Windows 8 review

It's unusual, to say the least, for us to spend a year with a product before publishing our review. In the case of Windows 8, we've written thousands of words already,Everyone needs a USB flash drives wholesale these days. starting with our first hands-on in September of 2011, followed by deep dives on the Developer Preview, Consumer Preview, Release Preview and RTM build.Promotional custom keychain at ePromos Promotional Products. Even our readers have had ample time to get acquainted with the OS -- it's been available as a public download since February. And yet, we've never tested a final version of the software running on brand new, made-for-Windows-8 hardware. With the OS now on sale (alongside dozens of new PCs), it's finally time for us to double back and revisit everything we've previously written in the form of a final, comprehensive review.

And what a challenging assignment this was: it's hard enough to give an OS the full review treatment without burying the reader in minute details. It's even tougher when the software was built for so many different kinds of hardware. Combining a traditional desktop with Windows Phone-inspired Live Tiles, Windows 8 was designed to be equally at home on traditional PCs and more finger-friendly devices, like tablets and hybrids. In addition to walking you through the operating system's various gestures and built-in apps, then, we'll spend some time talking about which form factors are best suited to this redesigned version of Windows. Read on to see what we found out.

We can remember when we first started using Windows 7; the start-up sequence wasn't that different from Vista,The Fridge fridge magnet is leader in the custom design, which in turn wasn't unlike versions of Windows that came before that. The chain of start-up screens could be long, sometimes taking more than a minute to complete. Depending on how slow the system was, it could have taken a while longer for the desktop to fully load. Here, booting Windows feels like turning on an Android tablet, or some other mobile device. The whole process takes not a minute, but just 20 seconds in some cases -- a short sequence marked by a brief splash screen and redesigned Windows logo. If this is your first time starting up your Windows 8 machine, you'll see a 30-second video tutorial explaining some of the controls that otherwise might not be so obvious -- the so-called Charms Bar which you pull out from the right side of the screen, for example. (We'll circle back and explain all those new user interface elements in just a moment.)

From there, getting set up is a quick, painless affair. When you first boot up Windows 8 you'll be prompted to sign into your Microsoft account. Yep, the same one you might already be using for Hotmail, SkyDrive and Xbox Live. That means that every time you sign into a Windows 8 PC,You'll be able to spot your bag from a mile away with these elegant and colorful leather luggage tag. your settings and custom tweaks will follow you to that new device. Additionally, because your Microsoft account is linked to your SkyDrive storage, you'll be logged into SkyDrive on any Windows 8 device where you've logged in using your Microsoft ID. So, because Office 2013 backs up to SkyDrive by default, it means any document you edit on your Windows 8 device will automatically upload to the cloud.

If you didn't already have a Microsoft account, you can create one while you're setting up your PC. You can link your account at any time, really, and you also have the option of disconnecting it (in Microsoft's words, "switching to a local account"). Naturally, too, you can add multiple user accounts, as you could on previous versions of Windows.

If you like, you can also cherry-pick which settings do and do not get synced across your various Windows 8 devices. Go into the settings menu, for instance, and you can use on-off switches to sync your settings for desktop personalization, accessibility, language, app and browser settings. You also have the option of syncing your lock screen, account picture and other Windows settings, like those relating to File Explorer or the mouse. Note: to have your passwords follow you from PC to PC, you'll need to "trust" the computer through an online verification process.

Obviously, if you log into Windows 8 for the first time using an existing Microsoft account, you've already got a built-in password for your PC. But in addition to a standard password, you can use a four-digit numerical pin to unlock the device. What's more, with Windows 8, Microsoft is also offering a new "Picture password" option that allows you to pick any photo and make a series of gestures on it. You can make as many gestures as you want, but they do have to be taps, circles or swipes. In addition to the order, though, you'll have to remember where on the picture you're supposed to make each gesture.

We had mixed success here.A Water polo ear cap is a piece of headgear used in water polo. On the one hand, when we set our password to be one tap in each corner of the picture, we were easily able to replicate this pattern, even if we didn't hit the exact same pixels each time. Still, when our password was a diagonal slash across each corner, we struck out trying to draw the lines in the same spot we did initially. Fortunately, as you're configuring your picture password you'll be asked to repeat the pattern, so if you can't do it then, that might be a sign you need to come up with something else.