News and Views

With a $40 price I felt it was worth it to try Windows 8. Gisele’s computer was still running XP, and was working fine, but since the rest of the computers in the family already have Windows 7, it seemed like the logical candidate. So yesterday I downloaded a copy of Windows 8 and set to work.

INSTALLATION:
The installation didn’t go easily. At first I tried to install from within XP. It aborted every time, sometimes after a half-hour or so when it seemed like it should be nearly done, and sometimes it wouldn’t even start. There are lots and lots of complaints on the web about how poorly the installer works, and how it doesn’t give any explanation about what went wrong. Hopefully Microsoft will fix this before too many people try to upgrade.

So I put a new hard drive in her computer, burned an installation DVD and installed from scratch. That went flawlessly. It found the network printer, and installed working drivers for that and the video card, etc. Everything except Gisele’s Chinese writing tablet are working fine.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS:
Where’s the start button? Where’s the desktop? How do I do anything?

Microsoft wanted a single version of Windows that would run on a desktop, a tablet and a phone. The result is a weird mishmash of modes. After a while I figured out how to get to the old desktop mode, with icons and the bar along the bottom, but there is no start button on the bar. All the stuff that you normally access through that start button (programs, control panel, printers, documents, help, search, etc. are now spread out in different not very intuitive locations. I quickly found and installed a free third-party start button that behaves the same as the standard XP start button and now feel much more at home.

The touchscreen mode is pretty useless without a touch screen, though you can click on the huge icons the same as if you were touching them on a tablet. Microsoft loaded it with a bunch of their apps, which at first glance seem somewhat useful — Weather, Travel, News, Sports, etc. But when you open them up there are big ads that frequently change. I immediately removed all of those apps. I hate ads

Once you get the desktop configured and add a start button, it looks and feels a lot like Windows 7.

My first impression is that Microsoft made a mistake by trying to integrate a touchscreen UI with a desktop UI. If you’re on a computer, the touch screen interface is pretty useless, but necessary for a few functions (though I hope the Start Button I installed will remove that necessity). If you are on a tablet, then the desktop is probably too small to use without a mouse and keyboard. The only case I can think of where you might really want them integrated is on a convertible tablet like the Surface. And even then I think it should automatically switch UI based on whether you are using it as a tablet or if you have a keyboard connected.

I do have to say that it feels snappy and responsive. I booted from POST to login in about 30 seconds, which is better than her computer did with XP. But the snappiness is probably mostly because it is a clean install without several years accumulation of crapware.

Gisele will continue to be the guinea pig for this, but I’ll play with it too and I may publish an update if impressions change after using the UI for a while. Meanwhile I would say that if you have Windows 7, don’t bother to “upgrade”.