Been using this for a few days already since it was released to MSDN. Definitely better than Windows 8.0 and even Windows 7.
If you don't like Metro, it's pretty easy to get rid of now but not entirely (it occasionally pokes you in the eye). My setup guide:
1. Use group policy editor to get rid of lock screen.
2. Set IE to open tiles on desktop.
3. Set start menu to display apps only and turn off hot corners. Then set to boot to desktop.
4. Uninstall all the metro apps that come with it.
You will still get the "start screen" but in apps view and the search stuff but to be honest it's pretty good. I rarely see it though as everything I use is pinned to the taskbar.
Use Windows+X as your new start menu afterwards - it rocks. In fact I wish earlier versions of windows had that!
Reasons to upgrade: faster boot, power management seems more stable, Hyper-V, explorer UI enhancements, nicer file copying, new task manager, better Powershell integration.
PuTTY and Firefox still work which is the most important thing for me though...
Edit: just to add I haven't installed a start menu replacement or metro killer.
Edit 2: I haven't figured out backups yet. Windows 7 backup was trivial with an external disk.
Edit 3: to bypass microsoft account login/creation on installation (I did this on Pro edition):
1. When it asks you to sign in, click "create a microsoft account".
2. There is a link at the bottom to "use a local account" on the page this sends you to.
You say that Windows 8.1 is better than windows 7 while occasionally poking the user in the eye?
I'm not sure nicer file copying is worth being pokes in the eye by Metro. Faster boot and power management sound interesting, but I would really need independent benchmarks before I would trust any such claims. A 5 seconds or less decrease in boot time (like http://www.zdnet.com/windows-8-vs-windows-7-benchmarked_p2-7...) would not be worth it for me. A significant power boost (+10%) for a laptop might be worth being poked in the eye, if said 10% can be gained while I use the computer (ie, not while sleeping/idling/suspended). For desktop however, power management is not really a feature Im looking for.
On improving boot time, here is some Steve Jobs folklore:
Well, let's say you can shave 10 seconds off of the boot time. Multiply that by five million users and thats 50 million seconds, every single day. Over a year, that's probably dozens of lifetimes. So if you make it boot ten seconds faster, you've saved a dozen lives. That's really worth it, don't you think?
In that regard, people should finally learn to not turn off their computers every day. Sleep takes a second or two at most and with hybrid sleep (has been in windows for ages) it's a non-issue.
Folklore becomes less relevant over time. Now that computers have very efficient sleep mechanisms boot time is a lot less relevant. I probably boot my laptop once a week.
Just my opinion based on a limited and outdated experience (see down thread comment - https://qht.co/item?id=6565296), but I definitely didn't feel like Metro was poking me in the eye.
You know, right after Windows 8 was released, I noticed something really interesting. While I was struggling with it [1], there were a lot of people on reddit and here being extremely positive, and on reddit there were attacks against anyone that was negative about it. At first, I figured I was just out of step. Gradually, the number of people complaining about Windows 8 grew to overshadow the boosters, where finally the boosters were nowhere to be seen. I believe it was a campaign by Microsoft to try and turn the tide they knew would be there, against it. It failed because Windows 8 was so horrible.
So, 8.1 comes out and here we have a new account (6 days old) with a glowing review. Pardon me if I'm a little skeptical. I've been had before.
Oh god, not this conspiracy theory paid shill nonsense again. If I had a dollar for every time I was called a shill for saying anything positive about Microsoft, well, it still wouldn't make me a paid shill.
There's an alternative to your theory that requires fewer assumptions and only requires reasoning based on the types of people involved in the discussions you mention. People who like Windows 8 were comfortable using it in new ways, people who didn't want to change didn't like it. The people who don't want to change still don't want to change and so of course they are still complaining. Me? I'm tired of debating people on whether or not Windows 8 was an improvement over 7 or not. Usually it comes down to dogmatic beliefs over how they think Windows should work and those beliefs are at odds with how Microsoft thinks it should work. Why argue with dogmatism?
As evidence for the dogmatism of this belief, look no further than your own comment. You simply cannot believe anyone would think Windows 8 was good, or that Windows 8.1 is good.
> People who like Windows 8 were comfortable using it in new ways, people who didn't want to change didn't like it.
I'm fully comfortable changing how my desktop works. I've used Windows 98, Windows XP, Windows 7, and even Windows Vista on other computers. I've administrated Windows Server editions from 2000 to 2012. I've also used several Linux distros with varying desktop environments. I'm now using Debian Wheezy, after primarily using Windows environments my entire life.
I still say Windows 8 doesn't solve any problems that I have, and introduces several. That is why I don't use it and don't recommend it. The split-brain nature of the operating system makes it close to unusable, for both myself and a number of non-technical people I know.
You're talking about yourself (and repeatedly telling people to go read your blog post, which they're not required to do) - the other posters are talking about users in general.
No doubt that you may well be an outlier. Every piece of software has groups of people who use it differently, including some that are infuriated by it. That doesn't mean that everyone that posts a positive experience is a paid shill.
Yeah by GPs logic I suppose I am also a "paid shill."
You know why I'm not on Reddit supporting Windows 8 any more? Windows 8 works for me -- it works _fantastically._
I'm a little preoccupied with enjoying my computer; I see no reason to surround myself with a stream of negativity about an OS that has worked flawlessly for me.
I don't personally like the looks of Metro, or how intrusive it is (fullscreen) but it is far superior to classic start in basically every regard. Especially with keyboard. I think people don't like it because of change, not because they think is bad.
The bitching at it reminds me of people using Gnome 2 or at least complaining how great it was. It's people hating change. Gnome 2 is crap when it comes to usability and configurability. Its only advantage was speed.. but hey, Windows 2000 might be fast on today's machines as well.
And while it might look sketchy it's not a glowing review but rather a list of configuration options that user changed in order to avoid metro as much as possible.
Go read the blog entry and tell me if I'm bitching about change.
I've used every single version of Windows since 3.1. I didn't like Vista because it had huge performance issues. I've never really bitched about Windows because I've always liked it. So, you couldn't be further from the truth.
I don't know if those people were shills or not but the thing about the Win 8 boosters that surprised me was how angry many of them were or are.
Someone would complain about the start screen or badly integrated metro apps and the chorus would start up about how anyone who didn't like the new menus and hot corners were luddites terrified of change. Absolutely ridiculous.
It was a surprising change of tone from how Windows users usually discuss things. The anger is usually reserved for inexplicable changes which don't work. The defenders usually shrug it off with a "Well, Vista always worked for me." Windows is not normally the sort of thing which attracts the sort of angry defensive passion which Mac or Linux users used to display.
So I can see how the abrupt change of tone would make people suspicious.
I was one of the converted boosters. Windows 8 was good enough out of the box. But the real usability problems came later.
Because the majority of the initial complaints were - "start screen ugly, metro apps unusable" - I was busy answering - start screen not that intrusive if you use shortcuts, metro apps uninstallable.
But the real problems blossomed for me much later - the inability of GFWL to work on windows 8 so I cannot play the legally bought Bulletstorm, Arkham City and Assylum, some software working weirdly (Stroke it), the phantom french keyboard that appears from time to time (don't ask), the general locked-ness of the metro runtime (I was insisting close to a year ago that they cannot be that stupid and will just open the platform), problems with Cisco VPN, and so on.
So for me W8 turned from different to terrible gradually.
Sorry this is a new account but I'm not a new HN reader. Shill argument here we come.
To be honest I'm not enamoured with windows 8.1. It's just marginally better for me than windows 7 was and I'm trying to spread some help for those who will be picking it up today who will no doubt expect it to work a bit like windows 7.
If I was a shill, surely I'd be saying "metro is fucking awesome!" and other such things which it clearly isn't based on the fact I want rid of it.
I've got 15 years of UNIX and Linux experience as well and would rather have my head in an old Sun workstation than this shit, but it's not where the world is for me unfortunately.
I feel the Windows+X menu is a disaster. It is the worse UI for a menu ever. Is it a traditional start menu? a context menu? It feels really out of place with the entire Windows 8 UI. You want a shortcut to the Control Panel? Device Manager? Event Viewer? Let's just throw it on the start/context menu! The whole Windows+X menu seems like it was added by an engineer and was completely overlooked by the design team.
I learned to love this full-screen menu, once I set up one of extra buttons on my mouse to "win" key and learned to use scroll-wheel to navigate the menu. it is fast, fluid and I do not have to focus on reading program names. became 2nd nature to me
As an admin, I don't find the menu useful. Especially when I hop on various Server 2012 servers that have a slightly different version of the menu than my 8.1 VM.
To me, win+r is all that is needed. If I can't remember the name of an msc winkey + start typing still works ok.
The fact that the metro start screen exists on the server OS is deplorable.
This was a mistake by Microsoft, de-emphasizing the full disk backup options. There were serious issues with it, it was pretty brittle in terms of backing up and restoring* but those problems should have been fixed rather than obscured. To find the Windows 7-style backup options, hit start, type "Backup" and select "File History". Then in the bottom left corner, click "System Image Backup". The GUI is there, it's just been needlessly hidden. :(
> But you don't need backup since you have SkyDrive now ;)
Oh what a fallacy this is. Cloud storage is at best a backup solution for some personal files you don't value too much, but in no way a replacement for a full-system backup.
When I started using 8 I wasn't too bothered by the missing start button, now I think I might actually prefer it without. I like the start screen, but I don't use any actual metro apps.
How long did the upgrade take? I'm just wondering if this is more like a service pack, or if I'm going to lose a better part of an afternoon doing the upgrade.
I'm just doing the upgrade at the moment: the download was 3.4GB and was maxing my connection, but the install has taken an hour so far, but this isn't on an SSD. The process looks like it's coming to an end soon.
that's going to vary highly depending on hardware and your link speed, but I just did in on 3 relatively newer PC's with SSD's over a 30Mbps connection, and it took between 30-45mins.
I did a fresh install from MSDN iso onto a disk cleaned with diskpart from a USB stick (see [1]). I didn't do an upgrade. I wouldn't ever upgrade Windows manually after a screw up going from Vista to 7.
To do a full clean install on my Lenovo T400 with Samsung 840 Pro SSD off a fairly old Sandisk Cruzer took less than 10 minutes.
I do. It's fantastic. I also have 8.1 on my work computer which is AD, but you can link your microsoft account to that account as well which allows all preferences to sync.
If you don't like Metro, it's pretty easy to get rid of now but not entirely (it occasionally pokes you in the eye). My setup guide:
1. Use group policy editor to get rid of lock screen.
2. Set IE to open tiles on desktop.
3. Set start menu to display apps only and turn off hot corners. Then set to boot to desktop.
4. Uninstall all the metro apps that come with it.
You will still get the "start screen" but in apps view and the search stuff but to be honest it's pretty good. I rarely see it though as everything I use is pinned to the taskbar.
Use Windows+X as your new start menu afterwards - it rocks. In fact I wish earlier versions of windows had that!
Reasons to upgrade: faster boot, power management seems more stable, Hyper-V, explorer UI enhancements, nicer file copying, new task manager, better Powershell integration.
PuTTY and Firefox still work which is the most important thing for me though...
Edit: just to add I haven't installed a start menu replacement or metro killer.
Edit 2: I haven't figured out backups yet. Windows 7 backup was trivial with an external disk.
Edit 3: to bypass microsoft account login/creation on installation (I did this on Pro edition):
1. When it asks you to sign in, click "create a microsoft account".
2. There is a link at the bottom to "use a local account" on the page this sends you to.