of your old apps and it is permissive enough to let you do whatever you want, even though it might be completely idiotic. Oh, and it still loves reboots.

Despite still being Windows, I sort of like it and I recommend anyone running Windows 7 to upgrade (just be careful to verify if all your apps are compatible with Windows 8). I would certainly be much more excited about it if it had killed the desktop legacy, but it seems this is a risk Microsoft is not willing to take at this time.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

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