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Windows 8.1 Rolls Out Today
The newest iteration of Windows has begun rolling out, and is winning positive reviews. (Here's an in-depth review from Ars, and a more concise one from Wired — both give 8.1 a thumbs-up).
Kelerei wrote with the above-linked TechDirt article on the release, noting that it is a staged rollout rather than global. Starting this morning, though, 8.1 is available to some customers. Kelerei writes: "The upgrade is optional (and free) for existing Windows 8 users, though if one looks at the changes, it's hard to imagine why those already on it wouldn't upgrade."
Also at Slash BI.
Well, in true Slashdot fashion, I didn't read the article or full summary thereby missing:
"The upgrade is optional (and free) for existing Windows 8 users, though if one looks at the changes, it's hard to imagine why those already on it wouldn't upgrade."
The start button doesn't actually do anything. It just brings up the modern UI.
Except the start button does the same thing as the Windows button in Windows 8.0 - show up the Metro UI. In effect, it's only taking up additional space on the task bar for those who ignore the Metro stuff.
I have also been running 8.1 RTM for a couple of weeks and my experience is similar. Little glitches here and there. Microsoft has released quite stable stuff lately so I didn't expect this level of bugginess.
Some examples: .NET Framework 3.5 gets stuck and the manual DISM utility has to be used instead
- On various laptops, the screen brightness indicator displays wrong dynamic range after coming out from suspend or hibernation
- When a device is connected to the computer, a "Device Setup" dialog appears and it can hang there forever
- The automatic installer for
- Windows Explorer displays Korean characters correctly, but Japanese characters are displayed as squares
- When I have two monitors connected (8.1 can show a taskbar on both screens) and set the taskbar setting to "Never combine" (a Vista-style look), the taskbar button labels are shown only on the primary display
- When I turn Bluetooth off, the settings application freezes for a long time
- The verification code to authorize my Windows Live account is often not successfully sent via e-mail
Here is the free (as in beer) software you are looking for.
Shame it doesn't completely eradicate Metro, but at least it means you can avoid it most of the time.
which is totally what she said
So why doesn't someone make an XP replacement machine? Conform to the XP interface specs at the bottom end, with much faster hardware loafing along doing half-work, just to keep old XP applications alive? It should be trivial; other than the part about Microsoft's lawyers carpet-bombing you into the late Neolithic.
Trivial? LOL! Those 'specs' are humungously huge.
PS: There's a bunch of guys trying to do it ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS ). They've been trying since 2004, and they already had a codebase when they started.
No sig today...
This is a METRO button, there is no start menu.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
EVERY business is laughing at MS. 8 on a workstation is a joke. Tiles, YAY! Server 2012 shoving metro down my throat too? Yea, not happening. In fact, just FU.
I'm not a super big fan of Apple's policies, but honestly, how does this shit get modded insightful? Don't like thunderbolt, use USB, those cables cost $2. Don't like the apps in the Appstore? Then install from the developer's website. Like hacking? Then install homebrew and have at it. I mean seriously, vim comes standard on OS X, and you can easily install clang or gcc to build whatever you want. XCode is free!!!! You need to pay absolutely nothing, beyond the cost of hardware, to build and distribute software for OS X.