Windows 8

Windows 7 is barely two years old, but already Microsoft is working on its successor. Code-named Windows 8, it's been leaking from Microsoft's Redmond labs in various iterations since September 2010. Now, though, there's a legitimate 'pre-beta' release ready for download, giving everyone the change to see and use what's likely to become the world's most widely installed operating system.

Metro interface

The first thing you'll notice is the new Metro start screen. You'll love it or hate it but, either way, you'll have to accept it, as you'll find yourself staring at its blocky, intelligent stacks every time you switch applications throughout your working day.

Every block on the start screen is a quick-launch app, including the block for the old-style desktop, through which you'll run traditional applications. They can't be dropped into folders, but they can be regrouped simply by dragging them about the interface, which extends to the left and right beyond the edges of your screen.

The Metro start screen replaces the traditional start menu with app blocks that you can move around (click image to enlarge).

Metro apps are largely Web front ends built using a series of new runtime APIs. They all run full-screen and can be coded using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript, so they run on both of the processors for which Windows 8 is being developed: traditional x86 and tablet-focused ARM chips. Traditional applications that run in the old-style Windows interface must be coded for each architecture separately.

Because they plug into a common set of underlying APIs, Metro apps can swap data without any further configuration, in much the same way that your Bluetooth keyboard can talk to both your PC and your smart phone thanks to a set of standard protocols. This does away with the need to copy things to the clipboard or save them to an intermediary file as you would with Windows 7.

For example, find a Web page you like and you can post a link directly to Facebook through Socialite or to Twitter through Tweet@rama, each of which you'll find among the Metro tiles. You do this by moving your mouse to the lower left corner of the screen and picking 'share' from the pop-up. For those apps that can't share their content, Windows instead offers the option of taking and sharing a screenshot.

Metro apps can share data among one another courtesy of the underlying APIs (click image to enlarge).

The start screen has been greatly influenced by Windows Phone 7. Look more closely at our opening screen grab and you'll see that the blocks aren't simply dumb app launchers, but information sources in their own right, with recent tweets appearing on the Twitter app, quotes on the Stocks app, temperatures on the weather app, and so on.

The weather app is a great example of the kind of graphical data presentation at which the Metro apps excel (click image to enlarge).

Microsoft champions the new start screen as a means to deliver a touch-first experience, but what about those of us who'll be using Windows 8 on a regular PC? Here, the news is good and bad in equal measure.

The good news is that the start menu may well disappear, but it's still there. Hover your mouse in the bottom left corner of any full-screen Metro-style app and up it pops. This is a neat implementation, and the two gel perfectly. 

The start menu, which takes you back to the start screen, also includes options for sharing data, searching the current application and managing settings and devices (click image to enlarge).

Now for the bad news. Click 'start' from any regular app in the old-style Windows interface, and in swoop the Metro tiles, which is totally inappropriate if all you want to do is launch Word to run beside Excel.

There's been speculation -- not all of it favourable -- that Apple is working towards a shared code base for its tablet and Mac operating systems. Here, Microsoft is doing the same, and, for a non-tablet user, it isn't always a pleasant experience. The world of pointers and pull-downs is being pensioned off.

Why? Look to the app store. Microsoft has spent the last few years in slow decline while Apple has built itself a multi-billion-dollar business out of selling 69p iPhone games and £1.99 MacBook apps. By encouraging more of us to do the same though the Metro interface, Microsoft too can expect to receive a passive income for merely authorising each app and taking a cut of the asking price. It's unlikely Microsoft would be able to do the same on the traditional desktop, where apps will almost certainly continue be sold as they are now.

When launched, the Windows Store will be the only place you can buy Metro apps (click image to enlarge).

The more forcefully Microsoft keeps pushing us back towards Metro, the quicker we'll tire of running smaller apps in the traditional workspace and instead opt for Metro-friendly alternatives, using old-style Windows for just the biggies: Photoshop, Office, games and the like. At least, that's what Microsoft hopes.

Windows 8, then, is a curious, and sometimes uncomfortable, mix of tappable blocks and clickable buttons. But the split personality doesn't stop there.

Internet Explorer 10

Internet Explorer 10 works in both halves of the OS, but in slightly different ways. In vanilla Windows 8, it's the browser we've come to know and love -- or hate -- over the last 16 years, complete with hooks for regular plug-ins and add-ons.

But not in its Metro incarnation. Here, plug-ins are out in favour of pure HTML5. This is in the interest of improving 'battery life... security, reliability and privacy for consumers', according to IE team leader Dean Hachamovitch. That means no Flash, Silverlight or ActiveX. If you do need to use these, then switch to the desktop version or, better yet, switch to a site that doesn't require such legacy support.

The Metro incarnation of IE10 doesn't support plug-ins. The old-style full edition, which runs in the desktop app, does (click image to enlarge).

This is bad news for Adobe, as it will see Flash further marginalised in the tablet space. If we really are moving into the post-PC era, as declared by Steve Jobs and suggested by the prevalence of Metro, then Flash's 99 per cent installation base on Internet-enabled desktops will quickly become irrelevant.

Let's hope these early Windows 8 developer builds are sufficient to encourage greater adoption of HTML5 by the Web's biggest names, as right now the experience is somewhat unpredictable. Click a YouTube link inside Tweet@rama, for example, and it sends you to the Metro flavour of IE, where YouTube asks you to update Flash -- which you can't. Yet visit the same Twitter stream in Metro IE, click the tweet containing the link to open it in the sidebar, and the video plays using HTML5.

Control panel and preferences

The control panel, too, straddles the graphical divide. A simplistic, touch-friendly Metro version presents the core functions in a bold interface, at the bottom of which a link opens up the traditional Windows 7-style control panel for everything else.

For really quick fixes, there's also a settings overlay on the start menu within the Metro side of the OS. You can use it to fix volume, network access, brightness and so on.

You don't need to visit the full control panel to make quick changes to common Windows settings (click image to enlarge).

Task manager

Skip into old-style Windows and you'll see that most of the improvements are under the hood.

In the old-school interface, you can't launch any apps directly unless you're prepared to hunt them down through Windows Explorer, keep them permanently mounted on the task bar or clutter your desktop with shortcuts. But clicking 'start' returns you to the Metro tiles, where your best move is to start typing right away. A search box pops up to intercept your keywords and narrows down the list of results in real-time. You can then click the one you want.

The easiest way to launch an app is to simply start typing its name. Windows 8 found matching results very quickly in our tests (click image to enlarge).

The task manager has been given a thorough going over and now exists in two forms: a quick and dirty panel for killing unresponsive applications, and a full-on diagnostics tool for identifying and remedying problems. Processes and applications are now split into groups, with inactive Metro tiles marked as suspended.

Task manager has been greatly improved, with darker backgrounds for those processes consuming the greatest number of resources (click image to enlarge).

You can organise all processes -- active and dormant -- in order of their consumption of processor power, memory, disk space and network bandwidth. Those using the greatest resources have darker backgrounds, making it easy to see at a glance which processes are hogging your PC's resources.

Other tabs let you see each of the columns in graphical form, split resource usage by user, remove items from your Windows start-up sequence without digging around in the config files, and view historical resource consumption app by app. This latter feature concerns itself primarily with CPU time and network bandwidth, so you can quickly ferret out both which apps are slowing down their siblings (and potentially draining your battery), and which risk hitting your Wi-Fi or 3G cap.

Ribbon returns

The ribbon interface has been extended to Windows Explorer and adopts a number of context-sensitive add-ons. So, open an Explorer window and click a drive and the existing 'file', 'computer' and 'view' tabs will be joined by a 'drive' tab, complete with a highlighted 'disk tools' topper to explain what the tab does. This certainly won't be as easy to use on a touchscreen as the Metro tiles.

Windows Explorer has adopted the ribbon, which sprouts new tabs according to what you've selected within the main window (click image to enlarge).

Elsewhere in Explorer, ISO disk images now mount natively, so our downloaded Windows Developer Edition ISO was presented as a live DVD.

Refresh and reset

We'd expect to see further features and system tools appear in future iterations of the operating system as it progresses through its development cycle. Right now, though, the two killer features for us sit in the control panel.

'Refresh' is a digital panacea, removing all third-party apps -- apart from those installed through the app store -- and reinstalling the base Windows system files without removing your settings, documents or data.

The Refresh function reinstalls core Windows files and removes apps that weren't downloaded through the Windows Store, without losing your personal data (click image to enlarge).

'Reset', meanwhile, goes one step further, zapping all of your personal data and cleansing your machine so that it's ready for selling on.

Development cycle

If Microsoft follows the same schedule as it did for Windows 7, then Windows 8 won't be available for another year. That makes this release, which Microsoft is describing as 'pre-beta', incredibly early. Given that, it's remarkably stable.

Still, there needs to be greater integration of the old and new ways of working. The ribbon interface is great for mouse users, but perhaps too fine for those navigating with a finger, while the Metro-based start screen feels like an uncomfortable interface for those using a mouse.

The best-case scenario would be an a clearer delineation between the two halves of the operating system, enabling mouse users to pin the old Windows environment in place -- complete with the traditional start menu -- and visit Metro only now and then, and for tablet users to do the opposite. That would rather miss the point of Windows 8, though, which is clearly aiming to unify the diametrically opposed worlds of the keyboard and touchscreen. On that score, though, there's still some work to be done.

Check out the video below to see some of the new features of Windows 8 in action.