First a little disclaimer – I’m no professional reviewer and do not work for Microsoft or (any of their) enemies. Views express here is strictly my own – to protect the guilty you know… 😉

I’ve managed to download the rather hefty 3GB download of the 64-bit version of Windows 8 (ISO). Then I used VirtualBox to install it – this time without any issues with incompatible drive controllers. If you search my blog history you might remember the developer preview had a problem where VirtualBox could not install using a SATA drive controller – so you had to use old IDE. This time around a (virtual) SATA drive worked without any issues.

Unfortunately during the installation and first running of the VM I had no Internet connection – thanks to security policies at work (which I’m honouring). This means that some basic things could not be compeleted yet – like activating this copy of Windows. Because of that some features don’t work yet. Yep, that’s right, if you don’t have an activated copy of Windows (even this test version) some apps and features don’t work. Well, that isn’t a train smash since I’ll activate it later at home and then test more.

My first impressions of this version of Windows is not a bad one. They definitely did some polishing and tweaking since the developer preview. Then again, I haven’t installed anything other than the OS itself yet. Like so many others I’m not really a big fan of the Metro interface for PC’s. Tablets and other touch devices might be another thing but ‘heavy’ PC users that use multiple apps at the same time constantly is not impressed with the ‘too simple’ interface. Metro seems to force you to run apps full screen. This is understandable on a tablet or other small device but not for a PC. Also, what happens with machines that have multiple monitors? A ‘one fits all’ idea sounds wonderful for some things but there are things in life that just don’t work that way – you wouldn’t expect a car to do the job of a truck or a row boat the job of an aircraft carrier (just try to imagine that one…).

From the point of view of the people that build this interface (yes, I’m looking at you Microsoft hehe) it makes sense to have everything work the same for development and maintenance purposes but not for the end users. Anyway, I’m sure many others have and will still be discussing this issue in length.

In terms of the things that are ‘in’ Windows 8 everything seems to work great and smoothly. Fortunately from the experience I had from the developer preview I knew how to do and use same basic things already.  For example, shutting down the PC (or VM) requires you to go to settings (move mouse to top-right corner) that are hidden from normal view.  Again (for the PC), “really?” why do they have to make something as basic as that so hard to do? In a tablet I can understand that the shut down option isn’t important since it would normally go into some kind of hibernate when you don’t use it. Even perhaps on a laptop… but not something like a home or gaming PC. A simple suggestion – just add a plain ‘Shutdown’ icon/shortcut on the Metro menu interface… At least the shutdown /s command in Admin command prompt works… hehe

Now that I’ve ‘Activated’ Windows (it happens automatically once you have a valid Internet connection) things seems to be rolling on again. One of the first things I did as soon as ‘on-line’ is available is to check for updates – and yes, there are already something like 6 ‘Important’/’Critical’ updates available – a whole 20MB more to download. Sheesh! There are two ways to interpret this…. I don’t think I need to explain…

Mail and instant messaging integration seems to work good. I just wonder, why do we still have outlook… hehe. The apps still are labelled ‘App preview’ which probably means they are also kanda ‘beta’. Seems all the ‘usual suspect’ online apps are there, even Facebook hmm.

Then, Internet explorer… I don’t think I like the way they completely rearrange and over simplified the interface. It took me a good few moments just to find the URL bar and the ‘Application’ seems to be doing things on its own while you are looking around how to do old familiar stuff. Perhaps I need more practice or something. At least I could still install Firefox and return some ‘sensibility’ to web browsing…

As a general comment I have to say, the way the old and new ‘user interfaces’ has been set up is really stupid. They give an inconsistent experience and makes it feel like MS is trying to have two interfaces that compete rather than word together. Metro on the one side and the old desktop on the other… somewhere between them there is a ‘generation gap’…

Well, Windows 8 will be a ‘mind-shift’ to get used to. No matter whether you like it or not it is coming and things are going to change – for better or for worse (not sure which). I personally will be using Windows 7 for quite a while still (heck, I still got one XP machine at home). Perhaps when I one day manage to get a tablet or computer with a touch screen then Windows 8 would make more sense. Till then…

Updates:

I must admit there are a couple of nice features with this preview like the ability to natively mount ISO images as a drive, built in Anti-virus and so. One not so nice thing is that once you loose internet connection (on boot up) Windows ‘un’activate itself meaning ‘stuff’ stop working again… This could be because I booted the VM up on another physical host that doesn’t have an Internet connection. Perhaps the change in hosts unactivated it.