Hands-On With Windows 8.1 Preview

adeelarshad82 writes "Microsoft launched the preview version of Windows 8.1 at the company's Build conference in San Francisco and early signs show that Microsoft heard the criticisms, and has responded with improvements. The new OS includes a number of changes starting with the return of the Start button and the ability to boot directly to the desktop. However, Microsoft hasn't given up on making the new-style tile and full-screen more usable for all users. If anything, the tile-based Start screen has gotten more flexible, with new smaller and larger tile options. Windows 8.1 also drastically improves built-in search, SkyDrive cloud syncing, mail and Microsoft Music." Microsoft also released a preview of Visual Studio 2013 and .NET 4.5.1, and there's a program that will give developers early access to the PC version of the Kinect sensor. Other tidbits: Windows 8.1 will use a standard driver model for 3-D printers, and it's getting better support for both high-res displays and using multiple displays with different resolutions.

Speaking as someone...

[Anonymous Coward]

...who views Microsoft as a corporation with disgust due to all the immoral, illegal and downright reprehensible acts they have committed over the years to maintain their monopoly position, I'd just like to thank them for Windows 8.x, which will probably do more to damage them than the toothless DoJ ever could.

Re:However

[jfdavis668]

No, I am going to test it out again. Spent nearly a year with the 8 preview, and dropped it. To many tasks took too many steps. Will try this again to see if it is ready for prime time.

Standard Driver for 3D printers

[Guano_Jim]

That's pretty cool. One of the things that needs to happen for 3D printing to become commonplace is to take it out of the realm of specialized software and just make it a mundane action one does with a computer.

Click, print. Heads up Apple, Microsoft is preparing to drink your milkshake on this one.

Re:the return of the Start button

[tripleevenfall]

MS is such a great company that listens to their customers... after their market share erodes, after they miserably fail in mobile and tablet spaces, and after they face the prospect of another Vista-like iteration of an OS that business customers will skip altogether.

Re:Why would anyone want Windows 8.1?

[Anonymous Coward]

You had a few typo's in your post. Here are the corrections:

Windows hardly works.

Windows isn't cheap.

Windows used to have the largest collection of software available for it.

Good, bad, and ugly

[JDG1980]

The good:

• The Start button is available again.
• Hot corners can be turned off.
• You can now boot straight to the desktop.
• The context menu for the Start button now has shutdown options.
• High-DPI support is supposed to be better now (though third-party developers will still figure out ways to break this).

The bad:

• The real start menu still isn't back, and the Metro start screen is nowhere near as good – it's more obtrusive and less functional.
• The window titlebar text is still centered, with no supported way to put it back to left-justified. For those of us who have been using Windows for years, this is a very annoying change since it breaks the muscle memory of our eyes. When I've tried Windows 8, I always find myself looking at the wrong place to see a window title.
• There's still no supported way to get back the Aero theme. I understand why people with tablets or low-powered laptops might want an interface that doesn't stress the GPU as much, but why should desktop users have to suffer through something that looks like it's straight out of 1995? The Windows 8 theme is the UI equivalent of brutalism – those ugly bare concrete buildings that architects were putting up in the 1970s.

The ugly:

• Metro. Or, as I call it, the Knots Landing user interface [youtube.com]. Seriously, you shouldn't be looking to the theme songs of 1980s soap operas as your inspiration for UI design...

Still don't want...

[Bearhouse]

Well, in my usual attempt to stay current despite my greying neckbeard, I was prepared to tryout this regardless of the hatestorm regarding the new UI. Hell, maybe I could work around that in exchange for the alleged increased performance?

Downloaded the "upgrade assistant" which helpfully informed me that my nicely-tuned Windows 7 PCs (both 32 and 64 bit) would require shitloads of work, (some hardware 'might not work' and several screenfuls of software would 'not function' or 'require an upgrade').

Oh yes, and all of this for the modest sum of Euros 250-plus...
Per PC.

So, no thanks...

(I keeping trying to "like" the latest versions of Linux too - Mint is OK- but am sticking with BSD for my severs...maybe I'm not hip enough, or maybe I've finally realised there's more to life than fucking around with stuff when what you have works fine.)

Lipstick on a Pig

[Luthair]

Unfortunately these are largely cosmetic changes and won't fix what many users (particularly those of us found on slashdot) actually have an issue with. There are a few concessions to regular users who need visual hints like a start button, however for the power user virtually everything wrong with Windows 8 is wrong with Windows 8.1. An OS designed for touch devices shoehorned onto everything in a vain attempt to make users familiar with it so they'll choose Microsoft for the phone and tablet purchases.

Not to mention they're introducing a search behaviour which sends terms out to the Internet, just like Canonical has done with Ubuntu. I'm surprised about the lack of outcry about the privacy implications.

Now that I've angered the Windows-8 fanbase I'll irritate everyone else - unfortunately in my estimation the only desktop alternative is KDE while still clunky it is superior to OSX (design predicated on a stupid user), Unity (OSX clone), Gnome (also predicated on a dumb user) while the remainder are missing modern features.

Re:the return of the Start button

[PopeRatzo]

lets put a hierarchy of everything installed on your computer in a small non-resizable popup menu.

That's funny. I kind of like that Start ->All Programs menu. There are a lot of programs that I don't use every day that I don't need anywhere near a first level.

I want them in that menu.

Re:the return of the Start button

[rahvin112]

I wouldn't mind metro if they'd let me put them in a fucking desktop window, then you could have separate interfaces (as god intended) and STILL leverage metro into phones/tablets.

Icon jungle

[jones_supa]

I hate this trend with Windows 8 and Unity where instead of having your apps and files nicely organized in their respective folders, you have this chaotic jumble of icons which you have to be searching through all the time.

Re:the return of the Start button

[atlasdropperofworlds]

I'm not a fan of the metro screen, but I don't hate it enough to go back to 7. All I care about is a flat search, which I guess is back in, a less jarring transition from desktop, and booting to desktop. All those issues are addressed. For those with touchscreens, Win8 is far better than 7. I have an HP touchsmart thats a few years old now. It's touchscreen wasn't very usable with 7's interface, it's fine with 8. I do like the concept of a single OS on all devices, and hence you get all the apps and content you buy in all locations automatically. However, MS is still falling short on that vision.

Re:However

[jones_supa]

Ironically, launching Control Panel on Win8 is actually faster than on Win7 (by default). Right-click the Start button (yes it exists; it was just hidden by default) or hit Win+X, and select "Control Panel" from the menu that appears. Easy and straightforward.

Straightforward?! The Win+X menu is a horrible hack and not discoverable at all.

What I see is happening here is that Win8 has just learned people to use various keyboard shortcuts more effectively because in the new GUI many things have been placed in awkward positions.

Re:the return of the Start button

[vux984]

There are a lot of programs that I don't use every day that I don't need anywhere near a first level.

Gotcha. So your horrendously offended by the start screen as way to access applications that you use infrequently? That seems like much ado about nothing.

What if its been long enough that you can't quite remember what the application or program group is called? Does a scrollable hierarchical popup window really sound like the best way of finding it?

Re:the return of the Start button

[Anonymous Coward]

The file copying is much better now

I'm intrigued - how can anyone screw up something as fundamental as copying a file so badly that some 28 years later it can still be made "much better?"

Re:the return of the Start button

[smash]

Well said. However Windows 8 isn't about giving us what we want. It's about making Windows on mobile devices relevant. The mobile market is the big one moving forward and microsoft was doing whatever they can to get a foot in the door. If that means pissing off their desktop users, then so be it. It's a joke.

Re:the return of the Start button

[DrXym]

That surprised me too. Metro apps are really slow to fire up and so gimped in terms of functionality that unless I was walking around in tablet mode I wouldn't see any point in most of them at all. The most frustrating thing is that if you flip away from an app then more often than not it doesn't restore to the state where it was left. I might understand this behaviour in a 512MB RAM phone, but not in an 4GB+swap laptop. It's stupid behaviour.

Also, the left edge of the screen only shows running apps+desktop, not programs running on the desktop. So I can quickly switch to some retarded metro weather app but Microsoft in their infinite wisdom won't let me switch to Firefox or Eclipse running on the desktop. I must switch to the desktop and activate the app. It's just bad design.

About the only metro app I like is the Netflix app whose simplicity suits the service and which is vastly more attractive that the Android client. Most of the other apps are barely worth the time of day.