I'm sure we all have seen the Windows 8 videos by razethew0rld, but there actually is some hidden potential for laptop/desktop users. I'm going to briefly describe features I have come to love and show you how I use them via screenshots. For the record, I'm not a Windows fanboy. I own a wide variety of things from various technology companies, this post is in no way biased towards Windows over any other operating system. It's just me showing you how I use it.
So first, I'll show you my Start layout.
As you can see, I've grouped my tiles into a more organized fashion. You may also notice that the 'genre' of app tiles are in close proximity to eachother. Such as the photo apps being close together. Google app, chrome, index file search, YouTube, are all next to eachother, So I don't have to go from one side of the layout to the other to get work done, it's all in one place where I need it.
Moving along, here is probably my favorite feature out of Windows 8 entirely. The apps. Here in the store we see a wide variety of apps we can download, a lot of these apps you can't find a PC program for. But here they are, for me to play on my laptop. A lot of the app developers are aware that not all Windows 8 users have a touchscreen, just a mouse and keyboard, so they make their apps in compatability to accomodate this. I have come across some apps that were touch only. Note: There are indeed free apps. If you click on one that has a price, a lot of times you'll see a "Try" button next to the "Buy" button.
Here I am playing Angry Birds Space directly from the Start screen using only my touchpad. It's fullscreen as you can see and runs well.
Okay. Hmmm. Let's do something different. First off, I don't know why you'd want to do this unless you had one muted, probably the game, but let's play Angry Birds Space WHILE watching the latest razethew0rld video.
That's pretty cool. Though I hate that you can't move the dividing bar closer to the center for a bigger video size. Hopefully that gets fixed in the future, and if it already has by the time you read this, good on you Microsoft. You can also watch the video and run your desktop beside it. So you essentially have a virtual secondary monitor, one to watch the video, the other to do work. Cool, but I'd get distracted.
Here's another use for the dividing.
So as you can see, the dividing bar is handy for performing multiple tasks at once. It still needs improvement though.
In a nutshell, that is how I use Windows 8 on a daily basis. I know it's not much, but if there's something you'd like for me to show you then let me know and I will update this post for you.
Do I like Windows 8? On a scale of 1 to 5, I'd have to say 3. The pros and cons are generally equal in my opinion. I would not recommend Windows 8 if you are planning on doing system administration work. However, you could probably just skip the Start screen and go straight to the desktop, some programs allow you to do that. If that's the case, then I'd stick to Windows 7 until Microsoft 'fixes' Windows 8. Unless you really want the sleeker desktop UI experience, then by all means. Windows 8 isn't the worst OS to be released, but it's far from the best. Get to work, Microsoft.