Windows 8: My First Impressions

I'll begin this review with two things. One, I write this knowing that Windows 8 is still in development and nowhere near release. Two, for point of reference, my current desktop and wallpaper. I used Rocket Dock for awhile, but got tired of not having access to my icons if I chose to alt-tab to the desktop. Moving on. Here's the hardware I'm running it on:
-Intel i7 i950 3.06GHz quad-core
-6GB of XMP-specification RAM
-nVidia GeForce 9500GT (1GB of memory)
-320GB Hard drive

I downloaded the 64-bit Developer Preview with the developer tools from Microsoft's website. My first experiences were a combination of puzzlement and frustration. 7-zip kept reporting that the source had disconnected when unzipping, and Microsoft's Windows 7 USB DVD Tool, advised by many online outlets, refused to work as well. I deleted the file and redownloaded the ISO image without the developer tools. Same thing. Finally found a tool that writes a boot sector to flash drives. Opened the ISO with Daemon Tools as a mounted image, and copied everything over from the virtual DVD drive after dissuading it from replacing Windows 7 with Windows 8.

Installation was quick and easy, until I reached a certain part. "Please sign in with your Windows Live ID". I have one, don't want to use it. Okay. So start to sign in- it begins asking more questions. Apparently, it offers some sort of consistent computing experience using clouds, similar to Android Tablets, Chromebook, the web desktop that existed for awhile (a browser-based OS), and other devices. I hunted around, and found a way to opt out. Ballmersoft managed to get in one snide comment before I chose to use a "Local Account", though. 'You will not be able to move the files you care about between computers.' Anyway, I like the concepts and ideas behind it, but I'm not going to test that feature now.

So I'm at the... Login screen? I see a picture of a (beautiful) mountain range, a clock, and... No login box for a username or password. *CLICK* Ah, here it is- giant flat green screen with 'dibblebill' and a password box on it. So I log in. Well, now what? I'm logged in and ready to... What's this? Where's the desktop gone? Its chosen to look like iOS and Android-based tablets. Great, if I were on a tablet. I'm not- I'm on a desktop. Ohkay, well, I figured out how to alt-tab out to the desktop, its still there. Just hidden. Well, at this point, I'm trying to take screenshots and post them. However, it seems that Windows no longer has Paint. Just PaintPlay, which I cannot find a way to paste into. Go go Gimp! I open the new Internet Explorer (Metronet Explorer? Not sure what its actually called) and go get GIMP to save jpg's of my progress. My opinions on this version are mixed. I seem to have no right-click, no options... And here's the new tab page. Opening it from the traditional desktop has different results. At any rate, I also had to install Adobe Flash, which was very buggy in Windows 8. Again, its a beta, if even that.

I looked for the control panel, but could not find it. I did find it later, but here's what it seems to have been replaced by. Do not like. I want to be able to open the hood and truly tinker with the OS. I also cannot try out the HTML5 Windows Store yet, to my disappointment, but I didn't expect it to be ready yet.

What I did like: Remote desktop made easy. I'm surprised that its such an up front and easy to find feature- I normally have to dig through mountains of menus to find it in Windows. I also liked this built-in feature. Overall, its pretty, but very little function yet, for a desktop. If I had it on a touch-screen tablet, I'm sure I'd have a very different opinion.