Windows 8 Release Preview on a Tablet PC

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There's a new build of Windows 8 available called the Windows 8 Release Preview. We thought we'd take a look at how it works on our old HP TouchSmart TM2 tablet PC. Take a look at the video to check it out. Not a whole lot has changed within the primary operating system other than a nicer app launching animation. We still have the customizable live tiles on the start screen, but with the release preview, a lot of the bundled apps have been updated for stability and more features. The Pictures app has added a great new SkyDrive fetch feature. It's similar to what you have in the new web based version of SkyDrive where you can browse through the files on any computer that you have installed the SkyDrive app under your Live ID (if it's turned on). From the Pictures app, you can very easily browse through pictures on your other computers, in addition to the local computer, SkyDrive cloud storage itself, Facebook, and Flickr. You've also got very nicely designed new apps for Bing News, Sports, Finance, and Travel. They all feature large imagery and great looking typography along with horizontal scrolling. One feature I really like in the Travel app is the panorama views. The Music app now supports Zune Pass subscriptions, which is great for unlimited streaming and downloads of any kind of music you want. You've got a "Play to Xbox" button in both the Music and Video apps as well, which still seems a bit buggy with my Xbox. You've also got the Xbox games app where you can see ...

Last week a free preview version of Office 2013 was released for Windows 7 and Windows 8 Preview. We decided to install it on our Windows 8 Release Preview release equipped HP TouchSmart TM2 Tablet and take it for a spin. The coolest part of Office 2013 is the new OneNote MX which is a Metro-style version of OneNote that is fully compatible with the new Windows 8 interface. It doesn't have all of the features of the desktop version of OneNote, but it is certainly more feature-rich than the iOS, Android, and Windows Phone versions of OneNote. You can finally view all types of content created in the desktop version of OneNote unlike other mobile versions. You can also rearrange pages and sections and notebooks, but features like extracting text from images, converting handwriting to text, and recording video/audio while taking notes are still missing. For those you'll have to launch the desktop version of OneNote 2013. However, OneNote MX also includes an excellent new interface design where controls appear in a radial menu accessible by a single button. Tapping the button to access the commands is fine and all, but if you already know which direction the command you want is hidden under, then all you have to do is tap and slide the button to activate that command. So for example if you want to undo something, just touch the radial menu button and slide to the left to activate the command without even having to open the menu. It's a very innovative way to access shortcuts ...