A few months ago now, Microsoft released Windows 8 onto the world at the BUILD conference. While i wasn’t one of the purported 500,000 who downloaded it in the first 12 hours, i have since downloaded and used it extensively as my primary Windows machine since early October.
Daring right? i know. The difference however between this iteration of Windows and just about all previous ones (going back to Windows 95 SE) is that this beta version really works! Once you get past the metro interface, which although nice looking is totally aimed at tablets, the underlying OS kernel seems to run a lot faster than Windows 7. Clever marketing-induced perception shifting or is Microsoft finally actually rewriting their OS for modern times?
I installed Windows 8 on a Gigabyte S1080 tablet, running an Atom processor and 2Gb of RAM. On first boot, the OS seemed to have started significantly faster than on its first boot into Windows 7. Just about all apps worked on first install. Having antivirus integrated is a nice feature, albeit one you could replicate in Windows 7 by installing Security Essentials. Getting to the control panel through Windows Explorer is handy, although takes a little getting used to. The immersive internet experience is perfectly suited for hand input just by virtue of having the address bar located at the bottom of the full screen window. HTML5 compatibility looks ok. Video rendering (by video i mean Youtube) is jittery but i’m not sure if its a driver issue or the hardware just isn’t up to it.
I have since reverted the machine back to windows 7 but my time using Windows 8 was filled not with disappointment, but with hope! Hope that the Metro interface is more than window dressing (pardon the pun). Hope that the apparent performance gains carry forward to the GM and aren’t sacrificed to cut corners to make a delivery date. Hope that Windows 8 is not just a knee-jerk reaction to the IT industry falling in love with Tablets (again/for real this time).
