A brief review of Windows 8

Well, Windows 8 was released just a few months ago, which in turn made me wait before purchasing a new laptop; my old one was without a battery, plus it seemed to have developed a mind of its own , giving me a few electric shocks once in a while..

So anyway, fastforward to the present; my new system has completed a week's existence in my care and I feel the time is right to give a straightforward review of my experience with Microsoft's latest iteration of Windows.

Now, you may have noticed the new windows homescreen kind of makes you feel like touching it, so I went for a laptop with a touchscreen. (so that I don't regret my purchase n bug my mom n dad later )

So here goes:

I switch on the machine for the first time ever; my eyes widened in excitement, the familiar loading screen comes on, I finish the initial setup and then , I'm greeted with this beautiful tiled interface..wowww!

Absolutely stunning!Magnifico! This homescreen has icons for mail, calendar, music, et cetera et cetera.. and there's a tile which leads to the desktop interface; which looks just like any of the previous desktop interfaces except for the glaring omission of the start menu. Yup! It's gone..banished to some mysterious land where all old innovations that have met similar fates reside.

Now this is what I don't get... One of the earliest windows OS's 3.1 did NOT have a start menu; it made its first appearance in 1995 with the Windows logo and "Start" written next to it. This was innovative; it conveyed the message to the consumer."Wanna do something?Well, press 'start'!".The start menu went on in the same fashion all they way to Windows XP, and then suddenly ,come Win Vista and WHAM! The word "start" has mysteriously vanished! But one may argue that by now, consumers had got used to the start menu concept and that just the logo was enough to convey the message.

But here we are, in late 2012, in a desktop mode , without a start menu! After making the consumer get used to what one may say was one of the main pillars of the Operating system over a span of more than 15 years, you suddenly make it vanish!

Okayy, now some may argue that well, that's what the tiled homescreen's for , it's got the word "start" written on it isn't it?

Well, writing the word "start" on something doesn't really mean much...The most irritating aspect of the OS is that if I were to "start" something, I had to access this start screen by pressing the windows logo key or accessing the "charms" bar, (another niggling feature which I'll get to in a minute).On entering this start screen, I am totally disconnected from what I'm doing on the desktop.What ever I was doing on the desktop has been completely masked by this assortment of tiles and whatnot.

Fine, I'll get used to it... Now what's it with this "charms" bar? Was it designed by a leprechaun?Will I get to his pot of gold by clicking on it? No? Then what's so charming about it?

Firstly, I had no inkling that this "charms" bar actually existed until I inadvertently went to the top right corner of my screen with my cursor and moved it down; I was like , now what the hell is this? It has a search button, a homescreen button, a settings key and a "share" key. Now frankly, were I using a tablet, this so called "charms" bar would actually be of some utility, but what the hell do I need it for on a laptop?

Another thing that bothered me was that for some reason, Windows was giving me this impression that they developed Windows 8 as a desktop interface first , and then at the nth moment, decided to do away with the start menu and plaster on a large sheet with tiles on it instead.

Select on any app that isn't a native homescreen app and it first takes you to the desktop mode and opens the app there.Personally, I feel that a transition effect such as a blackened screen would've been more aesthetic plus it would've made the interface feel more fluid. Currently, the continuity feels broken if you ask me.

Now one of the worst design flaws ever is the fact that if you purchased a machine without a touchscreen, your touchpad would then replicate touchscreen gestures.While this may seem as the natural way to go, lets discuss the repercussions of going down that route; swiping from the edge of the touchscreen opens the charms bar, and just moving the cursor from the right end of the touchpad does the same! The touchpad fails to differentiate between a swipe and a random cursor movement! Many a time I managed to accidentally bring up the charms bar by moving the cursor to the left..Not so charming now eh?Thankfully here,the presence of a touchscreen prevented me from using a sledgehammer.

For non-touchscreen users,the chance for error may be reduced by just using a mouse, but hey,the point of having a touchpad was to eliminate the need/use of a mouse..So , FAIL.

I must admit that I did get used to all these minor niggles over the week, but that's a pretty steep learning curve for a guy having an IQ of 149!(Imagine a nice old lady sitting at home searching frantically for the start menu just to open skype to chat with her grandkids!)

A newer version of an OS should invariably be much easier to use than its predecessor, right from the word go. Win 8 fails at this critical point. 

Many folks complained about Apple maps being a piece of crap, but that's just bad software.You can live with bad software.But can you live with a bad OS?

Hopefully the next Win version will be better.

PS . A lil retro analysis

Win 3.1 = good

Win 95 = bad (blue screen when bill gates demoed it for the first time live)

Win 98 = good

win me (millenium edition) = bad

win xp = good

win vista = bad

win 7 = good

win 8 = WTF?!?!

Update: Well, it's been two whole weeks since my foray into the Win8 universe. And I'd like to add a few additional points.
Clickpad gesture support : Once you get used to what each finger position and swipe on the clickpad leads to , it's really quite helpful , be it switching between the Start page apps and desktop or accessing various other features such as two finger scrolling , pinch to zoom etc.
The "charms bar ": Well, you may not get a leprechaun with his pot of gold, but it does come with a sizeable bag of tricks,for example "flight mode" so that you may easily disable the wifi incase you don't really require it, and the search button which actually is way more efficient than your old start menu (obviously once you get used to it)
Infact, apart from google maps and the start page apps , I really haven't used the touchscreen much.
But that doesn't change my overall opinion of Win 8; atleast not yet.