Lock Screen: A New Way to Sign In

When you boot the computer or wake it up from Sleep, you’ll be presented with the new lock screen, a full‑screen Metro‑style experience that is basically new to Windows 8 and visually sits on top of the sign‑in screen where you select a user account and optionally provide a password.

As you can see in Figure 3‑2, the lock screen looks and works much as it does on a smartphone OS like Windows Phone. It provides a nice photographic background image, the time and date, and a number of status notifications, most of which are icons.

Figure 3‑2: The Windows 8 lock screen

Virtually every aspect of this lock screen can be customized, and it provides what Microsoft calls a “glance and go” interface where you can glance at the screen even when the system is locked–indicated by the presence of the lock screen–and see information that is useful, such as the date and time and your next upcoming appointment.