WHAT TO EXPECT IN WINDOWS 8

Follow @USERNAME

The long awaited Windows 8, which
Microsoft expects to make available on October 26, will offer a few major
enhancements – one of them being a new look and feel. The new default Tiles
(what used to be called Metro) interface will show and perform like a mobile
application. This might be a welcome change for Tablet PC users and good news
for apps that are built for them – but not so much for more traditional
computer users. Thankfully, laptop and PC users out there who find that they’re
missing the old Start Menu will also be able to access the de-facto Windows
desktop.

Another big change
is that Windows 8 includes beefed-up free
Internet security. The new version of the Windows Operating
System will come bundled with an enhanced version of Windows Defender, which is
basically Microsoft Security Essentials — the same free security suite
featuring free antivirus and firewall protection that Windows 7 users could
download and install. It’s just now re-branded as Windows Defender, offering
more than the Windows 7 version of the software by the same name, which was
only an antispyware/antimalware solution. 

With the new
Windows Defender, Windows 8 is definitely a step up when it comes to
strengthening the security of the Windows operating system. But does it really
offer enough protection to counter all sorts of attacks across the web? Many
security experts say not quite.

We
can now see how Microsoft has implemented its controversial
decision to enable the Do Not Track setting in Internet Explorer 10 as well. During setup the Do
Not Track setting is listed as the third item in this bulleted list:

If
you choose the Customize option, there's a slider that lets you enable or
disable DNT:

The
most obvious difference after you finish setup is visual: there’s a new
selection of custom backgrounds for the Start screen and the Lock screen.

There's
a greater selection of background colors and "tattoos" for the Start
screen than in the Release Preview. In addition, the desktop has the new flat
look, with no more traces of Aero.

In
PC Settings, the only noticeable addition is an Available Storage block on the
General tab, which makes it easy to see at a glance how much disk space is
free. That measurement is especially critical on tablets and small devices with
limited storage, especially 32GB devices.

One
change is momentous in symbolic terms. The built-in Windows file manager, which
has been called Windows Explorer for 17 years, is now called File Explorer. You
might not notice unless you right-click its icon on the taskbar or search for
it.

During
testing, performance was uniformly excellent, even on a nearly five-year-old
Dell desktop PC. As was the case in the Release Preview, startup and shutdown
are impressively fast, and every app used was quick and responsive.

Most
of the built-in apps have received only modest tweaks from their Release
Preview predecessors. In a note to reviewers, Microsoft said, "The in-box
Microsoft apps we have built for Windows 8 (communications, entertainment,
etc.) will be continuously updated over time via the Windows Store. Some of the
applications will be updated at our next milestone, when Windows 8 is generally
available."

My
experience bears that out. The Mail app, for example, has no new features but a
few UI changes. Music is now called Xbox Music and boasts new options in the
Preferences pane (most notably an option that requires you to sign in before
completing purchases).

One
surprise in the Store was the first official appearance of the Xbox SmartGlass
brand, which replaces the earlier Xbox Companion app.

 

The
story with third-party apps is similar. Several
bugs experienced with third-party apps were further fixed in the latest
release. The RTM code seems, after very brief testing, to work very well with
other Microsoft products and services that are still in preview mode:
Outlook.com, Office 365, and Office 2013 all seem to function properly.

During
the latest Release to Manufacturing (RTC), they were very few surprises in the
Windows 8 interface itself. The Start screen is still on top and the Start menu,
like Francisco Franco, is still dead. If you've been testing Windows 8 for any
length of time, you've probably already formed an opinion about the new design,
and nothing in the final release is likely to change that. The only significant
(and welcome) change  noticed was in
 file search results, where right-clicking an item now displays an app
command that lets you jump to that file's location using Windows Ex... sorry,
File Explorer.

Meanwhile one would say that this
is an important milestone for Windows 8, but it's still just that—between now
and October 26, it's still best suited for evaluation by IT pros and
enthusiasts.