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Hands-On With Windows 8.1 Preview

Posted by Soulskill on from the solid-color-rectangles-redux dept.

adeelarshad82 writes "Microsoft launched the preview version of Windows 8.1 at the company's Build conference in San Francisco and early signs show that Microsoft heard the criticisms, and has responded with improvements. The new OS includes a number of changes starting with the return of the Start button and the ability to boot directly to the desktop. However, Microsoft hasn't given up on making the new-style tile and full-screen more usable for all users. If anything, the tile-based Start screen has gotten more flexible, with new smaller and larger tile options. Windows 8.1 also drastically improves built-in search, SkyDrive cloud syncing, mail and Microsoft Music." Microsoft also released a preview of Visual Studio 2013 and .NET 4.5.1, and there's a program that will give developers early access to the PC version of the Kinect sensor. Other tidbits: Windows 8.1 will use a standard driver model for 3-D printers, and it's getting better support for both high-res displays and using multiple displays with different resolutions.

3 of 505 comments (clear)

  1. Speaking as someone... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...who views Microsoft as a corporation with disgust due to all the immoral, illegal and downright reprehensible acts they have committed over the years to maintain their monopoly position, I'd just like to thank them for Windows 8.x, which will probably do more to damage them than the toothless DoJ ever could.

  2. Good, bad, and ugly by JDG1980 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The good:

    • The Start button is available again.
    • Hot corners can be turned off.
    • You can now boot straight to the desktop.
    • The context menu for the Start button now has shutdown options.
    • High-DPI support is supposed to be better now (though third-party developers will still figure out ways to break this).

    The bad:

    • The real start menu still isn't back, and the Metro start screen is nowhere near as good – it's more obtrusive and less functional.
    • The window titlebar text is still centered, with no supported way to put it back to left-justified. For those of us who have been using Windows for years, this is a very annoying change since it breaks the muscle memory of our eyes. When I've tried Windows 8, I always find myself looking at the wrong place to see a window title.
    • There's still no supported way to get back the Aero theme. I understand why people with tablets or low-powered laptops might want an interface that doesn't stress the GPU as much, but why should desktop users have to suffer through something that looks like it's straight out of 1995? The Windows 8 theme is the UI equivalent of brutalism – those ugly bare concrete buildings that architects were putting up in the 1970s.

    The ugly:

    • Metro. Or, as I call it, the Knots Landing user interface. Seriously, you shouldn't be looking to the theme songs of 1980s soap operas as your inspiration for UI design...
  3. Re:the return of the Start button by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The file copying is much better now

    I'm intrigued - how can anyone screw up something as fundamental as copying a file so badly that some 28 years later it can still be made "much better?"