The Windows 8 operating system was the next brainchild of Microsoft. And the key message that Microsoft wants to tell us, is this: “It’s Windows reimagined and reinvented from a solid core of Windows 7 speed and reliability. It’s an all-new touch interface. It’s a new Windows for new devices.” I have a HP Slate 2, which is a slate device running Windows 7.
It has the following specifications:
| Operating system | Windows® 7 Professional 32 |
| Processor | Intel® Atom™ Z670 (1.50 GHz, 512 KB L2 cache, 667 MHz FSB) |
| Chipset | Intel® System Controller Hub (SCH) SM35 |
| Dimensions and weight | |
|---|---|
| Weight | Starting at 0.69 kg |
| Dimensions (W x D x H) | 5.9 x 9.21 x 0.61 in (15 x 23.4 x 1.5 cm) |
| Memory | |
|---|---|
| Memory, maximum | 2 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM (Memory is on the board and not customer accessible or upgradeable; memory operates at the maximum system supported speed of 800 MHz.) |
| Storage | |
|---|---|
| Internal drive | Solid State Drive 64 GB |
| Optical drive | Sold Separately |
| Graphics | |
|---|---|
| Display | 8.9″ diagonal WSVGA wide-viewing angle touchscreen (1024 x 600 or 1024 x 768 for some applications) |
| Graphics | Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 600 |
| Expansion features | |
|---|---|
| Ports | 1 USB 2.0 1 combo stereo headphone/mic jack 1 integrated microphone 1 power connector/HP Slate Cradle connector |
| Slots | 1 Secure Digital |
| Audio | HD Audio SRS Premium Sound; Integrated stereo speakers; Integrated microphone; Combo stereo headphone/microphone jack |
| Integrated camera | Integrated 3 MP camera (outward facing); Integrated VGA webcam (inward facing) |
| Keyboard | HP Wireless Entertainment Keyboard (select models) |
| Input devices | HP Slate Digital Pen (select models); HP 2.4 GHz Wireless Optical Mobile Mouse (select models) |
| Communications | |
|---|---|
| Wireless | Integrated 802.11a/b/g/n + Bluetooth 4.0 + HS combo HP un2430 EV-DO/HSPA Mobile Broadband |
So, with the new touch-friendly Windows 8, I was excited to find out whether Windows 8 would be the next OS which heralds a new era of mobile computing. I was keen to find the re-designed interface is something that consumers such as myself would be pleased to use it for daily routines such as browsing the Internet, checking emails, play some games, view photos, play music, take pictures etc. This review is based on the device on hand; that means that if you are using models from other brands, your performance and experience might vary. However, the key function and features of the Windows 8 OS would largely be the same.
Metro Main Screen
The interface is clean and simple. It’s very similar to the live tile concept that you see on the Windows phone. This was designed for touch screen, as the tiles are easy to point to, and facilitate launching of the programs. If you have signed into the account, you will see that the tiles are live, which means updated information appears in the tiles. For example, the latest mail notifications appears in the mail tile, photos in the photo tiles, and new schedule items in the calendar tile.
The new “Go to Start”
The replacement for the start button in Metro is a double action swipe from the right of the screen. Once you swipe, the menu will appear on the right of the screen, and all you need to do is to touch “Start”. Yes, the good old “Start” word is still there.
Running Windows Programs
The desktop is still somewhat like the Windows 7 desktop, but with a few difference. First, the start button has disappeared all together, and if you hover near the lower left corner, you may just see the Metro start screen as the start “button”. The rest seemed pretty much like Windows 7, including the Control Panel and such.
Another difference that you can see, is that there is an touch/on-screen keyboard shortcut on the bottom of the task-bar. On clicking, the black keyboard appears, which I quite like it, for the simplicity.
However, the numbers are arranged in a num pad fashion instead of on top of the qwerty row, which in practice seemed more practical but less intuitive for me, who is used to the row on top 🙂 :
Browsing Internet
For the browsing of Internet, the Internet Explorer in Windows 8 is the IE 10.0.08400.0. Pre-release. The address bar is found at the bottom of the screen, and context menu again, can be activated by swipe from the bottom up. The bar reappears at a loading of a page, and if you interact with the screen, the address bar automatically goes away.
Checking Emails
The mail client works pretty much like the rest of the platform, with the list of emails on the left pane, and the preview of the email on the right, with options to reply, reply all, forward, new email or delete email:
Games
There are some free games available from the Windows 8 Store, and I downloaded one called “Pirate Loves Daisy” game, which is a tower defense type of game. It ran ok, although the interactivity was not as sophisticated as I thought. Sound was also a little limited, making the game a little “quieter” and less exciting. Also tried was the fruit ninja game, popular on the other two major platform, Apple and Android.
I had the “misfortune” that the fruit ninja game had a installation problem:
However, the repair option did not work, and I still could not launch the game. So I tried uninstalling, which I realised is from the start screen, hold and pull down, and you see a small tick on it, and select the context menu “Uninstall”. Wow. A somewhat “Hidden” feature:
After uninstalling and reinstalling, it launched, but exited after a second or so, so I gave up on the ninja game.
Pirates Love Daisies looked good:
And it worked. So, not all apps are built equal. :p
View Photos
Photos can come from different sources; you can aggregate them from Facebook, Picture Library, Skydrive, Flickr, and the likes.
Going into each each “folders”, will yield the left and right rows of photos. You can pinch to view them in thumbnails for ease of access:
When viewing individual photos, you can use the pinch/zoom action to zoom out/in the photo.
Windows 8 App Store
The Windows 8 App Store is a smaller store than the existing Apple App Store and Android Play, but Microsoft is trying very hard to beef up the number of apps to make it a viable platform for people to download and use the OS platform. Looking at the top free list, we see the likes of fresh paint, Pirates love Daisies (5 stars game), Fruit Ninja, Twitter type of apps (MetroTwit, Tweetro etc). The store is organised into categories such as Social ,Games, Spotlight, Entertainment, Photo, Music and Video, Sports, Books and References, News and Weather, etc.
First impression of the app store, is that it is not a fast app store, requiring frequent loading and preparing before the apps appear on-screen. So that dampened the app selection experience. Waiting for more than 3 seconds or more is a no no for most consumer. And this was done on a fiber network connection with more than 25mbps of bandwidth both directions.
Taking a look at the top free 100 apps, we see quite a number of useful applications available. 🙂
Conclusion
Windows 8, in my opinion, is Microsoft’s brave, but poor attempt to dovetail their Desktop OS into a tablet environment. Have they succeeded? I have doubts.
First, the Metro GUI and interface (Score 3/5)
The Metro UI was different; it takes some time getting used to, and it seemed to feel more touches/clicks are required to get what I want to do done. Charms menu needs a swipe, a click and a selection to get where you want. Back buttons are sometime missing in some GUI, and I was unable to go back to the previous GUI screen. Task management is achieved by swiping from the left edge. Context menu is achieved by swiping from the bottom up, for the options. Am I used to it? In the time I was holding the tablet in my hand, I feel a little lost, trying to get to the different part of the application and guessing what is in the context menu (bottom swipe) and what is in the setting context (right swipe). In my opinion, the back button needs to be available in the app for any page, so user can back out to the main page. Yes, it is simple in look, but not simple in use. Options are not obvious to the user. There is the charm, and there is the context menu, and what else do I need to know to even use the UI effectively? Ok, perhaps I am too strong here; I have not used it for long enough to be familiar with the UI. So take this with a large pinch of salt. I wish you well, if you would like to familiarise yourself with the UI.
Second, the Windows 8 App Store (Score 1/5)
This is one small and slow app store, and it really need to relook at the way apps are presented to a consumer. I was not attracted to surf the store for apps. Traversing from one page to the other was painfully slow, with a white screen and the swirling dots for most part of my experience, and a lot of waiting (some even 5 seconds or more?). When I do managed to install the apps, sometimes the app does not launch, sometimes it did not install correctly. What am I doing wrong? I am just using the app as a layman, the man on the street. To search for an app, I had to try my luck by bringing up the charm bar by swiping from right, select Search, and then key my search term in there. This is way too much trouble; and this comment is coming from the mouth of a tech-savvy enough consumer. What would a normal less savvy consumer do? They will give up finding the search. Simple as that. Microsoft folks need to hear this.
Integration with others (Score 3/5)
I am not sure what is the intention of Microsoft’s current service connection design, but somehow I felt lost while trying to connect the Windows 8 to Facebook, Twitter or some other social applications. The association process/concept was a little filmsy and inconvenient. I had to first get a Windows account (live, hotmail etc), and then somehow link that account to another Facebook, Twitter or other app some where. The connection process feels disconnected. Sometimes, I don’t even know which account Windows 8 is asking of me – the Windows account, or the calendar or mail account I want to connect to, or the Facebook account I want to link to. Hopefully, this will become clearer in the future, and I hope in a single GUI, I can know which services I am connected to, and easily connect/disconnect/sync these services.
Conclusion
When you want to be everything to everyone, it is a tiring thing to do. When an OS tries to be everything to everyone, it really messes up itself. Think of it as a schizophrenia-type of behaviour. I believe when you try to achieve success in everything, you may potentially end up with mediocrity in all things. I really hope Microsoft’s Windows 8 strategy is not this, but it seemed to be going that way. I know a lot of hard work has gone into this. But frankly, I don’t connect with the new OS. I simply don’t. As a techie person, who has used Android phones and tablets, Windows mobile phones, Windows desktop OS, from the venerable MSDOS through Windows 3.1 through Windows 8, as well as iPhone and iPads, I am not sure this Windows 8 offering will work out for Microsoft in the short and medium. With the benchmark of usability held high by Apple’s IOS, and the increasing popular and open Android platform for the tablet/phone ocean, Windows 8’s chances of breaking into that market looked alarmingly slim. And if in the short term it does not take off, I doubt it would ever do.
