In my previous post I described the process I went through in order to upgrade both my laptop and desktop computers from Windows 7 to Windows 8. Both apparent success stories, except that it really was not on my laptop. After using it for some hours and few days I discovered a bug related to the desktop version of MetroTwit. When I tried to open up the application the process would start up, consuming up to anywhere between 15 and 20 MBs of RAM, and then just freeze up. There was no splash screen, and the application itself never showed up on the desktop. I tried uninstalling both the desktop and Metro-version, then reinstalling the desktop application to no avail. I searched online to see whether anyone else had encountered similar problems, without finding anything. The problem probably had nothing to do with MetroTwit itself, as it ran just fine on my upgraded desktop PC.

I took a hard look at what I had on my laptop, and contemplated formatting the C drive and doing a clean install, but decided against it since I have too much data on that drive that then needed to be moved off it before proceeding (I have back-ups of everything – both on and off site). Lets just say that the sheer size of the workload put me off. I know that Windows 8 comes with some new features allowing you to refresh your operating system, while keeping your files and settings. This meant blowing away all applications, but still not as daunting a task as a complete reinstall would entail. So, as I mentioned in the previous post, after some short contemplation I decided to try this out on the laptop.

In order to start this process you navigate to the Charms bar by either moving the mouse to the lower right corner of the start screen, or by hitting Winkey + C.

You choose Settings which brings up the following;

Here you choose Change PC settings, which brings you onto this full-screen environment

 

Click on General and scroll down until you see these options:

As you can see, you can choose between refreshing your PC without affecting your files or reinstall Windows while removing everything. I chose the first of the two.

The screen then dims down and you are presented with the consequences of your actions. What to do…

 

The OS then starts preparing for the operation

 

As it found it my case, it needed some of the files I have on my Windows 8 USB key

 

After popping in the USB-key and restarting the preparation face, I was notified that it was now ready to refresh my PC

Then it is just to sit back and relax while the system refreshes itself. It will reboot the system, and you will eventually have to go through the intro and setup of your fresh Windows 8 install (as described in my previous post).

The outcome? A fresh copy of Windows 8 on your machine, with no other applications other than your Metro-style apps (eh Windows 8 modern UI apps – whatever). But, all my files and settings were still there. To give an example: After installing a fresh copy of iTunes onto the laptop, my whole library was there, and I was able to sync both my iPhone and iPad without having to wipe them and start over, which I would have had to had I done a complete reinstall of my system. Sweet!

And Windows 8 had also done me the service of putting an html file on my desktop with a list of all the applications I had installed previously. Let’s just say that I have not reinstalled every single one of them, neither will I. But what about MetroTwit you ask? I headed over to the website, downloaded the desktop version, installed it and it is just running as beautiful as it always has. Success!

All in all a perfect way of making sure your system is running like its new, without loosing any of your data. A total win for Windows 8. Killer feature!

Like a lot of you, I got my hands on the Windows Developer Preview of Windows 8, that was made available to the Public following Steven Sinofskis keynote adress on the Build conference earlier this week. I will not provide a review of this build, since it is far from feature complete as well as being pre-beta software.

The Metro-style Interface takes some getting used to, especially since I am having in on a desktop computer without any touch-capabilities, and also having it on a screen with a resolution of 1280×1024.

The Metro-style start-screen

The Start-screen that welcomes you in Windows 8

By moving the mouse to the lower left corner the so-called charm-menu appears – as well as the time and date.

By scrolling right with the mouse the tiles with the applications I have added appears. All these can be rearranged to your own hearts delight.

The classic windows desktop

When hitting the desktop tile on the start-screen you end up here on the classic Windows desktop – sans the classic Start menu.

Internet Explorer 10

There are two versions of Internet Explorer 10 in WDP; this one being the full-screen version Metro-style one.

The Metro-style IE10 does not allow any plug-ins and has a very minimalistic interface.

You can bring up other “tabs” by hitting the right-click button.

 

Hitting the IE-icon in the taskbar brings up the more familiar version of IE10 – which allows plug-ins and add-ons.

The version of IE10 included in the Windows Developer Preview is numbered 10.0.8102.0 – Pre-release version.

Windows Explorer

A lot has been made of the fact that Windows Explorer now includes a ribbon;

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This is the home tab on the Windows Explorer ribbon for the Pictures library.

Here is the Share tab in the Pictures library.

The View-tab on the ribbon looks like this.

And the Manage-tab looks like this.

The Picture Tools Manage-tab looks like this in the Pictures library

The Control Panel

When accessing the Control Panel from the new Metro-style start screen you end up in this view

The more familiar look of the Control Panel is still available – here grouped by category

And here organized by large icons.

Metro-style apps

The weather-app included is just beautiful, with an animated background pictures illustrating present weather-conditions

A native twitter-app is also included; Tweet@rama

It is great-looking, but lacks too much functionality to be of any use.

The RSS News Reader included also gives a good Metro-style view of your feeds latest posts.

Microsoft once again confirmed that an app-store will be available in Windows 8, although not yet available in the Windows Developer Preview

Miscellaneous

By opening the Charm-bar and choosing Settings, you bring up a context sensitive settings menu on the right side of the screen. Here related to the Desktop. Not too many options available yet, although it shows off info on Network, volume, Notifications, language selection and power-options.

The Windows Task Manager has got a new look. This is the rather minimalistic look that greets you when opening it.

By selecting the More details option in the previous image you get this view. Here we see that when you switch between apps in the Metro-style Start-screen the non-active apps are put in a suspend mode.

The Performance tab in the Task Manager also has a revamped view.

There is a new App History view in the Task Manager as well.

Old style Windows applications

“Old style” Windows applications works just like before; here the beautiful Metrotwit application made by Long Zheng.

And here is Word Pad.

 

I have installed Windows Developer Preview in a dual-boot on both my desktop and laptop in order to tinker with it and try out the new UI. I am not completely sold on the UI for a desktop situation quite yet, but will give it a try to see whether this is a good idea or not. The WDP is in no way ready to replace your daily work-environment but if you do have the space available, partition your hard disc and try it out for yourself in order to form your own opinion. You can download the WDP from here.

This will be the future of Windows going forward…

Your thoughts and comments?

 

 

Today, September 15th 2010, Internet Explorer 9 Beta went public. And the only way to sum up my first impressions is – wow – IE is back in the game. I have been using Google Chrome for the last year. I like its simple user interface and speed, compared to IE 8, which became slower and slower to me. IE 9 on the other hand is slick, slim and fast.

I will test the browser more thoroughly in the weeks to come, and will for now only show you some screenshots with my comments after a few hours use. For more in debth information Ed Bott and Paul Thurrott have both written up their impressions after a few weeks use and both articles are really worth reading.

 

If you want to download the beta yourself head on over to the beautyoftheweb.com site to get the bits;

 

Underneath are a few screenshots I have taken that shows IE 9 Beta in action;

 

The IE 9 Beta site that welcomes you after installing it

 

My homepage setup in IE 9 Beta with the LastPass add-in and the Favorites bar.

 

My Hotmail inbox with the taskbar preview of all the tabs showing at the bottom.

 

IE 9 Beta allows you to pin tabs to the taskbar, and for sites to make spesific jump lists for their sites. Paul Thurrotts’ winsupersite.com already has that functionality enabled as seen on this screenshot.

 

The open new tab displays this page. Yes, there is definitely something similar to Chrome here, and I am pretty sure that a lot of people will compare IE 9 Beta to Chrome due to this and the general layout of the browser. It still feels different in all the right places.

Like in Chrome you now search directly from the addressbar. But unlike Chrome the more secure option is default and you have to actively select to turn on search suggestions – which means that your keystrokes are transmitted over the net.

 

Here I have locked the Favorties pane on the left, and here I am missing one of my simple but favorite UI solution from IE 7 and 8; the little blue arrow that pops up on the right side of your bookmarked links which enabled me to with just one click open the link in a new tab. Here I either have to right click and then choose “open link in new tab” or hold down CTRL while clicking the link – Microsoft – please bring back the blue right arrow.

 

To sum it up; Impressive and a total redesign of Internet Explorer. It is fast, it is good looking, it has great integration with Windows 7 and it really looks promising going forward. I have already made it my default browser and it will be interesting to see how I feel about it after more regular use of it. If you are using some other browser, it being an older version of IE or one of the competing browsers like Firefox or Chrome you ought to test this one out – you will be positively surprised

 

Two thumbs up!