Nov 04, 2012 11:15 PM
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Like the title suggests I only got about 120 seconds with the Sony Viao running Windows 8 OS. It was at a Staples Store, which was about to shutdown so did not get a whole lot of time, might have missed a few points.
The first thing I felt when I used the system was the interface is not that friendly with a mouse or touchpad, might be better with a touch screen, the Sony VIAO on display did not have a touch screen.
The mail app is not done well when you click on new mail you get a bar on the left to put the addresses and the subject and body of the mail is on the right, which you can never make out since there is no outline and the whole screen for mail is solid white, gives you the feeling you are going blind!
Also I was missing the x icon on the top right for closing windows, was looking all over the place but could not find it!! ALT+F4 still works for that so does CTRL+ALT+DEL but the control over applications running is much reduced through the task manager, in earlier versions after Windows XP, you could actually view all applications running on your system and the amount of resources each is using, there is no such option available in this OS, you can only see the applications which the user has opened, meaning you will never know about the applications running in the background.
Its harder to switch between applications in the metro view as there is no start bar unlike earlier versions of windows, where you can click on the minimised applications and see whats running there. One can argue that you can go to desktop view to view the start bar, however this option is absent on Windows RT it is only available on Windows Pro. Again if you remember the key board keys for switching between applications i.e. ALT+TAB you are ok, but this just plain irritating.
Also like closing windows there is no button on the screen to minimise the window! There is button for the metro view, which as the name suggests take you to the metro screen and if you hover over the right most side of the window while an application is open you also have an option to go to the metro screen, but if you just wanted to minimise the screen to get back to the application you were working on just before opening the new application there is no such option, you can toggle between apps using ALT+TAB of course, but thats not making things simple and someone new to windows would never know that.
The Internet explorer address bar in the window is on the bottom of the screen, did not get to play with it a lot, as there was no internet connection available. There is a new app store for windows which I have hear had 400 applications but could not check for certain as there was no internet connection.
I got a feeling overall that windows has got a brand new skin that just was not made for it. The whole interface begs for a lot of work, however it is a fresh new look and reaching stuff like internet, photos, camera, maps, mail, search is faster than in traditional windows. The look is peppy and the tiles which keep on updating on regular basis could serve well if customised properly, though I wonder how long an average computer user spends on his computer desktop.. The games tile is the most interesting of the lot with X Box integration, I think that will be a sort of an edge, but only time will tell. Overall I would suggest you wait this upgrade out, an year later we would have a much better version hopefully also a more polished version of windows 8. People who are used to windows will find it slightly difficult at first to adapt, might take an hour or two. Someone who is new to computers itself is probably going to pull their hair out..
