Windows 8.1 update 1

wildefalcon

Sometimes it's hard to change a good thing.

Win 7 is a damn fine OS.

Win 8 is also very good - better if you have a tablet.

200motels

madfcuker wrote: »

This is the biggest load of nonsense ever. My friend you seem to be reluctant to change. I was like you, didn't want to move to windows 8, had to buy a laptop, all sold pre-installed windows 8. Looked at getting windows 7. In the end bought one that was pre-installed windows 8.

Took me about a day to play round with it to get things the way I wanted. Boots straight into desktop mode. No metro used. No third party add ons installed.

I currently run Windows 8.1 and I love it. I have no third party software with it. Boots faster. Much faster at getting stuff done. Once 8.1 came out I even liked the operating system more.

And if you look at market research, windows 8.1 has been success.

Lastly, I still know people that run Vista and love it. Each to their own I suppose.

I beg to differ, I had 8 and 8.1 and had enough of it just before the New Year and went back to 7 and to me it's a better system, 8.1 hasn't been a success, it has already had two service pack updates in a year and a half, where as 7 has had just one in 5 and a half years, even Vista hadn't it's second service pack until well into it's third year.

PropJoe10

200motels wrote: »

I beg to differ, I had 8 and 8.1 and had enough of it just before the New Year and went back to 7 and to me it's a better system, 8.1 hasn't been a success, it has already had two service pack updates in a year and a half, where as 7 has had just one in 5 and a half years, even Vista hadn't it's second service pack until well into it's third year.

You're more than entitled to your opinion, but what is it that you dont like about Windows 8/8.1 exactly? Is your dislike of it just based on your dislike of the Metro interface or is there something else that you feel makes it inferior to Windows 7?

Fysh

200motels wrote: »

I beg to differ, I had 8 and 8.1 and had enough of it just before the New Year and went back to 7 and to me it's a better system, 8.1 hasn't been a success, it has already had two service pack updates in a year and a half, where as 7 has had just one in 5 and a half years, even Vista hadn't it's second service pack until well into it's third year.

Service Packs are mostly rollups of existing updates, and tbh not since Windows XP SP2 have there been particularly significant under-the-hood changes. 8.1 and 8.1u1 have brought some UI changes but they are frankly minor tweaks. Having new operating systems released on a 3-year cycle argues against the idea of using service packs for anything much more than rolling up security fixes, because new functionality development efforts will be going into whatever the latest OS is.

The number of service packs rolled out to an OS isn't actually an indication of the technical underpinnings, and the treatment conferred on 8.1 and 8.1u1 by Microsoft is more about marketing than technology.

Windows 7 was and is a very decent OS - but it's worth remembering that it reintroduced the world to the ping of death in its first year or so. Windows 8 and 8.1 build on the core of Windows 7, as can be seen by checking the full release version number (Vista was NT 6, 7 was NT 6.1, 8 was NT 6.2, 8.1 is NT 6.3)

degsie

Fyi. Windows 7 support ends January 14, 2020, Windows 8 support ends January 10, 2023.

Capt'n Midnight

degsie wrote: »

Fyi. Windows 7 support ends January 14, 2020, Windows 8 support ends January 10, 2023.

How many times did they extend XP support ?

PropJoe10

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

How many times did they extend XP support ?

About a zillion. 7 will be the new XP I'd say.

Where I work, we've completely migrated the desktops to Windows 8.1. However we're still rolling out new Windows 7 machines on request for some clients.

I have to agree with Fysh; beneath the UI changes, 8.1 is a fine system. Although I resisted it initially, I'm now using vanilla 8.1 without any shell hacks or Start menus. It take a bit of getting used to, but not that much. The thing which helped me most was to unpin any unnecessary apps from the Start screen and pin my own. For the rest, I can either use the search or All Apps view, which is easier to get to in 8.1 than it was in 8.

oneerc

legrand wrote: »

Anyone notice display changes to the desktop - icons got larger in task bar and desktop (easily solved).

Font in Chrome has gone fuzzy as if slightly out of focus (other apps/progs are fine) and font appears 'bold'

I've a yoga 2 pro with a 3200 x 1800 screen (might be related to some scaling issue)

I have the same laptop and have the same complaint. At first I thought I did something wrong and did a system restore, but as soon as I did the 8.1 update the problem was back.

I Also notice utorrent has the same problem

This to do with the way Windows 8.1 handles DPI scaling. On applications that don't have the "high DPI aware" flag set, Windows will simply render the application at 96 DPI and upscale it, so it looks blurred. You can go into the Compatibility tab for the application and disable this, but then it is rendered at 96 DPI and may be very hard to read.

Personally I think that Windows looks terrible on high DPI screens, I have a laptop with a 15.6" 1920x1080 panel and regret it. I just run the screen at 1600x900, despite the interpolation, so I can read everything without the high DPI scaling problems.