Tech Tips: Joyful hybrid with OS that’s lacking

The Toshiba device is both a tablet and an ultrabook, thanks to an innovative mechanism that lets the keyboard slide out from under the screen. The device is designed, like all hybrids, to offer a touch interface that flips seamlessly into full desktop mode. You also can use the touch interface to control Windows when using the device as a desktop, which complements the keyboard nicely.

The Toshiba itself is an enjoyable device to use. It is thin (20.3 millimetres), and light (1.5 kilograms). Yet, it doesn’t compromise too badly on features, offering an i5 processor that will keep up with most tasks. The device features a respectable four gigabytes (GB) of random access memory, and 128 GB of solid-state storage that will store most of your documents and presentations. The device also features two USB ports (no firewire, sadly) and an HDMI cable that will let you output video to a suitably equipped TV.

The screen resolution (1,366 by 768 pixels) could be higher for a device costing $1,149.99. But, otherwise, there are few downsides.

The problem isn’t the device; it’s what’s running on it.

When you’re in the zone with Windows 8 and using it intuitively, it’s beautiful. It blows Apple’s Mac and iOS interfaces out of the water. The Metro interface that greets you when you start the machine is mostly a pleasure to use. It arranges a selection of tiles representing your applications across a variety of screens, among which you can swipe your way from one to another.

Poking at the Bing News interface brings up a gorgeous display filled with news stories that you can select and move among with your finger on the screen. I’m almost too distracted by the pleasant interface to read the news.

Windows also links seamlessly to other services within your Microsoft Live profile. You can automatically save your preferences and settings, and if you have two or more Windows 8 PCs, you can replicate your preferences across them all.

This replication extends to Microsoft’s Skydrive online document-storage service and to Windows Video, both accessible via the Metro interface. This ability is a joy. I had rented a video from Microsoft on my Xbox at home. When I started Windows Video on the Toshiba machine, access to the same video dropped into the “my videos” section without me having to do anything. That’s lovely.

And then there’s Windows Music. This application includes a free, streaming radio service that puts together playlists based on artists you like, turning your Windows 8 hybrid device into an Internet-connected disc jockey.

All of these features, and the smoothness of the Metro interface, make Windows 8 sing.

But there are problems. Metro is pretty but functionally vacant. There are tasks that are difficult to do – or, perhaps, even impossible. It was hard to tell, because Windows 8 comes with very few instructions for new users.

Can I move my application tiles around, putting similar apps onto a single screen? Apparently not. What about stopping a Metro application from running? That’s all managed behind the scenes, it turns out, and not immediately controllable by the user.

Then, there’s the marked difference between the Metro interface, which seems designed mostly for consuming information, and the underlying Windows desktop interface, which we’ve all spent years using for real work. It’s as though there were two teams at Microsoft, one of them working on Windows as we all know it; the other tasked with producing something new, shiny and inventive. It’s as though the project manager who was supposed to bring the two teams’ efforts together was on holiday. So, at the end, they met in a café and, amid awkward silence, someone asked: “So, how are we going to make these work together?”

The answer was to bolt them together like a motorcycle and a sidecar rather than integrate the two interfaces from the ground up. Users must boot up the Toshiba device into Metro, then access the desktop in one of two ways: either poke at a tile for an application that was designed to work in a window on the desktop or simply poke at the separate tile in the Metro interface that says “desktop.”

Either way, when you’re in the desktop, there’s no “start” button. You can’t access programs in the same way as you could under the old Windows. So, if an application isn’t represented by a tile and isn’t accessed through a shortcut on the desktop (like, say, the DOS Command window), it’s difficult to know how to access the desired application.

The answer? Swipe your finger left to right on the screen and type “command” in the search window. Simple enough when you know how, but hardly intuitive.

In fact, the more things I do with Windows 8 beyond simply poking at application tiles, the less intuitive it seems.

Even writing this article presented me with problems. I was focused on finishing a paragraph, but accidentally hit the “Metro” button – a dedicated key on the keyboard that brings back the tablet-style interface. Suddenly, not only did all open windows vanish, but so did the entire desktop. It was replaced by the loud, one-dimensional Metro interface, like a drunken football team crashing a chess club meeting.

This disruption extends into other aspects of Windows’ design. I was happily writing this article when Windows suddenly announced that it was going to restart in 15 minutes – because it had to install important files. It didn’t give me a choice. It did the same during several Skype calls, as it seems to need to do this every few hours of use. How well would that go down in the middle of a presentation to a client?

You might think Microsoft could have taken just a fraction of the brainpower that went into creating pretty poke-and-swipe interfaces and put it into creating a system that respects users enough to work out when they might be busy and thus leave them alone.

Frankly, the problems started shortly after I switched the device on. I went to download Microsoft Office from its website, using an account that enabled me to install the software. The system dutifully told me that it was downloading the files, then it happily reported that it was installing them. Finally, it officiously said that it couldn’t find a file and simply listed the directory where it expected to find it. Did it tell me what to do about it? Nope. You can’t poke and swipe your way out of that one. Eventually, I found a solution, using the registry editor and some tech know-how. But I shouldn’t have to.

This just doesn’t happen with my Mac.

Apparently, I am not alone in my fundamental dislike of Windows 8. PC sales dipped 14% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2013 – the steepest decline ever.

It’s Apple’s turn to come with a hybrid that combines the Macbook Air and the iPad. Even though the Windows 8 hardware design is attractive, Microsoft hasn’t nailed the hybrid concept yet. Windows 8 is pretty but just too disjointed and confusing.

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