You already know my overall opinion of Windows 8: that it’s two very good operating systems â€" one for touch screens, one for mouse and keyboard â€" idiotically superimposed on each other. You wind up with duplicate everything: two Web browsers, two help systems, two search features, two control panels (actually three, but never mind). It’s very confusing.
But for the last few weeks, I’ve been up to my neck in writing a how-to book on Windows 8, and that means mucking around in its deepest, darkest corners. That means learning its idiosyncrasies and quirks. That meansgetting to know its most embarrassing lapses and its most unsung brilliance.
Maybe Microsoft will somehow fix what’s wrong with Windows 8. Maybe people will get used to the duality. (With the addition of free programs like Classic Shell, which restores the Start menu, you can almost get away with using only the desktop mode on your PC, as before. Almost.)
In the meantime, I thought I’d share three completely overlooked gems that I’ve unearthed in my explorations.
Xbox Music. Don’t be confused â€" in Windows 8, the term Xbox has nothing to do with the game console. It’s now just a generic term that Microsoft puts on its online stores.
Anyway, Xbox Music is a completely great music service. It combines elements of Pandora, in that it can play endless free music in a style you choose; Spotify, in that you can listen to any song or any album or any performer, on command, free; and iTunes, in that you can buy so! ngs to download. It’s a Windows 8 exclusive; it doesn’t work on Windows 7. And it’s free.
The free version has occasional interruptions in the form of audio/video ads. Music streaming is free and unlimited for the first six months; after that, you can listen free for 10 hours a month. If you’re willing to pay $10 a month (or $100 a year), you can get an Xbox Music Pass, which lets you (a) also listen on a Windows 8 phone and an Xbox 360 (provided you also have a Gold membership), (b) download songs for offline listening, (c) sync your playlists across multiple gadgets, and (d) eliminate the ads.
When you’re listening to one type of music, Pandora-style, you can click the Skip button to pass over a song you don’t care for. In theory, the free version offers only a limited number of skips a month, but Microsoft has confirmed that, for now, it’s still unlimited.
Bing Magazines. In TileWorld (my name for the second operating system, the full-screen, colorful, tapable tiles), you get a handful of brilliantly executed, full-screen, perpetually self-updating “magazines†for news, sports, finance and travel.
This is a fantastic feature. Each, behind the scenes, is simply grabbing articles from hundreds of big-name news Web sites. For example, the News magazine gets its articles and photos from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, CNN, Huffington Post, and so on.
But each re-formats everything into one uniform, attractive, screen-friendly design. No hard-to-read color schemes or ugly fonts. No blinking ads, banners or obnoxious animations.
They all work essentially alike. You open the app (Internet connection required). You see a huge cover photo. Tap or click it to read the associated article.
Or scroll horizontally to see headlines and teaser blurbs for other articles.
Each magazine is customizable; you pick the sports league to follow, the stocks you track, the news topics or news sources you prefer. T! he Travel! magazine is integrated with Bing Travel, so you can actually book hotels and flights on the spot. Flipboard is an obvious predecessor, but it’s nice that these magazines are built right in and ready to go.
Narrator. If you’re blind, computers are hard enough to use without the introduction of touch screens. In Windows 8, without any fanfare whatsoever, Microsoft has followed in the footsteps of Apple’s VoiceOver technology. It has turned Narrator, a weird, sad old feature that would read your error messages to you out loud, into a full-blown screen reader.
Those who are blind or have limited sight can use Narrator to describe every item on the screen, either in TileWorld or the desktop. It can describe the layout of a Web page, and it makes little sounds to confirm that you’ve performed a touch-screen gesture correctly.
Even if you’re not blind, Narrator is still handy; it can read your e-mail back to you, or read Web articles as you’re getting dressed in themorning.
When you open Narrator, you wind up at its Settings dialogue box  â€" and the voice of Microsoft David (no relation) starts talking, reading everything on the screen.
Like VoiceOver, Narrator takes a lot of time and patience to master; it’s almost like another operating system unto itself.
But the basics are easy enough: on a touch screen, drag your finger around the screen; Narrator speaks everything you touch, so that you can get a feel for the layout of things. You can also tap to hear a single item identified. When Narrator is running, it takes two taps to open something instead of one.
To see the master cheat sheet of touch gestures in Narrator (and hear it read to you), tap the screen three times with four fingers.
If you have a keyboard, the Caps Lock key becomes specially dedicated to Narrator. Press Caps Lock and V, for example, to make Narrator repeat whatever it just said. Caps Lock and the plus or minus sign makes the voice speed up or slow down. ! Press Cap! s Lock and Esc to exit Narrator.
So yes, there’s a lot of good in Windows 8, and a lot that’s getting no press. Here’s to the unsung engineers who came up with this stuff â€" and to the hope that Windows 8’s split-personality problem somehow improves.
