Hands On with Windows 8.1: Microsoft’s ‘do-over’ OS is loaded with features - wrightititan79
If you already think Windows 8 is a flawed Atomic number 76, Microsoft's new 8.1 update won't change your mind. But I've been digging into a preview release of the raw system since Tuesday good afternoon, and it's unfrosted that Microsoft's course-correction efforts have professional off in loads of convenient new features.
Microsoft announced the long-awaited Windows 8.1 trailer at its Build 2022 developer's conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. To download the preview, you hindquarters latch on from the Windows Store on your extant Windows 8 or RT gimmick—after backing rising your hardware first, and reading both this installation guide and Microsoft's FAQ. Microsoft executives say your live apps North Korean won't be affected by instalmen the prevue, only some could require re-installation once Windows 8.1 is released in its unalterable form. The download appears to be about 2.44 GB, supported connected a demo Microsoft showed journalists Tuesday.
The preview holds few surprises for those who've been holding track of the Windows 8.1 saga. Yes, it includes the new boot-to-desktop alternative, and Microsoft has re-organized the Start page to make finding apps easier. Within the desktop, the Windows droop serves as a faux Set about button, although it's really just a shortcut to the Start page.
The expected personalization options are there, including dynamic desktop art as well as the ability to share a background knowledge between your desktop and Start Thomas Nelson Page. But there's as wel a inundate of other tweaks, apps and features, devising this free upgrade a tremendous value in terms of volume alone.
Whatever highlights: There's a new Bing Solid food & Drink app that you bottom wave at to turn on the page, Samsung Extragalactic nebula S4 style. There's direct control of 3D printers (yes, 3D printers). You give the axe turn the PC into a WI-Fi hotspot, and stream 1080p TV via Miracast to the Xbox One. And Microsoft likewise confirmed that IT has "alpha code" of Microsoft Office for the Modern interface that's due some fourth dimension in the future.
Although Microsoft volition key the Windows 8.1 release to your Microsoft Gem State calculate, it seedy the upgrade to journalists and analysts on Surface Pro loaner units. While not untold grabbed ME from the get-go, poking into the nook and cranny has been rewarding.
Cordial, but frustrating
Because Windows 8.1 is a connected operating system, booting improving the Surface is a rather bombast experience. But after connecting your Microsoft account, enabling SkyDrive, and dive into the personalization options, Windows 8.1 comes lively. It's just a good deal harder than information technology could be.
A key finish of Windows 8.1 is to offer a highly personalized experience. Indeed, uncomparable of the many additions to the Start pageboy is the "Personalize" choice below Settings. To get over there, swipe in from the right, select Settings, and then "Personalize." Erst you make out so, you'll experience an option to add unusual backgrounds, with various discolour schemes. I'm not sure if the Control surface I had simply lacked the high-powered 'Dragon" and "Golem" backgrounds that Jensen Harris, percentage of the Microsoft Windows Substance abuser Undergo team up, demonstrated for reporters Tuesday. But Windows 8.1 either synced over the new backgrounds by copying o'er my old background options, operating room the content wasn't there.
Windows 8.1 also adds the ability to share a background between the desktop and Originate page. It's a pleasant feature that offers the impression that your desktop and Pop page are merely ii sides of the same strike. Adding this capability is harder than information technology looks, though: I had to manually shift the desktop background, then wait for it to bear witness up in the "Personalize" tablet in the Start commands. A "sync Desktop and Begin backgrounds" option would solve the problem, but it isn't there (more on that later).
In fact, when I turned murder syncing on my personal PC tied to my Microsoft account, the beach background I had on my Windows 8.1 desktop disappeared from my Starting signal screen, but remained American Samoa a Personalize background pick. Clicking it didn't work, and IT remained there as an unusable choice.
Other personalization feature is available via the "Change PC Settings" option: You can turn your PC into a photo frame with photos displaying on your lock screen. Unfortunately, I couldn't get that feature article to work, and it wouldn't commit my photos from SkyDrive. Windows 8.1 does offer the power to sync apps, as well as Start block out tiles and layouts, Vane browser shortcuts, mouse and printer settings, and more. For right now, however, I'm not sure the sync settings are that efficacious, especially between Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 devices.
The "Change PC Settings" pick also allows you to turn off "hot corner" access to the Charms and recent apps, eliminating one of the more confusing features of Windows 8.
Part of the problem is that Microsoft has hidden its power-user options inside the desktop. In Windows 8, press the Windows key + "X" brings up a handy card of commands, including the Control Panel, Gimmick Manager, Disk Manager, and others. Within 8.1, you john access that magnate-user menu via a "long press" of the Windows flag/Start icon.
But right-clicking the taskbar at the bottom of the desktop brings rising the really important stuff. A new "Seafaring" tab inside the Taskbar and Navigation Properties contains the bring up-to-Background option; the option to sync the background of the desktop and Start screen; and the option to show the Apps view automatically every time you view the Start screen. These features (and others) are all incredibly useful options, but they're virtually impossible to find unless you know what you'ray looking for.
Smart Search: the command line for Windows?
Indefinite major complaint about Windows 8 concerns finding applications: Instead of clicking though a Bulge out fare (as in Windows 7), you have to visually search inside a slew of tiles, or central in a explore from the Beginning page. Ace of the shipway Windows 8.1 solves this problem is aside organizing your package into an "All Apps" collection that can be accessed by swiping up from the Start page. The list can be organized several different ways, including most frequently victimised, last accessed and, of course, alphabetically.
Microsoft has besides importantly improved its search capabilities. Start typing, and a search window opens to the right, as it did in Windows 8. But the new Seek capability searches the Web, your PC and SkyDrive, among other locations. Look for "Madonna," and up pops a lovely, enormous "hero" varlet with the singer's biographical information and discography. (The Surface that Microsoft gave Pine Tree State connected the discography to Xbox Music, so I quickly switched to BB King for the residuu of the night.) The measure of possible results could grow enormous, but Microsoft does a fine job of managing the output. Sadly, mail can't be searched—yet.
Xbox Music provides a free "wireles station" of a exceptional artist or writing style, none subscription needed. Microsoft executives said that it would auto-implication playlists connected a web foliate, such as the lineup of artists at a music fete, later this year.
A lot of Windows 8.1 apps
From a macroscopic level, Microsoft has also added flexibility to its Modern apps, adding the capability to "snap" up to four apps connected a standard widescreen admonisher. (Adding another monitor allows another quaternity.) Only deuce windows—the standard for Windows 8—privy equal snapped on a Superficial, however, due to scaling issues. I wasn't able to test the "four-in the lead" feature on a full-sized monitor, as I lacked a mini-DVI adapter for the Surface review unit.
On a more microscopic point, a number of apps have either been rewritten or totally added for the Windows 8.1 release. Among these is Reading Number—sort of a Microsoft-proprietary Instapaper. If you open up a vane page, then bring up the "Contribution" bewitch, you hindquarters save whatever you'Re reading for later. It whole shebang equally you might expect, but with some limitations. First, you need to remember to click the olive-sized "beam mail" icon in the upper right of the Recitation List tab. Sec, IT solitary kit and caboodle with the Modern version of Net Explorer, rather than the background version. Stories then open in IE for later meter reading.
One of the more significant additions is I 11. It forthwith includes side-by-pull browsing and syncing of favorites, tabs, and settings crosswise all Windows 8.1 devices. Microsoft as wel says IT lashing pages quicker. We weren't really able to test completely these capabilities (we only had one Windows 8.1 device, for good example), but the browser seemed to perform the job antimonopoly fine. Internet Explorer 11 stool also prevent extensions from launching until it has a chance to hand of the code to an anti-malware computer program for scanning.
Food & Salute is a new built-in app that includes a repast contriver, a grocery list tool, and a searchable database of recipes that can be augmented with pleased you find online. The list of recipes isn't very singular, but it includes a good conjuring trick: You give notice enable a "hands-free" mode, and flip through pages just by gesturing above your gimmick. The idea is to avoid gumming ascending your computer or tablet with your chickenhearted-spattered paws, but you'll still need several clicks to enable hands-unimprisoned modality, and the Surface's webcam practically required my manus to cover its crystalline lens.
Health Tracker is essentially Intellectual nourishment & Drink for exercise. You can check unfashionable a range of exercises; monitor nutrition, diet, calories, bloodline pressure, and other wellness attributes; and try out an encyclopedia of drugs and health conditions. It's all laid out well, and can sync with Microsoft's HealthVault online disc repositing.
Microsoft also promised that a new translation of Skype leave on the job users to incoming calls via a popup message connected the lock screen door, and so allow you to begin talking immediately. I created a test account on a nigh Windows 8 machine, then installed Skype on the Surface and called myself. I was capable to see the watchful, but I had to log in atomic number 3 sane to begin talk. Clicking on the alert didn't lic.
SkyDrive is likewise supposed to gain photo redaction capabilities, allowing you to simply swipe your screen for a range of exposure filters and redaction features. For some reason, this didn't work for me, and the seemingly related Photos app didn't stimulate this capability either.
Mail, another app that Microsoft's Harris described as updated, also seemed to represent exactly the same in the Windows 8.1 build loaded into my Control surface Pro loaner social unit. Nevertheless, when whol is said and done, Get off's inbox will allow you to iris and sort messages by sender, and social updates from Twitter and Facebook will be able to be separated into their personal folders, Harris promised.
In addition, Windows 8.1 boasts a new Voice Recorder app, a new Alarms app, and a stylish new Calculator app. (Note that there are both desktop and Modern versions of Calculator, if you want to test one against the opposite.) Microsoft promised thatSports, Tidings, Brave out, Finance, and Locomote have also been updated for Windows 8.1, but I didn't have fourth dimension to probe completely the apps before posting this article.
Windows Store gets a cosmetic surgery
Incomparable subtle shift in Windows 8.1 is the elimination of the slim number at the bottom of the Windows Stock icon. That's because apps now auto-update in the background.
This sounds good on newspaper, but comes with a caveat: According to Microsoft's Ted Dworkin, partner conductor of program management for the Windows Store, apps won't necessarily alert you if they'rhenium updated and their access policies change. This means that if an app wants more than data, Microsoft wish softly grant permission unless certain undisclosed permissions are asked for, triggering a user notification.
Within the Windows Stack away app itself, look for the first "page" of tiles to leave. Instead, Microsoft is curating apps, pushing forward a single software championship that it thinks most users will like. There's also a special selection culled for individual users, based on their preferences.
Microsoft will also now give up in-app purchases for peculiar costumes and other consumables in games, and volition offer stored-apprais options, allowing you to carry a balance of dollars, yen, euro, or some other currency from which to buy apps, movies, euphony, and so on. In Windows 8.1, you will also personify able-bodied to establis apps on an unlimited number of Windows devices, but Microsoft leave monitor substance abuser activity to make sure apps aren't copied across, enounce, an entire residence hall's valuable of hardware.
Windows 8.1 for businesses
If you interpret our earlier report on Windows 8.1 for businesses, you'll get a good grasp of what Microsoft intends for the enterprise features of the new OS.
Using a featured called Appointed Get at, a Windows 8.1 PC derriere be "locked downfield" to boot to a single app. For good example, you could lock pop PCs to a dedicated test-taking app, preventing students from launching Internet Explorer during exams.
The Starting signal Screen configuration can atomic number 4 exported to an XML file, and enforced as a policy. And Windows 8.1 has been designed with Mobile Device Management in mind: Users reach bring their personal Windows 8.1 devices into the work, but businesses can put their own apps and documents connected the user hardware—and revoke access to this worldly as they wish.
Other new capabilities more straightaway benefit employees: Users can circle up their PCs arsenic Badger State-Fi hotspots, communion a freelance-for work connection, and new "virtual smart cards" can be used as tokens to launch VPNs. Third-party VPNs now work with WIndows RT as fit, Dustin Ingalls, a group broadcast manager at Microsoft, said.
Prettier just not perfect
So what's the bottom agate line? Right now, Windows 8.1 offers somewhat moderate improvements to a debatable design, together with a few bugs. And, in person, I would have appreciated better formation of the new personalization options.
For now, my dissertation remains unchanged: Windows 8 bolts a tablet interface on go past of a PC interface, and nearly people who approach it from the Personal computer position are in for a shock. When it comes to interface design, familiarity breeds not contempt, but preferablycontent—happy, happy users who would rather see their honey interface polished up, but not overhauled entirely. Complete time, however, Microsoft bequeath benefit from user familiarity, as people learn how to navigate Windows 8 (and all its updates) and the Innovative user interface becomes the early normal.
Windows 8.1 is Microsoft's chance at a make-over. So far, the company has stuck to its guns, offering a few changes to ease the transition from Windows 7. But the caller has also secure to increase the gait of change, with more frequent updates. I like what I see—a company that's scared of becoming irrelevant, hearing to its users. I appreciate what Microsoft has through with with Windows 8.1, but I like a susceptible Microsoft even more.
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/452612/hands-on-with-windows-8-1-microsofts-do-over-os-is-loaded-with-features.html
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