What’s Windows 8 going to do for me?
Microsoft has an unenviable balancing act to perform. Technology professionals and enthusiasts need and want to know about what new technology is coming as early as possible so they can plan for it. However, it also means early Microsoft software previews have a tendency to be changed by the time they get released – sometimes as a result of feedback from testers, but sometimes just because Microsoft can’t reliably deliver some of the features in time. The other danger for Microsoft is that everybody sees the new, shiny, future version and decides to wait for that rather than upgrade to today’s version now.
So with that in mind, what should we make of Microsoft’s “developer preview” of Windows 8? There isn’t even a hint as to when it might be released although many suspect late 2012.
The obvious thing that’s been focused on in most reviews is the new “Metro” interface, which is largely derived from Microsoft’s current smartphone OS. It looks nice and, without a doubt, it’s been designed with one eye firmly on the tablet/touch screen market and taking on the iPad. It’s going to be interesting to see how typical users adapt to it on a traditional PC or laptop though. It’ll take a bit of getting used to but many will no doubt see it as an improvement, whilst others will be resistant to the change. For the latter group, Microsoft has provided the option to run a Windows 7 style interface instead.
The key to the new user interface’s success will be whether applications are written to use it; switching between “Metro” and current styles of programs could become confusing or annoying; time will tell.
So what’s going to encourage organisations to move to Windows 8 – is there more to it than the user interface? Fortunately (for Microsoft) the answer is yes, although many of the benefits are of a technical nature (as you would expect with an operating system). In no particular order, some of the things that stand out are:
- System wide searching and spell-checking built in.
- Improved performance over Windows 7 (although this may be marginal and could change by the release date).
- A better Task Manager that provides an easier interface for most users, but more information for power users who want it.
- An improved way to effectively reinstall a clean version of Windows itself, without removing any installed applications, settings or data which should significantly improve system support and reliability.
- An online application store, much like Apple’s.
- Live cloud syncing to keep multiple PCs current with your data, social network settings etc; again this seems to be following Apple’s iCloud lead.
(Note that we’re only talking about the client version of Windows 8 – we’ll look at the Server edition another time, as that has some other, more significant, changes in it.)
So should you delay any upgrades and wait for 8 to be available? Well, it looks good and should be a big step forward for Windows, allowing it to catch up with features that Apple has been providing whilst keeping compatibility with previous versions of Windows. However, it’s a little way off yet (nobody knows how far, of course) so if you’ve currently using XP or Vista then for most people we’d strongly recommend that you make the move to Windows 7 rather than wait for 8. As always though, everything depends on your own unique circumstances.
