Top 5 Windows 8 Nuggets

by Bryon D Beilman

As a technology firm we work hard to understand upcoming technology before our customers do so that we can provide advice based on real experience. We did this with Vista, Windows 7 and now Windows 8.  Although Vista proved to be painful and Windows 7 was a marked improvement from Vista, Windows 8 is both an improvement and a challenge because the user interface is so different.  One of my colleagues said when he was handed a windows 8 laptop "It looks like a smart phone puked on a laptop".  I could see where is was coming from as Windows 8 is much more functional on a tablet or touch screen than it is on a device that does not have touch screen.

After working with windows 8 for a few weeks, here are my top 5 discoveries that will hopefully help you or give you insight on how to use it.

1) Start menu is virtually gone, everything is found via search

Go to the upper right hand corner and a magnifying glass shows up in the right hand side. Search for the application or file you want. You may need to know what you are looking for, however it does present a group of icons for installed applications. They all appear on your screen.  The search is very fast, in fact nearly instantaneous.

2) Opening more than one instance of an application

If you are like me, you might have 2-10 putty windows or Remote desktops.  If you want to launch it and go to search, typing putty if it is already running will just go to the existing putty. It behaves like nothing is happening.  To launch a second instance, Type the app (in this example putty)

Right click on putty and another Menu appears on the bottom, from here you can open it in a new window , or perhaps run as administrator if required.

 3. Application compatibility

Virtually all of the applications I had before installed correctly. There were a few that had trouble, namely winpCap , which is a set of libraries that Wireshark uses.  To install older apps, you can right click on the app and select properties.  There is now a new tab in properties, called "Compatibility". You can select the app to run in an older version of an operating system.

 4. Full screen apps

One of the most frustrating items for me on day one was that I would open a PDF document and it would immediately go to full screen with no apparent way to change it, close it or move it around.  When this happens, you merely need to move your mouse to the top of the screen, you will see a hand show up that will allow you  drag the window down and once to the bottom, it will close.  This still is my least favorite feature of windows 8, but there is at least a way to control it.

5. Windows Explorer

Windows explorer is now more powerful. The top ribbon is now much more context sensitive.  If you select Computer,  you will automatically see Control Panel, Manage and other admin like functions.   The way that windows explorer works is much better than previous versions of the OS.

There are of course many other features of Windows 8 and perhaps ones I have yet to discover, but these are the top 5 that I discovered in my first two weeks of intense use.