Since the day Microsoft released the Developer Preview edition of Windows 8, everyone is suddenly very excited to experience the look and feel of the next-generation Windows operating system on their desktops. Some may have already installed the Windows 8 Developer Preview edition on their computers. Whereas some are reluctant to try the pre-beta (or incomplete) version of Windows 8.
Fret not, you can taste the Windows 8 Metro UI even without installing the OS on your computer. Newgen is a freeware Metro-style launcher for Windows that is designed to bring the start screen of Windows 8 to your desktop. Isn’t it cool or what? 🙂
After install, launch the application from the start menu or click the Newgen desktop icon. You will be presented with the metro-style start screen (in full screen). In the start screen, you can put tiles, widgets and also pin application and website to the start screen. By default, there are three tiles/widgets available – the time widget, store widget (where you can download other widgets) and the Newgen widget. Also, at the upper right of the screen is the user tile. You can change the user tile with your photo.
To add more widgets to the start screen, click on the Store widget. You will be presented with all the available widgets for download, including Twitter, Gmail, Weather, Hotmail and more. Newgen supports WPF, HTML5, and HTML widgets.
After you have downloaded the widgets, you can add them as tiles by left-clicking on the right edge of the screen to call up the Start Menu, then right click again to display context menu. Click on Add Tiles. You can pin application and website too.
On top of that, you can customize Newgen to your liking in the Settings page.
Newgen is compatible with Windows 7 and Vista. It requires Microsoft .Net Framework on your system.
