Hopefully, you’ve checked out the walkthrough video of the Samsung Windows 8 tablet from Build 2011 but I actually couldn’t cover everything in there in that video. Sadly, I’ll have to give this tablet back soon so I decided to create another video to take a deeper dive into the software.
As we covered before, Windows 8 is a bold reimagination of the platform which takes a touch-centric, Metro-style user interface and makes it the main focus of the computing experience. Tablet fans and mobile OS fans should find it comfortable but what about keyboard users and those who are happy with the traditional Windows experience?
As you can see from the video, the keyboard shortcuts all still work and it’s easy to switch between apps with a quick ALT+Tab. I didn’t have a mouse in the video but I’ve used Windows 8 on other machines with that device and many of the contextual menus that are achieved through gestures can be brought up with a right click. Additionally, you can use the scroll wheel to “flip” through your pages of live tile apps.
The Samsung Windows 8 tablet also came with a digital pen which you can use to write notes or draw pictures. Like with the capacitive stylus on the View 4G, I’m not convinced that I would ever use this but I’m sure there are some users who want it, so it doesn’t hurt to bake in support.
Overall, we’re very excited about Windows 8 and what it will mean for tablets and the future of computing. Unfortunately, we’re probably still about a year away from this thing really hitting the market (maybe even longer for ARM tablets to land) so I’m going to cherish this tablet for as long as I can.