Tag: windows 8

Opinions

OEMs can’t do it, so Microsoft DID IT!

Posted on by Eric Tay

This is a follow-up for my previous post on What I think a Windows 8 Tablet should be like.

Intro

Finally, our prayers have been answered. While Computex showed some interesting Windows 8 tablet concepts. Most of it was just gimmicky (Asus Taichi) or rehash of a failure (Acer W510/W700) or plain uncomfortable (Lenovo Yoga).

Before Microsoft Surface

The Acer W700 looks like it may be the closest to my wishlist but then they added that huge useless stand. I sure they can squeeze a couple of Lithium cells in there.

The Acer W510 is interesting because the keyboard has an additional battery & based on the battery life it’s an Atom but is it dual-core? Acer isn’t saying.

Asus Taichi looks very impressive & I’m sure some people is going to love the dual-screen, but can you imagine the current draw on the battery? Even when the screen is off, there’s current leakage which can absolutely kill the battery!

Lenovo Yoga has a flip to the back 360° hinge, so in tablet mode, your hand is caressing the keyboard keys. Very nice if you’re an accordion player, not so nice for the rest of us.

The Future

What is Microsoft to do? Well, they did this!

The Microsoft Surface

Not to be confused with the Super-cool but super-expensive coffee table, the new Surface(s), one for Windows RT & one for Windows 8 Pro, is targeted at the iPad & Android tablet market & the TabletPC market respectively. (The coffee-table is now called PixelSense.)

Microsoft worked in secret for this tablet & the engineering effort shows in the precision in the whole thing. Unlike the iPad, the Surface is also easily repairable like all Microsoft hardware products. See the torx screws at the bottom?

The Fully magnesium-alloy chassis is also used in many hi-end tablets/Ultrabooks from Lenono Thinkpad X series to Fujitsu T & S series because of strength & toughness, but this is an expensive material to use & machine. In the Surface, it’s basically magnesium & Gorilla Glass 2.0 protecting the thing. So this thing is NOT going to be cheap. BOM cost is going to be high. So I’m hoping this is like the 1st-gen Xbox & Microsoft sell at or below cost to secure market share. (Me dreaming…)

Why is Microsoft doing this now?

Some bloggers & tech journalist mentioned threat to the Windows eco-system. What do they mean? Windows is installed in more than 1 billion PCs around the world. When you add up all the Macs + iPad, it’s only 300million. (Phones not included). What threat?

Well, Microsoft’s Windows is 1 of the pillars of profit. Over the years, it’s profitability has reduced slightly. One of the reason is iPad is good enough for many people’s needs + iPhones has 30+% of worldwide smartphone market. Many of these people still need a PC to connect & manage these devices. A big portion has chosen Mac OS to be THAT device. Granted, many of them still buy Windows licenses to run in Parallel, but that’s because they NEED to, not because they WANT to.

The soonest their work don’t need Windows, they wouldn’t even boot up or upgrade their Windows license. Microsoft knows this, hardware makers know this, Apple knows this & now, so does Google with their Chrome OS.

After the uninspiring show at Computex, Microsoft announced this ultra-secret press conference to salvage developers’ interest. Remember, without apps & hardware, the eco-system is dead. Just look at RIM, lotsa BB 10 demos but no devices yet. Developer interest is low.

Apple just finished their WWDC & Google is doing their thing next week. On Wednesday, Microsoft will share Windows Phone 8 Apollo with the rest of the world. Monday was the best time to drop the bomb.

Mostly good reception but doubters exist.

Some bloggers criticized Microsoft for always announcing things way before product availability unlike Apple. These bloggers must not have covered the tech industry for very long or they’re only covering Apple, who deal mostly with consumers.

Microsoft has to announce things early so that companies can set the direction & upgrade path for the next few quarters. CTOs cannot have disruption to their business because a vendor suddenly change or discontinue product lines, something Google is famous for, or new features which are incompatible with company infrastructure, Apple’s forte.

Yes, BYOD is on the rise. But in many industries, accountability & compliance is still paramount. Microsoft is successful because they do not disrupt their product lines like Apple do. Surface is the most logical way of moving forward & setting the bar for OEM to follow, just like how Intel set the Ultrabook reference design. Microsoft is also not withholding any special software features so OEMs can play on even ground when they get their acts together.

Another mitigating factor is, Surface is unlikely to be cheap (assuming Microsoft sell at a premium), so OEMs can differentiate themselves using price & features like the laptops & PC.

Research houses like Ovum pointed out a jarring & horrible user experience. Jarring maybe, horrible? Hardly. If you’re using Win RT, the chances of you dropping to Desktop is low & only for Office 15 which you’d use when you’re sitting down & working with the keyboard cum cover. I’d like to ask Ovum researchers, when you’re on the move, will you be formatting your text & checking grammar or generating numbers of Excel or Access, or will you be taking hand-written notes, audio notes & shooting the event with the camera?

For Surface Pro, a stylus is included so you can still use all your Enterprise software that uses ink. When used as a laptop, the keyboard/mouse is still used & Aero is still easy to navigate. When on the move, Metro takes center-stage. Jarring? Yes, but humans are adaptable.

Will Surface cannibalize OEM tablet sales? Just look at why Google came out with their Nexus series of phones. The OEMs can’t make it well. Look what happened to Samsung after helping Google? Their Galaxy line of smartphones benefitted greatly from getting frontline support from Google & Google’s vision.

In Microsoft case, Microsoft Hardware division designed the tablet in-house, according to Pinoys, the actual device is probably made in China by Pegatron. If we look at the hardware market for Mice & Keyboards, you still have a very healthy eco-system with Microsoft, Logitech & Razor on top, & tons of China/Taiwanese brands serving the mid-to-low end market.

Remember, we’re talking about Windows PCs here, which has more than 1 Billion physical devices. Right now, Microsoft has to grow this tablet market so that eventually these OEMs can rejoin at a later date with compelling products.

If cannibalization is the worry, I think the Surface (& subsequent OEM efforts) may wipe out the OEMs’ own Android tablets & overtake iPads. With a wide variety of Windows tablets to choose from, Microsoft’s vision is to beat the iPad the way they beat the MacIntosh 20 years ago.

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Opinions

How Windows Phone 8 & Windows 8 can share software

Posted on by Eric Tay

Overview

Microsoft just generated a huge amount of buzz in the press & developer community when Microsoft’s Paul Thurrott confirmed a leak that Windows Phone 8 (WP8) codename “Apollo” will use Windows 8 kernel.

This is a big deal, bigger than what most people realise, because it means that Microsoft can have a standard integrated development environment (IDE) to target Windows 8 (for Intel x86/64 – Wintel), Windows on Arm (WoA) & WP8 (now a WoA)!

So when a developer wrote an app for Windows 8, he can automatically target both Wintel, WoA & with some tweaks for screen dimension, WP8!

What’s the big deal anyway?

Let’s me start by saying I’ve been a software developer for many years since C++ & Visual Basic 6. Unlike many developers these days, I’m what was called a system programmer, meaning I do low-level, machine interface stuff, including Assembler on embedded systems. I stopped coding professionally 8 years ago but I still do some projects here & there. So I’m aware of the going on in the development of Wintel, WP7 world.

Software is created by writing code in a language not unlike English. In order for the code to be recognised, you need the other party to also speak the same language.

Unfortunately, Intel Core i7 or nVidia Tegra-3 or Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU doesn’t speak English, so you need an intermediary. A translator that converts the code into machine language which is just a bunch of ones & zeros. This is the job of the compiler.

There are 2 ways to accomplish this. You can compile code directly into machine language or you can send your code into a translator that converts these code in realtime into machine language.

The advantage of the first approach is speed. The problem is you need to rewrite (port) code from one platform to another.

The second is the interpreter approach. A middleman will translate the code during software running time into machine code for the CPU to execute, hence the term, “runtime”.

The advantage is the ease of porting code from one platform to another. It still takes efforts & time to customise for the environment but at least there are less mundane chore to do/debug. The major problem is speed because the middleman also uses CPU resource. Multicore CPU mask some of the time but there’s still lag.

SO, where does Windows 8 fit into all these CPU discussion anyway?

Windows 8 is an Operating System. It’s job is to manage resources in CPU, memory, storage, network, graphics, user input, etc. The part that manage the hardware is called the kernel, which is itself a special software. The part that you see on the screen is the GUI, which is also software. All the apps that you use must interact with the kernel & GUI.

IIRC, the kernel of Windows Phone 7 is based on Windows CE, which is itself a branch of Windows 95 or earlier. It’s a very mature & stable kernel but doesn’t support multi-core CPU or pre-emptive multi-threading which is why multi-tasking on PocketPC/Windows Mobile always seem to hang or slow the phone with no way to recover but a soft reset. Surprisingly, Android 2/3 seem to share the same problems! But is mitigated somewhat by having multicore CPU.

Windows Phone 7 bypass this limitation by following Apple’s iOS when it was initially launched. No app is allowed to run in the background, except for a few that strictly follows certain parameters. Task switching was minimum, restricted to 5 open screens, not 5 open apps. This severely limited many enterprise apps which required ongoing background processing.

Now unlike Apple, which keeps its iOS & Mac-OS separately. Microsoft seems to want to consolidate their OS as early as 2003 with the MinWin initiative. Windows 7 is based on the Windows NT kernel, which was super robust but very monolithic in that all the services were integrated into the kernel, making it big & hard to debug or extend. Performance was good though because all the services exist in the same memory space.

The problem was, every time a new service is needed, like IPv6, Microsoft had to change the kernel without affecting other components. The complexity gets too much to handle even for a software house as big as Microsoft. The only way was to compartmentalized the kernel. Performance suffered a bit but can be recovered when developers optimise the individual components that were separated from the kernel.

This initiative culminated in Windows 8 using just 600+MB of memory footprint compared to Windows 7 800+MB in a TabletPC configuration. The kernel itself is only tens of MB! Small enough to fit in the future 256MB of RAM on a Windows Phone 7.5.x upgrade called “Tango”.

For WoA, the memory footprint will probably be similar to Wintel because Windows Desktop will also appear in WoA. However, as mentioned, for any developer who needs speed in their desktop apps like Microsoft Office, they will have to port their code & recompile the entire app to work in WoA Desktop environment. Which is why Microsoft was very secretive about whether legacy Windows Apps can run on WoA. My answer is, No. (Unless MS includes VirtualPC on WoA.)

It’s very clear to me that since Microsoft wrote the compiler in Visual Studio IDE & can port the entire Windows to ARM, it’s no problem for them to port MS Office as well! However, legacy apps compiled for Intel CPU will not work on WoA. Developers need to port their code.

The good news is, the new Visual Studio will probably support compiling to both Intel x86/64 & ARM all in the same IDE! Devs may need to set certain parameters but they do not need to invest in another IDE or train/hire new developers. Visual Studio will handle the differences in platform like it handles the difference in Intel & AMD CPU.

This is excellent news for Enterprise customers because it simplifies managing their business by providing a single platform that can run on Intel PCs in the office & WoA laptops/tablets for their mobile workforce. Intel CPU is much more powerful but ARM CPU uses much less power so having Windows on both platform solves a dilemma that has dogged the industry for more than 10 years. This is the reason why the iPad is so successful because even though Bill Gates envisioned a tablet future, it was Steve Jobs who realised the vision!

However, Steve had to compromise on functionality on the iPad because Mac-OS wasn’t optimised for low-memory/CPU computing. On top of that, Mac-OS was compiled for Intel CPU & it will take them time to find a good compiler to recompile for ARM, plus all the engineering needed to port the OS.

What about WP8?

Most of the 60,000 apps on WP7 are written in Silverlight & XNA. Both are interpreted code which requires a Runtime. This Runtime is also an integral of Windows 8.

Now that we know WP8 Apollo uses the NT kernel, it automatically means that WP8 supports multicore CPU, full pre-emptive multi-threading, multi-GPU & multi-displays on-top of the other regular stuff you find on iPhones & Android phones.

Since Microsoft has to compile Silverlight/XNA to work on WoA & Windows Phone is actually an ARM computer with a small screen, it means that there is NO difference between WoA Silverlight/XNA & Silverlight/XNA on Windows Phone as well! Do I even need to mention Silverlight/XNA is already in Windows 8 for x86/64?

Ultimately, this means that developers can use Visual Studio to compile speedy Native apps like MS Office for Wintel, WoA & WP8. If the situation doesn’t require speed, they can more easily program in Silverlight/XNA & enjoy low power consumption for Wintel, WoA & WP8 as well. The only major work is to change the interface to fit the screen & that’s it!

Conclusion

Microsoft has announced a range of screen size for the next version of Windows 8/WP8 & the reason is very simple.

All Windows machines will share a common interface & work the same. After adjustment for screen size, Silverlight developers can also easily target WP8 & Windows 8.

Native App developers can also easily target Wintel or WoA allowing the new platforms to gain huge number of apps in a short time. Having tons of apps drive adoption which is what ensures the survival of the platform.

I can’t wait! 8)

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Opinions

What a Windows 8 Tablet should be…

Posted on by Eric Tay

* Follow-up of this article here “OEMs can’t do it, so Microsoft DID IT!”*

This article is about what I think a Windows 8 Tablet should be like.

A bit of background… My first Tablet PC was an Acer TravelMate C110 running Windows XP Tablet Edition. My current is a Fujitsu Lifebook T4210 (upgraded with Bluetooth, 4GB RAM, T7200 CPU & Self-encrypting SSD). The current machine started life with WinXP Tablet as well & was dual-booted with Vista, & finally replaced with Windows 7 Pro 32bit. SO I have a total of 8 years+ of Tablet usage.

I’m looking for a new Windows Tablet because my current doesn’t have a Touchscreen & it’s not something I can upgrade.

Based on my years of using Tablets, I have come to several conclusions which I’ll share here.

The new Tablet OS, Windows 8

Windows 8 is a rethinking of how people will use Tablets to Create Content in the future, versus, Consuming Content on the iPad & Android tablets. It’s made to run special Windows 8 applications + run your good old MS Office & Photoshop, etc.

By supporting 2 different mindsets, Content Consumption + Creation, Microsoft is trying to allow people who like iPads to enjoy ease-of-use & good battery life anywhere anytime. They are also trying to appeal to the office worker who wants a fast, stable & productive platform to get on with work to make the money to enjoy life. There is actually a 3rd mindset which isn’t well-defined yet, that of the gamer/home entertainment with XBox Live integration so we should have to wait to see how that works out.

Microsoft new vision is this. While on the move or onthe sofa, you’d be carrying a light-weight tablet that runs low-power content consumption apps from Microsoft Store & enjoy long battery life. When in the Office, you can plug it into a dock that’s connected to your Keyboard/Mouse/20″ monitor to work & run your old MS Office & Photoshop, etc.

After you’re done, you can bring the tablet home & plug it into your Home Entertainment center where you can play your games or watch streaming video on your 55″ 3D LED TV. That’s the vision Microsoft is pushing for Windows 8. Can it work? Yes! All the technology needed are there, WiDi, DLNA, 4G, HDMI…

Now Windows 8 Beta is coming out soon & should be almost feature complete. It should be interesting for people who has Touchscreen Tablets/Slate because they get to experience this vision first-hand. Some of the suggestions from Developers have been adopted in the Beta & it’ll be interesting to see how far MS goes to satisfy End-users when the Release Candidate comes out by mid-2012.

Hardware, the physical tablet must feel good & look good!

Many manufacturers have also pledged to launch Win8 Slates in H2 2012 after their Android Tablets fail to make a dent in iPad sales. If these new Slates are less than SGD$1000, it will attract buyers (with enough advertising & education.)

The current batch of Windows tablets (in Singapore), Acer W500, Asus B121 & Fujitsu Q550 all have fatal flaws that makes them unattractive to buyers. Chief among them is Windows 7 of course. There’re too much bad press about Windows 7 being a lousy tablet OS. Some of the complaints are true but many the reviewers don’t know what they’re talking about. Let me say again, Windows 7 is a competent Tablet OS when configured right.

It’s easy to configure Windows 7 to be easy to navigate using Touch. All the settings are inside the Control Panel (bigger icons/text & space in between/super large themes). StartBar can be docked to the side & gesture controls can be used to navigate the interface.

The problem, of course, is these things should be pre-configured by the Tablet makers themselves, not the end-users. Slapping a custom layer over Windows 7 desktop isn’t the answer as well! Therefore, the fault lies in these makers, Acer, Asus & even Fujitsu who just slap Windows 7 in as if they’re selling Desktops. No customisations whatsoever!

On top of that, these tablets are either too heavy or too bland or too slow. Take a look at the new Nokia Lumia 800 & 900. People naturally gravitate towards the better looking device even if the specs aren’t as fantastic as a dull looking but super-fast one! Early iPhones & iPads are the BEST examples!

The brains behind the operations, the CPU

The other flaw is CPU. Intel Atom CPU + motherboard + chipset was too expensive for its performance. Being single-core with low bus speed + a GPU that’s slower than molasses. It can’t even play a decent 720p video without dropping most of the frames.

The coming generation of Dual-core Atom CPU (Cedar Trail) should finally solve the problem unless Intel screws up somehow. Dual-core, higher bus speed, support for 4GB RAM + a PowerVR GPU should allow 720p video playback (clear enough for a 10-12″ screen or a 55″ TV). A typical person using this tablet for media consumption & business usage should have no complains about lag. Gamers wouldn’t be interested in Atom CPU of course but home entertainment is definitely doable!

Makers of tablet (Asus) also shouldn’t be using Core i5 in their Tablets. It adds weight & $ cost for heat dissipation & reduce battery life, or they have to use a bigger battery thus increasing weight. Considering Core i5 + chipset uses >30W while Atom + chipset uses <10W. A 4-cell battery powering an Atom N2800 should last >4 hours of actual usage with WiFi on & screen at half-brightness.

SSD prices have come down by a lot on the lower-end, 32-64GB. If storage is not enough, a 32GB SDcard or MicroSD is also dirt cheap. With all these drop in prices, I do not see why a Win8 Slate should be more than $1000.

Let’s guesstimate the costs of the perfect Windows 8 tablet…

MS Windows 8 Home OEM license – $130
Intel Atom N2800 CPU – USD47
4GB DDR2/3-800 SODIMM RAM – $50
Kingston SSDNow Self-encrypting 32GB – $100
IPS 10″ LED screen – est. $150
Li-ion 4-cell battery – est. $100
Motherboard + WiFi + Bluetooth – est. $80
Chassis + Gorilla glass + Touchscreen + Active Digitizer – est. $120

Total around $800 including box + packaging! Maybe I’m optimistic but I think $1000 for this Tablet is entirely possible! If you include branding/advertising, it’s still an additional $100 at most. Still near to the price of a White iPad 2 32GB. Tablet makers can even throw in a 32GB SDcard to act like a secondary storage & only add another $20 to BOM cost.

We can see from the Android camp that users are demanding higher & higher performance by using Quad-core CPUs & integrated high-performance GPU to save power & improve Android’s laggy nature. The irony is, Windows 7 is super optimised already & Intel is simply lagging behind on the low-power front. Nobody I know liked their Netbook due to the many (artificial) limitations that Intel put on the Atom CPU. The only decent Atom is the Cedar Trail CPU that I just mentioned but the price is not low either.

Intel should watch out since Windows 8 will be able to run on some ARM-based platform like Nvidia Tegra & Qualcomm Snapdragon S4. I’m not mentioning ARM-based Windows 8 because older Wintel apps like MS Office cannot run on ARM-based Windows 8 unless Microsoft emulate x86 platform on ARM which will be a major engineering undertaking, not to mention the high licensing fees they have to pay Intel. I may be wrong but I’m pretty sure MS will not do this for many years to come.

Conclusions

So the question is, why aren’t PC makers chunning out great tablets? Maybe it’s because there wasn’t a strong enough vision until Apple launched the iPad or Microsoft was so pre-occupied with the Anti-Trust lawsuits that they didn’t listen to customer demands for the past 10 years. Or even maybe because Bill Gates has left the building.

We have been pushing for lighter tablets with better battery life for the longest time but while Sony & Lenovo have 1KG laptops with >8 hour battery, they didn’t translate these to the Tablet form factor. It has been extremely fustrating for Tablet users like me for the longest time, but finally it seems that our prayers are being answered with Windows 8.

In conclusion, 4 things must come together for the Windows 8 Tablet to be successful or better yet, be desirable.

1. Windows 8 is already super efficient in terms of CPU/Memory performance. It’s the Interface that’s the biggest bet for Microsoft. So far the Metro design language seems to be winning praise from Press & developers. Windows 8 has 2 interfaces, Metro for media consumption & traditional for media creation. If Microsoft listens to End-users during the Beta & makes the necessary adjustment, Windows 8 Metro could be wildly successful. Many people are already praising the Metro interface on the Xbox 360 & Windows Phone 7 Mango, so chances are good.

2. Hardware makers MUST make their tablet shine! Nokia has shown that with a beautiful device like the Lumia 800 & 900 + enough advertising, people will WANT to get it! Apple basically made a name for themselves around simple beautiful design with tons of advertising. That’s why there are calls for Nokia to make a Win8 tablet based on that polycarbonate shell! I certainly would love a Lumia tablet but that HP Slate is cool as well!

3. Intel must support Windows 8 by making a CPU/chipset that’s fast enough & cheap enough. So far the Intel Atom CPU has been a joke in the market. More than anything, users were not satisfied with Netbook due to lag. It’s ok for the processing to be slow but it’s NOT ok for the mouse to stop working after clicking something. This is the problem with a single-core CPU on a desktop OS.

4. Price. Fujitsu Stylistic has been the pinnacle of TabletPC in the Slate format for many years, but few companies & even fewer individuals can afford the $5000-6000 price tag. So long as manufacturers stick to Intel Atom Cedar Trail, they can afford to use cheaper components. These few years has battled the economy of many countries. Having a fast enough tablet at an affordable price will be a major factor in determining how many buyers they can attract which will further drive adoption rates.

To say that I’m excited about new Win8 product launches later this year is an understatement, especially with all the cool Ultrabooks that these same makers can make. If they (Microsoft/Intel/Manufacturers) get the above 4 points right, we could get a iPad killer. Until then, we can wish & pray.

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Reviews

Windows 8 Developer Preview on Fujitsu T4215 (Updated)

Posted on by Eric Tay

Update: My Fujitsu T4215 has been upgraded to Windows 8 Pro 32bit. Everything works as expected but battery life doesn’t seem improved from Win7.

This is a quick note of my thoughts on the new Windows 8 Developer Preview on my souped up Fujitsu T4215 Convertible Tablet (launched 2007).

*** Summary ***

Windows 8 DP looks great @ Build 2011 because they are using fairly modern hardware (don’t need to be the fastest). When running on legacy hardware without Touch, even with a Digitizer, the experience is not so great. These are hardware problems & it’s not something software can solve easily. SO? Go buy new hardware! 8)

*** Quick specs ***

CPU: Intel T7200 2Ghz (upgraded from T5600 1.83Ghz)

Memory: 4GB

HDD1: WD 160GB 5400RPM (some drive I had lying around)

HDD2: Kingston 64GB SSD with Full Disk Encryption enabled

Input: Keyboard/Touchpad/Digitizer screen

*** Boot-time ***

HDD1: 9 sec

HDD2: 7 sec

Not quite the 3 sec boot up shown by Emily Watson. Reason is probably because the BIOS is too old & together with a motherboard that does not support UEFI, dooms my Tablet to boot using legacy IBM PC mode.

You need a modern system with newer chipset + a SSD to achieve the 3 sec boot up.

*** Memory footprint: 630MB on boot up with TabletPC extensions enabled. ***

Better than Windows 7 by a fair bit

*** Windows Experience Index ***

CPU/Memory/HDD : 5.2

Graphics/3D : 3.2

*** Drivers ***

Intel INF + Graphics : Latest available but actual installed driver dates back to 2009

Fujitsu Motherboard BIOS extensions : Latest available for T4215 on Windows Vista and dated late 2007 Windows 8 detected all other drivers natively

*** Findings ***

— Older hardware like my T4215 is not modern enough to run the full Windows 8 Experience. Running normal apps etc., it can keep up when my WD Scorpio Black 7200RPM HDD or a SSD is installed, but Fast Boot & Touch experience is not as the developers intended. This means that I cannot use the Metro Interface even though I have the Stylus.

The situation is unlikely to change unless a new input scheme is hatched because a Stylus only allow 1 point of touch while Metro works best with multi-touch. This means that a Stylus works more like a mouse than as a touch device.

Boot up is faster than Windows 7 even taking into account logging into your user account.

— Windows 8 new UX (this will change by a fair bit when Win8 is launched (mid?) next year)

The old Start Menu is completely gone & replaced with the Start Screen so at the moment it feels disjointed when using just Keyboard/Mouse. I would rather they leave Start Menu there when you click the Windows Icon & show the Metro start when you Touch the bottom Left corner of the screen. That way the transition is smoother. As a Keyboard Mouse user, I’m already starting to feel like a second class citizen.

Microsoft has defended this move in this recent article. It does make sense & I admit I did not spend a significant amount of time to “acclimatise” but I’m one of the 1.2% who uses Jumplists so I’d appreciate if Microsoft develop that secondary tiles concept. A good compromise is probably to switch between Start screen & Start Menu based on the input mix and also allow users to set it in Control Panel.

Many of the apps & the OS itself is compiled in Debug mode so performance ain’t so great. For example, the Weather app, on my WEI graphics score of 3.2, the background video is choppy. When released it should be much better. Under the Hood, Microsoft has done a lot of groundwork & it shows when you use the system. No crashes or BSOD, background tasks are started & completed without user intervention or any slowdown in performance, everything is smooth & seamless. Much of the architecture has been changed & rearranged to minimise Kernel/Drivers/Services footprint & UI impact, allowing the UI to take center stage. Even at this stage, Windows Update is working, allowing Microsoft to smoothly transition developers from DP to Beta to RC without the hassle of reinstalling the whole OS.

It also allow programmers from different backgrounds to tap into the powerful Win32 API, now called Windows Runtime, all using a single familiar IDE in Visual Studio 11. New Tools like Task Manager, Control Settings, Windows Refresh, etc. also enhances the basic day-to-day operations & maintenance of your piece of equipment to improve productivity or simply to enjoy your PC without having to worry about background stuff.

The only problem now is how to find these little gems without resorting to Search all the time! I think the Apps Hub should be part of the Charm bar & Metro Start bar instead of going into Search.

*** Conclusion ***

Microsoft has completely casted away the uncertainty the DOJ had caused them & have gone back to basics. Windows 8 as it is now is already a much better Windows 7. Lower memory footprint, tighter CPU control on Apps & even Windows itself. 3D accelerated UI across the board, nice addition of information incorporated into even simple things like File Copy, all makes Windows 8 very nice to use if you have Touch.

With Keyboard Mouse & Stylus only + legacy hardware, the experience is more mundane. It’s still very nice but it lacks the WOW factor seen in the Keynote videos. Make sure you buy a laptop with a Touchscreen or Tablet to get the most out of Win8.

Hint: Windows 8 will run on any of the Windows 7 tablets on the market like Acer Iconia W500, Asus Eee Slate EP121, Fujitsu Q550, etc.

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