Here is a quick summary of my first impression with the consumer preview of Windows 8.  There are things I liked and some I did not like (or at least items that need some work).  I will say right away that despite the fact that the list of annoyances is longer than the list of things I liked, that I absolutely love where they are going with this.  Will it take some getting used too?  You bet, but in the end we will have a very rich user experience on both the desktop as well portable devices.  The key will be well written apps that will make or break the experience.  Some of the apps demoed in this consumer preview are some of the worst I have seen to date, especially when used on the desktop.  I have no doubt they will clean them up and enhance them.  Certainly when 3rd party developers get up to speed, we will begin seeing some great stuff that will amplify the experience.  In the meantime, we have to use some imagination to see the possibilities.

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Things I really like

  • Desktop navigation is pretty functional and very fluid once you get used to it.

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  • Seems to run very well on lower end hardware.  Navigation was very fluid on dedicated hardware but sluggish on VM’s.
  • New File Manger in the desktop mode has some nice additions for file management.
  • SkyDrive integration is pretty awesome and works very well.  Response is fast allows for quick navigation through your content.

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Music app is great once you figure out that your music needs to be in your library and that you cannot simply point to a music folder (see comments below).

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Here is some of the issues I ran into that hopefully will get addressed before the final release.

  • Occasional Issues running via remote desktop.  Scaling is off and operation was a bit sluggish.
  • LogMeIn did not work at all with it. Continuously disconnected and locked up.  I am sure that this is a Logmein issue as Teamviewer worked fine (thanks for lead Michael).  Still indicates to me some level of incompatibilities
  • People App is one of the worst apps on this preview in myh opinion.  It is useless and wastes the screen space while containing almost no information.
  • Libraries.  In order for things to show up (music, pictures, movies) they must be in the local library of the PC as opposed to pointing to a location.  In order to add a share from your NAS or sever, you have to add to the library using the file manager which seems counterintuitive.  This worked for Music and Video but did not work for pictures.  This whole concept needs some work as it makes it difficult for people with centralized storage.  This was the area I found that needs the most work.
  • Store is a bit confusing and as it grows, it will be difficult to find things. Tiles are a bit big and the layout will not lend itself to finding things as the shear number of apps grows.

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  • Photos app does not pickup network share nor does it pick up pictures that are in shares within the library.  All it gave me was these huge squared with no content despite having thousands of pictures.

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  • Yahoo not supported in the email app (interesting as they are partners) nor can you add other accounts except Google, Exchange and Hotmail.  I am sure this will get addressed before the release however for now Yahoo or Pop 3 users are out of luck.
  • Messaging app is pretty bad for the desktop.  It looks like it will be nice on a tablet however.

 

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  • Multi-tasking may be challenging and will take some getting used to especially if you like allot of windows on your screen.
  • Video playback from the Video app is very poor and plays choppy video over my network even on a Core I5-2500.  Codecs are obviously not yet optimized nor is the networking.

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  • Tile Size in some apps and menus are way too large and do not appear to adjustable.
  • When Doing a split screen, you cannot resize the either view making it less than ideal on a larger screen.  More options for tuning are necessary.

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Conclusion

Take Windows 8 for what it is going to be as well as where we are today.  Your work habits and use case will probably change.  Know that you are going to do things differently going forward with the promise of user consistency from desktop to tablet.  Consider that this is the most aggressive move Microsoft has made in its history, and despite how polished it is now, come October, this should be a killer OS.