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The Upcoming Windows 8.1 Apocalypse
arglebargle_xiv (2212710) writes "As most people will have heard, Microsoft will end support for anyone who hasn't upgraded to Win8.1 Update 1 on May 8. What fewer people have heard is that large numbers of users can't install the 8.1 Update, with over a thousand messages in this one thread alone, and that's for tech geeks rather than home users who won't find out about this until their PC becomes orphaned on May 8. Check your Windows Update log, if you've got a "Failed" entry next to KB2919355 then your PC will also become orphaned after May 8."
It's very interesting what kind of circus the Windows 8 major updates have become. Instead of Service Packs, you now have Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and Windows 8.1 Update 1. Now, the support carpet is suddenly pulled for anything before W8.1U1. Along the way, various platform changes in the UI front have been introduced: start button goes away, start button comes back, ability to snap Modern apps, Modern apps get a title bar, Modern apps can appear in the taskbar, start menu is coming back. Also the settings are still wonkily spread across the classic Control Panel and the Modern UI "PC settings" application, not to speak about the "charms bar" which integrates really badly with the paradigms of the normal desktop, which the user is using at the same time.
It's interesting because in the past Microsoft planned these things very carefully beforehand, and after the release of OS was very careful to not change core functionality. Maybe this is the future, then.
Shill or not, he does has a valid point (I have not looked at the other comments).
As much as I personally hate automatic updates, as I decide when I want to update shit, for the vast unwashed masses, it is not a bad idea. Too many of my friends and family (I no longer play tech support except for direct family.. aka my wife) have had machines with years of missing patches, and they wonder why their machines are up shits creek.
I on the other hand, have a windows 8.1 slate I used for my car (runs vehicle diagnostic software, not the std odb reader crap), I cannot get update 1, I get the failure many others are getting. I cannot go back to Windows 7 because too many missing drivers, and very unreliable touchscreen experience. I have tried the windows 8 drivers on 7 with no luck. So for me, I will no longer have support (I do not need technical support, I would like security updates at least).
Good thing I do not use that for anything other than car diagnostics... At least my car won't give my computer herpes :P
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
I'm not sure what the issue is. Both times I've tried to install it I end up with a black screen with no error message, no hard drive activity, nothing at all. Both times I've had to use my 8 disk to revert to regular Win8.
Did you even read TFS? Apparently, for a lot of people, Update 1 simply won't install for some reason. How are these people supposed to apply OS updates when the OS won't allow it?
I got a brand new Windows 7 Lenovo machine for my folks' small business (to avert the imminent XPocalypse that I told them about two years ago, and eighteen months ago, and twelve months ago ... .) and I was shocked how a new-out-of-box Windows 7 machine not only needed about eight reboots to update itself, but that out of 147 updates there were like 24 that failed to apply. Reboot-re-run was needed about five times to just get through all those failed applies.
I'm more used to lazily installing a CentOS 6.0 DVD and running yum update and getting 959 updates which all apply in one smooth transaction. And that stuff was just written by a few part-time guys at Duke (of course credit to RHAT hackers for making it faster).
I wasn't surprised by XP's crummy updater, but by time Windows 7 came out they should have had this nailed with a team of pros working on it, and that this stuff is still broken in 8.1 is ridiculous. And to add insult to injury, they charge money for this junk!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Well I did have a choice, true. I could have bought an OEM version of Windows 7 that was more than twice the cost of Windows 8, and cannot ever be moved to new hardware when this computer dies or requires a major upgrade. Or I could buy Windows 8.1 direct from Microsoft for about $100. I knew it had the ridiculous metro start screen, but I knew that Classic Shell could make it close enough to Windows 7 to be workable. And it is. Also Windows 8.1 can be transferred to brand new hardware and reactivated. They loosened up the restrictions some. So faced with this, it wasn't a hard choice to put on Windows 8.1.
Mind you this situation I was in was precisely engineered by Microsoft to push me in the direction they want me to go. But surely you would do the same, no? Or would you really drop nearly $250 on an operating system?