8 Super Windows 8.1 Tweaks For Power Users

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
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Okay, you have gone through the process of switching over to Windows 8.1, so now what? You’ll need some tweaks to get the most out of your new OS, so check out these recommendations.

Many of these options are all-new in Windows 8.1 or have moved from where they were in Windows 8. Windows 8.1 is quite a large update compared to Microsoft’s old service packs for previous versions of Windows.
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It was on the right track with showing how to remove SpyDrive and Bing search as default when youre just trying to search files on your hard drive but falls short in neglecting to mention a start menu restore app. Does explain how to restore Libraries as well which MS didn't want people using anymore.

I give it a C+ given its just rehashing widely available and written about tweaks already easily found with a google search.
 
Screw that. I just put Mint 16 on my laptop and that's the biggest upgrade I've ever done to it. Boots fast as hell, as well as shuts down. Before anyone says anything about Windows 8.1's boot speed benchmarks, just remember that's without startup programs which are essential to Windows use.

If things go well then I'll be putting Mint 16 on my desktop next.
 
DPI first post in microsoft front page thread now all we need is heartless and the cycle repeats.
 
I didn't realize that libraries were even gone. Guess that shows I useful I found them to be lol
 
Semantics said:
DPI first post in microsoft front page thread now all we need is heartless and the cycle repeats.
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Always happy to oblige. Been using a Dell Venue 8 Pro for a couple of weeks. What an amazing little device running Windows 8.1. This is the kind of hardware that I've been talking about for a year now that will make Windows 8 interesting. Decent price, solid performance, light and good battery life. 8" $300 dollar x86 Windows 8 tablets that run well. There's a market for that sort of thing and actually the Bing integration on something like this is pretty sweet.

The problem with Windows 8 for a lot of old timers is that is does have a lot of tablet focus. But now some of the cheap and interesting devices running Windows are tablets sold at WalMart.
 
For those that have used this: Do you still have to use the registry hack to change the damn border padding on the windows in desktop mode? Why the fuck would hey hide that?? o_O
 
Ashbringer said:
Screw that. I just put Mint 16 on my laptop and that's the biggest upgrade I've ever done to it. Boots fast as hell, as well as shuts down. Before anyone says anything about Windows 8.1's boot speed benchmarks, just remember that's without startup programs which are essential to Windows use.

If things go well then I'll be putting Mint 16 on my desktop next.
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I wish I had the option to to this. Unfortunately, I am too heavily dependent on Visual Studio and .NET for work for this to be a viable option. Unless I did it in a VM I suppose.
 
heatlesssun said:
Always happy to oblige. Been using a Dell Venue 8 Pro for a couple of weeks. What an amazing little device running Windows 8.1. This is the kind of hardware that I've been talking about for a year now that will make Windows 8 interesting. Decent price, solid performance, light and good battery life. 8" $300 dollar x86 Windows 8 tablets that run well. There's a market for that sort of thing and actually the Bing integration on something like this is pretty sweet.

The problem with Windows 8 for a lot of old timers is that is does have a lot of tablet focus. But now some of the cheap and interesting devices running Windows are tablets sold at WalMart.
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yes god forbid us old-timers want to use our computers for productivity or something... guess I should just stop working and play angry birds all day
 
It pisses me off how you need 8.1 to access what seems to be a handful of the newer apps. I could really use the new clock app.
 
anyone know how to get "my computer" back to normal?

1) remove the stupid folders that were added with windows 8.1
2) separate hard drives and removable drives in separate categories, now they lumped everything together under devices and drives
 
FLECOM said:
yes god forbid us old-timers want to use our computers for productivity or something... guess I should just stop working and play angry birds all day
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Windows 8 is just as productive as windows 7 outside of probably a small minority of programs. For photowork, office, editing, gaming, htpc, and anything else I throw at it windows 8 is equal to or faster than windows 7 and xp. I still don't understand this argument that windows 8 isn't productive.
 
Climber said:
Windows 8 is just as productive as windows 7 outside of probably a small minority of programs. For photowork, office, editing, gaming, htpc, and anything else I throw at it windows 8 is equal to or faster than windows 7 and xp. I still don't understand this argument that windows 8 isn't productive.
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microsoft goal is to push metro, to force more metro apps, this way they control the app store, they get chunk of sales, that why they are trying to push "desktop" away. and frankly metro is not productive.

windows live mail much better then metro mail
windows live photo gallery much better then photos

metro is a worst pile of shit to ever come out from microsoft. I don't mind it on phone or tablet, but it should never be forced on people on desktops.
 
ZenDragon said:
I wish I had the option to to this. Unfortunately, I am too heavily dependent on Visual Studio and .NET for work for this to be a viable option. Unless I did it in a VM I suppose.
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Well that's why it's on my laptop and not on my desktop. I figure that since I don't game on my laptop and just watch movies and surf the web, the laptop would be a good place to see how daily use of Linux would be like. I'll see how compatible Wine is with the apps I use. So far so good.
 
nekrosoft13 said:
microsoft goal is to push metro, to force more metro apps, this way they control the app store, they get chunk of sales, that why they are trying to push "desktop" away. and frankly metro is not productive.

windows live mail much better then metro mail
windows live photo gallery much better then photos

metro is a worst pile of shit to ever come out from microsoft. I don't mind it on phone or tablet, but it should never be forced on people on desktops.
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Then dont use it. Metro is optional to use especially in 8.1. Set ypur default programs and never experience meteo again; however, metro is extremely efficent once you get used to it if you choose to.
 
nekrosoft13 said:
microsoft goal is to push metro, to force more metro apps, this way they control the app store, they get chunk of sales, that why they are trying to push "desktop" away. and frankly metro is not productive.

windows live mail much better then metro mail
windows live photo gallery much better then photos

metro is a worst pile of shit to ever come out from microsoft. I don't mind it on phone or tablet, but it should never be forced on people on desktops.
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I've long said that Windows 8 doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense on conventional hardware and on of the issues with the launch of Windows 8 was compelling touch hardware at good prices. That simply didn't exist last.

That's now changed. Quite a bit of buzz is being generated over these new 8" Windows 8.1 tablets that started coming out last month. Coupled with the Bay Trail Atoms, these things are proving to be a significant upgrade in performance for x86 low power SoCs. Naturally they are designed to be used as tablets but the ones that support video out can run a lot of desktop software well also. So now we have $300 Windows tablets that can offer a lot of flexibility at a low price point and on these kinds of devices the hybrid nature not only makes sense but even potentially offers economic advantages in being able to offer the capability of a tablet and a traditional desktop computer.

Certainly not for everyone but I think there is market for devices like thins and Microsoft's marketing seems to finally be making this very case of 2-in-1 functionality. It will be interesting to see who the Holiday goes for Windows 8 hardware like this.
 
Climber said:
Then dont use it. Metro is optional to use especially in 8.1. Set ypur default programs and never experience meteo again; however, metro is extremely efficent once you get used to it if you choose to.
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If you don't use a UI replacement you see the Start Screen and PC Settings but modern apps themselves don't ever have to be used but of course defaults out of the box are set to modern apps.
 
FLECOM said:
yes god forbid us old-timers want to use our computers for productivity or something... guess I should just stop working and play angry birds all day
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Climber said:
Windows 8 is just as productive as windows 7 outside of probably a small minority of programs. For photowork, office, editing, gaming, htpc, and anything else I throw at it windows 8 is equal to or faster than windows 7 and xp. I still don't understand this argument that windows 8 isn't productive.
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I agree. I have been using windows 8 since the first developer preview. I have not noticed a single change to how I use my computer. ANY OF THEM. touch screen or not. My programs still run on my desktop, my old programs still work.. Being on a computer 16+ hours a day, I might see the start screen for about 1 minute total which is how often I ever saw the start menu in a day.

Back before vista I used to shortcut most of my programs so that I could do shift-alt- and then any key on the keyboard or shift-ctrl any key and launch some program. I found that much faster than trying to navigate the horrible start menu and all the lists of programs. something like shift-ctrl-w would launch word, e would launch excel. Once I got to ability to press the windows key, just type in the name or part of the name that became my way to launch programs. That still works in 8 and 8.1 so I notice no change in how I launch programs. and have just as much need to be in the start screen for an extended period of time as I did the start menu. For something that I want to look for instead of typing out a name I find it faster to find in the start screen than I do the start menu. As a list of icons is faster than having to expand menu after menu after menu after menu.

As stated you don't have to use Metro apps if you don't want. I don't use very many if any of them. I have Office on my work machine so I use Outlook not the mail app, on my personal machine I just use webmail for my email. I don't care for the picture app so I use the existing photo viewer in desktop mode. I normally use the windows media player instead of the music player app... So to me, I don't notice much of a difference between using windows 8 or 8.1 and 7.

Yes they added apps, yes they added a store, but you can still do stuff without touching them.
 
Is this mouse lag thing as big of a deal as it's being made out to be, or was it only the games that Microsoft supplied a fix for?

I play StarCraft II and Borderlands 2. Both require the mouse to not act silly--I've been dismissing the "free update" for a couple weeks now...
 
Climber said:
Then dont use it. Metro is optional to use especially in 8.1. Set ypur default programs and never experience meteo again; however, metro is extremely efficent once you get used to it if you choose to.
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how the hell do you not use on normal install

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

unless you install start menu replacement app, but even then they always find a way for metro jump out.
 
nekrosoft13 said:
how the hell do you not use on normal install

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

unless you install start menu replacement app, but even then they always find a way for metro jump out.
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Pin your most used programs to the taskbar and be done with it. With 8.1 you can have it boot right to the desktop so you don't need to see the tiles. Other than not having the start menu, you can still pretty much use it as you did with Windows 7.
Heck even with Windows 7 I pin my most used programs to the taskbar ,much faster to get to them then going through the damned start menu.
 
nekrosoft13 said:
how the hell do you not use on normal install

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

unless you install start menu replacement app, but even then they always find a way for metro jump out.
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How is that forcing you to use the apps on there? you are confusing it existing and you being forced to use the metro interface 100% of the time that you are on your computer with all desktop programs being completely unusable in any manor. Or are you to stupid to know that you can click on the desktop tile and run things in desktop mode? that you can still run all your old programs?

03grandam said:
Pin your most used programs to the taskbar and be done with it. With 8.1 you can have it boot right to the desktop so you don't need to see the tiles. Other than not having the start menu, you can still pretty much use it as you did with Windows 7.
Heck even with Windows 7 I pin my most used programs to the taskbar ,much faster to get to them then going through the damned start menu.
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Agreed. for people that bitch about the start screen taking away from being productive they seem to use the most fucked up way of launching a program out there to try to be productive. lets move our mouse down to the start menu button, then click that, then click all programs, then scroll through a list then click on a name to bring up more menu items, then click on maybe another name to bring up more menu items to finally get to the program that you want. Talk about being non productive.
 
DPI said:
It was on the right track with showing how to remove SpyDrive and Bing search as default when youre just trying to search files on your hard drive but falls short in neglecting to mention a start menu restore app. Does explain how to restore Libraries as well which MS didn't want people using anymore.

I give it a C+ given its just rehashing widely available and written about tweaks already easily found with a google search.
Click to expand...

I give it A+ I don't want a start menu replacement, and I won't be googling for tweaks
 
Young whippersnappers don't know what it was like to use a REAL computer... Now they need pretty blocks to play with.

:)
 
ZenDragon said:
For those that have used this: Do you still have to use the registry hack to change the damn border padding on the windows in desktop mode? Why the fuck would hey hide that?? o_O
Click to expand...

I'm using this: http://winaero.com/comment.php?comment.news.96

Pretty quick and easy.

I just got done fighting the image software that comes with it. If you did an 8.0-8.1 upgrade, the recovery partition needs to be increased from 300MB to 350MB or you'll error out due to space for the shadow copy. Very boneheaded of MS.
 
DPI said:
It was on the right track with showing how to remove SpyDrive and Bing search as default when youre just trying to search files on your hard drive but falls short in neglecting to mention a start menu restore app. Does explain how to restore Libraries as well which MS didn't want people using anymore.

I give it a C+ given its just rehashing widely available and written about tweaks already easily found with a google search.
Click to expand...

A power user is someone who knows how to use the keyboard to press the windows key so they don't need a start menu replacement.
 
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