Windows 8

My initial reaction is extremely positive.

Everything is running much faster, the touch screen on the tablet is working much more responsively, consequently the unit is much more pleasant to use as a tablet without plugging it onto it's keyboard dock.

The new tablet-friendly UI is a breeze to use, the only problem I had was working out how to shut the machine down.

OK, it takes a bit of getting used to not having a task bar, and I missed the start button a little at first, but 10 minutes in, and I could find my way round the UI with no problems.

I think Microsoft may have got it right for once :)

Incidentally I won't be trying to self-compile on this machine, there's not enough disc space, I am impressed enough, however, to be considering upgrading my 3 XP machines to 8

Editing in Musescore 1.2 is problematic in tablet mode, however, as the keyboard that pops up lacks up and down arrows. This is overcome by using the On Screen Keyboard instead (Run>OSK.exe)

I am using it on a desktop and I like it very much. Since using it on a desktop with a mouse seemed to be causing the most speculative moaning and groaning I'll outline what I've found.

IMO, the biggest problem with W8 was inadequate instruction on the changed concepts such as you don't shutdown tasks when using the tile UI and what seems to be the big bugaboo, how do I turn it off.

I deleted the tiles I didn't want, and there were several, and then laid out the tiles for my OS and installed programs in a configuration that made sense to me. Funny how nobody really associated the tiles with the icons on the previous versions desktop and considered them some obscure concept. I like the live tile for my email. Before you spend time laying out your tiles, install all your programs first then you know what you are dealing with.

It is very easy to bring up the desktop from its tile and the user should run the mouse pointer in all corners of the Start Page screen to see "what is there".

The IE10 browser operates differently when started from the tile but if you are a tablet user is likely won't be as much culture shock. Right-clicking is your friend since it will bring up a history at the top of the screen and the IE address bar at the bottom. Left-click in the address bar brings up any pinned sites (I have my personal homepage pinned), Frequently visited sites and Favorites.

For flipping between the tile interface and Desktop, the WIndows Key is your friend, Also Windows-E brings up File Explorer as in previous versions. Windows-X brings up a menu that gets you to a lot of stuff that was on the old Start Menu. There are lots of these shortcuts.

The Setting "gear" which is one of the charms is context sensitive so it depends on what is displayed when you click it.

A right-click on the tile Start Page will display an "all apps" button which will provide all the installed apps including all sorts of Windows OS apps like the Control Panel, Calculator, Wordpad, etc. You can pin any of these to the Start Page which makes a tile.

If you like playing with OS admin stuff, you can bring up the charms in the Start Page click settings, tiles, and a switch to display admin tasks will be displayed. Turn it on and you get things like Task Scheduler, Services, Firewall, etc.

If you have a dual-monitor setup, Windows-PgUP or PfDown flips the Start Page/Desktop to the other monitor.

When you are through with an app started by tile interface just hit the Windows key to leave it. It keeps an entry on the disk to it can be quickly restarted and with todays modern machines it is not a burden.

BTW, if you use Windows Media Center, it does not come with W8 and is an extra cost add-on but for a while it is free. Just go to the MS site and download the free key. The software is already on your W8 system and just needs to be enabled with the key. Also, the W8 download upgrade version is only $40 in North America for a couple of months or so. I downloaded it (about 2GB and burned the .iso to a DVD. There are other options than just the DVD.

I am writing this on an XP laptop so I hope I've remembered W8 things correctly.

Does it bring a whole lot more to your desktop computing capabilty than W7. I'd say no but if you are interested in the latest or want to see how things may be evolving then get W8. There are indications of new touch devices becoming available for the desktop computers that will mimic touch control more than a mouse does.

Pinch and zoom is indeed key on touch screen OS, and I use it quite comfortably there. On a touch pad (or at least on my laptop's touch pad), sometimes either it does not do it reliably when I want it to, and sometimes does it for a single finger attempt to move the cursor, and some times it does work as I intend/wish. This is not an education problem or even an experience problem, it is a bug in either Win 8 or the laptop or even both.

And the black bar is indeed standard, as a temporary result of bringing up the 'ghost' menu and hovering over a selection. However, if you move off the menu, the black bar goes away, as it should. What I am talking about is it coming up WITHOUT the ghost menu AND not going away until you click on something. Again, not education, but a software and/or hardware bug.

I use musescore only on the win 8 computers (so far) and the only problem I have seen is when shortening measures so that multiple lines become one line, the measure layout sometimes gets messed up. So far I've always been able to recover by making measure bigger again. Since I have not tried it on a lower level system, I can't say this a Win 8 problem.