Windows 8 reviews: 'Mission accomplished', 'transcendent', 'unintuitive'

Consumer preview is received with enthusiasm, some complaints

Early reviews of Windows 8 range from describing it as speedy and elegant to unintuitive, but those who have given the operating system a test drive seem to enjoy the experience.

Several point out that Internet Explorer 10 has two versions, one for touchscreen and one for a mouse and keyboard machine, that look and feel very different, which they find disconcerting.

NON-REVIEW: Windows 8 test drive crash 

TEST YOURSELF: The Windows 8 Quiz

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Early reviews of Windows 8 range from describing it as speedy and elegant to unintuitive, but those who have given the operating system a test drive seem to enjoy the experience.

Several point out that Internet Explorer 10 has two versions, one for touchscreen and one for a mouse and keyboard machine, that look and feel very different, which they find disconcerting.

NON-REVIEW: Windows 8 test drive crash 

TEST YOURSELF: The Windows 8 Quiz

Reviewers find remarkable the speed of the platform in responding to commands and of the applications themselves.

Here is a sampling from some published reviews with praise and complaints about Windows 8:

Jason Cross at PC Advisor: This is definitely not the flaky, feature-light version of Windows 8 released for developers last year. It's dramatically smoother and more responsive. Apps snap open, and flipping between them is immediate... Everything is big, bright, smooth, and beautiful... I spent a good hour just discovering how to do things I've known how to do in Windows for over a decade. It's usually a good feeling, because when I figure out how Windows 8 does something differently (like display all installed programs), I'm usually impressed by its speed and elegance. Let me say that again: I'm impressed by the speed and elegance of a Microsoft interface. Really!... It doesn't take long, and before you know it you're using new shortcuts and flying around the OS like an old pro. I can't wait for the Store to launch, because much to my surprise, I find myself really valuing the Metro-style applications and the way they operate, even when using a keyboard and mouse. I want Metro apps for Spotify and Evernote, a great Twitter client and a native Facebook app... I have some concerns about how well everything scales to a large monitor, but more and more, as I spent time with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, I just wanted the OS to be done and on the market already. So I suppose that's "mission accomplished" for the folks in Redmond.

David Pogue at The New York Times: It's a huge radical rethinking of Windows — and one that's beautiful, logical and simple. In essence, it brings the attractive, useful concept of Start-screen tiles, currently available on Windows Phone 7 phones, to laptops, desktop PCs and tablets...The starter apps include Camera, Xbox, Mail, Calendar, People, Messaging and Photos. There are also Music and Video apps that link to Microsoft's music and video stores. (Microsoft is also introducing a Windows App Store that's modeled on Apple's.) You can drag these tiles around and create new screens full of them, labeled the way you like. It's like a Lego kit for your life's control panel... Swiping your finger onto the screen from any of the edges bring hidden controls into view. That's especially important in Internet Explorer 10, the new version of the Web browser, which otherwise displays no "chrome" — toolbars, buttons and other space-eating elements — at all when you're browsing. Smart, right? Because your phone or tablet screen is usually smallish...The only huge design failure is that Microsoft couldn't just abandon "real" Windows completely — desktop, folders, taskbar and all those thousands of programs. So on a PC, hiding behind this new Start screen is what looks almost exactly like the old Windows 7, with all of its complexity. In other words, Windows 8 seems to favor tablets and phones. On a nontouch computer like a laptop or desktop PC, the beauty and grace of Metro feels like a facade that's covering up the old Windows. It's two operating systems to learn instead of one.