Chris Evans

I was one of the (likely) minority who jumped to upgrade to Windows 8 within a couple of days of its release. This is the first time that I’ve upgraded OS manually as opposed to waiting for whatever edition comes with my next new PC, but I had my reasons. In this post I’ll be discussing my opinions of some of the new features, highlighting both the good and bad that I’ve come across so far.

So what were my reasons for upgrading? Firstly, the brave evolution of features in this latest Windows iteration piqued my interest, and secondly my old box was running Vista, which in most people’s estimation is probably reason enough itself (and then some). Additionally, I hadn’t had a proper cleanup since getting the PC circa 4 years ago, so it was high time for it.

Installation

I purchased the Windows 8 upgrade for £24.99 (an offer that’s only valid until 31-01-2013) – this means that it has to be installed on top of a valid XP, Vista or 7 licence. I wanted to re-partition my drive as well, the process of which erases my Vista licence, so I had to reinstall Vista (oof) and then run the Windows 8 upgrade. A bit of a pain, but I guess you can’t expect too much if you’re intentionally wiping out your hard drive… right? Both installations took around twenty minutes each which was far less than I thought they would, though the last time I remember manually installing an OS was Windows 98 (!). Handily, Vista remembered my OEM licence so I didn’t even need to write it down and enter it again (I had written it down anyway). As soon as Windows 8 started, I could activate it and all was good. Although installation isn’t part of the day-to-day, I felt it worth pointing out that it was a pretty painless process for me, which was a good start.

Load Times

Coming from a boot-to-desktop time of about one minute thirty seconds in Vista, the boot times are greatly improved for my mid-level machine. It’s now less than thirty seconds boot-to-start screen. If I had hardware adequate enough to support an SSD, this would be magnitudes quicker again (I hear reports of around 8 seconds). Most of the software loads much more quickly as well. Starting Adobe Photoshop used to take a minute or more (plus non-responsiveness during that time); now it’s about fifteen seconds.

Start Screen

Ah the big one. The controversial new Start Screen. Personally, I was a little worried about switching to this new style, though confident I would get used to it in time. In fact this took much less time than I imagined, as within about three days I wasn’t even instinctively heading for the Start button at all (although the bottom left corner still does offer a Start Screen pop-up), having transitioned almost exclusively to using the Windows key. It’s a rather slick display, at least once you get rid of a few of the less useful Live Tiles. I used the old start menu for two functions primarily – storing shortcuts to less-used programs, and searching. The Start Screen is used for exactly the same purpose, except it’s more of a dashboard now. You perform the exact same actions and keystrokes to access the functionality too – click on the bottom left corner or press the Windows button to bring it up, and start typing to bring up a search box.

For illustration purposes, this is what my Start Screen looks like.

It’s neat and pretty customisable, though for some unfathomable reason you can’t change the background without a hack, only select patterns (yet you can change the background of your desktop as usual as well as that of the lock screen).

I do have some issues with it however. I find it to be rather a pain that Metro apps can’t be shown side-by-side on the desktop, for example having a PDF up in Reader whilst having a couple of other standard desktop apps open and viewable at the same time. Even with my 27″ widescreen 1920×1080 display, only a small slice of the screen can be split between Desktop and Reader, meaning one way or the other it’s just too small to use (I’ve a feeling this description isn’t quite adequate, so see the image below). Bear in mind that I’m running a single monitor setup due to lack of space – I imagine switching to dual setup allows the Start Screen on one and the Desktop on another, which would be perfect.

Also, whilst I don’t really use many of the Metro tiles, I do find it abhorrent that they decided to put ads in the Weather app, no matter how out of the way they may be.

Another big issue that has worried a lot of the community is the new App Store. Personally, it’s seen so little use from me that I feel it’s going to be largely irrelevant to any of the desktop crowd, only having significance on tablets. I downloaded the Skype app, but I’ll probably switch to the desktop version in time.

The other minor niggle I’ve had is how damn long it took me to find the Shutdown button. Turns out its under ‘Settings’ in the right-hand charm bar – hardly a setting.

File History

I have a couple of other tasks on my todo list that I haven’t gotten round to yet, the big one being configure a backup solution. I found the Windows 7 backup to be quite neat (I have Windows 7 on my work laptop), and Windows 8 has this feature, but it also includes a new solution – File History. I’m not sure which will be better for me, but I’ll probably set up File History as this is what Microsoft seems to implicitly recommend by developing it for Windows 8. As an upshot of preparing for this, I’ve changed the layout of how and where I store some of my files. File History only allows you to backup files stored in your libraries, so I’ve been creating new libraries to accommodate for this. I didn’t really get to grips with the Libraries feature in Windows 7, but by approaching Windows 8 with an open mind it’s given me opportunity to take advantage of this older functionality that I’d never given much thought to before. Even if it doesn’t work out, my methods for indexing files has become a lot neater, so I’m thankful for that.

Summary

I’ve been impressed with Windows 8 so far, namely in the speed, efficiency and aesthetics. It won me over pretty quickly, and the downsides have been far outweighed by the benefits of coming off of Vista. Bear in mind that I haven’t gone into too much detail in this article, for example I haven’t even touched on the new Task Manager, and there are lots of features too small to be worth covering, such as improved system sounds. If you’re pondering upgrading from Windows 7 before 31st of January to take advantage of the offer, hopefully you’ve gotten a couple more ideas from reading this. If you’re coming from Windows XP or Vista, I wouldn’t even hesitate about the decision.

Thanks for reading!