People have been asking me “Well, after a few months what’s Windows 8 really like?”

I have to confess that I’ve been using it and learning it just enough to help clients – whether it’s been advice on buying a new computer or figuring out how to get Windows 8 to work for them.

But I haven’t really put myself in their shoes till now. What about when I have do some real work?

I felt the onus to do my own acid test. A little bit of “physician heal thyself“.

Ok, so here’s the experiment:

I am going to do this whole blog post with Windows 8.

I want to do this as fast as possible, keeping as close as possible to the way I’d do a blog post with Windows 7 or XP.

Here are the tools I need: (it looks like a lot at first)

1. My spiral notebook and pen
– who’da thought that most of my original ideas get scribbled down while away from the computer (not too many in the car, I promise)
2. Windows Double Explorer – a utility for seeing two File Explorer windows at the same time – super handy for transferring files from one computer to another, or backing up files.
3. Notepad++ (a plain text editor for writing the actual text of the blog)3. 4. Scrivener – a fantastic program for organizing and editing documents or ideas, even so it looks like a corkboard. This is how I visually keep track of all the bits I write down.
5. The Journal (this is an indispensible program for me. I make a daily entry like a diary and I can search for notes and observations from days, weeks, years that might come in handy).
6. Outlook (Microsoft Office) – I’ll often e-mail research links from the Internet to myself
7. Windows Live Writer (the Microsoft Word of Blogging software – where everything is finalized)
8.  ACDSee (for photo searching, basic editing)
9. Corel Paint Shop Pro (for fine editing) – does almost everything that Photoshop can.
10. Snagit – a program for taking “snapshots” of websites or my computer screen (in Windows 7 and 8, there is the built-in “Snipping Tool”, which is almost as good.
11. Internet Explorer – for research on GOOGLE , for adminstrating my  WordPress blog.
11. Firefox (for compatibility)
12. Google Chrome (for compatibility)

The whole mess can get to looking like this:

 

I’m using a laptop that I’ve sacrificed to Windows 8 evaluation, and I’m going to use the original “Metro” Start screen. The one that comes with Windows 8 straight out of the box.
(Microsoft now calls it “The Modern UI” – the name Metro was taken apparently)

FIRST THINGS:

First, I have to get everything onto the laptop that I’ll need – programs and files from my main computer.

To transfer anything to the Windows 8 laptop, I’ll want to have two windows open – one that shows the folders on my main computer and one to show where I’ll be transferring to on the laptop.
I notice that there is NO Windows Explorer anymore in Windows 8. There is “File Explorer“. (That needed a name change anyway, to avoid confusion with “Internet Explorer”.)

The new File Explorer Icon

Instead of firing up File Explorer twice and getting the size of the windows right,  I’ve found a utility called “Windows Double Explorer” that works only in Windows 7 and 8.  I used to have a program called “Twofer” that works wonderfully with Windows XP, but it doesn’t work here.

This is a screenshot Windows Double Explorer:

So, what do I have to copy?

1. My blog post folder with a first draft of this post I started on my other computer.

2. My “plain text editor” where everything gets written without formatting or jazzing up.
I install “Notepad++” a great free editor. But, now, where can I start it up from? There’s no icon on the screen. Wait, there’s no Desktop screen at all. Just those “Tiles”
Ok, how to find it? Remember there’s no Start button that I can click on to see “My Programs”.
I have to go to the “Charm Bar” (don’t you love it?). The Charm Bar is something you see when you hover your mouse pointer over the bottom right of your screen, thusly:

 

I click on the Search “charm” and type “note”. I get a new screen with three results:

If I right-click on Notepad++, I have the option to “pin” this program to the Start screen, creating yet another “tile” or pin it to the taskbar, so it’s always there on the bottom of my screen.

“Pin” to Taskbar screen:

And now on your “Desktop”, you’ll see:

All of this, so far, is just to get the most basic of tools I’ll need to do a blog post.

From here on in, I’ll be adding text and pictures to Windows Live Writer, editing content, doing a little formatting, adding a few links, and uploading the whole schmear to WordPress.

There, I’ll look at it again, get disgusted, make final edits, and hopefully not leave too many typos.

So, the blog post gets done and it only took me 4 or 5 times as long with Windows 8.

Sure, it was the first time and that accounts for some of the extra hours put in. But some things with Windows 8 will never go away. It will always be a matter of  constant flipping between that “Modern” Start screen and the familiar desktop.

To be productive, there will always have to be work-arounds. The chore of finding and “pinning” your oft-used programs will go on. This is the big failing of Windows 8:

You cannot completely “live” in either the regular desktop environment or the Start screen (what David Pogue, the tech columnist for the New York Times calls “Tileworld for Touchscreens”).

And there are two Internet Explorers, two Control Panels, two photo-management apps, two email programs, two ways to right-click, and so on.

It’s too bad because, under the confusing layer of the Start screen, it’s actually an ok operating system. It’s fast and so similar to Windows 7 that, if you add back the Start button, there’s not much difference and not much to learn.

I actually like the “look” of Windows 8 more than Win 7 or Vista. It’s cleaner and crisper.
And there were even some pleasant surprises among them, for example:

– some older and expensive pieces of software that would not run on Vista or Windows 7, now run on Windows 8, literally saving me thousands of dollars.
– files copy much faster than Windows 7 or Vista

The simple fix for Windows 8 is to install Classic Shell or one of the other third party programs that lets you boot to the familiar desktop and gives you back the Start button.

For now, this is as much of Windows 8 as I want to use for day to day work. I will be continuing to use my Windows 7 computer to get things done – fast.

 

 

That’s what  reviewers are calling Windows 8 – The Marmite Experience. You love it or hate it.

Trouble is, a lot of people will have no choice in the matter if they’re buying a new computer with Windows on it.

Here is my story of  setting up my first brand new computer with Windows 8.

A long-time client of mine decided he needed a new computer, his  trusty 7 year old desktop having finally stopped working. It would have cost more to try to bring it back to life than it would to simply get a new one.

We priced out a few options and settled on a Dell Inspiron model. It arrived a few days later. With Windows 8 on it.

I took the computer out of its box, plugged everything in, and pushed the power button. And when it booted up, here’s what we saw.

I think I designed something like this in Grade 3.

Nothing resembles any previous version of Windows. No icons, no Start button, none of the usual things on the screen. Microsoft calls these coloured blocks on the screen “tiles”.

So how to begin using this thing?

“Let’s get my e-mail going”, my friend suggests. Okay, that’s a good place to begin.  There’s even a “tile” on the screen that says “Mail”.

All right. Now, my client has always used Outlook or Outlook Express for his email. What happens when we click on the Mail tile is that we’re taken to an online (Internet) screen that wants us to “sign in” or “create a new account”. He’s already got an account, why does he have to make  a new one? He doesn’t have to. All we want to do is set up Outlook and get on with e-mailing like he’s used to.

A little problem here: where is Outlook?  We know it’s on the computer’s hard drive somewhere – we ordered it with Office already installed. But there doesn’t seem to be any way to locate the program. No list of programs, no Start button to find programs, no way to search for it.

I notice a tile on the screen that say’s Desktop. Hooray! I click on it and get something that resembles Windows XP or Windows 7.

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But still no Start button.  Just where will I have to go to start up Outlook?

Now I’m starting to get really unhappy. Keep in mind that I’d already been playing with this new operating system for a week. I was getting bored having to work around this new User Interface just to do my work. Easter egg hunts happen once a year, not every time you turn on your computer. But that’s what you will discover with Windows 8. Or, rather, not discover.

I had to look up on Google just how to find and start up  the old familiar programs. Without having the Windows 8 screen right in front of you, it’s too hard to describe how we got it happening, but after some looking, we got Outlook running and set up his e-mail.

But that experience with Outlook is indicative of everything you try to do with Windows 8. Nothing is where it was.

I won’t go through every program we tried to get going. The main conclusion is that we had to ignore everything that was on that big colourful childrens’ tile screen – except the Desktop tile, of course. Every tile that says Mail, Music, Video, Pictures will take you to the Microsoft Store where you have to sign up for a special account and use an “APP” that you’ve never seen or heard of before. These tiles don’t start up the programs you’re used to like Windows Media Player, Photo Gallery, Outlook – just a bunch of stuff that should be running on a cell phone.

The good news is that you can completely disable this new Windows 8 Start screen. There are a few little programs, some free, that let you boot up your computer so it looks just like Windows XP or 7.

That’s what we did. We used a program called Classic Shell that gives you back your regular-looking desktop and your Start button. I don’t know how many people are going to be able to do without such a program.

Windows 8 is for touch screens, plain and simple. In my opinion, it has no place on a regular desktop or laptop computer. At least, not as long as Microsoft forces it’s new way of doing things on its customers.

My clients are practical people.  Most use their computers for e-mail, surfing  the Net, and word processing. All these things are still possible with Windows 8, but not as easy as it once was. It just takes a bit of tweaking, and then Windows 8 will behave very much like Windows 7. But it does take a bit of tweaking.

If all this scares you a bit, and you are in the market for a new computer soon, there are still some systems available with Windows 7. For the next few months, even new computers that come with Windows 8 will be able to have Windows 7 installed on them. The hardware will still be compatible for a while.

Or, you can get a Mac if you want. Linux if you dare.

The final verdict on Windows 8: some people will never acquire the taste for Marmite.