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    10 Key Windows 8.1 Features: Start Button, Better Search & More

    Discussion in 'Notebook News and Reviews' started by Jacqueline Emigh, Oct 18, 2013.

  1. Jacqueline Emigh

    Jacqueline Emigh Notebook Consultant

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    Windows 8.1 brings literally hundreds of new features. Here are ten that either fix mistakes in Windows 8 or add other important new functionality.

    Read the full content of this Article: 10 Key Windows 8.1 Features: Start Button, Better Search & More

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    Last edited by a moderator: May 7, 2015
    Jacqueline Emigh, Oct 18, 2013
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  2. Mitlov

    Mitlov Shiny

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    A couple of the "new capabilities" listed aren't new.

    I believe this was true of the menu you got from right-clicking the bottom-left hotcorner in 8.0.

    You could also group, assign names to groups, and resize in 8.0; you just had two tile sizes instead of four.
     
    Mitlov, Oct 18, 2013
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  3. J.R. Nelson

    J.R. Nelson Minister of Awesome

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    Both of these points are correct. I do think a lot of people aren't aware of the awesome right-click menu, though.

    By far the best parts of 8.1 (for me) are the Start screen wallpaper (it sounds like a dumb thing, but using the same wallpaper as your desktop makes such a huge difference) and the vastly improved global searching.
     
    J.R. Nelson, Oct 18, 2013
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  4. Mitlov

    Mitlov Shiny

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    I also love the start screen wallpaper. It fixes the feel of "lack of continuity" that the two different wallpapers caused. I love how the all-apps screen has a slightly-less-transparent background than the live tile screen, so there's three visual "steps" in transparency: the normal desktop, the live tile screen overlayed with a mostly transparent grey background, and the all-apps screen with a moderately-transparent grey background.

    The improvements in the native apps is the biggest improvement for me besides that aesthetic issue. And yeah, the new search rocks.
     
    Mitlov, Oct 18, 2013
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  5. HI DesertNM

    HI DesertNM Notebook Deity

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    Probably the worst issue is how some text is blurry in some apps in 8.1. I noticed skype was not clear and firefox did not have as crisp of text. Its a huge issue that is widespread and well documented. What you have to do is go to display and select one scaling level for all displays to restore the old behavior. The scaling is no good on 8.1
     
    HI DesertNM, Oct 20, 2013
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