Windows 8 CP on a Tablet Review

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Grand Master

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Windows 8 CP on a Tablet Review

Last week I ordered the Acer Iconia Tab W500 windows 7 touch pad (W for windows A For android based tablets). I didn?t really want to order one, but I also didn?t want to run Windows 8 on my desktop or continue to run it on my laptop. I?ve had Windows 8 CP running on my laptop that sits next to my couch since the CP got released. It was a very frustrating experience. I run my own computer repair business so whether I like it or not I have to learn windows 8 to help support my customers (god help me), so I thought I might as well test windows 8 out in the environment it was clearly designed for. A tablet.

Last night I decided to do a Video review of my experience with Windows 8 on the new tablet. The Problem is, I?m not very good at talking on my feet, so what I ended up with was 9 minutes of word vomit. So I thought I would write my review instead. It?s a lot easier to edit a written review when you make a mistake than it is to go back and rerecord. Like when I called Metro Metroid and referred to Windows Phone 7 as Windows 7.

The icona W500 tablet comes preinstalled With Windows 7. Inside the device it has 2GB of ram an AMD c-60 low power CPU, 32GB SSD and a keyboard dock, which lets you dock the tablet with a keyboard for when you want to do some serious typing.

Windows 8 CP first impressions

Windows 8 is a very fast operating system. Boot times, launching of applications and accessing the Metro UI via the charm bar on the side or via the Single Windows button on the bottom of the device was very snappy. Application load times were also very good. Considering it was running on a low powered CPU it performed very well.

Metro

The Metro UI was very smooth and worked very well with my finger (as it should it was made for the finger) When I would take my finger and slide the metro bar side to side or launch a metro application, everything seemed very fluid. Sliding my finger from the side of the screen inward to reveal the charms bar also was as smooth as butter.

Metro by itself is good. The issue I had is when I would leave Metro and go back to the desktop environment. I will say for the most part the Windows desktop / aero UI does work better than expected with a finger. Large icons are easy to press, Small labeled menus are often selected on the very first try without issue.

I am puzzled by one thing though. When I first heard that they would remove the start menu from Windows 8, I thought it doesn?t make for a good user experience on a desktop / laptop to replace the start menu with metro tiles. But I was sure that Metro and touch would work a lot better than the old start menu. As it turns out, I think the start menu, at least for a few things does make more sense / would have worked better than Metro.

To access Computer on a device with a mouse and keyboard you put your mouse in the bottom left of the screen and then right click the Start box and select ?Computer?. On a tablet device you cannot access the start button in the bottom left. You have to use the charms menu on the right hand side of the screen. That start (metro button) doesn?t have the option of right clicking (press and holding only opens it). So the only way I could get to computer on the tablet is by tapping the explorer icon that was pinned on the taskbar and then tapping the small labeled ?computer? on the left hand side.

I personally think it would make far more sense t have our old fashion start menu in the bottom left where it has always been. Then when someone wants to access ?Computer? all they would have to do is tap the large start button in the bottom left and then tap ?Computer? or even ?Control Panel". That method does sound easier and more useful. In the case of control panel It would be a tap, tap instead of a Slide, tap, tap.

The one feature they tout in on the desktop is that you can open the titles and just start typing to access the application of your choice. Where on the tablet you have to slide from the right, tap the search box then tap inside the search box. So on the desktop it's click / type. On the tablet it's slide, tap (search), tap, then type using the on screen keyboard.

*update*

I just installed Classic shell onto Windows 8, and Oh my gosh. it's so much easier to navigate on the desktop environment using the classic shell than it ever was using metro. Now I don't have to stop and type for crap I can just tap it.

On screen keyboard

The On screen keyboard is big, responsive but on a 10.1 inch tablet on the desktop, it takes up 70% of the screen. So any application that you want to type in gets covered up by the keyboard. Some desktop applications like Chrome are keyboard aware. You click the text box and you get the windows 8 keyboard. Almost all the other applications you tap the text box and then tap the keyboard icon located in the system tray. I would not want to write this entire review or even a few lines of it on a tablet.

Internet Explorer 10

The first thing I did was try to navigate Firefox 11 using my finger. There seems to be a bug in the way that Firefox handles touch. Navigating the web using Firefox and your finger works ok, but using Firefox Menu?s such as bookmarks or the bookmarks bar, don?t work so well. When you tap the menu it drops down but when you go to select an item in the menu the menu disappears and nothing happens. Turns out you have to press and hold the menu and pull down, then you will see a colored bar highlight different items as you pull down. When you are on the item you want, you just lift up your finger and it opens.

Chrome on the other hand works great. Very touch friendly and as mentioned before is also keyboard aware. One issue I had was when it would bring the keyboard up, sometimes the keyboard no matter what I clicked, the keyboard wouldn?t leave the screen. The issue seemed to go away once chrome got silently updated to the new version.

Internet explorer 10 on the desktop also works really well with touch. I also tried the Metro version of IE 10. I didn?t really like that experience at all. It just seemed clucky. I was looking for the favorites menu, and upon researching found they removed favorites and replaced them with pinning websites, which I think is stupid. So for now, I?m going to use either Chome or IE.

Metro Applications

Metro applications strike me as interactive web pages. I guess that is maybe what they are going for . They look nice and provide some good information, but overall the Metro applications I have used thus far feel nice but not very useful productivity wise. To be fair once Windows 8 is released more applications will be available and hopefully they will look better. Comparing them to Ipad applications they feel very simple and not full featured and look sort of BLAH! They are ok for consumption, not for productivity.

Over all thoughts and conclusion.

Windows 8 at least on the x86 and x64 side of things, tries to be too many things to too many people. You are going to have people who love aero and hate metro, love metro and hate aero or people who just don't like Windows 8 at all because they tried to have both Metro and Aero all at the same time.

On the ARM side of things you will have Windows 8 tablets that will be Metro only and won't even be able to run x86 or x64 applications. Which if that is the case why didn't they just bring Wp7 OS from the phone over to a tablet like the Apple did with the IOS? It already had a large catalog of applications.

I installed Red Alert 3 on the tablet because I thought a touch screen might work really well for the game. The touch screen did work very well in the game. The only issue was, the game also required you to use the right and center mouse button, which the touch screen didn't' have. The good news is, I don't think it would be hard for these companies to modify the game for Windows and touch screens.

So do I like Windows 8 on a tablet? Metro is touch friendly and if all I'm doing is consuming information it works pretty well. But once I'm dumped back into the desktop environment I'm left wondering , why am I touching my desktop? Sure it works pretty well (better than expected even), but I would never want to write a book on this thing. I would never want to edit video or do anything that I do on my desktop . While touch works better than expected on the desktop of the tablet, the mouse is WAY more productive.

I also think 10.1 inches is probably as big as I would want to carry around. I wouldn't want to carry a 12 inch tablet. By the time you get to that size and that weight, I would rather carry a laptop.

I'm also going to get responses from people who will say "This is not the final version, it will change!". Sorry to say, but it's not going to change. There will be some bug fixes and some cosmetic editions but 98% of what we current see in the CP is what we are going to get in the RTM of Windows 8.

Will Windows 8 Fail on the desktop as hard as people say it will? Not sure.

While I was using Windows 8 on an x86 tablet I was reminded of a quote from movie "The Social Network". A girl tells Mark "You're not an *******, Mark. You're just trying so hard to be. "

In the case of Windows 8 on an X86 tablet

You're not a very good tablet OS Windows 8, You're just trying so hard to be"

  • Roger H. and simplezz
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migo

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You have to admit you were biased going in. You think Windows 8 doesn't work with a mouse and keyboard (it does), so it's not surprising you don't think it works well on a tablet either.

I won't accuse you of spending several hundred dollars so you could come here and post it, but I still wonder why you went out of your way to buy a tablet to test Windows 8 when you had already decided you didn't like it.

  • giantpotato, tuneslover and mrp04
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Grand Master

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You have to admit you were biased going in. You think Windows 8 doesn't work with a mouse and keyboard (it does), so it's not surprising you don't think it works well on a tablet either.

I won't accuse you of spending several hundred dollars so you could come here and post it, but I still wonder why you went out of your way to buy a tablet to test Windows 8 when you had already decided you didn't like it.

Actually I dissed Metro with a mouse and keyboard. I had high hopes for Metro with using touch and it does work MUCH better and feels much better with a finger than it does with a mouse and keyboard. Plus I can always install Android on the tablet if I get bored with windows 8. The tablet is also great for looking at photos when I'm out taking pictures. It has an SD card slot. Already tried that and it works great. So I will defiantly be using this tablet for that.

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Dot Matrix

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I just installed Classic shell onto Windows 8, and Oh my gosh. it's so much easier to navigate on the desktop environment using the classic shell than it ever was using metro. Now I don't have to stop and type for crap I can just tap it.

I stopped reading right here. Sorry. Credibility lost.

  • ahhell, Xerax and 123456789A
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Grand Master

Dot Matrix

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They already have you touching icons. Why not touch a start button instead of having to stop and swip your finger.

You're right. That must be why Windows 7 tablets are kicking the iPad's ass.

Oh, wait.

Grand Master

+Warwagon MVC

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You're right. That must be why Windows 7 tablets are kicking the iPad's ass.

Oh, wait.

Yes and they also have an iPad model / version which drops you out of the tablet interface and back to the desktop :p

Grand Master

+Warwagon MVC

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I stopped reading right here. Sorry. Credibility lost.

Video Response

Yes I know I accidentally opened up movie maker instead, I was actually behind the camera reaching at the screen, off center.

  • PixilEyes, still1 and Motoko.
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pack34

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Video Response

For searching, it's just charms -> search and type, you added some erroneous taps. Also, in the start menu I can't tell if you have the control panel pinned or if it's a recent program. If it's something pinned that you access consistently you can always pin it to the taskbar or on the start screen. For recent programs, tap on the search charm and the programs displayed are your recent apps with and all-apps-list to the right.

You also seem to have way too much stuff pinned to the start screen, I would suggest unpinning some of that and group them. Everything seems really scattered about. I've personally found it useful to limit the length of the start screen to about two monitor widths. I'm finding that with anything more than that it just works better to go to the all apps list. However, if the way you have your start screen organized works for you, then it works for you. I just felt like I'd throw some advice out there that made it work for me.

Grand Master

+Warwagon MVC

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Why Swipe, Start, than Swipe again and Search? Why not Swipe then Search?

Good point, but I still don't want to have to search for apps, and the list of apps that show up on the screen when clicking the search button include far more things than I need, I just want a simple list of installed applications.

You also seem to have way too much stuff pinned to the start screen, I would suggest unpinning some of that and group them. Everything seems really scattered about. I've personally found it useful to limit the length of the start screen to about two monitor widths. I'm finding that with anything more than that it just works better to go to the all apps list. However, if the way you have your start screen organized works for you, then it works for you. I just felt like I'd throw some advice out there that made it work for me.

Technically I'm using it unmodified, just like an average user would. Most of them wouldn't even know how to group, so cluttered is what they will probably be left with.

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migo

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Technically I'm using it unmodified, just like an average user would. Most of them wouldn't even know how to group, so cluttered is what they will probably be left with.

At the moment it's a bit more of hassle to re-group than it needs to be, but the average user definitely re-arranges and customises WP7 tiles on the start screen, so there's no valid reason for thinking they wouldn't do the same with Windows 8.

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Pikey

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Nice review warwagon and , strangely enough , I bought a Acer W500 about a week ago too!!

I'm resisting the temptation to add in any start menu stuff so far , I'm determined to go with whats there as much as I can!

I hope they change that on-screen keyboard though ... it was much better in Win 7! .. nicely floating out of site until needed , and much smaller too.

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migo

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Nice review warwagon and , strangely enough , I bought a Acer W500 about a week ago too!!

I'm resisting the temptation to add in any start menu stuff so far , I'm determined to go with whats there as much as I can!

I hope they change that on-screen keyboard though ... it was much better in Win 7! .. nicely floating out of site until needed , and much smaller too.

Does it have a split keyboard mode?

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KevinN206

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Good point, but I still don't want to have to search for apps, and the list of apps that show up on the screen when clicking the search button include far more things than I need, I just want a simple list of installed applications.

Technically I'm using it unmodified, just like an average user would. Most of them wouldn't even know how to group, so cluttered is what they will probably be left with.

If you want a list of app, then wouldn't it more sense to use the "all apps" from the app bar (i.e. swipe up from the bottom)? When you do that, then all of your apps are listed (metro first + desktop apps). If you needed, you can then use semantic zoom to go a "folder" of your choice. This is much more friendly because you can see A LOT more apps on the screen and the hit target is a lot bigger. You actually just proved why the start menu is cumbersome on a tablet: You launched Movie Maker instead of Photo Gallery. Look how TINY the hit zone is for items in the start menu within the "all programs".
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~Johnny

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I hope they change that on-screen keyboard though ... it was much better in Win 7! .. nicely floating out of site until needed , and much smaller too.

The old style on screen keyboard is still there (not the new touch keyboard) - it's in All Apps, Windows Ease of Access, On-Screen Keyboard.

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Though honestly I prefer the new (bottom) keyboard, seeing as all you do is press it's taskbar button to show / hide it. I even use it on my laptop occasionally when I'm too lazy to reach and type :p (It also has a RIDICULOUS amount of smilies in it, easily over 100 of them)

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rfirth

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Good point, but I still don't want to have to search for apps, and the list of apps that show up on the screen when clicking the search button include far more things than I need, I just want a simple list of installed applications.

Good thing there is an "all programs" feature/button on the start screen, just like the old start menu. Swipe up from the bottom on the start screen, or right-click if you're using a mouse.

Seriously, you should learn a bit about the system before you criticize it. Especially when your argument for the start menu is actually proof why the start screen is better.

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