Another minor but boneheaded "feature" of Win 8.1 - Display Brightness

With Windows 8.1 my display brightness option disappeared from power options. I thought it was a driver issue or a some other problem. Seems they removed this for Windows 8.1, well kinda they set it to dim 15 seconds before it turns off... what?

This is the only detail I could find. This is from Lenovo but is specific to Windows 8.1: Windows 8.1 Upgrade

" Dim the display does not display in the edit plan settings. This new behavior is designed for Windows® 8.1. Dimming will be set to occur 15 seconds before display off."


And a number of other design limitations:

Windows® 8.1 design limitations by Microsoft

As Windows® 8.1 is a new operating system, certain behaviors are as-designed, and are not upgrade issues. The following are some examples:

The appearance of random characters during installation is normal, and will stop when the whole upgrade process is finished.
No Windows experience index (WinEI) system performance value item exists after upgrading.
Windows® 8.1 will introduce some new applications, so the user interface may be varied, such as the Start screen.
When your computer connects to an AP and you right-click the Service Set Identifier (SSID), you cannot reset the SSID and the estimated usage 0MB since a moment ago message appears.
Dim the display does not display in the edit plan settings. This new behavior is designed for Windows® 8.1. Dimming will be set to occur 15 seconds before display off.
After upgrading from Windows® 7 to Windows® 8.1, power items lack “S3”. This is normal because Windows® 7 to Windows® 8.1 is only an upgrading process, which does not migrate drivers in place. You can go to the vendor site or WU to install a workable driver.
The Start screen offers two more levels of flexibility regarding layouts and tile sizing. Not all apps support all four sizes.
Install a new app and its icon will be stuck in the All Apps view. It will only appear on the Start screen itself if you explicitly pin it.
To customize a tile in Windows® 8, you can nudge it up or down to select it, and then change its size, unpin it, uninstall it, and so on. That nudge gesture is now gone in Windows® 8.1. Currently, the "edit" mode is invoked by the more traditional long press.
The Start screen does not change with the DPI setting.
Windows® 8.1 cannot search ad-hoc wireless.
It still shows the logo of Windows® 8 instead of Windows® 8.1 if you check the system property.
Airplane mode, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth can be activated at the same time in Windows® 8.1.
There is no desktop tile on the Start screen after upgrading to Windows® RT 8.1.

 

Microshaft Winblows strikes again!

Just installed Slackware 14.1 on my desktop today, by far one of the best OSes i have ever used. Still experimenting with WINE and stuff before i deploy my production setup.

 

I moved by Toshiba laptop back to Win 7. Too much stuff was either glitchy or not functioning correctly in Win 8 and things went slightly worse with 8.1

 

LOL good going Microsoft.

I also went back to Windows 8 after getting fed up with 8.1.

 

8 was fine, 8.1 is fine. The only issues I had was I did not have drivers ready for my Acer when I went to 8.1 and had a couple of days where I thought my wifi card was bad. Actually I like 8.1 better than 8. Once you get used to the OS, and if you have no crippling issues, windows 8.1 is great.

 

Just glad here that I don't have to deal with all the issues. Then again we asked for a change so to the old adage, "be careful what you ask for as you just might get it!"............

 

I hate to interupt this hate train...

But did you try turning off auto brightness? http://www.maketecheasier.com/disable-auto-brightness-adjustment-in-windows-8-1/

 

You do realize this has nothing to do with the OP's problem? What he's talking about is the removal of brightness control from Power Options in Control Panel.



Adaptive brightness is a feature that's been around since Windows 7. It only works on machines that have an ambient light sensor, which are usually thin-and-light mobile computing devices such as tablets and convertible Ultrabooks, not the larger performance/gaming/desktop replacement notebooks many of us are sporting.

@OP Is brightness control still accessible for you from the Windows 8 Settings Menu in Charms?

 

In Win8 there was a power setting that was "After X minutes of inactivity, dim (not black out) the screen." I never played with it, never used it. I don't even remember if Win7 had it. It's not exactly a legacy thing, XP I know didn't have it, and I don't think Vista did either.

I don't know about all of the Linuxes, but OS X doesn't have such a thing. Maybe MS thought it was used infrequently enough that they could scrap that code.

 

I never really use that feature. but I can see some people need it to save some battery life when viewing/monitoring stuff and lower brightness kick in by itself.

MS like to fix thing that aint broke. lol

 

You are correct Indrek. It's the "dim display after" option. The screen brightness slider is still there. Sorry for the confusion. It's just these little things that MS decides to remove for no apparent reason.

 

Stuff like this makes me glad I'm sticking with vanilla Windows 8.

 

To you there's no reason. MS has metrics through the CEIP on what users are clicking on, and maybe they saw this feature was really not used much. Maybe the code needed to make it work was clumsy or hacky, or maybe the power savings weren't very much, and MS decided it was better to just remove that code.

MS used to get a lot of flak for "feature creep".. Now the realities of trying to scale that back are apparent. No no, not MY checkbox!!

 

I would accept that if they hadn't done a bunch of other crap moves. If they are using ceip then they would know the start menu was heavily used.

Beamed from my G2 Tricorder

 

HAHAHA ultimate comeback.

 

As a matter of fact, that is exactly what they did. I am too lazy now to dig this out, but this exact reason was given in one of the blogs they had during the preview release time frame.

You callin' them stupid, dude?

P.S.: It was a crap move, big time. It was the biggest mistake they have made in a very long time.

 

One might also remark that, by that logic, they should gotten rid of the task manager: I mean, how often do you think people call up the task manager? Yet, they have enhanced that thing (and people seem to go all gaga over it, for reasons that are a bit mysterious to me).

I can't speak for WingNut, but for me it just means "very bad move", no "deliberate" in there, necessarily.

 

It was deliberate. They deliberately removed it. You can't deny that, they admit it. And yes, it was clearly a bad move. Not understanding their customer or their own product. They used statistics instead of actually interviewing the customers. It's horrible interpretation of results and shows their complete detachment from the user base. They confirmed their complete and utter ignorance by not correcting it in Windows 8.1.

For the umpteenth time... why not just put an option to add the Start Menu? Not too difficult clearly from the multitude of third part Start Menu apps out there.

 

[Begin EnglishLesson]Ahh, but he said "deliberately bad move", which is quite different from "deliberate bad move". The former is a move that was deliberately bad, the latter was a deliberate move that was also a bad move.[End EnglishLesson]

But, yes, absolutely, since the Start Menu still existed, and could be obtained by a simple Registry hack in the Preview Candidates, they could have just left well enough alone. Instead, they deliberately removed that option, just as they deliberately ripped out any code that would have allowed people to get Aero Glass on the desktop.

 

One day later and I change my mind. I thought the missing driver wifi issue was all I would have to deal with. Today I get this weird grey screen telling me to please wait, it never went away. I called Acer and they said do a full system restore, they also said do not upgrade to 8.1 if you keep having problems. Thanks Acer. So in the past 3-4 days I have done couple partial and now a full system restore, and I am going to stay with windows 8 for the rest of the year. Windows 8 worked fine for three months, within a week of 8.1 two problems. One making the laptop completely unusable.

 

Well, you were still right: IF you have no crippling issues, Windows 8.1 is great. You notice that was a big "if", pun intended...

 

"Wow, users use the Start menu a lot. Maybe we should make it really large and the user can just put the stuff they want right there on it. Like a whole SCREEN of stuff that people already want to click on."

 

I also thought you were talking about the brightness slider, and yes I know it is different than autobrightness. Moving on...

I wonder if powercfg might do the trick. I don't have 8.1 to try.

But from http://windowsitpro.com/systems-management/powercfg

" Many laptops have function keys that let you control brightness, but none let you configure the screen to remain bright all the time. And Control Panel offers no help on the subject. The solution is to simply open a command prompt and type

powercfg /g off /option videodim

The /g switch is a global option that accepts four parameters in addition to videodim..."

Videodim is the name for this feature. If off works, then maybe millisecond values can be used.

Additionally you can dump the status by doing powercfg /query >power.txt

Then open power.txt and you might see something like this (sorry about formating)

Subgroup GUID: 7516b95f-f776-4464-8c53-06167f40cc99 (Display) GUID Alias: SUB_VIDEO Power Setting GUID: 17aaa29b-8b43-4b94-aafe-35f64daaf1ee (Dim display after) GUID Alias: VIDEODIM Minimum Possible Setting: 0x00000000 Maximum Possible Setting: 0xffffffff Possible Settings increment: 0x00000001 Possible Settings units: Seconds Current AC Power Setting Index: 0x00000078 Current DC Power Setting Index: 0x00000078

 

Thankfully, I have no crippling issues on either of my Vaios...so you agree that the OS is now great?

 

It is still true of the old saying "if it works for you that is great". Again as Pirx mentioned so long as there are no crippling issues. I would like to see all these issues disappear so that we will see real user numbers with market share. I think a lot will fear the upgrade, or new system, based on the desire to run Windows 8.1.

 

Heh, good one...:hi2: I agree, Windows 8.1 is great for you. Me, I won't touch it with a barge pole.

 

By interview I don't mean a physical sit down interview. But more like a consumer poll that they do extensively as well. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that something that has been an integral part of an OS for nearly 20 years. It's like saying people don't roll the windows down in their cars as often as they used to so let's just remove the handle or button that rolls it down.

 

The key word here is "supposedly"...

Both Lenovo and M$ have gone through employing a Goebels-style propaganda in order to insult the intelligence of their customer base...

 

Not analogous as what percentage of the PC market does this OEM have as compared to Windows OS? You have to look at it as not every PC purchased has to be a Lenovo but almost every PC has to have Windows. If a total of only 10% of consumers like, or prefer, the Lenovo keyboard they could be set to go. The same, or even reverse, can be said of UI issues........

 

Add to this, the whole GFWL debacle that is causing all sorts of problems for GFWL games especially Batman and Dirt 3.

 

This is a feature that I actually use. It make no sense why they stopped letting you control it. They gave full control for full brightness, dimmed brightness, and how much time for each. Bunch of crap. And don't tell me there was some legitimate reason for doing this. The code that does it is all still there, they simply removed the user's control over it. There is probably some way to modify it in the registry.

 

On 8.1 I played DIRT3 yesterday, thru *Steam* thru GFWL. double online-ness! No issues.

 

well there is this too........... Codemasters Removing GFWL DRM From DiRT 3

 

Am i the only one here two actually liked Lenovo's new keyboard?

Typing on an X1C/Tx30 feels so much better than typing on a Tx20/X1.

 

You're definitely not the only one.

For people coming from other brands, the "new" ThinkPad keyboard is a bliss.

For hard-core ThinkPad users, with shortcuts embedded in their brains/muscle memory, it's usually a nightmare due to the layout.

 

Good for you. It doesn't work for me. This is the error I always get:

 

All GFWL will have that DRM removed and Dirt 3 is on the top of the list. At least that's what Steam is promising.