Windows 8.1 Discussion

pxc said:
The expiration behavior may be to restart every two hours (or whatever) like the Windows 8 preview did. The last update may have extended the expire date too, but I haven't heard any such thing.

If you set the date forward, the status message on whether it's expired or not is in the Activate Windows screen from Control Panel. It's just keeping with the plan to hide everything from the user. ;)
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Windows 7 did this as well iirc.
 
Suprfire said:
Anyone tried ClassicShell, Start8, etc with 8.1 yet?
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I just got an update notification for ClassicShell. There's a new version that supports 8.1.

Also, apparently Microsoft's lawyers sent a nastygram saying they can't include the Metro-themed start button anymore. Way to go Microsoft! Real consumer-friendly attitude. They must think they haven't pissed off enough people over the whole start menu issue yet. :rolleyes:

Fortunately you can still download it and install it yourself like any other custom start button.
 
I'm still irritated that they got rid of the built-in image back-up software. That has been a lifesaver for me on numerous occasions even going back to Vista. I know there are other ones like Reflect, but the built in one was easier, quicker, and lighter.
 
I've searched all over. If it's there in normal 8.1, they've moved the executable and all links to it within the backup & restore area.
The fact that it was called "Windows 7 File Recovery" in Windows 8 was never a good sign for the longevity of it.
 
*Breaking Rumor*

Microsoft is abandoning Modern UI / unified desktop experiences. Their Windows Phone 9 will be a new tablet/phone exclusive UI.

Source

If this is true I would bet that PC's are going to get a PC specific UI for Windows 9, Start Menu or not, which is for the best.

I will entertain the idea of getting rid of the Start Menu on PC's, but the replacement needs to be geared around keyboard and mouse, not touch.
 
I'm guessing the back-up software will be back in the final release. This is a preview version after all and some features won't work as you knew before installing.

With that being said, I am also eagerly awaiting having this backup feature back. Re-installing stuff sucks!!
 
bigdogchris said:
*Breaking Rumor*

Microsoft is abandoning Modern UI / unified desktop experiences. Their Windows Phone 9 will be a new tablet/phone exclusive UI.

Source

If this is true I would bet that PC's are going to get a PC specific UI for Windows 9, Start Menu or not, which is for the best.

I will entertain the idea of getting rid of the Start Menu on PC's, but the replacement needs to be geared around keyboard and mouse, not touch.
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I'm still trying to figure out how you came to these conclusions based on that article.

All it says is that they are rebuilding Windows Phone from the ground up.
 
bigdogchris said:
*Breaking Rumor*

Microsoft is abandoning Modern UI / unified desktop experiences. Their Windows Phone 9 will be a new tablet/phone exclusive UI.

Source

If this is true I would bet that PC's are going to get a PC specific UI for Windows 9, Start Menu or not, which is for the best.

I will entertain the idea of getting rid of the Start Menu on PC's, but the replacement needs to be geared around keyboard and mouse, not touch.
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Yeah, right. :rolleyes: I think not, the Modern UI is not going anywhere and even then, it works great on the phone and tablet. (Works fine on the desktop too but that is another story.) Rumors and like opinions, everyone has one and they all stink. :D
 
ManofGod said:
Yeah, right. :rolleyes: I think not, the Modern UI is not going anywhere and even then, it works great on the phone and tablet. (Works fine on the desktop too but that is another story.) Rumors and like opinions, everyone has one and they all stink. :D
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Yeah, the guy that's the source for this "rumor" is well known for just making stuff up that's never true. The phone and tablet and desktop are already merging and I would expect that to continue though I could see more options for configuring it better for each platform to improve.
 
Windows 8.1 is a pile of shit don't waste your time the start button is silly the whole thing doesn't make sence.
Just stick with windows 8 and everything will work........your apps and that I had problems where stuff didn't even work.
 
Comixbooks said:
Windows 8.1 is a pile of shit don't waste your time the start button is silly the whole thing doesn't make sence.
Just stick with windows 8 and everything will work........your apps and that I had problems where stuff didn't even work.
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Windows 8.1 is not even out yet so what is your point? (Preview is not release.)
 
ComputerBox34 said:
I'm still trying to figure out how you came to these conclusions based on that article.

All it says is that they are rebuilding Windows Phone from the ground up.
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Well, let's see here. If Microsoft has (up till now) been pushing a unified UI experience across all platforms, yet now are planning to stop doing so and give phones/tablets their own UI, where does that leave the desktops/laptops UI?

heatlesssun said:
The phone and tablet and desktop are already merging and I would expect that to continue though I could see more options for configuring it better for each platform to improve.
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Do you think Apple and Google will follow suit? So far they haven't hinted that they will be doing this. Do you think that's part of the reason Microsoft is doing it, to be different?
 
DeathFromBelow said:
Also, apparently Microsoft's lawyers sent a nastygram saying they can't include the Metro-themed start button anymore. Way to go Microsoft! Real consumer-friendly attitude. They must think they haven't pissed off enough people over the whole start menu issue yet. :rolleyes:
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WTF, the button is 4 trapezoids. I would tell them to go f*ck themselves for trying to claim rights to basic geometry.
 
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I was due for a clean install, so went ahead and installed Windows 8.1 just for the hell of it. I've got no complaints really. Seems fast and well polished. I could even deal with Start button opening the Start page. But I did end up downloading Start8 just to see how it worked. Now I'm running 8.1, but the desktop is almost identical to my Windows 7 setup. So I'm gonna stick with it. I got some nice speed increases on my SSD and in gaming benchmarks. And everything just feels snappy and smooth, but that may be placebo from the fresh install. Plus I like a lot of the little added features and tweaks.

Is there much of a difference between the start button programs like Start8, classicshell, etc..? Which one is the "best"?
 
officer921 said:
Is there much of a difference between the start button programs like Start8, classicshell, etc..? Which one is the "best"?
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ClassicShell is free, looks great, and is very customizable. It's been around for a long time, too. I've been using it on Windows 7 for ages just for the customization options. I really don't understand why anyone pays for the other ones.

ComputerBox34 said:
All it says is that they are rebuilding Windows Phone from the ground up.
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I agree that he's jumping to conclusions, but there is some interesting info in those rumors:

According to Eldar Murtazin of Mobile Review, the next version of Windows Phones will be both a tablet and smartphone operating system. What's more, Murtazin says we'll see a whole new UI that will be different to Metro UI...
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This is a big deal if true. Thus far Microsoft's strategy has been to make desktop Windows a hybrid OS for desktops and tablets, unlike Google and Apple who used their Phone OS as the basis for tablet devices. Switching strategies like that along with the recent leadership swap (making the Phone guy the head of all OS engineering) suggests that big changes are in store.

I have a hard time imagining that Microsoft is planning on having both Windows RT tablets and Windows Phone OS tablets for sale and they really can't afford to slow down app development at this point with multiple operating systems. There are other rumors floating around that Microsoft is planning on using RT in low cost/low power desktop-style office devices. If the 'unified UI across all devices' concept is going out the window I can imagine that future versions of Windows/Windows RT may be redesigned to be more desktop friendly while Windows Phone becomes the basis for all of their consumer touch devices.
 
bigdogchris said:
Do you think Apple and Google will follow suit? So far they haven't hinted that they will be doing this. Do you think that's part of the reason Microsoft is doing it, to be different?
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The way I see it devices and OSes are converging. Android is beginning to appear on laptops and desktops, though it remains to be seen how popular that will be. The thing about the Modern UI unlike iOS and Android, it was designed from the ground up to work with keyboards and mice actually does pretty well. The changes in the Modern UI in 8.1 were mostly about making it more multitasking and multiple monitor desktop friendly.
 
heatlesssun said:
The way I see it devices and OSes are converging. Android is beginning to appear on laptops and desktops, though it remains to be seen how popular that will be. The thing about the Modern UI unlike iOS and Android, it was designed from the ground up to work with keyboards and mice actually does pretty well. The changes in the Modern UI in 8.1 were mostly about making it more multitasking and multiple monitor desktop friendly.
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This is false. The modern UI was designed from the ground up with Touch in mind (You have stated as much yourself, sorry I don't forget). Keyboards and mice were an afterthought and it shows. Modern UI is MS trying to get into the touch space, because Android is trying to get into the non touch space. both seem to work about equally badly. If modern ui was designed from the ground up with mice and keyboards in mind, it would work better and take less steps than its predecessor Aero and it doesn't work better or take less steps. Actually in general it takes more steps. This isn't to imply it is broken or doesn't work, it does. It just doesn't work nearly as well as it did. If you work in a hybrid environment, I am sure it does work better, but most don't work in a hybrid environment. The experience is a non touch environment is flatly worse than it was. Can you improve it? somewhat yes. However users should be required to jump through a ton of hoops just to restore functionality that has always been there.

Edit:
Even though I should just ignore them, I'm not. There are a bunch of people trolling threads with the whole "It's popular to hate MS" garbage. I don't hate MS and I doubt seriously anyone on this forum actually does. Without MS where would we be in modern computing today? Not where we are likely because Apple sure as hell doesn't support enthusiasts. You see it is quite possible to be unhappy with a direction of a companies products and still quite like the company in general. I hate the Direction of the UI in Win 8, but I like the core of Win 8 after you get rid of that. I hate the Direction of the new Xbox, but that doesn't mean I hate MS. Honestly I am getting a little tired of this pedantic dismissal of valid criticism's of a company. I wish people could realize that you can in fact criticize the company and products you like because things Don't get improved without feedback both positive and negative.
 
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Dekoth-E- said:
This is false. The modern UI was designed from the ground up with Touch in mind (You have stated as much yourself, sorry I don't forget). Keyboards and mice were an afterthought and it shows. Modern UI is MS trying to get into the touch space, because Android is trying to get into the non touch space. both seem to work about equally badly. If modern ui was designed from the ground up with mice and keyboards in mind, it would work better and take less steps than its predecessor Aero and it doesn't work better or take less steps. Actually in general it takes more steps. This isn't to imply it is broken or doesn't work, it does. It just doesn't work nearly as well as it did. If you work in a hybrid environment, I am sure it does work better, but most don't work in a hybrid environment. The experience is a non touch environment is flatly worse than it was. Can you improve it? somewhat yes. However users should be required to jump through a ton of hoops just to restore functionality that has always been there.
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The Modern UI was designed from the ground up for both touch and conventional input. No, it's not always as good with a keyboard and mouse, something things could be considered worse. But there were some significant changes in 8.1 to help. The way windowing works with Modern apps in 8.1, while not as powerful as free form floating windows actually does provide a great keyboard and mouse experience for side by side windows, they are much easier to manage and control in a number of important ways than free floating desktop windows. swapping sides, resizing, launching apps into the desired division all work very smoothly with mice in 8.1,
 
Does 8.1 have a new tutorial? I'm guessing not because we'd have heard about it by now, and IMO that is still a glaring and really inexcusable omission esp given the new features which increase complexity.

I think we've gone over this a million times, but there is no way ModernUI was designed *for* kb/mouse use, that much is pretty obvious. It was made to work this kb/m, and that support got better in 8.1, but that's a vastly different thing. MS has even said explicitly that Metro and Win8 are 'touch first experiences' so there's really no need to debate this further.
 
There is a Help & Tips app in the 8.1 Preview but it is just a place holder that says "Coming soon" which for an incomplete test version is pretty normal for Microsoft.

Touch first doesn't mean touch only and doesn't mean that consideration for keyboards and mice wasn't in the Modern UI from the ground up. Even if one doesn't think that the Modern UI doesn't work well with keyboards and mice it's hard to figure how Modern UI apps would be able to respond to keyboard commands, mice buttons and scroll wheels if that support wasn't added to the Modern UI from the beginning.

Here's one fun fact that most probably don't know. Modern apps acquire focus on mouse hover, you don't have to click on the app to get it to respond to mouse scrolling. That's something that I've seen people complain about in Windows FOREVER. It does only apply to Modern apps. If a desktop app has mouse focus and you hover the mouse over a Modern app, the desktop app still retains the mouse focus.
 
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So Windows 8.1 + Classicshell = Win. Fast, stable, lot's of new features, and you don't have to mess with any of the metro crap. Oh, and free for now.
 
heatlesssun said:
Here's one fun fact that most probably don't know. Modern apps acquire focus on mouse hover, you don't have to click on the app to get it to respond to mouse scrolling. That's something that I've seen people complain about in Windows FOREVER. It does only apply to Modern apps. If a desktop app has mouse focus and you hover the mouse over a Modern app, the desktop app still retains the mouse focus.
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That would be meaningful if there were any Metro apps worth a damn.
 
officer921 said:
So Windows 8.1 + Classicshell = Win. Fast, stable, lot's of new features, and you don't have to mess with any of the metro crap.
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What new features? The fugly flat GUI? Having to pay an additional $60-$100 for Media Center? A built in VM that doesn't officially support Linux?

Windows 8.1 doesn't really add anything on top of that.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
What new features? The fugly flat GUI? Having to pay an additional $60-$100 for Media Center? A built in VM that doesn't officially support Linux?

Windows 8.1 doesn't really add anything on top of that.
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I agree I thought win 8.1 was a bust based on the beta. It felt like a patch job but a bad one.

I think Windows XP Service Pack 1 and Windows 2000 SP4 did it right.
 
DPI said:
That would be meaningful if there were any Metro apps worth a damn.
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I want to use the Sports app, but I don't know why the F the text has poor aliasing. Is this fixed in Windows 8.1?
 
officer921 said:
Media Center if for noobs. GTFO.
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:rolleyes:

It works great for watching TV and makes a great HTPC movie gallery with the MyMovies plugin. It's brain-dead easy to set up TV tuners with it, it looks great, and it came free with Windows Vista/7 Home Premium. What else do you need in that kind of app?

They didn't add anything new to it for 8. Charging for it is outrageous. I'm surprised they didn't sneak in a few Office 365 banner ads while they were at it.
 
Did they ever fix the bad font rendering problem in Metro and IE in 8.1?
 
By "bad font rendering problem", I'm assuming you're referring to non-ClearTyped fonts? If so, no. Most text is still monochromatically antialiased.

I got around to installing 8.1 this weekend. Figured a clean PC deserved a clean OS install. Some initial thoughts:

1) Disk Cleanup is now buried in Administrative Tools and non-searchable from Windows Search. A mild annoyance.

2) Being able to use the desktop wallpaper as the Start Screen backdrop makes for a significantly less jarring start screen, assuming your desktop is relatively unoccluded by apps. If you have some apps in the foreground, then it's still pretty jarring.

3) The unified search is bizarre. It seems to filter results based on some sort of match metric such that results that might appear in one of the specific contexts (say, Settings) won't appear in unified search, even if there are only a couple results total. This means you still have to jump between contexts quite a lot to get what you want.

4) Bing-enabled search could certainly be useful, but I'm finding that the lag time between query and suggestion is pretty significant, and that really significantly hampers usability. Leads me to wonder whether queries and suggestions are going through HTTP/S as opposed to going through a leaner protocol.
 
Even after several patches and different Nvidia drivers, my desktop zoom is still off every time I turn on my PC for the first time. Logging out fixes it and it doesn't seem to affect reboots.

While XBMC has pretty much replaced Media Center for me, I've also noticed that Media Center Plug-Ins (like TMT from Arcsoft) don't seem to work in this version.

Just like Windows 8, it irritates me that the "Metro" versions of certain apps only seem to work if you leave your shortcut icons where the installer puts them by default. If I ever move the Chrome or any other program that has a "Metro" version, that breaks that functionality.
 
heatless, what are your thoughts on 'This PC' replacing Computer and Libraries? I found ist quite confusing and I don't understand why MS would remove the concept of Libraries. It was never explained to users well enough and hardly any Windows tools used it, which is common practice, but it is a useful concept. It still exists because all it was is a virtual folder, but the UI is gone now.
 
wonderfield said:
1) Disk Cleanup is now buried in Administrative Tools and non-searchable from Windows Search. A mild annoyance.
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While on Start Screen go to the Charms and then click Settings->Tiles->Turn on Show Administrative Tools. That will add all of the Administrative Tools to Apps (but not the Start Screen as in Windows 8) and will allow for searches of the Administrative Tools.

wonderfield said:
3) The unified search is bizarre. It seems to filter results based on some sort of match metric such that results that might appear in one of the specific contexts (say, Settings) won't appear in unified search, even if there are only a couple results total. This means you still have to jump between contexts quite a lot to get what you want.
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Can you provide an example of what you're describing, can't say I've seen what you're talking about over the last month of using 8.1 on a couple of devices daily.

wonderfield said:
4) Bing-enabled search could certainly be useful, but I'm finding that the lag time between query and suggestion is pretty significant, and that really significantly hampers usability. Leads me to wonder whether queries and suggestions are going through HTTP/S as opposed to going through a leaner protocol.
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You shouldn't see any lag on a reasonably fast connection. On a slower connection the Bing results might take more time, however the search is threaded apparently, I've tested this on slower connections and local search results don't have to wait for Bing results to finish.
 
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