I’ve been playing with Windows 8 on an HP 6730b, and have collected some thoughts below:
- While the Installer (at this point) looks like Windows 7, the Setup screens are all Metro. This means lots of solid green and thin text.
- Setup is simple. It quickly joined my wireless network, which is unlike previous Windows versions.
- You can create a Local account, or sign in with a Windows Live ID. Doing the latter allows Windows to sync preferences and other information across computers via the cloud. You can “upgrade” to using a Live ID at any time.
- The new Start menu (interface?) is cool, but sort of overwhelming. I like the “Live Tiles” idea on Windows Phone 7, but the laptop shows so many of them it’s almost too much information.
- This interface is also cluttered. AND WHY IS THERE SO MUCH GREEN?
- Clicking “Desktop” from Start will launch … well … the Windows we’ve all come to know over the last few years. While it is probably critical that Microsoft doesn’t go all-Metro at once, it feels very jarring to move and back and forth between the interfaces. It seems that Windows 8 has dual personalities. One is wearing a tie, while the other is going batshit crazy from its first shot of heroin.
- This leads to some duplication of services. For example, there’s a Metro-based Control Panel, and one in the Desktop environment.
- Overall, it feels very fast. I’ve only had one crash in my few hours of testing.
- I wonder how much Metro will be used by desktop and notebook users. My guess is that many will view it as most OS X users view Dashboard: helpful every once in a while, but mostly useless.
- I really want to see this on a tablet.
- It took several minutes of looking around to figure out how to shut down the computer.