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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.
I'll never upgrade, never!
The millions of consumers buying cupcake pans this fall will need to fill them with something. Toast and bagels won't fit.
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!
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.
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.
[crickets chirping]
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
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
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..
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.
---- GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
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?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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.
Run Windows 7 until that leaves support in 2020?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
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.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
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.
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?
Here is the MAD Magazine fold-out version
Windows 8 |-------| .1 ---(fold until the two bars meet)
Result
Windows 3.1
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
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.
Windows 10 is great - I used it to download Linux.
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...
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.
Obligatory Penny Arcade.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/28
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
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.
No sig today...