I took advantage of the $15 upgrade for Windows 8 back in October thinking it was cheap enough that if I had any regrets I could just go back to Windows 7 and write off the experience as the equivalent of a lunch in a new restaurant I’d not go back to.
Some four months later I’m willing to say the restaurant wasn’t too bad but the presentation of the menu and dessert could use a little work.
The good things about Windows 8:
- I was able to upgrade my existing Windows 7 installation on my SSD quickly and without issue. The whole thing was up and running in less than half an hour.
- It works fast and has been extremely stable.
- Task Manager is vastly improved and startup items are now easily accessible instead of being tucked away in msconfig.exe.
- Some of the Metro* apps are decent, like the PDF reader and weather. Live tiles can be handy especially if you spend a lot of time on the Start screen (or pin apps — see the ‘bad things’ section below for more).
- Windows Defender now does everything MS Security Essentials did, so there’s integrated anti-virus right from the start.
- The right-click in the bottom-left corner is handy for accessing items like Control Panel, Device Manager and an admin command prompt.
- The desktop is pretty much the same as the one we know and love in Win7 but with lots of small refinements in dialogs for common tasks like copying files.
- The flat UI is kind of nice in how it gets out of the way.
The bad things about Windows 8:
- Some things don’t seem to work right. I never get notified for Windows Updates, despite having set it up to alert me, so I have to look for them myself, even if they are critical security fixes.
- File History, which backs up user data, will appear in Action Center when the drive needs to be reconnected but Action Center never makes itself visible, even when it has multiple alerts.
- Discoverability is poor. You get shown a few gestures while the OS is installing but after that you are left to bumble around trying to figure out how to access features. A lot of it is not intuitive (try snapping two apps onto the same screen without reading how to do it first–assuming you even knew it was possible to begin with). Much of the potential of Windows 8 is hidden away and items can be difficult to find even if you know they exist.
- The Start screen is okay as a replacement for the Start menu but it’s limited in odd ways, probably as a compromise for working with tablets. Re-ordering tiles is possible but not very flexible and tiles only come in two sizes. The All Apps view is a cluttered mess with no easy way to modify it.
- Customization in general is poor. A lot of the UI design is ‘like it or lump it’.
- I miss the dedicated links to Documents, Pictures, etc. that appeared in the Start menu. In terms of actual clicks it’s still the same but having to go to a different screen feels more cumbersome. You can bring these dedicated folders up by starting File Explorer but it still feels inelegant. I’d at least like to pin shortcuts to these folders on the taskbar but it can only be done on the Start screen. Boo.
- You get one choice for window titles: black. If you don’t like it, too bad. If you selected a dark border color for your windows, it’s even worse, as those window titles will now be illegible. I’m not sure why this can’t be customized.
- Most of the included apps (mail, photos, etc.) are half-baked and feature-poor.
- The store (equivalent to Google Play or Apple’s App Store) has a fairly small selection and is missing some fairly big name apps. On a desktop machine this isn’t as big a deal because if you want Facebook, you can just hit the website. On a tablet this is more of an issue.
I spend nearly all of my time in the desktop away from the Metro* interface (apart from starting programs and occasionally checking the weather or something) and here the experience is so similar to Windows 7 but with (mostly) improvements I don’t regret making the switch to Windows 8. On the other hand if I was forced back to using Windows 7 it wouldn’t feel like a significant downgrade, either, nothing like going back to, say, Windows XP or even Vista.
Microsoft needs to provide a better experience on the Metro* side of things for (desktop) PC users, though. I doubt we’ll see much of that coming for Windows 8 but I am curious to see how Windows 9 will evolve. I suspect it will either better integrate the disparate Metro and desktop elements or further move away from the desktop in favor of a more touch-based experience.
In all I rate Windows 8 a score of 7 out of 10 tiny Bill Gates.
* it’s not officially called Metro anymore but much like Kleenex, that battle has been lost.
