So my last post on Windows 8 didn't really come across as the positive experience I made it out to be with the introduction. I'll admit, I got side-tracked - and I like to think it's pretty easy to understand how and why. Where with my reviews I take my time and stick to a format, the rest of my posts are largely written off-the-cuff and it certainly shows.
But this time I promise there's good news for people who may be stuck with Microsoft's latest offering.
On the surface (no pun intended), Windows 8 is just different to its predecessors. The Start Screen (or "Modern UI" as Microsoft calls it, and "Metro" as most people know it) looks like something more at home on a mobile phone or tablet. And, in many ways, it is. But my experiences so far have actually lead me to prefer it to the start menu and certainly add a lot more shortcuts to it than I ever did my desktop. Yet, when it comes down to it, I almost never use it - and that's when Windows 8 starts to become a good OS.
This is the "but" I was talking about with my last post on the subject. If you take the "Modern" out of Windows 8, you're essentially left with a leaner, cleaner Windows 7. All your old shortcut keys still work, everything I've tried to run on it has worked, and very little has really changed in my day-to-day experience at all beyond clicking once to access the desktop (something 3rd party programs can do for you, and I'm told is possible with the upcoming 8.1 update). So I just have my desktop and my taskbar, and everything simply works.
In fact, using it like this has basically been the same experience as using Windows 7. If I want to run a program, but don't want to navigate to it with the explorer (something I do frequently), than I simply press the Windows key. Unlike Windows 7 this actually presents me with a bunch of shortcuts that my old desktop never had on it and my old taskbar had hidden away in neatly-filed submenus. The icons are a little Fisher Price, but they're still perfectly functional - even with a mouse.
But what if I want to run something that isn't "pinned" to the Start Screen? I do the same thing as I used to do in Windows 7: I press the Windows key and start typing the name. Where Windows 7 would try to do a basic search as you typed, sometimes yielding files instead of programs, Windows 8 defaults to searching your applications instead - with options for control panels and files.
In fact, the only real variation comes from trying to "navigate" the Start Screen as one would have previously done with the Start Menu. But even that isn't really an overly complicated task. Microsoft has added a couple of new shortcuts to the mix: Windows+Q opens you straight to the application list, Windows+E opens you to the Settings (or Control Panel if you prefer), while Windows+F opens the file list. Slightly inconvenient is that it opens all of these to the Search facility instead of just a list, and only the application section even has a list, but the facility is still there and works.
Microsoft has actually added a whole host of new shortcuts to Windows 8 to try and simplify things. I highly encourage people to take a look at this Microsoft-provided list of all the new ones. Personally, I find I get the most use out of W (Settings search), T (activates the Task Bar), and C (opens the Charms menu); the rest seem somewhat superfluous to me.
Another handy shortcut that's been added is the bottom-left corner. If you hold a mouse there it will simply show up the switch indicator that will either take you from Desktop to Modern or vice versa, but right-clicking it yields a useful shortcut menu. It's not something you can't live without, sure, but it's convenient - I've used it quite a few times since I learned about it.
I'm also very much a fan of the new Task Manager. It still lets you see all the nitty-gritty if you really want, but they've added some very nice touches to it such as the ability to separate running applications from background tasks, selecting services from their executable, checking what's being launched on startup and a somewhat usable estimate of how long each of these programs takes to run.
There's also a new status window for file operations which gives a much better view of how your transfers are going - including the ability to pause transfers. However, for as far as it's come it does feel like there are some backwards steps and some steps not taken in this regard: attempting to perform multiple transfers to or from the same drive still happens synchronously instead of sequentially (a much faster alternative), and the "overwrite" menu - while useful in some regards - is needlessly overcomplicated, and it really isn't that complicated!
Now, I'm not gonna sit here and try to tell you it's all sunshine and rainbows in Windows 8 land. But the only complaints I really have, aside from my initial issues, are extremely minor: some of the default applications are painful to uninstall, you can't "stack" groups on the Start Screen in so much as only one group can be in a given "column" at any time, and the aforementioned file transfer quirks. As far as an OS goes, it's not perfect but it certainly gets the job done well enough that the only people who can really complain about it are those who've never used it.
Of course, it remains to be seen what changes on October 17 with the release of the 8.1 update. I hear good things, but I also hear bad things, so it will depend on how much of the bad is optional as to whether I consider it a success or not.
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