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" Published in the October 2012 issue After decades of relatively dull, relatively unintuitive design, expecting Microsoft to update its ubiquitous Windows operating system with anything but more of the same felt pointless, like hoping Steve Ballmer would show up with a new haircut. Form followed so closely to function, you could barely distinguish between the two. And then Microsoft announced Windows 8. Ballmer might as well have walked out with plugs and a ponytail. There&amp;#039;s a good chance you&amp;#039;ve heard about the new software, or even downloaded the Consumer Preview to use in your parents&amp;#039; basement. But in case you haven&amp;#039;t, a refresher: On October 26, Windows 8 will appear on new PCs. And for once, anyone can understand it \u2014 pretty much immediately. The start screen, which draws from Microsoft&amp;#039;s clunkily named mobile software, Windows Phone 7, is a colorful grid of living tiles. Not little icons on a desktop accessed through a complicated multibranched start tree, but big squares and rectangles that take up the entire screen. Those tiles are constantly updating, cycling through the day&amp;#039;s news, your messages, and any new food photos your friends post on Instagram. It&amp;#039;s simple. An idiot&amp;#039;s interface \u2014 kind of like those phones for grandparents with the buttons showing the faces of people they call most. Look for what you want, click it, and you&amp;#039;re there. The only thing that needs to be smart is the computer. Not that Windows 8 feels dumbed down. More like streamlined. Intuitive. Click a tile and you&amp;#039;re brought into the program. To dismiss it, just drag it off the screen. You can also relegate programs to a small updating bar off to the side. Returning to the start screen is just a matter of pushing the Windows key. If that&amp;#039;s too hard to find, the screen corners also serve as hot spots. Bottom left for the start tiles. Upper left shows you the last program you were in, or slide the mouse down and choose from any program that&amp;#039;s running in the background. To access settings (or share something on Facebook or Twitter), move the mouse to the right side of the screen. The search function may be the simplest option: From the start screen, just start typing. That&amp;#039;ll automatically open the search bar and look through everything that&amp;#039;s stored on your computer or can be accessed through any of your apps. For example: Say, like all men, you love Pitbull. Type &amp;quot;Pitbull&amp;quot; on the start screen and you&amp;#039;ll be shown everything related to him that you have saved on your computer, from albums to homemade dance videos to fan fiction. Click to search the news app and you&amp;#039;ll be shown every recent Pitbull-related news story. Click a music app like Slacker Radio and you&amp;#039;ll be led to a Pitbull-themed station, which you can pin directly to your start screen. What&amp;#039;s most interesting about Windows 8, other than its ability to simplify your search for reductive dance music, is what it means for the future. Once you&amp;#039;ve used a Windows 8 computer for a few weeks, you want everything to be a tile. Especially Web sites. No matter how good a site may be, nothing beats the optimized experience of an app. No messy tool bars or URLs and, best of all, very few, if any, ads. It&amp;#039;s how the Internet was meant to be experienced. Perfectly uncluttered. Simple. Just like Windows 8. A Few Options to Try It On 1. Vizio All-in-One PC  Vizio packed all of the computer&amp;#039;s hardware into a base that&amp;#039;s barely half an inch thick. A little pricey for a PC, but then again, it&amp;#039;s a little beautiful for a PC. (starting at $1,250; vizio.com) 2. Microsoft Surface Microsoft&amp;#039;s first tablet weighs slightly more than an iPad and isn&amp;#039;t quite as pretty, but it has a built-in kickstand, and the cover doubles as a fully functional keypad. (price to be determined; surface.com) 3. Acer Aspire S7 Although it&amp;#039;ll work on any PC, Windows 8 feels most intuitive on a touch screen, like Acer&amp;#039;s striking new 13-inch Ultrabook. It has a backlit keyboard and full HD display. The screen can even lie flat at 180 degrees, if you can figure out a reason to do that. (starting at $1,200; amazon.com) YOU CAN ALSO TRY OUT: More Selections from Our October Issue "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a15751/windows-8-review-1012/>