Windows 8 review

DISJOINTED

So far Windows 8 sounds pretty good, with an improved Desktop sitting next to a full-screen Start menu replacement. However, it’s the way in which these two systems interact, or rather don’t, that starts to cause problems.

For example, there’s a new PC Settings Start Screen app, which acts like a simplified Control Panel replacement. It’s incredibly easy to use, with simple on/off switches for most settings, but, it doesn’t let you do everything and, in some cases, it doesn’t even let you do simple things. For example, you can create a User using PC Settings, but you can’t set it as an Administrator or delete the account; to do this, you have to switch back to the old Control Panel using the Desktop.

The new PC Settings app is really easy to use, but you’ll have to go back to the old Control Panel for some jobs, such as deleting a user account

Some things you absolutely have to do through the Desktop, such as managing hard disk partitions. These jobs are more frustrating as there’s no Computer icon by default – in previous versions of Windows, right-clicking on Computer gave you access to a lot of powerful functions. You can add Computer to the Desktop easily, but we preferred to use the Windows-X shortcut, which brings up a menu with options for Device Manager, Disk Management and Control Panel, among others. Quite why Microsoft can’t put all of the options in one place is beyond us, as it can be frustrating searching through the Start Screen app only to find it has a limited choice of options.

The Desktop quick menu is a lifesaver for all of those management tasks you’ll still need to do

JUST BROWSING

Another niggle is the web browser. This is set to Internet Explorer 10 by default, which can run in Desktop and Start Screen modes. The mode is chosen automatically based on where you launch the app from: so Desktop if you click the IE10 icon on the Taskbar and Start Screen if you launch it from there. This means you have to have the browser pinned to the Taskbar to run it in Desktop mode, or it will always start in Start Screen mode.

There’s little difference between the two versions, bar the Start Screen version running full-screen, having a simpler interface and limiting the range of internet options you can touch. Fortunately, Microsoft has fixed the issue in the Consumer Preview where you couldn’t access Favorites from the Start Screen version or Pinned sites from the Desktop version. You can replace IE10 with Chrome and, if you set Chrome as your default browser, it will run in Desktop and Start Screen modes. Strangely, you have to log both versions of Chrome into your Google account if you want to synchronise your bookmarks, passwords and history. It’s a shame that there’s no interconnect between a Live screen app and the Desktop.

You can run IE10 in both Desktop and Start screen modes