How well does Windows 8 Consumer Preview run on a touch-screen Windows 7 PC? is it a better experience, now that you can touch the Metro interface? We installed Windows 8 on a touch-screen PC to find out.

Windows 8 Consumer Preview is the popular download of the month, and we decided to try out its vaunted touch interface. As stated before, Windows 8′s Metro UI is optimized for a touch interface, similar to the UI built into Windows Phone 7. It “worked,” but only with a clean install, rather than upgrading from Windows 7. Needless to say, we recommend that you wait for a few more revisions before replacing Windows 7 on your primary touch-screen PC.

Setup and Problems We hoped that setting up Windows 8 on a touch-screen PC would be simple, but it turned out to be anything but. Previous hands-on accounts, such as Brian Westover’s look at running Windows 8 on a MacBook Air, were “clean” installs to a blank partition on the hard drive/SSD. For the touch-screen preview, we wanted to use a system with preloaded apps, Windows 7 Home Premium, and as many toys as we could try out. To that end, we picked two systems: the HP TouchSmart 620 3D and the Lenovo Ideacentre B320. We picked these two systems because they had TV tuners, discrete graphics, Blu-ray drive (on the HP 620 3D), active shutter 3D glasses (TouchSmart again), and both are media-oriented. We essentially wanted to have the big tablet experience and see if the single-tasking, touch-screen interface was effective on a desktop PC.

When we tried to run the Windows 8 setup utility from Windows 7, it asked if we wanted to install Windows 8 while keeping “Windows settings, personal files, and apps,” just the personal files, or nothing (from scratch). We chose the first choice and if it worked, it would have meant that we could use all the systems’ preloaded programs, like PowerDVD to view movies. Things seemed to be fine; the setup utility checked the preloaded programs to verify they would work with Windows 8, and we uninstalled the one or two programs that were known not to work.

Unfortunately, each time we tried to upgrade either of the two Windows 7 systems to Windows 8, we ran into a snag. the systems would get hung up on one of the screens where the installer was preparing or loading device drivers. It happened so often, we’ve started calling the illustration of the Betta fish you see on loading screens as the “failfish,” like the Fail Whale on twitter.com. We eventually gave up installing Windows 8 on the HP TouchSmart 620 3D, and motored on with the Lenovo B320. Thankfully, the Windows 8 setup utility is able to bring users back to the state the system was in when the upgrade process started. that said, we still recommend that you create recovery discs or a USB stick just in case things don’t work out.

We were able to install Windows 8 Consumer Preview on the Lenovo B320, albeit as a clean install, after completely erasing the hard drive. Once you start from scratch, the setup process takes about 15-20 minutes, as long as everything works out all right. Once loaded, the system brought up the main Metro screen, and we could continue with our hands-on.

Sometimes When We Touch Anyone who suspects that Microsoft releases products in order to get end users to beta-test them will have a lot of conspiracy fodder. (Though Microsoft itself touts this fact on its website, claiming that 8 million beta testers evaluated Windows 7 before its release in 2009). the Lenovo B320 we used to test Windows 8 is has an Intel Core i5-2500S processor, AMD Radeon HD 6450 graphics, a 21.5-inch (1,920-by-1,080 resolution) multitouch screen, and 8GB of memory, so it’s well over the minimum requirements for Windows 8.

Check out our complete Windows 8 coverage.

Startup was quick: under 20 seconds from power off to the Metro screen. this isn’t all that surprising, since the system essentially has nothing on it but the OS and a few preloaded apps. Navigating the Metro screen made it clear that this is beta software. Clicking on tiles with your finger isn’t quite as responsive as it should be. Short taps that would otherwise open an app on a tablet like an iPad did not return a response. Pressing on a tile for too long sometimes only made the individual tile tilt, which visually looks as if you were pressing on a ceramic tile resting on a mushy surface. Eventually your muscles will learn how much pressure to use, for what length of time, and to avoid dragging your finger during the tap, but it’s still quite a period of time before your fingers and the touch screen are in sync. Normal touch-screen gestures like pulling down for toolbars, Pinch and zoom, and swiping from screen to screen worked. Eventually, however, you’ll learn the new gestures, like pinching the screen to show more of the Metro interface, swiping the right edge of the screen to bring up the Search/Start toolbar, and swiping up from the lock screen to unlock the system. It all “works,” yet feels kludgy since the performance and click sensitivity isn’t optimal yet.

Speaking of kludgy, focusing your attention on a single touch-based app, full-screen, works fine on tablets and while playing casual games like cut the Rope, but it’s annoying if you’re trying to use the system as a desktop PC. the simple act of browsing several websites simultaneously and copying and pasting info among different screens takes more steps than necessary. To access the tabs toolbar, you need to drag down the top edge of the screen, which is frustratingly slow compared to clicking a horizontal row of tabs as on other browsers. Granted, you can put the system into desktop mode and use a regular browser like Google Chrome, but that’s not optimal for touch.

Dragging toolbars from the screen edges was a chore; bringing your fingers to the inner edge of an indented screen feels decidedly non-tablet-like. the bezel on the Lenovo B320 (and HP TouchSmart 620) is raised, so you can’t simply drag you finger from the edge of the bezel to the screen surface: there’s a step “down.” the experience should improve once more touch-screen PCs have edge-to-edge seamless screens. other ergonomic nits include the vertical tilt of the screen. after a while it becomes more comfortable to use the keyboard and mouse, since the vertical touch surface forces you to stick your arm straight out for extended periods of time. Unless you’re a traffic cop, holding your arm out straight becomes tiring quickly. the extreme tilt of the HP TouchSmart would’ve been a help to ergonomics, making the experience more tablet-like.

So is Windows 8 Consumer Preview a good start? yes, if you’re willing to wipe out the system. Installing Windows 8 on a touch-screen system is an interesting exercise and will be a good experience if you’re familiarizing yourself with Windows 8 or planning on developing apps for the Windows 8 platform. Otherwise, you definitely don’t want to compromise your primary system by installing Windows 8 over Windows 7. It’s better to experiment with a system you won’t mind erasing and rebuilding in a few weeks. In any case, make sure you have a good restore or backup method available for when things go wrong (and they likely will).

Installing Windows 8 on A Touch-Screen PC

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