Windows 8 is an odd, discombobulated beast of an operating system that suffers from an identity crisis of the most severe degree. On the one hand, the primary focus of Windows 8 is to bring touchscreen tablets into the Windows fold, but at the same time it cannot eschew the billions of mouse-and-keyboard users who use Windows on a daily basis, and the millions of developers and specialists whose livelihoods revolve around the Windows Desktop ecosystem.
Whether you use Windows 8 on a tablet or desktop, x86 or ARM, or something else entirely, this paradigmatic rift will always be there. With months of use you can push Windows 8’s interface conflicts and foibles to the back of your mind, but the rift is always there, an inescapable pestilence that lurks in your shadow and sticks a wetted finger in your ear when you least expect it.
The good news, though — if you’re a tablet user, anyway — is that the touch/mouse-and-keyboard schism is much more evident on desktops. In fact, if it wasn’t for a few niggling issues that should’ve been sorted out by now, I would even say that Windows 8 is a fantastic tablet operating system. To get the full story, read on — or, hit up our review of desktop Windows, if touch isn’t your thing.
For this review I am using Windows 8 Pro (x86) on a Samsung Series 7 tablet (pictured above). On the front there’s a 11.6-inch 1366×768 display, around the edges there are USB, micro-HDMI, and micro SD slots, and under the hood there’s an Intel Core i5-2467M CPU (dual-core Sandy Bridge, HD 3000 integrated graphics) clocked at 1.6GHz, 4GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD. In short, it’s one of the best tablets on the market. My only complaint, as you will see later, is that the screen is actually too big for Windows 8. You should also bear in mind that your Windows 8/RT experience, on wimpy ARM or Atom processors, might not be quite as slick as mine.
With that out of the way, my first impressions of Windows 8 on a tablet are very good. The first-run experience is smooth — and when you’re finally dumped on the Metro Start screen, and the live tiles burst into life, you immediately want to start touching things. The Start screen is by far the most fluid and agile interface I have ever used. It seems weird to say this, but flicking my way around the Metro interface is almost joyous.
And then, as the adrenaline begin to run dry and the elation fades, you realize that you should probably stop pawing at your tablet and attempt to actually do something. This is where Windows 8 starts to run into trouble.