Windows 8 Screenshot Tour: Everything You Possibly Want to Know

So What’s New in Windows 8?

How Can I Get Windows 8?

Keyboard and mouse will work just fine.

Just head todev.windows.comand download the ISO images from the page.

Various Install Notes:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\

What’s This Metro Interface All About?

Metro Keyboard Shortcuts

These are a few keyboard shortcuts that I’ve personally been using.

Which will enable a menu at the bottom of the screen.

Some of the tiles will open up a Metro-style app, which is always full screen.

You might notice the purple bar on the left hand side of the screen—that’s very important.

Keep swiping left to cycle through all of the applications.

On the left is the news feed, and the right is a photo program.

What you might’t do, however, is adjust them to be 50/50, it’s a fixed ratio.

Swiping from the right side will pull up another menu, which they call the “Charms” menu.

Yes, that’s a very silly name.

Windows 8 Lock Screen

Windows 8 brings an entirely new lock screen experience.

That’s right, no more annoying Windows Update popup.

You’ll immediately be taken to a very familiar screen, albeit lacking the Start Orb.

Where’s the Shut Down Button!

How do I restart?!

And you’d be right to ask that question.

From here, it’s possible for you to shut down or reboot your PC.

Since we’re already looking at the Windows 7 style side of things, we should talk about Explorer.

Update: turns out, you canforce the Ribbon to stay minimized all the time.

So much simpler, even clean looking.

All the functionality is there, easily accessed from the Ribbon should you need it.

you could also use the Quick Access Toolbar, and add a couple of useful options on there.

Double-hit any of the files, and you’re able to open them up.

It’s extremely useful.

Mounting ISO Images!

That’s right, you’re free to finally mount an ISO image or VHD directly from Explorer.

Want to read your Facebook feed directly from Metro?

But even more interesting is that you might easily browse through your photos.

Here’s all my messy photo albums, for instance.

There’s also a Feed reader utility, which is pretty simple to use.

Assuming you’re looking at a full feed, of course.

Don’t freak out!

There’s still loads of power, it’s just hidden behind the More details button.

Multi-Monitor Wallpaper and Taskbar!

There’s even a bunch of options that let you configure it.

Hmm, wait… what’s that File History thing?

It’s a backup solution.

you could backup to a web connection location as well…

And easily see the previous versions to restore.

Most of them are pretty self-explanatory, so we aren’t going to go into detail here.

Very useful for the more paranoid among you.

PC Refresh and Reset

Some of you reload your PC on a very regular basis.

Yes, you know who you are.

Reset will completely wipe the whole thing.

Probably a last resort.