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.

Comments

You'll pry Windows 95 from my cold dead hands!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll never upgrade, never!

Re:You'll pry Windows 95 from my cold dead hands!

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll pry Windows 95 from my cold dead hands!

Cool. I'll be right over.

Re:You'll pry Windows 95 from my cold dead hands!

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the first line as " The newest irritation from windows". wow

Re:You'll pry Windows 95 from my cold dead hands!

[operagost]

When Windows 8 came out, I thought about all the effort they put in since Windows 95 to have as few items on the desktop as possible. So, yes, it's like they went back to Windows 3.x Program Manager, having icons scattered all over.

Re:You'll pry Windows 95 from my cold dead hands!

[omnichad]

Personally I'd wait for Windows 8.11 for Workgroups.

Re:You'll pry Windows 95 from my cold dead hands!

[Joce640k]

"it's hard to imagine why those already on it wouldn't upgrade"

Question is: Is it hard to imagine people who aren't on it upgrading? eg. From Windows 7?

Re:You'll pry Windows 95 from my cold dead hands!

[omnichad]

I thought we were talking about marketing names. Version numbers in Windows are more or less meaningless.

Re:You'll pry Windows 95 from my cold dead hands!

[linebackn]

Say what you will, but the Windows 95/NT 4 Windows Explorer is the lightest weight, least cluttered, most consistent, and most sensible version of their user interface of all of them.

It pre-dates all the web "integration" madness so it is not tied to IE under the hood. It provides all the file management and desktop functionality anybody would really need, even in a modern computer.

Re:You'll pry Windows 95 from my cold dead hands!

[smash]

They've gone back to program manager, except it is less flexible and customizable.

Re:You'll pry Windows 95 from my cold dead hands!

[JohnnyMindcrime]

With all respect, I agree with him. I am both Linux and Windows person with no requirement to spend valuable CPU cycles on unnecessary eye-candy simply to impress someone who happens to look over my shoulder.

GUI interfaces need to be slick, clean and uncluttered, they need to get you to where you need to be in as few mouse-clicks and key presses as possible, whilst at the same time allowing usage of both of them for navigation.

Rotating cubes, melting windows and icons that animate other than to tell you your mouse pointer is over them have no place on any computer outside of a kindergarten classroom - Windows, OS X, or Linux, I don't care, I'm not biased.

Meh

[fermat1313]

Windows 8 was a huge disaster, and windows 8.1 only applies a different color of frosting to the same stale cupcake. As both a personal user and IT decision maker, there's no way I'd put Windows 8.x on anything around here.

Re:Meh

[Sponge Bath]

The millions of consumers buying cupcake pans this fall will need to fill them with something. Toast and bagels won't fit.

Re:Meh

[SpoonStomper]

That's quite silly. Considering this brings back the missing features that everyone was missing like a start button and boot to desktop. This puts it on par and better in many ways than Windows 7.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

The start button doesn't actually do anything. It just brings up the modern UI.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Meh

[Charliemopps]

Cupcake pans are quickly going out of style. Thanks in part to all the shitty Microsoft cupcakes getting baked recently.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really.

Boot to desktop is nice.

The missing Start button that they "gave back" however now takes you to a "Start Screen" that takes over your entire screen (what if I wanted to navigate based on a graphic that was previously on the screen or based on instructions that I wanted to keep up) and relies on hot-corners and swiping for navigation (which are a waste based on the simplicity of the previous interface.

The "returned" start button is equivalent to someone buying a car and stating that they wanted a manual transmission. Then when the car was delivered it turned out that it had an automatic transmission. Then when this draws a complaint, the seller installs a stick and clutch pedal, but leaves the automatic transmission.

What's scary is that 3rd party companies had no problem doing this almost on day one. This is more just MS not wanting to bend. Not surprisingly, nobody I've spoken to is happy with this.

Re:Meh

[somersault]

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.

Re:Meh

[Anrego]

I've normally considered myself fairly pragmatic, and while I've run Linux happily for well over a decade, I totally get why it's not a practical solution for most. Interesting thing is, for the first time since.. forever, I actually feel like I can recommend Linux to my non-technical friends. The situation that's coming up a lot:

"I run windows XP, I tried windows 8 and hated it, what the heck am I supposed to do when they stop supporting XP".

Gaming is still the big sticking point (though even that's improving a lot), but for my "facebook and email" friends, throwing mint on there (or whatever the current user-friendly distro of choice is) is becoming a realistic thought. One in particular has a computer that's barely capable of running XP right now, so I might recommend it to her as a trial.

The other big unresolved sticking point has been attachment to specific software. In the case above, she has used some ancient version of "print master gold" for a while and would very much like to continue doing so. It's this kind of thing that we tend to shrug off that keeps people from switching, but at this point it probably won't work on windows 8 anyway, so nothing to lose, and might be able to make it work through wine..

Re:Meh

[zixxt]

That's quite silly. Considering this brings back the missing features that everyone was missing like a start button and boot to desktop. This puts it on par and better in many ways than Windows 7.

The start button does not doing anything useful. And its still missing the Start Menu, and I very much prefer Aero over the ugly flatness of Windows 8 metro interface.

Re:Meh

[slaker]

Honestly, it's fine. I rolled out 8 (plus Classic Shell) to about 150 systems and they've been trouble free. My power users like to whine about having to go look for that's now split between Control Panel and the Settings modern app, but power users always whine about things and I don't care. For every person who moans about something that moved, I have at least one compliment about how fast their computer seems now. My less-experienced users actually do pretty well with the start screen that puts the three or four applications they're supposed to be using in a nice, huge tile right in front of their face.

Re:Meh

[jones_supa]

My power users like to whine about having to go look for that's now split between Control Panel and the Settings modern app, but power users always whine about things and I don't care.

It's still a rather unelegant split. If Microsoft wanted to go with the Modern UI, they could (and should) have implemented the classic Control Panel in its fullest, inside the Modern UI. Also some of the Windows Accessories are still missing a Modern UI counterpart, including Notepad! These things don't make sense. They didn't do the proper integration work and that's why the new UI still sometimes looks like a taped-on quick tech demo.

Re:Meh

[dunezone]

Free or not its still ridiculous that I need to download third party software to have a feature that was standard to Windows for 17 years.

Re:Meh

[operagost]

"I run windows XP, I tried windows 8 and hated it, what the heck am I supposed to do when they stop supporting XP".

Run Windows 7 until that leaves support in 2020?

Re:Meh

[CreatureComfort]

That's what all the fan boys say, but when I checked it out, all he was handing out were poorly documented recipes and a lump of ingredients that I had to bake myself, and when I asked where to go to get the rest of the ingredients I needed, all the other cooks called me noob, and said that I didn't really need those raisins, or I should be using walnuts instead of the pecans I really wanted...

Re:Meh

[X0563511]

Imagine this. That is Windows 8. Now, imagine this. That is Windows 8.1.

Sure, it's a pretty ball and all, but it's broken and changing the paint job isn't going to fix it.

Re:Meh

[Chas]

No.l Actually 8.1 WON'T fix that.

All it does is add a teasing layer of "fuck you" to the interface with the useless "Start button".

What the people asking for a start button back are REALLY asking for is a start MENU. Not a start SCREEN.

Re:Meh

[X0563511]

Do you really think that's OK? It is not acceptable that such a thing is required to get basic functionality from your OS.

Imagine the uproar if Canonical removed everything except Unity from their repositories. Would you think that was OK? Sure, you could easily add a third-party repository (eg, getdeb) and get your goodies back, but you should not have to do that and that is the problem.

Re:Meh

[slashmydots]

I agree with that. I build A LOT of computer at my repair and custom builds shop and now that my ad campaign is basically "I still build new PCs with Windows 7" I've had even more. I refuse to sell it. The problem is, most of my virus removal and diagnostic tools don't work on 8 but I can't simply refuse to service it either. But besides that temporary annoyance, I'm doing fine refusing to sell it. I didn't build one single Vista computer the entire time it was out since XP licenses were still available and I kept getting decent used XP machines in to refurb and that's how I intend to handle 8 as well. I REALLY hope Windows 9 doesn't put me out of business though because 7 will stop being available past then.

Re:Meh

[JohnnyMindcrime]

Speaking as an IT person with 30+ years experience who is mainly a Linux guy but likes XP and Windows 7, I only ditched my last copy of XP (excluding virtualised ones) about 6 months ago and moved to Windows 7.

Ultimately, I like Windows 7, it's as reliable as XP (mainly because I never found XP to be unreliable) and a lot slicker on newer hardware, but then XP was starting to get clunky with newer machines.

But I hated Windows 7 when I first started with it, it seemed that stuff (especially in Control Panel) had been moved around for no readily apparent reason and a couple of months to comfortably find everything I wanted to as quickly as I could in XP.

My point is that it took even an IT geek a couple of months to get used to a new OS, so why is this any different for "Joe Sixpack" ditching XP and moving to, say, Linux Mint with it's Cinnamon interface that is very similar to the XP layout.

It's all just about familiarity and I am sure every Microsoft-focused person out there suffered some initial infuriation when they fired up Windows 7 for the first time and saw how different a lot of it is from XP. Yes, we all got used to it and like it now, but that time to familiarise was still there, even if you choose not to acknowledge it.

Re:Meh

[Joce640k]

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.

Re:Meh

[asmkm22]

8.1 actually makes the experience pretty decent on a desktop. Just get used to right-clicking the start menu instead of left-clicking gives you quick access to most t hings you need. The real "start menu" is still there, but once you unpin the crap it starts with (weather apps and such) and pin your actual programs, it functions well enough. It's also nice, now that I'm used to it, to be able to just hit the windows key and start typing to get the program i want. The search is fast, and you really just type and hit enter.

There are a few tweaks to make, though, but nothing real difficult. For example, I set the default picture viewer to the actual Windows Picture Viewer (or whatever it's called). By default it loads up an app, which makes you go through the weird transition away from the desktop with no real clear way on how to get back (mouse the top left for a list of open apps, including the desktop).

For the record, I couldn't stand version 8. I only recently gave 8.1 a try, via Technet, and it's been pretty decent. Certainly not the horrific beast that win 8's reputation implies.

Oh, and I work in IT.

Re:Meh

[dragon-file]

The other big unresolved sticking point has been attachment to specific software. In the case above, she has used some ancient version of "print master gold" for a while and would very much like to continue doing so. It's this kind of thing that we tend to shrug off that keeps people from switching

Couldn't agree more. I had a friend who brought me his laptop... The OS drive was shot and the XP CD key was gone. So I replaced the drive and installed mint. His first complaint was not having office so i recommended wine. He came back 3 months later saying it was running slow. His solution to the Office problem was to install a cracked copy of XP in Virtual Box.

Moral of the story: Software makes the average user HATE change.

Re:Meh

[MrNemesis]

Obligatory Penny Arcade.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/28

Re:Meh

[Joce640k]

I've been recommending OS X instead. The hardware is nice and it just works.

Sure, so long as you don't mind paying Apple prices for hardware plus Apple prices for every last little cable/connector/widget that isn't included with it. Standard connectors, peripherals which will work on the next generation of computer...? Hah!

And ... only if you only want to run software that Apple is 100% happy with. No hacking, please.

Re:Meh

[ISoldat53]

I liked the comment in the ARS article asking "How do I remove the Start Button from windows 8.1."

Re:Meh

[JohnnyMindcrime]

I don't think gaming is anywhere near the big sticking point that it used to be when it comes to choosing Linux over Windows.

Microsoft essentially killed big commercial PC gaming on Windows when they took the decision to split DirectX 9 and 10 across XP and Vista respectively. Making that decision when they did hurt the Windows games development community considerably because it fragmented game development when most people were still on XP, and was precisely the scenario DirectX was designed to avoid. It wouldn't surprise me if it was a deliberate tactic by Microsoft to drive people to X-Box for their gaming needs, but it undoubtedly had a huge negative impact on commercial PC gaming releases.

In the longer term, it's actually an extremely good thing to have happened because it's killed the stranglehold big PC games companies had on Windows games and opened the floodgates for indie developers to start making games again - not to mention the impact of Kickstarter in getting games released that, under big corporate control, would never have seen the light of day.

Steam is going to be an interesting turning point for gaming on Linux, but as some analysts are already saying, the actual turning point will likely only be if and when there's a killer game on Steam for Linux (or SteamBox or whatever it's name is) that gets people buying it in their droves.

I would argue that big applications like MS Office and Photoshop are bigger obstacles to the adoption of Linux. In reality, most MS Office and Photoshop users (who are, let's face it, probably using pirated copies anyway) would find that LibreOffice and The GIMP do everything that they need to do anyway but are just too lazy and/or scared to try something new. Sure, there are a minority of "professional" users who need the specific features in MS Office, Photoshop and other big commercial Windows applications, but they really are a tiny proportion compared to the overall userbases of them.

Re:Meh

[citizenr]

This is a METRO button, there is no start menu.

Re:Meh

[danfromsb]

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.

Just when you thought it was safe....

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Windows 8.x is back, and this time, it's personal.

Or it feels that way. I've been working with the Windows 8.1 RTM. Many more things seem to break on the Windows 8.1 RTM that did on Windows 8. Mayhem ensued. Kiss your SQLE 2005 goodbye if you haven't already. Change your Setup.exe's to Vista compatibility if you don't want them to take an hour to install. Other than that, no worries.

Re:Just when you thought it was safe....

[jones_supa]

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:
- 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 .NET Framework 3.5 gets stuck and the manual DISM utility has to be used instead
- 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

Win8 as a UI vs. an OS

[xianzombie]

Before everyone starts bashing on Win8 (even though it does, to some extent, deserve it), I feel obligated to state:

The OS:
1. Performs better than Win7 (for me)
2. Has been perhaps the most stable iteration of windows (for me).

The UI:

Is horrible in terms of the default layout. Adding back in a 'normal' start menu (via Classic Shell, etc) and turning off the charm bars are key to making it a usable GUI, IMO.

With the above 'tweaks' the biggest thing I miss comparing 7 to 8 is the loss of being able to search files directly from the search bar. Perhaps that' some option/tweak I missed somewhere along the lines.

Will I try 8.1? If I can do it for free, yes. Will I give them money for it? NO!

Re:Win8 as a UI vs. an OS

[xianzombie]

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."

I want to search just my pc

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the use case for me typing something in the windows search charm thing and me wanting to get results from my PC and web pages, music, and photos from the Internet? Searching for files or file content on my PC already got harder with vista. Now this? If I want to search the web I can use google or bing or whatever I want. When I search my PC it is because I need to find a file on my PC. Also I do not want my data on sky drive.

"Hurray!" said no one.

[TWiTfan]

[crickets chirping]

Re:DO NOT WANT

[xianzombie]

Somewhat sadly, after a HD failure, we loaded up Ubuntu on the wife's laptop. While it did everything she needed, she really just didn't like it, and things like Skype just didn't play nice. (Which was sad, as I was working out of town for about a month and wanted to see her and the kid).

That said, once it gave up the ghost, we picked her up a replacement laptop with Win8. She wouldn't let me tweak it, but somehow she can handle the default Win8 with Metro better than Linux with KDE, Gnome, or XFCE. *shrug*

This is sort of what Windows 8 should have been

[onyxruby]

This is sort of what Windows 8 should have been to begin with. What this doesn't do is fix the issue with the missing Start MENU. The result is that every time you need to load an application through the menu you are forced back into the abomination that is the Metro interface. This is a deal breaker for the enterprise and shows Microsoft's continued contempt for their customers and what their customers need.

A tablet interface has no business on a desktop and Microsoft should have made it completely optional. Fixing boot to desktop was a half hearted start to be able to say they were listening to feedback - sort of. However the stunt with the Start Button instead of the Start Menu was a slap in the face to the enterprise and large OEM's that have been begging Microsoft to restore the Start Menu.

Sales will continue their worst downturn in history since the advent of the personal computer. OEM's will continue to lose money hand over fist. Enterprise customers held with contempt are evaluating third party vendors they never would have considered before. If you force people to use a new interface regardless, than it's an opportunity for your customers to pick what that interface is going to be. Sales of Mac's to the Enterprise have hit record highs, Linux is breaking through where it never did before. People are even toying with Chromebooks.

Re:This is sort of what Windows 8 should have been

[Theophany]

Enterprise customers held with contempt are evaluating third party vendors they never would have considered before. If you force people to use a new interface regardless, than it's an opportunity for your customers to pick what that interface is going to be. Sales of Mac's to the Enterprise have hit record highs, Linux is breaking through where it never did before. People are even toying with Chromebooks.

This seems a tad hysterical. Enterprise users will continue to use W7 for a while yet. It still works, is still supported and is less of a headache to maintain for the tech guys than upgrading everything to work with W8. Businesses aren't clamouring to upgrade all their machinery just because MS has a newer OS.

Not much improvement; drawbacks continue

[jkrise]

1. No improvement in user interface. Touch sucks on the desktop and Microsoft knows it. A Start button without a Start Menu is useless.

2. Metro style apps are very painful to deploy in the Enterprise; even for those with Subscription (Dis)Advantage.

3. Still not immune from viruses and worms - needs continuous stream of patches; customer remains at the mercy of Microsoft; like the forced ditching of XP which works perfectly fine.

4. Many existing licensed software such as SQLE are not supported in 8 series; so all that money is wasted expenditure.

5. Still no native support in the OS for cameras; SIM cards, etc. even Android is better in that respect despite being minuscule in size compared to 8.1.

The list of drawbacks continue; nothing to write home about; despite these paid shill reviews.

Re:Not much improvement; drawbacks continue

[Joining Yet Again]

3. Still not immune from viruses and worms - needs continuous stream of patches;

Yeah, that utopia really is proving hard to reach.

customer remains at the mercy of Microsoft; like the forced ditching of XP which works perfectly fine.

Yeah, fuck Microsoft with its 12 year support cycle. Versions of OS X and Linux from 2001 are still in mainstream support.

5. Still no native support in the OS for cameras; SIM cards, etc. even Android is better in that respect despite being minuscule in size compared to 8.1.

Eh, my webcam works fine in Windows 8 without extra support. I assume Android has SIM card drivers because of u no it's used for 'phones a lot.

Re:Not much improvement; drawbacks continue

[Joining Yet Again]

What are you talking about? Linux isn't immune to viruses and worms.

And your vigorous handwaving didn't actually address the main point: nobody gives 13 year consumer support cycles except Microsoft. Trying to get stuff working on non-contemporaneous versions of Linux is way harder than on Windows - it may be possible in principle if you have the source, but that's an open vs closed source software argument which rarely applies in practice except among cadres of geeks.

MS isn't stopping you from supporting SIM cards or GPRS, and it's only imposing hardware restrictions if you want to re-sell discounted licences, which is sorta what Apple does except that Apple says, "You can't sell it at all because fuck you."

Re:Ubuntu 13.10

[DoofusOfDeath]

Meh, given my feelings about the direction Ubuntu's desktop environment has taken over the past few years, I was already not paying attention.

I'll be somewhat more interested when the Linux Mint derivative of Ubuntu 13.10 comes out.

Re:"winning positive reviews"

[gstoddart]

Who is making those reviews?

Dude, it's in the summary -- Ars Technica and Wired.

You can choose for yourself if you trust them. You could even read them if you cared since they're linked in the summary.

Re:no no no!

[wonkey_monkey]

Any review which doesn't declare 8.1 to be worse than 8.0 counts as a positive review. Don't you know anything about marketing?

Windows 8.1 BUYING positive reviews.

[linebackn]

The newest iteration of Windows has begun rolling out, and is buying positive reviews.

There, fixed that for you.

Does anybody besides the shills really think anybody not paid or threatened with leg breaking would give this a positive review?

For those not selected for the rollout

[Provocateur]

Here is the MAD Magazine fold-out version

Windows 8 |-------| .1 ---(fold until the two bars meet)

Result

Windows 3.1

Win 8.1 "Rolls Out"

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Yeah. Like a fat, greasy turd...