Windows 8.1(Blue)Free Update

The bug...W8 itself is a bug...not much to look for when the bug was the O/S to begin with...not listening to customer and improving and refining the windows experience is another bug M$ has so far failed to head. And basically M$ isn't Apple...so they should try to play Apple game as they got not game....

 

I guess M$ thinks if there is a treasure hunt it will generate Win8 excitement...................

 

$100,000 for EACH bug? Some people will get rich vey soon.

 

Making the Metro UI the default on desktop/laptop computers.

When do I get my check?

 

Windows 8.1 will be available as an update to a Windows 8 installation via the Microsoft Store in a Windows 8 installation or as an ISO for a full clean install with free Windows 8.1 preview universal serial key.

To install the Windows 8.1 preview a Microsoft ID will be required.There's no option for a Local Account.

Here's the link where the preview can be downloaded from when it's available on the 26th.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/win...cts-and-technologies/windows-8-1/default.aspx

 

From one delighted customer about Win 8.1:

" Holy ****!!! Microsoft, you've outdone yourself this time! You mean I can check the weather, view pictures of nonsense and add a dragon to follow my fingers all within a single pane of glass?? This is the wave of the future... future.. future. Next time, why don't you get a second opinion before throwing **** like this on your business users. We're still trying to make a living these days. Can't wait to buy one of these for Peggy in HR... gonna be fun watching her try to cut checks while the dragon is following her fingers!"

 

There's absolutely nothing to fear in Windows 8.1 US Edition.

PRISM is a built in added feature.

 

I got a system ready to test it, until then, I'll reserve my judgement. Some things look pretty useless while others seem pretty nice. So far, it seems that if you load the preview, you're in for a reinstall once the final version is out.

 

Stop show-boasting! I have this same feature in Windows 7 Pro :/...

 

Can't wait to see WinRT (LOB) code...........

Prism on .NET 4.5 and the road to Windows 8 apps - Blaine Wastell - patterns & practices client architecture guidance - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

 

Conversion of the 9AM June 26th San Francisco to worldwide local times.

Event Time Announcer - //Build 2013/

 

What exactly is in the update? any pics...?

 

Arstechnica has a few primers on the changes up now, I'll be testing it on my ThinkPad tablet 2 soon enough, I'll post my impressions after giving it a good try. The changes in metro are pretty good, I haven't checked the desktop side of things yet.

 

It is cool :thumbsup: ;

 

See nothing in the video to make desktop users happy and this is the issue. No one is dispelling the usefulness of Win8 on a touch tablet device............

From their article;

 

Almost done installing, I'll be able to test it pretty soon. It will be on atom Z2760, so I certainly won't be commenting on speed.

 

I'm currently downloading it on my S15 as we speak. I will comment back later.

 

I can already say that the settings in metro are now worth something, I'm running updates and getting the list of updates available, selecting which ones I want, etc. no longer takes you to the desktop (great for tablets), the new on screen keyboard is also better. Those are the improvements I could find in 5 minutes, the time it took to get into the admin account and start the updates.

I might go VM with it on my M6700 if I got the time, it's my production machine and even though I can boot to windows 7 for work, I'd rather keep the ability to boot on both OS.

 

First couple screenshots of some of the new features:

Start button is alive: (Though just takes you to the start menu)


Right clicking on the start button gives you a bunch of good options now:


Ability to disable hot corners:


Ability to make metro icons smaller now and to name groups of icons:



This is all the time I have to mess with it for now, as I've got a ton of homework and stuff to do. But if you guys want me to test stuff, etc, just leave a comment and I'll get to it as soon as I can!

 

Good news, on 1366x768 displays, the default number of tile rows has been increased from 3 to 4. HELL YES! Same here, I'll take requests if you want to see something in particular. Too bad I didn't take a screenshot of my start screen before updating, I wasn't expecting an increase in the number of tile rows. I'll update once I'm done updating and reorganizing my start screen to my liking with the new icon sizes.

You can see the before from NBR's own review though:

After:

 

Here's my Windows 8.1 Preview Desktop

 

Also just set it so that my start menu screen background is the same as my desktop background...And I made it so that when I press the start key it takes it to the app view as opposed to "metro interface". I definitely like the app view better, making it much more usable for a power user IMO.

Edit:


I then have them sorted by most used...That view has made itself most useful to me.

 

And here's the comparison of the new vs old start screen on 1366x768 along with the new small tile size: http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...dows-8-1-blue-free-update-12.html#post9258482. Props for the increase in usability, real difference on a low res display.

I noticed sluggish performance at first (more than what I got before), but like I said, I'm testing this on atom so I'll give it some time, maybe Windows was just indexing stuff in the background or something similar which would slow down any atom system.

 

That is more usable for tablets, I still await actual usable desktop enhancements, like fix DWM and Aero Glass and others.......................

 

I haven't tried the desktop environment yet and I am testing it on a tablet.

One thing I have noticed though is that a right click on the start button gives you a shut down option. I'm pretty sure aero won't make it back.

 

I know.................

 

Oh, I forgot, boot to desktop is back, not easy to find the setting, but it's back.

I hope that's not all there is, but at least usability will improve somewhat: http://arstechnica.com/information-...-does-windows-8-1-offer-to-desktop-die-hards/

 

Amazing how we've been thrown back a couple of decades, to the point that the crap that is shown in your screenshot is lauded as "much more usable". Yes, I know, of course you are correct, this is absolutely much more usable than the complete disaster we had before, but this is a good thing only if we compare it with the borderline unusable garbage that is Metro in Windows 8. It's still a far cry from what we had in Windows 7. My decision is pretty much made at this point: I'll stay with Windows 7, probably until 2020. What happens by that time is anyone's wild guess.

 

I'm with you Pirx. If the best they can do is fit more tiles on a screen and it's cause for pomp and circumstance, then we've lost. PC's will now be nothing more than oversized smart phones and force the death of keyboards and mice. We'll all resort to hunt and peck on a substandard touchscreen interface and say good bye to any real productive work.

 

And I agree with both of you for the most part. This is definitely a step forward for Windows 8, but still won't be a big enough leap for the individuals still sticking with Windows 7.

In all honesty I never even look at the start menu/metro interface in windows 8. If I need a program that isn't pinned to my taskbar I just hit the Windows key and then start typing the program name and then hit enter. For me, this is much quicker than navigating through the Windows 7 start menu to find a program...But there are definitely other features of the Windows 7 start menu I miss.

 

Fourth here. This is pretty much a poor excuse of an "improvement" You can try to polish a turd, but it's still going to be a turd in the end.

Hitting the Windows key and typing out a program works just the same on 7 as on 8. Really the only reason to roam through the 7 Start menu is if you forget the spelling of the program's name you're looking for.

 

As other have said if this is all they can do in 8.1 they have lost credibility and more and more will stick with windows 7 including corporations. My W7 works well and I don't need or use a tablet and when I do I will get a Android or Ipad....

 

I do not know guys what is your problem with the start screen and why do you bury the PC, because of that... For me it is working very usefully, faster than a start menu would work, all it need is to garbage out all microsoft craps and install own programs...

Here is a good start screen, that I would not change back to start menu;

 

For those tried the update, can you make the background of icon tiles transparent now?

 

Right-clicking in the bottom-left corner of the screen gave you that same menu in 8.0.

You could name groups in 8.0 as well. It was just really unintuitive how to do it. You had to pinch to zoom out, then flick the group upward to select it, and then you could name it.

I think the combination of (1) boot to desktop, (2) start launches all-app screen, and (3) desktop underlies all-app screen, will be a useful combination of settings for traditional desktop users.

To whoever said that the live wallpapers on the metro screen was a waste of time for "Peggy in accounting"...so is Aero Glass. So is ANY wallpaper. So are a multitude of consumer-oriented features. If you don't like the live wallpapers, don't use them. No harm in them being there for people who like them (who are generally going to be consumers, not "Peggy in accounting").

 

Well, that's it, I'm done.

 

I install a lot of little apps. Sometimes I forget what the heck they're called. An organized start menu lets me drive through to them and find them quickly. I can see the rest of my desktop when doing so for reference should I need it. With Metro I have to go to a completely different screen, I can't see my desktop apps, and use a lot more mouse movements to get to what I want/need.

Again, I've used Windows 8 on a tablet and I think it's actually an excellent tablet OS, no problems there. But it just doesn't work for a traditional laptop/PC.

I don't understand why Aero went away either. With today's hardware it's not like it created any resource issues or performance issues. Most people that multitask just want an overview of everything they have on their desktop at any given time. Metro interface takes that away completely.

It's like if you were driving a car, and any time you wanted to change the radio station or find a song you wanted to play, it blocked your windshield view so you could find it.

 

I think that right there is why Aero went away. Everything about Windows 8 screams tablet first, PC second. The hardware inside of the tablets are similar performance wise to PC's from many moons ago. Back then, some PC's suffered a performance hit because of Aero. They are primarily focused on the tablet experience first, PC's second. They don't want the "performance hit" to happen on the tablets. Whether there would actually be a performance drop with Aero enabled on a tablet I guess would vary from device to device.

 

It's not like they can't add an option to turn it on and off (like in Windows Vista/7).
I think it's pretty obvious that a lot of people out there like Aero glass, why remove it?

 

Well, a lot of people liked the UI that was in XP/Vista/7.

It's pretty obvious that Microsoft is just doing what they want, and not what their customers want. Do whatever it takes to force yourself in the tablet market, I suppose.

 

Yeah, sure, but the option shutdown wasn't there though, it's been improved and I think that is what he meant.

Now, one thing I do agree with HT is that the all apps screen needs more customizability like creating custom groups and the groups should be collapsible just like subfolders in the start menu. Either, I'm blind, the option doesn't exist or it is well hidden.

 

Yeah that's what I meant about improvement. And I agree, if you could make app folders then the new app view when pressing start would effectively be as useful as the old start menu IMO.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I don't think full screen is going away, but why not display the desktop as a background instead and I don't mean just the wallpaper, but the active windows on the desktop as well. Yeah, it won't make it like the start menu, but it would be better in my opinion.

 

To both if I wanted kids style blocks I would buy kids blocks to play but with this interface it make and looks like kids blocks not something a professional would use. Just take a look at Ipad and Iphone do they have blocky icon..."NO" they are like regular "ICONS" and Android they are icon not blocky icon. I see nothing in mprovement in going this way other then to stop 3rd party software from installing or finding your third party software you use and forcing you to use M$ software(this is the most likely reason why they have Metro).

 

To each his own. I personally find the metro interface attractive and not un-professional in any way. But if someone had to use Windows 8 and hated the metro interface they could pretty much never have to see it with this update. If you only want to see "ICONS" and not the tiles, then just either pin all needed applications to the taskbar or pin them to your desktop. That way you boot straight to the desktop and never have to see the metro-style look.

You can also now make the metro view take you straight to an app view, which doesn't show the metro tiles, and instead shows just a list of apps, which I believe you would find more professional looking.


Not saying I love Windows 8, as I'm far from a fanboy due to my extensive use of Linux and OS X as well...But I'll continue to defend Windows 8 within reason.

 

I'm fine with the Windows 8 UI as well, well aside from a few small annoyances. What kinda baffles me is why Microsoft opted to remove the start menu and features like aero completely instead of simply leaving them disabled by default and letting the user enable them should they want to. Sure, there are third party apps that will bring back the start menu and all, but I was expecting MS to leave more things up to the user when Windows 8 came out.

 

Well apparently from this so far we are seeing only a further division of the camps not win overs. What M$ severely needs is Win overs from the traditional PC desktop/laptop market. This may however boost the acceptance of Windows 8 on tablets over desktop like hardware. In other words it may have helped the Surface Pro at the time of its release..............

 

Well, you would be getting pretty close to a full-screen start menu. Except there's no jump lists. No combination of pinned and frequently used items. And no easily distinguished special items (like Recent Places, Control Panel, Network, etc.)

But, yeah, we'd almost have a good part of the functionality of the Start Menu back.

 

If you right click you can click on control panel, network, and others. However there is no recent places if you right click, which I would like.

When you press the start button you can have the app list show you the frequently used applications first. However I wish you could pin certain items to certain locations within the app list.

And doesn't Windows 8 have jump lists? I always thought jump lists was just right-clicking on an icon on the taskbar and having it show e.g. recently viewed websites, recent documents opened, etc. But maybe you guys are referring to something else.

 

I think he was referring to these jumplists: