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Internet Explorer is the only really useful part of Windows 8 that natively supports pinch-to-zoom. If you miss, or let up your finger at the wrong time, you'll have to do it over.
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They're primarily vertical, which means your arms will have to hang out in space while you interact with objects on screen. While I evaluated three all-in-ones whose screens tilt quite a bit, most of them don't. Just because you can fold a screen flat doesn't make it a good keyboard surface. Once that keyboard does pop up, you can't make it large enough to touch-type with two hands, or even large enough to comfortably hunt and peck if the screen is too dense. You need to click on the keyboard icon manually, and that gets to be a chore. That doesn't happen in the classic desktop mode. In the new Windows 8 interface, when you click on a text field, up comes the virtual keyboard - just like on almost any tablet or smartphone. The virtual keyboard doesn't automatically pop up in desktop mode
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If your finger doesn't glide, it doesn't work well, so things like dragging and dropping files, snapping apps to either side, or closing an app by swiping from the top to the bottom of the screen become extremely difficult. When the diagonal size of your screen is 24 or 27 inches, you have to pull your finger across a lot of very tacky glass in order to get to your destination. It's hard to drag fingers across a big piece of glass I quickly found out that it was a nearly impossible task, because neither the computers nor the operating system were designed for one another with that in mind. When I began testing Windows 8 all-in-one computers, I made a vow: I would make a good-faith attempt to try using each one solely with the touchscreen, instead of combining touchscreen with mouse and keyboard. But first, here's an overarching note: Don't expect to use Windows 8 all-in-ones with the touchscreen alone.
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