Windows 8 Consumer Preview

[Del Lardo]

Installed it last night and had a quick play and I must say that I'm quite impressed, runs well on an Atom 330 with only 1.5GB RAM (2GB shared with video) and 5400rpm HDD.

I've had a Windows phone for a few weeks so the Metro UI looks familiar but it works so much better on a larger screen (20" 1680x1050) as you have much better access to your icons. Miss DLs initial reaction was one of wtf how do I find my programs until I pointed out that it's a prettier (looks better and live tiles (icons)) version of exactly how she has her Windows 7 PC setup with links to all the software she actually uses on the Desktop. Talking of the Desktop you still have very easy access to it via a single click and it includes a fancy new Progress bar when copying files. I can see the UI working really well on a 10" tablet but a keyboard and mouse works fine though somethings like the drag to unlock when you first boot feels very strange.

There is a preview of IE10 and it integrates really nicely, tabs are handled well and rendering speed is very good.

There is an App store (to be expected) and it does exactly what it says on the tin, currently the limited number of Apps/Games are free and demonstrate the final intergration well. My favorite app so far is the Photo one (comes preinstalled) as the integration with Facebook and Flickr is excellent and it is something that both my Windows 7 and OSX machines really lack.

I suspect that a lot of people will slate the new UI when they first try it as people don't like change but given the core functionality for most people is a bit of e-mail, internet, music and photos I think that if after a couple of weeks that if you gave people the choice of going back they'd look at you a bit funny. In fact I'm typing this on a Windows 7 PC and I'm already missing the ability to set an app to be a permanent sidebar (would be great for Skype).


A good preview/review can be read here and you can download it from here if you fancy a play.