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Windows 8 Consumer Preview

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PCQ Bureau
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Snapshot

Applies to: Everyone

USP: Explore the new features in Windows 8

Primary Links:http://ld2.in/3vr, http://ld2.in/43w

Search engine keywords: Windows 8



So far we have covered Windows 8 Developers Preview and how Windows 8 would be useful for SMEs. This time we get our hands on Windows 8 Consumer Preview. We checked out different applications and features and how Windows 8 actually synchronizes with social networking websites and devices. Here's what we found.





The All New Desktop

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When you login to your Windows user account you are welcomed with the Metro UI. You may start looking for the Start button but won't get it because it is gone. Yes! When you take your pointer to the bottom left corner it will show you the thumbnail of the location you can visit. It also shows you the list of applications that you have opened and those that are in the suspended state (just like in Android 3.0 Honeycomb). A Desktop tile is also provided in the Metro UI. Click on it and you will be on the desktop. To get back to the Metro UI take your pointer to the bottom left corner and select the Metro UI thumbnail.



Viewing Photos Made Richer



This application lets you view pictures from Flickr, Facebook, SkyDrive and from local hard disk also. This is something interesting and looks good. We tried to login to Facebook. After you've logged in, install a small Windows Live application which needs permission to fetch images and videos from your Facebook account. Once the installation is complete it will provide you with those images. Now within the Metro UI you can check your Facebook images, in the tile form or as a slideshow. The best thing about this is that it is a straight forward process.

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Syncing Info From Multiple Accounts



This application aggregates information from multiple accounts. You can add your Windows Live, Hotmail, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, LinkedIn and Exchange accounts. We first tried to add our Windows Live account. After adding this account we were able to import contacts form this account. This is taken care of automatically if you log in using your Windows Live account (as in our case). It also shows you the status of the contact, whether the person is online or not. If you click on any link then you get the option to send an email or a message. On selecting the message option, a messaging app gets opened and you can chat with that person or send an offline message. We tried to add our Twitter account. It was again a very simple process. After entering the account information we checked the tweets under the 'What's New' tab. We were able to see only three tweets on the screen (you have to scroll for others) with each tweet taking the full screen height. The integration between different apps like Messaging and People is quite nice and interesting.





Messaging



Again if you have logged in using your Windows account, then that account will automatically be added here. You can add other accounts also for chatting and messaging. But the bad part is that only Facebook can be added. It won't let you add your Gmail or Yahoo accounts.





SkyDrive



SkyDrive is Microsoft's online storage service that offers you 25 GB of free space (yes it is 25 GB). While previous versions of Windows require you to access SkyDrive using browser or Windows Live Mesh, in Windows 8, the SkyDrive tile in Metro UI lets you access it just like any other drive. You can save your information on SkyDrive as a backup and can restore it on other systems. Just go to 'Sync your Settings' under the Settings option. The SkyDrive is not just limited to this. When you open its interface you can simply select the files or photos that you can store on the SkyDrive. Downloading a file from the SkyDrive is again quite simple. Just right click on the file you want to save on your drive and click on 'Save Local' option, and you are done.





The Windows Store



This time we got a hands-on experience of the Windows Store. It is functional now and has a tile within the Metro UI. Once you click on this tile, you shall see apps within the Metro UI. Applications are divided into different categories like games, social, entertainment, music and videos, etc. For the time being the number of applications in the Store is limited. To check whether we can install applications or not we tried to install a WordPress application. It got installed swiftly and started functioning as well.



Microsoft seems to be serious about "one size fits all" notion and it shows when you work with Windows 8. Synchronization with different social networking accounts and messengers is really good. Inclusion of the SkyDrive gives it an extra edge over previous versions (but that is not the only reason). Within the Metro UI you can see live feeds on different tiles. In our case, we started getting live updates to our email account, WordPress, finance data and weather. We find the Windows 8 Consumer Preview interesting to work shall come up with more on this and keep you updated.

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