Windows 8

So had some time over the “silly” season to install and play with Windows 8. I downloaded the Developers Preview 64 bit . Which includes:

• 64-bit Windows 8 Developer Preview;
• Windows SDK for Metro style apps
• Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows 8 Developer Preview;
• Microsoft Expression Blend 5 Developer Preview;
• 28 Metro style apps including the BUILD Conference app;

Not wanting to compromise my current OS installed I opted to install it in a VM using VitualBox.

The install at least worked and it was up and running however one thing that I noticed is that it is a lot more hungry on memory, which is understandable, however I think Microsoft can do a  lot more to ease up on the HW utilization.

It was interesting to explore the Sample applications which was provided in this bundle, however none of them really got me exited and I must be honest I do not believe that I will use them going forward, but I must also mention that this view  is from a business perspective.

I found the keyboard and mouse combo odd as Windows 8 was designed from the ground up with finger input interaction and it is clear that Windows 8 is optimized for touch, I just wonder how well this will be received by the normal day-to-day business user running Windows 8 on his trusty Laptop. I guess that the Business user will shoo away the live tiles when real work has to be done.

On of the annoying things (well it did annoy me but I have been told to be a bit odd) ,clicking Start whisks you straight into Metro-land, so a lot of keyboard shortcuts needs to be used to get around this.

From time to time Windows 8 felt very unfamiliar to me, simple things like how to Shut Down or put your Laptop to Sleep. I guess a lot of this is linked to habits, i.e. tapping the Home button on phones.

It seems that the learning curve is a lot steeper that I imagined at first, as it will take time to get use to the new interface and the way that you interact with the glossy live tiles.

I do believe that the change moving from Windows 7 to Windows 8 is big especially considering the business user, mostly because of it being very unfamiliar and the amount of “getting used to” or perhaps learning that will be required to get around.

It would be interesting to see what Microsoft will add or change from now until the official release, and how long it will take for big Organizations to deploy Windows 8 in their enterprise.