I downloaded the consumer preview of Windows 8 from Microsoft’s website a couple of days ago; over 3GB of download that took quite a few hours with my super slow connection, but at last I had my ISO.
I decided to install it using Virtual Box on my MacBook, in order to avoid to use a real hardware; it looks like VBox has already support for the new operating system, so the creation of the new virtual machine was done in a blink of the eye.
The installation was not harder, just longer: pretty similar to the Windows 7 one, it asks where to install and a few questions about language etc. In around 30 minutes the system was ready to go.
At the User creation step, the system asked to create an account online, and at the end the new Mango interface came on my screen. The first impression is weird: the new OS is anything but the Windows we’re used to; the start screen is colorful, alive, as the one in the Windows phones.
No more icons, but tiles; each tile can be small or big and might contain some live data. The screen has some shortcuts that might be hard to find in the beginning, looks easy to use after you get used: right click (or two-fingers click on the Mac) opens a menu, that changes based on the app; moving the mouse to the bottom left edge shows a link to the start menu; on top left we have a link to the last used app; both right side edges open the settings sidebar. Also, when moving the mouse to one of the lower/upper left edges and sliding it up/down opens the list of all open apps.
The apps are definitely thought for touch screen devices, but can be easily used with the mouse; there is no more concept of filesystem, at least for the User (in fact there are the same directories we’re used to), but each app shows its own files. One example is the Photos app: it might show your local pictures (user wouldn’t know, but are the pictures under c:\Users\username\Pictures), as well as the ones you have online, included SkyDrive, Flickr and Facebook. I tried to connect the account to Facebook and it just worked, even though a bit later there was a weird error message and pics did not update anymore.
Also the Mail app is easy to setup: with Gmail nothing special to configure, just username/password. Once the mail is configured, the tile in the start page shows the new incoming messages: nice and useful.
The browser installed is Internet Explorer 10: again, it looks like a tablet app, showing the website fullscreen and allowing to change tab only with a right click (remember the app menu?). I’ve also seen a few issues on some websites, but with IE I’m not surprised.
There is also a Camera app – hope I won’t see people going around taking pictures with a 15″ laptop – which did not work: I expected to see it opening my webcam, but it didn’t. Pity.
Everything else is easy to use, as in mobile devices: all the new apps have their own tile, there is a market, settings are easier to.understand – though not as many as the current Windows. For the nostalgic, the standard desktop is also available. Well, yes, clicking on the Desktop tile shows a very standard desktop, which misses only the Start button.
This desktop is also used for standard applications: I tried to install Funambol OneMediaHub and the standard installation window, on the desktop, appeared. The installation creates a tile on th start screen, but when you run the app you are redirected again to the desktop menu. All the apps need to be changed accordingly, in order to match the new OS layout, but it’s still possible to run current applications.
One aspect that is always present in the new apps is the Share function: you can easily share anything and the new installed applications can add their own to that menu, as it happens for example with Android phones.
The OS looks really innovative, compared to what we’ve seen in the past years on the desktops (Linux and Mac included) and the idea of having the same user interface on phones, tablets and computers sounds nice; however, right now on a desktop is not the easiest UI to use. Also, not-technical people would probably find very hard to understand the new interface, after years of Start-Applications. By the time the final version will be out, however, everything is possible: the new Nokia phones with Windows are super nice, so people might get used to Mango. Another had point is for people like me: I’m not sure how handful is a single-fullscreen-app system is when you’re developing software.
By the way, this Windows is promising: Microsoft is really taking out something different, while everyone else is more or less copying the iOS interface. We just need to wait a few months to see what else they will be able to give us.
