Windows 8 Review

As expected, Microsoft is using its Build developer conference to distribute a pre-beta, developer preview version of Windows 8 (for x86 PCs only; the hardware to run the ARM version on isn't finished yet).

Windows 8 is Microsoft's combined desktop, laptop and tablet operating system, designed to go from 10-inch touch-only tablets to big screens in your living room, from ultra-portable notebooks to massive gaming systems and business desktops.

You can check out our Windows 8 preview video below:

It's got the Windows Phone 7 Metro-style touch interface of live tiles, the Metro programming model for building web apps and native apps that run full screen and share information.

• 50 Windows 8 tips, tricks and secrets

Windows 8 also features gestures to put two apps on screen side by side, and the traditional Windows desktop for when you need richer apps like the ones we've been using in Windows for years.

That's a combination no other single operating system can offer - but how well does it work?

The inspiration of Windows Phone 7's Metro interface is clear in the interface for the Windows 8 Lock screen and Start screen (which completely replaces the Start menu).

But this isn't a slavish copy of the phone operating system look.

It still has the live tiles and the personalisation, enabling you to pin people, RSS feeds and web pages alongside apps. But it's more colourful, more flexible and better designed, to enable you to arrange and explore large numbers of apps.

Windows 8 interface

You can customise both the image you see on the Windows 8 Lock screen and the details of unread emails and missed instant messages that it shows. And you can pin desktop apps such as Office or Task Manager, and even a link to the desktop, to the Lock screen.

You can group tiles together - giving groups a name or leaving them blank - and make any tile single or double width. Just swipe the tile up a little to get the option to change the size, unpin the app or uninstall it completely.

You'll be able to do that for pre-installed Metro software too (which is what Microsoft is encouraging OEMs to bundle on new Windows 8 PCs).

As well as moving a tile to a new location by dragging it, you can also drag it up to the top of the screen with one finger and hold it there while you swipe across the screen to get to where you want to drop it - a much easier way of dealing with a long list of tiles.

Future builds of Windows 8 will also enable you to pinch to zoom out so you can see all the tiles on screen at once, and rearrange groups at the same time.

Once you launch apps, you can use gestures to arrange them. Swiping from the left switches to the next app, but you can also swipe and drag to put two apps on a screen side by side - and one of those can be the Windows desktop.

There are only three window sizes for apps arranged like this (counting full screen), so that developers don't have to worry about making an infinite number of layouts look good. One app is a thin QVGA 'snap' view on either side of the screen, and the other is a larger VGA full view - which is why this only works on 1366-resolution widescreen PCs.

But if the Windows 8 desktop is in full view you can still use Aero Snap to arrange two windows, and if it's in snap view you get thumbnails for all the running desktop apps that you can tap to open.

This is a good combination of enabling you to use two apps at once on a tablet. This is something only the occasional dual-screen Android tablets enable you to do, and then only for a limited number of apps. It also makes it easy to switch from Metro apps to desktop apps and back.

Swipe in from the right of the screen and you get what Microsoft is calling the Windows 8 "charms": search and share, which work across different apps; devices and settings; plus a button for switching between the Start menu and the desktop.

The Settings charm gives you the settings for the current Metro application plus options for volume, brightness, notifications, networking, switching language and choosing to sleep, shut down or restart.

It's great to have one place to do that in every application. It's also a logical place for commands such as Restart that used to be on the Start menu, because there was nowhere else to put them. We kept looking in there for a link to the Control Panel, which is currently just a tile on the Start screen.

It would be more logical to put a link here for more settings, in the same way that the friendly Control Panel interface organises the most common options clearly, with a link to the desktop control panel for other settings (and you can still search for specific control panels just like searching for an app or file).

Open an app that needs the Windows desktop and you get the familiar desktop view with Recycle Bin, task bar and Start button.

But the Start button opens the Start screen again - the Start menu is gone in Windows 8.

The look of the desktop and desktop apps will change before the Windows 8 release date. We're expecting the new-look Task Manager to be a clue to the final interface style, but the ribbon makes an appearance in Explorer. This is always controversial, but we think it works well for organising options and tools together.

If you use multiple monitors, you finally get better desktop management. You can have the Start screen on one monitor and the desktop on the other, which keeps the two interfaces separate.

But if you're using multiple screens it's more likely you're using desktop apps, so you'll like the option to duplicate the task bar on both screens or pick which icons you see on the task bar for each screen. You can also finally put a different desktop background on each screen.

Windows 8 search

There's no Start menu in Windows 8, but you can search as if it was still there. Hit the Start button on the keyboard (or on a tablet PC) and start typing. The results you see on screen are for apps, so you don't have to go swiping through the tiles to launch programs. But you also see if there are matches in settings or file names.

You can pick apps that you can search directly here, including social and music apps and Internet Explorer, which searches on Bing.

This is the way sharing works too; choose the Share charm and you can pick a contact to email or a social app that has signed up for sharing, so you could send a tweet or upload a photo to Facebook the same way from any Metro app. How successful this is depends on how many apps use these features, which is something developers have to build into their apps.

Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8

IE10 runs in Windows 8's Metro interface as well as the desktop. If you want to change settings - such as turning on the Tracking Protection Lists or saving a favourite or home page - you'll need to swipe for the app bar and tap the button to open the page on the desktop.

Swiping also shows the address bar and the list of open tabs. Press the '+' button to open a new tab; press and hold to open a new tab for InPrivate browsing that doesn't save cookies or history. Most of the time that's all you need from a browser, so IE 10 works very well as a Metro app.

It also works well as a modern browser - it has the vast majority of usable standards in HTML 5 and CSS 3, it's fast because of the hardware acceleration and it has excellent security thanks to SmartScreen.

Internet Explorer 10 in Windows 8 also still has Flash, Silverlight and all the other plug-ins that other tablet browsers often lack.

Windows 8 applications

Metro apps don't have to work the same way in Windows 8 as Microsoft apps, but some things are consistent. Swipe up from the bottom of the screen or down from the top and the app bar and any controls appears. This is similar to the Windows Phone 7 menu gesture, but is better suited to the larger screen.

The developer preview has a couple of dozen Metro apps, from utilities for setting alarms to games to the obligatory Facebook and Twitter tools.

One of these is a media app, which is fun but basic. We haven't yet seen Media Center or Windows Media Player or Zune for Windows 8. You can paint with your fingers, handwrite notes and reminders, or waste hours reading RSS feeds laid out like magazine pages.

These Windows 8 apps were written by Microsoft interns in 10 weeks this summer, and they range from pretty but basic (Tweet@rama isn't going to replace Seesmic) to accelerometer games that are huge fun to play.

They're very like Windows Phone apps scaled up, and they're easily better than many trivial apps for Android tablets and the iPad. While they don't match the best apps on other platforms, they bode well for what developers with more time and inspiration will be able to deliver.

The Live apps for Metro look impressive, although again they're not in this Windows 8 pre-beta developer preview build.

The Mail app has a very Windows Phone look, but uses the widescreen space well to show folders or accounts as well as your inbox and messages.

The calendar app has a nice two-day view as well as week and month views, and overlays multiple calendars from Windows Live.

The People app aggregates your contacts from Windows Live, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Exchange. It looks remarkably like the Windows Phone version, down to the icon for linking contact entries that are the same person.

The Photos app grabs your pictures from Facebook and Flickr as well as SkyDrive, and even from PCs that you connect to remotely through SkyDrive.

Windows 8 app creation

Desktop Windows apps are the same Windows apps they've always been, at least on x86. At this point, although we've seen a prototype ARM Windows version of Office, Microsoft is saying that all ARM applications will be Metro apps.

But that doesn't mean they have to be just web apps. Developers can write Metro apps that use the new Windows 8 runtime application interfaces in HTML, CSS and JavaScript - or in Visual Basic, C#, C++ or Silverlight. However, Silverlight code designed to run on Windows Phone 7 or in a browser will need some fairly minor changes to make it work as a Metro app.

Metro apps run in their own sandboxes for security, and while they can use your location - if you give them permission - access files and share information with other apps, that's limited to accessing documents and pictures rather than being able to get at the whole file system.

The developer tools for creating Metro apps are the same powerful tools Microsoft has for writing standard Windows programs and Windows Phone apps, but with templates for the Metro layouts. These include full screen, snap view and full view in landscape and portrait at different screen resolutions.

This broad language support should reassure developers who have been complaining about lack of Silverlight support since ex-Microsoft server chief Bob Muglia suggested last year that Silverlight was being sidelined. We're not sure why Microsoft didn't come out and explain the position much earlier.

Now developers can concentrate on building interesting apps, and we're looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

Windows Store

We've seen a preview of the Windows Store, but it's not in the developer preview of Windows 8. The Store is a Metro app that looks similar to the Windows Phone Marketplace, but it'll include desktop apps as well.

You can search for something specific or browse the categories, which highlight new apps as well as top rated, top free and top paid apps. Developers can offer trial versions and see how popular their apps are and what errors have been reported.

Windows chief Steven Sinofsky suggested that Microsoft would also learn from Apple's mistakes and allow in-app purchasing, but there's no news on what the charges to developers will be.

Windows 8 cloud integration and synchronisation

Install an app from the Windows Store and it will show up on all your PCs. Give it a Live account and Windows 8 will also sync settings between all your PCs. It'll sync your desktop background, lock screen, what you have pinned to the task bar, IE favourites, passwords and your browsing history so you can find the page you were looking at, whether you opened it at home or at work.

You can also use SkyDrive to access one PC from another, remotely over the web, even if it's behind a firewall. This is how the Photos app will be able to get images from your different PCs.

Metro apps can also sync information using SkyDrive, although if they have a lot of data they have to ask permission before they fill up your space. Desktop apps can do the same, but coding that up isn't as simple.