First Impressions:
While I am awaiting the DL for my desktop here is what I thought of the netbook experience so far
Netbook: EeePC Touch MT101??, 2GB ram, 160GB HDD, Atom N450
1) The Origami Fish needs to go... so random... The new Windows logo can go as well.
2) Install, Boot, and Wake times are all decreased from Dev8, so good work on cutting bloat and getting things moving faster. 64bit runs smooth on an Atom... Can't imagine how fast this is going to be on an i7 with 16GB of ram...
3) Touch experience is MUCH improved! The screen is now pressure sensitive and supports multi-touch (nither of which worked properly under Win7 or Dev8). Pressure sensitive is a huge factor as it make the touch much more mouse like. Soft touch gets you access to the charms, and other edge commands, while normal/hard touch acts as a click. As it was before, touch and hold acts as rt. click. As the screen was not designed for pressure sensitivity I think it is trying to emulate it somehow and it is really finikey... but it does work, and I am learning to adjust.
4) 64bit version of the graphics driver does not support resolution scaling/stretching... In short I could not play with the Metro apps as I was stuck in 1024x600, and the apps require 1024x768. I will install the 32bit version tomorrow and use the 32bit GMA3150 driver to get access Metro proper. So far though things like scrolling and program switching all work much better.
5) Colors! We can now get rid of that god-awful green they used in Dev8... granted we are still stuck with earthtones... but at least they look better. Reminds me of the old Henry Ford quote: You can choose any color car you want... so long as that color is black.
6) As multi-touch works properly now I can zoom out of the start screen and more easily manage and label the groups. This was impossible to do before on the netbook... and didn't quite work properly on the desktop if memory serves correctly.
7) There is no way to disable Metro... guess they lied to us... but over the last few months I have gotten rather acustomed to the start screen on the netbook, and have not really missed the start menu with the exception of turning the computer off (which I had to do often due to a driver issue on wake).
8) Touch screen acts as a touch screen after waking from sleep! This was a major pain, requiring a restart after going into sleep more because the touch acted as a mouse before.
9) Still have mixed feelings on IE10, I generally like it, but I like Chrome better
10) Touch scrolling works in 3rd party applications like Chrome, so I no longer have to use the stylus. counter-intuitively, all scroll bars now act as touch scroll, meaning pulling down moves the page up instead of down. Makes sense now that I think about it... but really threw me for a loop at first.
11) the Onscreen Keyboard is even better than before! I loved the thumbs layout, and they now added a 10-key in the middle, and it all works very well once you change the size back up to large.
12) I can now use the netbook in full tablet mode with no problems. Still nice to have the keyboard and mouse when needed, but even nicer to not need to constantly switch between the two because of missing functionality. I find that I now use a combination touch and keyboard instead of keyboard and mouse much of the time, and switch to full tablet mode when carrying it around.
Well, those are the big things that stuck with me for the day. All in all it is much improved and feels like a nearly finished product. Can't wait to try it on the desktop next.
There was one HUGE thing that I felt was missing though; Voice input. Windows has some decent voice recognition build it... and typing is bothersome on that screen, so why not have something similar to google search where you can tap a mic button in a text box and start chatting away? It feels so obvious, and would really help make things simpler. I tried playing with the accessibility options, but it would not take my internal mic for some reason (though Google search had no problems with it). Maybe Win9?
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