Ars Technica Reviews Leaked Windows 8.1 Update

SternisheFan writes to note that ArsTechnica's Peter Bright has reviewed the leaked Windows 8.1 update that was temporarily available from Microsoft's own servers. Here's how the article starts: "Leaks of upcoming versions of Microsoft's software are nothing new, but it's a little surprising when the source is Microsoft itself. The Spring update to Windows 8.1, known as Update 1, was briefly available from Windows Update earlier this week. The update wasn't a free-for-all. To get Windows Update to install it, you had to create a special (undocumented, secret) registry key to indicate that you were in a particular testing group; only then were the updates displayed and downloadable. After news of this spread, Microsoft removed the hefty—700MB—update from its servers, but not before it had spread across all manner of file-sharing sites... Just because it was distributed by Windows Update doesn't mean that this is, necessarily, the final build, but it does present a good opportunity to see what Microsoft is actually planning to deliver."

Comments

Nobody cares

[JoeyRox]

Microsoft could give Windows 8 away for free and tie a $100 bill to every DVD and people would use the DVD as a beer coaster and the $100 to buy an Android tablet.

Re:Nobody cares

[Calydor]

Seems to me it's more hate for Windows 8 than it's hate for Microsoft.

Re:Nobody cares

[roc97007]

That's the real point. I use Windows 7 and it's actually ok. I had Win8 on one of several machines, and after struggling with it for months, finally installed Windows 7 Pro and called it good. They can call it Microsoft Hate if they want (which is really the geek equivalent of hollering "racism") but it's really Windows 8 that sucks.

Re:Nobody cares

[Billly Gates]

I have extended family members. One daughter got a new Windows 8 tablet/ultrabook Lenovo hybrids for Christmas and loves it. She brings it out in the island in the kitchen to browse facebook, do homework with MS Word, etc. Her mom grabbed it for recipes, they used it for skype more relatives, her brother kept fighting to use it for things.

I mentioned how HORRIBLE ITS UI was and offered to put Windows 7 on. They looked at me like EWW that GUI is for old people that doesn't run applets.

Like the EEE it is super portable.

The issue us geeks need to use muscle memory to relearn something and we used to laugh at those who could not adopt to change. Now the joke is on us.

The millennials like their apps, tiny sizes, portability, long battery life, etc.

Windows 9 will be a refined balanced UI. Tile applets on a Windows 7 desktop if you plug in the keyboard and mouse (mouse-first UI) if rumors are true. MS nees an answer to iOS and Android with battery life, smooth graphics acceleration, and applets. It is NOT GOING AWAY.

Re:Nobody cares

[roc97007]

It's possible (billly gates??) that this is a joke and it's gone zoom! right over my head. But assuming for a moment it's legit:

Yeah, sorry, that's a made-up story. Test by: (1) the great majority hate Windows 8 as you're well aware. The story of people loving 8 is usually some kid who just can't put it down, and how it's old fogeys who can't move with the times who want their start button back. That story is getting old. (2) "Windows 9 will be a refined balanced UI" etc etc, something that neither you nor any non-Microsoft person could know.

8 is a disaster. 9 might be more or less of a disaster -- it's too early to tell. With Ballmer gone, I have hopes that Microsoft will do the right thing, but like any of us here I don't have any knowledge for or against.

Re:Nobody cares

[thegarbz]

Bill Gates? Is that really you?

Only a few weeks ago you were having no end of problems with Windows 8.

Re:Nobody cares

[Penguinisto]

Most of what you wrote is typical shill-chow, but I want to stomp this one tidbit in the bud:

The issue us geeks need to use muscle memory to relearn something and we used to laugh at those who could not adopt to change. Now the joke is on us.

Now this is funny, because I find myself learning new GUIs on a very regular basis (the latest? This month is all about learning VMWare vCloud Automation Center. A few months ago, it was all about Cisco UCS Manager.)

I also know the Metro GUI very well - and I've discovered something: I really, really detest computing-by-easter-egg.

Mind you, it's 500x worse with having to use that stupid wasteful GUI on a server. (Yes, I know all about the mantra of "OMG use PowerShell and Core!!!111!!" but we both know that's bullshit, nobody does it on any serious scale, and it completely guts the Microsoftie argument of "OMG you have to use a command prompt in Leenux!!111!!" - but I digress.)

Point is, many of us who detest that abortion of a UI have already had to work with it, we know it, and we think it still sucks in spite of knowing it.

If some of the ordinary user crowd loves it, hey - well and good. Thing is, the majority does not, and for good reason.

Re:Nobody cares

[AnonymousCoward1998]

One of my customers says Windows 8 is for people dumb enough to put their "stuff" in the cloud. I'd say that's about right. Lower the intelligence level required and get more data from the consumer. Kind of like dumbing down the curriculum and tests in school, because certain kids don't score well.

Re:Nobody cares

[Kjella]

I have a friend with an Asus Transformer hybrid and he likes Windows 8, but it's also exactly the kind of device it's designed for. The hate comes from trying to force everyone down that road, I mean if you big non-touch monitors then you don't want the tablet interface. I don't want to use it at work. I don't want to use it on my gaming/workstation rig. I might want to use it on an alternative to having an iPad or Android tablet. Sadly Microsoft knows they can totally ignore that market and it's not going anywhere. No, really it's not. Most of the "heavy" users are so stuck with Windows-only thick clients it'll take ages to migrate to something else. See Vista, it sucked donkey balls. Did users leave the Windows platform? Largely no. I left Windows in favor of Linux for 3.5 years and came back to Windows 7.

I hate to say it to geeks but if you look at Microsoft's stock performance they're still making money hand over fist despite what geeks think about Win8. They're not hurting. They're not failing. We hate them but Apple has largely abandoned the professional market (one trashcan design swallow does not a summer make) and Linux well I probably don't need to tell you about the current holy wars between Unity and Gnome 3.0 and KDE and whatnot chasing the tablet, nobody is taking charge to kill Microsoft on the desktop. I don't understand why everybody is leaping after the next big thing, it also means the competition will be intense. Why not try to outflank your competition or hit them in the rear in the markets they mostly ignore? When giants clash it's best not to be an ant with delusions of grandeur, you're likely to get stomped.

Re:Nobody cares

[Idimmu Xul]

my very non technical mate got a sony vaio flip thing 10 days or so ago with windows 8 installed. he LOVES it, despite complaining non stop, it also auto updated itself this week, i think to 8.1, he certainly didnt do any registry hacks but had a text rendering issue with chrome that is apparently an issue caused by 8.1?

ive had a play and i dont really see the problem, sure its a bit different but its not a world ending calamity, i do prefer my mac tho

Re:Nobody cares

[Technician]

As an older guy who has received an Unltrabook recently, and trying do do production work instead of consuming media, I had some issues. Installing older paralell port printers attached to my LAN via Trendnet or other devices proved to be very difficult. Visiting the manufacture of the printers for updated drivers was a total failure. As mentioned, there is a learning curve. To get the drivers, you have to use Windows Update instead. Trying to sort a list of files proved difficut too. A long list has the traditional scroll bars on the right just where you expect them. Dragging the bar does scroll the list, but at the top and bottom are the two buttons which also used to scroll the list without dragging, usefull if you only want to scroll small distances in a long list. Unfortunately in Windows 8 they are only decorations with no function. You either need a touch screen to scroll the list, or highlight a file and arrow up/down through the list, which defeats picking multiple files for copy by Control Click. A small wiggle on a extended list can scroll it by several hundred items making picking files difficult.

Maybe there is a trick to this I haven't learned other than drag drop each by itself..

The touch screen is not the preferred method of picking files from a list. My fingers are about 5 lines tall. A mouse is a much better and precise way to do fine motor skills. Photo editing suffers the interface issue too.

I tried to burn some CD's from a band I recorded. Windows 8 had a serious issue with my external USB DVD drive. Using Windows Media Player had no problem burning ONE disk. The media player on the left side properly identified if the drive contained a music CD, Data CD, or Blank CD. The information IS NOT passed to the right side which stubbornly recommended I insert a Blank CD before I could burn another. I went back to a Windows 7 machine which did properly recognise blank disks in the right side. Too bad they didn't keep Windows 7 functionality in the Window 8 Media Player.

In a nutshell, don't ditch your other machines when you get a Windows 8 machine. You may need the older machines to do older tech stuff like burning CD's, sorting photos, editing audio tracks, editing photos, etc. The Windows 8 machine is a great Facebook, Skype, social media and connected machine, but for production, keep your other hardware.

Re:Nobody cares

[davester666]

for me, it's that I fired it up, and a whole bunch of relatively important functionality is hidden. There is no real visual indication that "if you have the mouse in this corner, a bunch of options you probably want to use, will appear".

It's like they saw Apple's Dock, and that it could be hidden, and said, let's use that UI, only it will default to be hidden, and we won't tell the user about it. It's like a game of "Where's Waldo", only with basic Windows functions.

Re:Nobody cares

[jonwil]

+1 to this, I have no problems whatsoever with Windows 7 and use it every day as my primary OS. But I wouldn't use Windows 8 even if someone paid me to use it.

Re:Nobody cares

[MightyMartian]

I am... A future where MS is driven out of the consumer market.

Re:Nobody cares

[ShieldW0lf]

Windows 7 was the first version of Windows I actually enjoyed using since Windows 2000. Microsoft lost me when they came out with Windows XP and I switched to Linux. I would never have considered going back to Microsoft, but then Gnome and Unity both tried to force their own vision of Metro on me. I used Windows 7 in the office, and was actually ready to buy a new computer and go back to Windows. But, when I showed up with my money, there were no Windows 7 computers to be had, and I needed a laptop, so I've got Windows 8.

I hate it so much. Every time I click a file and it opens a metro app and obscures the entire screen, I grind my teeth and swear.

But there's just nothing else I could install that has any real critical mass of users that wouldn't suck just as badly.

The technology that used to empower me have been fucked up at every turn by the influence of the advertising and entertainment industries. Sometimes I just want to abandon IT and go be a farmer.

The right way to do mobile computing is glasses and a glove that detects subtle hand gestures. Touch screens covered in fingerprints with buttons you can't distinguish by feel are not an optimal way to do ANYTHING.

When is this stupid fad going to end?

Re:Nobody cares

[Nimey]

I've been running 8.1 on my work computer since it came out. It's really not bad with Classic Shell installed to give it a sane interface again. I never even see the Start Screen, by choice.

Re:Nobody cares

[nateman1352]

The thing is there is a non-trivial number of computer users that used Win9x extensively and then 2000/XP and everything else after that who are used to that "old GUI". Honestly I think that old GUI is much better suited to any task that is complex enough to require the user to operate multiple different applications together to achieve a higher goal. I suspect that your teenage daughter's most complex computing task is typing her school papers. She probably doesn't create a whole lot of diagrams and pictures to go with them so she probably only ever has to look at Word and not do any context switching.

Really the users that do complex work flows involving multiple applications at once are Microsoft's core audience which for whatever reason they seem to have mostly forgotten about. Just to put things in to perspective, that kind of user is often referred to as a "power user" now... I remember when the term power user meant something meaningful.

And the thing is, it would be sooooo easy for Microsoft to make the "power users" happy. Here are the simple changes that would make everyone love Win8:

1. Bring the Start Menu back as an option. You don't have to make it the default, just make it an option.
2. Optionally allow Metro apps to run in a window on the desktop
3. Optionally allow the user to disable the charm bar
4. Allow the user to select between the Win8 Modern theme, Win7 Aero theme, or Windows classic theme.

Give the user the choice of how he/she wants the GUI to look and everyone will flock to Win8. It seems that Microsoft has forgotten one of Bill Gate's most important lessons, the power of the default.

If anyone from Microsoft is reading this, really guys please do this. The PC industry is in the shitter right now because of your arrogance NOT because of the iPad. The entire industry including you and including me would be better off if people started buying PCs again instead of $150 android tablets, the typical ~$400 PC + new software licenses to go along with it pumps a lot more money in to just about everyone's pocket (except maybe Apple and Google).

Re:Nobody cares

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to say it to geeks but if you look at Microsoft's stock performance they're still making money hand over fist despite what geeks think about Win8

Go read their annual report. About 60% of their operating income comes from MS Office. Another 30% comes from Servers and Tools - SQL Server, VS .NET, Azure, etc. And yes they do a good job with those. Windows division revenue is flat, while operating income is down - "primarily due to higher cost of revenue and sales and marketing expenses". Bing has been a disaster for years in their "Online and Services Division" and Xbox is a drop in the bucket overall.

So stock is doing well but its not because of Windows. Nor XBox. Nor Bing. Nor any of the "consumer" facing stuff. Its mostly Office and .NET.

Re:Nobody cares

[Joce640k]

The issue us geeks need to use muscle memory

No it isn't. The issue is that us geeks do real work and have things called 'files' on the computer.

I'm sure Windows 8 is fine for using Facebook and playing online games.

Power button.

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who DID spend time looking for how to shut down the first time (alt+f4 to the rescue) I'd booted Win 8, thank you MS for making it more obvious.

The writers idea that you'd just hit the power button is idiotic. I would NOT expect to get an orderly shutdown from that (possibly because that's how I have my "BIOS" configured). If I don't know for sure, I won't do it. I'm going to gamble with my filesystem, am I?

Re:Power button.

[cbhacking]

Windows Control Panel - Power Options (reachable directly by Start search since Vista, of course) - "Choose what the power buttons do" - "When I press the power button:" [Do Nothing | Sleep | Turn Off]. This is on my desktop which boots from an SSD, so I disabled Hibernate, but normally that would be there too. The default option is Turn Off.

This has been there since *at least* Windows 2000. Congratulations, you're almost 1.5 decades behind the times...

Re:Power button.

[cbhacking]

Sorry to self-reply, but a bit more info:
You can also configure the Sleep button (if you have one in hardware, or have one on your keyboard as many users will) and the lid-close action (if you have a laptop). So for example, you can make closing the lid just go quickly to sleep, but taking the time to press a button first cause a full hibernate. It's also very handy to have the power button configured for a (reasonably safe) shutdown; it can be used to get the machine out of various states where the UI is hung so you can't use a normal software shut down, but don't want to hard-kill the machine (which is pretty much never a good idea).

Oh, and every single computer I've seen since I first found this feature also supports press-and-hold on Power to do a hard shutoff anyhow, in case the system is *so* frozen that it can't even turn itself off (or in case there's some process which is continually aborting the shutdown).

Re:Power button.

[beanpoppa]

Well, this might come as a surprise, but not everyone is like you. I very rarely shut down my computer, and I don't want it to go to sleep every time I close the lid to move to a meeting, so I always map my power button to sleep. On the rarer occasions that I do want to shut down or reboot, I hit the Windows key, and the shutdown/reboot options are right there. Just like they have been for almost 1.5 decades, until Microsoft decided to hide it.

Re:Power button.

[EvanED]

Windows NT has had a journaling FS since its introduction in 1993.

But (on any OS) a journaling FS usually just means that the file system metadata itself is consistent; most journaling FSs don't journal data changes as well, so you could have a half-committed change to the contents of a file from a program. Even if it did, that still doesn't guarantee that a program will issue file operations in a way that has any chance of being considered atomic.

You could make an argument that journaling fixes some of the least important file system consistency issues.

Re:Power button.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the issue: Everyone can configure it differently.

And for many geeks, we end up being tech-support for friends so we can't risk learning a muscle-memory default that might be wrong elsewhere.

So as a result, if it's customizable we tend to disable everything we can on our own hardware and only learn the one sure-fire way to do something elsewhere.

And for 1.5 decades, yes, it was "start menu... power buttons right there" as the safe way to guarantee something would shut down cleanly. So that became our safe muscle memory option that would apply no matter who's machine we were working on, or how new/old it was.

The whole 'sleep when lid closed' default never made sense to me either, since so often hardware was sluggish to come back from sleep state, and usually you only closed the lid to carry the laptop elsewhere and open it right back up.

Different "sleep timers" for lid closed versus open? I'd be all over that like white on rice. If I keep the lid closed for 15 minutes, or open for an hour and idle? Sleep that puppy!

But the defaults sucked for a lot of folks and gave laptops a bad rep. I've met dozens of sales drones over the years that would carry their laptops wide open between meetings to avoid closing the lid putting it to sleep because they didn't know they could change that default.

Re:Power button.

[cbhacking]

Cool, good for you. I don't know why the hell you'd map Power to Sleep when I guarantee that your laptop's keyboard already has a Sleep key, but hey, whatever. I wasn't talking to you, though, I was talking to the AC who was complaining that they don't know what happens when they hit the Power button. You obviously do know, so why the fuck talk back at me like I'm trying to tell you how to do things?

Re:Power button.

[viperidaenz]

press windows+r for the run prompt
type "shutdown -s -t 0" and it will magically shutdown. Works for all version of Windows since 2000. Maybe earlier NT versions too.
You can use -r to reboot instead of -s
It's pretty much the same as linux, except "-t 0" is equivalent to "now" and -s for shutdown instead of -h for halt

Reviewer hates users

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't get through the article. The reviewer seemed positively baffled about changes that would give more control to the user. Why would anyone want that? He kept asking. Yeah that's how Microsoft used to think throughout the past 2 decades, it's time for them and you to get past that ridiculous mindset. Give MORE control to the users, not less. And make MORE information available to the users; stop hiding things behind registry keys, obscure log files, and generic and highly misleading error messages.

Re:Reviewer hates users

[Atomic Fro]

I don't really agree with you. In 2000 Apple gave the world a powerful commercial UNIX workstation OS that "just worked," along with a fantastic IDE and development tools for free. There were lots of things in there for power users that may not have been advertised or easily discovered, but they were there and documented somewhere if you knew how to look.

Now, the workstation OS started going to shit as you described after they moved to intel, supposedly Mavericks fixes that a bit. I don't know, never owned an intel mac (thats also when they started sunsetting hardware almost as quickly as it was released).

Its iOS thats for the lobotomised retarted proto-lifeforms. And, yes, some of that was getting into OSX proper. But I believe the backlash with Windows 8 showed them that might not be too wise and I've heard they've backed off, again, with Mavericks.

Harps on about power button

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone with a desktop machine actually _want_ to use the power button to turn off the machine? Personally, mine is tucked away under my desk well out of convenient reach.

Keypress turns the damn thing on, start-> shutdown turns the damn thing off.

Only time the power button gets used is if the machine freezes and need a kick.

Oh my god

[Undead Waffle]

A Peter Bright article that is actually critical of a Microsoft product without trying to downplay all of its flaws? What is this world coming to?

Re:Oh my god

[Atomic Fro]

It didn't seem to me that he was critical of Microsoft as much as he was desktop users. I could barely get through the article due to rage, but this is how I parsed it:

"Look at all these redundant features Microsoft felt they had to add to appease stupid desktop users who haven't learned anything from Vista's UI 7 years ago. These users need to go away, they are forcing Microsoft to clutter up my Metro!

Look, a power button! A power button for Ballmer's sake! Who the hell needs that? If you are a laptop user, close your damn lid and let it sleep. If you are a desktop user, push the button on the front of your pee cee. That's been standard since ATX came out in 1995. GET A CLUE PEOPLE!

What? You say you want to reboot? If Windows needs to reboot it will do it for you. You don't need to waste time doing that on your own.

Well, crap. Metro apps have title bars now. Well, I guess that's not too bad. But, you know, you could have just dragged down with your mouse you lazy desktop users. Ugg, now that ugly task bar is covering up the ui in the bottom portion of the screen. I don't remember you desktop users wanting that. Leave my metro alone!

OOOOOH PRETTY! SkyDrive is now called OneDrive, and I can access it in Metro, the OneUI to rule them all.

Well, I don't know who wanted this. Its just redundant crap taking up space on my metro. Desktop users avoid metro anyway, so they obviously don't want it. Stop wasting time on desktop users, Microsoft.

Re:Oh my god

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

Peter Bright has been sucking the MS cock since he first started posting on Ars Technica's forum back in the late 90s. His posts were always full of vemon and hate towards anyone who dared criticize MS (and therefore extension, himself) When AT was making new positions for editors, he whined and screamed for one, and if he didn't get it, threatened to leave AT. I am so glad AT implemented the "ignore" function. Now him, and Evil_Merlin are never seen by me. If only I could filter out his stories as well...

posting from windows 8

[Teunis]

observations:
- install a start menu replacement to get application menus back. Application menus are handy when one has a number of applications with similar names.
- disable search and system speed jumps. Don't use it anyway, and it's pointless for a programmer like me.
- constant delays in performing tasks
- chrome can open 1/10 the tabs of linux on same hardware. That's perhaps a bad sign.

I've actually found my ability to work effectively on this platform has degraded to the point I just don't anymore.
I now use windows as a game platform and occasional (and frustrating) web browsing.
With Steam (etc), the issue with not being able to find my applications anymore stopped being relevant - I stopped using them under windows at all.

so when I want to do real browsing, real programming, or pretty much anything other than playing games, it's back to Mint for me. (because I similarly find unity and other "tablet" interfaces - interfaces less useful and intuitive than either IOS or Android - pointless)

Start Menu Search

[VanGarrett]

Perhaps this is speculation too far, but this pair of changes almost suggests that many Windows users haven't changed the way they use the operating system—or their computers—since the mid 1990s. The Windows Vista-era mechanism of "Start and then type," now seven-years-old, apparently hasn't caught on and quite plausibly isn't even known by many Windows users.

Am I missing something important, or does this idea where you're expected to type the thing you want to do kind of abandon the whole point of using a GUI instead of a command line?

I'm not exactly opposed to having the feature there, but if you automatically have to resort to it, then your GUI needs to be reconsidered.

Re:Start Menu Search

[cbhacking]

When you find a command line that lets me launch programs by typing the first few letters of any word in their name (in the case of multiple results it defaults to the one you run most often), let me know, OK? Oh, and by name I don't mean just the binary name, but the program's full name and any description you've given it in the Start menu/screen.

I mean, I use command line stuff a fair bit. I've got two windows of cmd and one of bash open right now, and I'm surprised I've only got one session of the latter running. But, that's mostly developer stuff (Visual Studio Tools in the one, manpages in the other; yes I write portable code in VS). Aside from programs that are inherently CLI-based though (like man), I rarely launch programs from the CLI. It's much faster to hit the WinKey and type "not" [ENTER] than to switch to a command line and type "notepad++" (even with command completion, which will get stuck on other expansions) and that assumes Notepad++ is in my path.

Xubuntu

[tepples]

Gnome and Unity both tried to force their own vision of Metro on me.

When Ubuntu 11.10 started pushing Un(usabil)ity harder, I just did sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop and never looked back.

Posted from my Dell Inspiron mini running Xubuntu 12.04 LTS

Still crap

[mysidia]

Wake me up, when they concede to bring the Windows 7 start MENU back.

Re:Still crap

[mysidia]

Given the normal response patterns when someone complains at a Linux installation your inability to install the free Classic start menu feels odd.

This is a Microsoft-unsupported shell tweaking application that Microsoft can break at any time.

I don't want to support Windows 8 by purchasing, UNTIL the user experience is good out of the box.

Re:True

[Carewolf]

It is probably because he is trying to defend himself instead of Microsoft, which means he needs to defend his previous defences of Windows 8.

Funny stuff.

Wrong approach for PCs

[siege72]

I'm running Windows 8.1 now, with StartIsBack to make desktop mode behave like a real computer. I was willing to give metro/modern a chance, until I tried to use Calculator. The "Modern" version opens fullscreen, with a small calculator window in the center. So much for being able to use it to add the numbers in another window! (The desktop version behaves correctly) Windows 8.1 changed a decently powerful desktop into a crappy tablet. Using _any_ of the utilities to return the start menu/desktop functionality can fix Microsoft's mistake.