Introduction

Introduction

With Windows 8 upgrades, new Windows 8 PCs and Windows 8 tablets having been released at the end of October 2012, the operating system has now been in stores for quite a while.

As well as including the traditional desktop, Windows 8 also ushers in a new Start Screen. This works in the same way as the old Start Menu, although it opens full screen and is also a place you can launch and use new Windows 8-style apps - essentially full-screen, tablet-style apps.

The first thing you should know about Windows 8 is the versions available - we have more guidance on that here: Windows 8 versions: which is right for you?.

With the final version plus various updates since, the integrated Windows 8-style apps are now far, far better than they were originally. Even the previously disappointing apps such as Mail, Calendar, Messaging and People are sleek and far more functional. More updates are on the way, notably with Windows 8.1, due over the coming months.

Check out our roundups of the latest Windows 8 devices to buy:

Running Windows 8

First of all, it's worth noting that the finished version of Windows 8 is still only for x86/64 PCs; there isn't a version of the specially-made Windows RT for ARM devices that you can download and install on existing devices. It's only available on released tablets such as Microsoft Surface RT. We've also looked at the newer Windows 8.1 RT version of that OS, too.

 Windows 8 doesn't include the desktop Office apps that will be bundled with Windows RT either and of course it runs all the x86 desktop apps that won't work on RT. It also has the optional Windows Media Center.

Windows 8 system requirements

You need a 1GHz or faster CPU (it also needs to support PAE or PAE-NX Physical Address Extension for new security features in the Windows 8 kernel), 1GB of RAM (or 2GB for 64-bit systems), 20GB of hard drive space and a DirectX 9 graphics card with WDDM driver.
  • Windows 8 vs Windows RT: what's the difference?  
 If you want to use the Windows Store to download WinRT apps, you need a screen resolution of at least 1024 x 768, and if you want to snap two WinRT apps side by side, that goes up to a minimum of 1366 x 768.

Installing and upgrading

When you buy Windows 8 online you'll get a step by step download and installation, complete with the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant to warn you about program and hardware compatibility issues, or you can buy a DVD.

How much of a previous Windows system you can keep when you install Windows 8 depends on which version you're upgrading from; upgrade from Windows 7 and you can keep programs, Windows settings and files; upgrade from Vista and keep settings and files. Upgrading from Windows XP only gives you your personal files.
If you're installing Windows 8 Enterprise, you activate it once it's installed (and the system for that was still being set up when we started testing, so it wasn't seamless but this what you'll see as a normal user).

Modern Ui Interface

Once you activate Windows 8 you can personalise the Start and Lock screens. You can choose from one of 25 colour schemes. Some of these are extremely bright - the vivid pink background is quite the eye-opener – others have grey or black backgrounds with an accent colour.

 There's also a selection of 20 different abstract designs too, ranging from plain to detailed to some quite strange and quirky images with floating mountains and swimming birds. Pick an animal, mechanical or musical theme or choose from the more abstract designs. 

  A nice touch is that as you scroll the Start screen, the design you choose scrolls along; especially on a touchscreen tablet, we reckon you'd probably get a bit of motion sickness if it didn't. But the designs are so carefully put together that they scale smoothly to the size of the screen and you never see an ugly join where it wraps. 

 Navigating the 'modern' interface, is no more puzzling than any other new interface. Swipe up from the Lock screen, press the right arrow or right-click to get started. If you've added your Microsoft account or set a password you can type it in, or add a Picture Password so you can tap or swipe rather than typing on a touch screen. 

 Press the Windows Start key (or turn on your PC) and you get the new-look Start screen instead of a Start menu. It's bigger, brighter, bolder, much more personal – and much more controversial, even though you can go for hours or days at a time without seeing it. This shows tiles for key apps, desktop programs and settings, but not everything that's installed. 

 Drag to move tiles around, from group to group or to make a new group. As you drag a tile into the gap between two groups, when you position it between them a vertical grey bar appears to show that you're creating a new group to put it in.

Swipe from the left side of the screen and you switch to the next app in the stack (which might be the desktop); throw your mouse into the top left corner and you get an icon showing you what app that will be that you can click to switch. Putting your mouse pointer in the bottom left corner shows an icon to click for the Start screen which feels more like a rectangular Start button than an unwelcome reminder of Metro (unless you're on the Start screen already, when it gets you the icon for the next app on the stack), plus hints for the thumbnails in the switching pane.



 On a touch screen you do that by pausing as you drag from the left and then drag back. If you only drag back a little, you snap the next app into a window taking up a third of the screen, if you drag further back, you get the switching pane. The desktop and any desktop apps show up as a single thumbnail here; if you snap the desktop next to a Metro app you can have a desktop slightly smaller than full screen, or a thumbnail list of running desktop apps, depending on whether you snap it into the smaller or larger tile. 

Charms and settings

Microsoft has continued tweaking the charms and the controls they bring up, like the Settings bar. Where the pre-release versions of Windows 8 favoured boring and obvious over cute but potentially confusing, the final version nails the interface with controls that are both cute and functional.
Take the keyboard icon on the Settings bar; this has gone from an icon to an abbreviation for the keyboard language you're using, to an icon that opens a menu with two options – open the on-screen keyboard so you can type something, or change the keyboard language.

 
 

 The network icon shows you the current network connection and opens a pane with available networks and an airplane mode slider to turn off all the radios. And the power icon produces a popup menu with Sleep, Shutdown and Restart (if you want to add Hibernation, that is hidden away in the advanced power options in the desktop control panel because it will be much less relevant on new machines with Connected Standby). 

Search, Share and Settings are what Microsoft calls contracts; they're something apps can sign up to use. Settings shows you the settings for the current app but you can always choose Change PC settings at the bottom for a much simpler version of the key options from control panel. There's one new feature here in the final version; under General you can see how much space all the 'modern' style apps you have installed use up (remember, you can uninstall any 'modern' app, even one pre-loaded by an OEM, by right-clicking it icon on the Start screen and choosing Uninstall). 

Whether you want a file, a program, an email message or a specific photograph, you can search for it wherever you are using the Search charm. The initial results are context sensitive (unless you use the keyboard combination to start a file search).

Think of it as the new universal clipboard. This could be one of the more exciting tools in Windows 8 and we're starting to see apps take advantage of it. In the end, the 'modern' interface is only going to be as useful and interesting as the apps that run in it.

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