Octahedral symmetry

Oct 03, 2011 - Akshit Goyal |

Age Correspondent

In a “post-PC world”, as Steve Jobs likes to call it, Microsoft is completely cornered. It’s very clear that it's desperate to strike a chord with the new tablet generation, and trust me, with the Windows 8 developer preview they released recently; they’ve proved that they're working really, really hard. Here are a few general impressions.
The Metro UI (from Windows Phone 7) has been brought over to the PC, and it’s surprising, but it just works amazingly out of the box. You’ve got a set of tiles, each of which represents an application and many of which show information and notifications that correspond to the app. For example, your email tile will tell you how many unread emails you have (and who they’re from), your calendar tile will show upcoming events; your music tile will show you what’s playing, and so on. What’s even more amazing is that you can switch over to the traditional Windows 7 interface anytime. It just works!
Microsoft mentioned a few times that Windows 8 was supposed to bring a hefty performance boost along with it, and even at this preliminary stage, it’s quite evident. Windows 8 is fast, alright. I noticed almost half the boot times even on my ageing machine compared with Windows 7. It’s faster at pretty much everything.
It’s designed primarily with touch in mind, and it’s amazing how well it pulls off. The entire OS is built around large, accessible icons that make using it with your fingers a breeze. Seriously, watch the videos and you’ll be drooling over the tablets for a while.
What’s not so noticeable, but still stands out in the long run, are the somewhat subtle or minor changes to the experience. The app interface, for example, is streamlined and user-friendly. The App Store works (though there’s frankly not a lot of innovation here). There’s cloud syncing over Live. The new explorer and task manager make things really exciting.
Everything about this preview screams out that Microsoft wants to win this race and consolidate their market share in this category, once and for all. Check out the preview yourself, at http://bit.ly/ q0HyaP, and let us know what you think.

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