Thread: The Acer 500W, or How I Learned Win7 Wasn't Made for Tablets But I Don't Care

Given that Acer's going to mail me copies of the recovery media, I went ahead and installed Windows 8 on my tablet.

As it is now It's a very different experience, but I get the impression that a lot of stuff which Windows handles through the Windows Aero app (i.e. the Windows 7-esque desktop) will be handled through the standard touch interface in the future.

It'll be neat when applications are written for this interface, but for now I have to use the Windows Aero app for most programs, of course.

One last thing--the start button is gone. It's replaced with basically two things: a tile screen like you see on XBox LIVE, whose icons you can move around and add or remove as you like, and a sidebar menu that comes when you swipe from the right edge inward, from which you can pull up a menu of all installed applications, search your computer, etc. The tile screen is summoned with the Windows button, either the one on your keyboard or the one located on the border of your tablet. I have no idea how to summon the sidebar menu with mouse and keyboard alone.

It would be a pain in the ass to use Windows 8 without a touch screen. But the touch screen interface definitely beats that of Windows 7's ad-hoc touch screen interface. It's a lot more comfortable to type on Windows 8's soft keyboard, and I don't have to fear pressing Ctrl or Alt and screwing up the window in which I'm typing. (But now there seems to be no Alt key at all on the soft keyboard...).