Windows 8.1 Update Hammers Out the Little Things

[eza]

I've never understood the "oh noes they took away the start button" complaints, when every keyboard made in almost the last two decades has a start button on it between Ctrl and Alt.Press the start button on your keyboard and start typing the name of the thing you want to run, then press enter.Anything more complicated than that? Press Win+X.Anyone moaning about the loss of an on screen button that replicates keyboard functionality just isn't able to use their computer very well.Maybe these people would like the on-screen keyboard, then they can click all the keyboard buttons to their heart's content!Personally I've not upgraded from 8 to 8.1 yet. They removed a few things I used and didn't add much.

 

[red77star]

Apparently Start Menu is coming back to Windows 8 later this year and as far this release goes it is just ugly and useless. Even with Start Menu, Metro is not going away which big deal for me cause i can't stand it. We need Aero back!!!!

 

[dokonewski]

OTA update? Sorry my PC isn't a handheld mobile communication device to which OTA refers. Just say Windows is getting an update, Windows 8.1.1 ... saying OTA made me think you were discussing Windows Phone 8.1. UI fixes will be nice, but seeing how I have no issues with Win 8/8.1 I could care less about the updates really. I like the centralized Start screen. Not having to scroll through 100 folders to find the program I want to start is a bonus. The smart search is fantastic. VPN into guest network before logon is a must have for any IT admin. Disk management is easier, Hyper-V for VM creation is awesome, I could go on and on. However, the haters will continue to hate.

 

[user 18]

I've never understood the "oh noes they took away the start button" complaints, when every keyboard made in almost the last two decades has a start button on it between Ctrl and Alt.Press the start button on your keyboard and start typing the name of the thing you want to run, then press enter.Anything more complicated than that? Press Win+X.Anyone moaning about the loss of an on screen button that replicates keyboard functionality just isn't able to use their computer very well.Maybe these people would like the on-screen keyboard, then they can click all the keyboard buttons to their heart's content!Personally I've not upgraded from 8 to 8.1 yet. They removed a few things I used and didn't add much.

Personally, I have 2 issues with the use of a start screen compared to a start menu.

The first issue is the simple fact that it's a full-screen feature. In windows 7, I can (and often do) launch a program while reading or watching something on one of my monitors. The appearance of a small box in one corner of the screen is much preferable to the more invasive and jarring transition to a full screen, particularly if it's for a brief moment.

The second issue is with how I use the start menu. I have my most commonly used programs pinned to the taskbar, and a group of less-commonly used programs pinned to the start menu. I don't need these programs often enough to want them taking up space on my taskbar, but I don't want to have to search for them every time I want them either. With the start menu, it takes 1 or 2 clicks and very little mouse movement to access about a dozen additional programs. With the start screen, it would take more mouse movement and more time to launch one of these programs, while again being more invasive to my workflow than the traditional start menu.

It's not that the start screen is nonfunctional, I can and do use windows 8 machines on a regular basis. I just find that my workflow is much better on Windows 7, which works more efficiently with my personal workflow.

E: @jpishgar:

I believe the issue Christopher is referring to is the elimination of line breaks when posting new comments. If you're interested, I have an image which captures the issue, which I experienced in making this post. I'm using Chrome version 33.0.1750.146 on Windows 7x64,

 

[JohnUSA]

Microsoft: Your new update is still BAD.I will not touch any version of your horrible, irritating and abysmal Windows 8.I will keep using Windows 7 and wait till Windows 9 is released.Windows 9 better be just perfect and not have any of the bad features that you stupidly included in Windows 8.If Windows 9 fails too then I will give up completely on Windows and migrate to Linux.Microsoft.... you are one dumb and stupid company. Shame on you.

 

[falchard]

There is a different design philosophy in regards to how Windows 8 handles program switching and start up which is why when you close a program, its still partially loaded into memory.This is one thing that confused me when using Android for the first time. Applications don't fully close when you exit them which for beta testing is not convenient and you typically want to run applications in a clean state.The reason for this is the overabundance of memory and fact that the amount in memory does not affect power draw. So to facilitate fast restart of commonly used programs, they still reside in memory for being started again and will automatically clear from memory when necessary and not open.The main complaint I had with Windows 8 was the fact CoreWindow and hWnd programs were treated separately by the OS. So using the Modern UI and Desktop UI in tandem was difficult to manage.

 

[rwinches]

The mashing is the elimination of spaces between sentences (after periods), carriage returns and line feeds.

 

[jimmysmitty]

So now they're making UI adjustments they should have during beta testing and letting people use screen corners again. Too bad about all the incompatibilities of old games and utilities, buy new ones.I guess they got their phone interface, which was all Ballmer wanted and now they're finally making concessions to standard PC users.

I have games that are pretty damn old and have run them with no issues.

I am willing to bet you are one of those people like they had during Vista who never actually used the OS but rather listened to what other people may have said about something that would also have issues on 7.

Remember the Die Hard Trilogy games? Those wont run on a NTFS based system. There might be a patch but once I went from 98 to XP, it was a useless game.

So, when are they going to fix safe mode?

Safe Mode works fine. The only time it doesn't is when you have Secure Boot enabled and that normally requires you to go through the OS to get to it.

In other cases, the system boots too fast to get the shift+F8 command in. Thanks to SSDs that is. I see the Windows 8 logo for but a second then it load in.

I've never understood the "oh noes they took away the start button" complaints, when every keyboard made in almost the last two decades has a start button on it between Ctrl and Alt.Press the start button on your keyboard and start typing the name of the thing you want to run, then press enter.Anything more complicated than that? Press Win+X.Anyone moaning about the loss of an on screen button that replicates keyboard functionality just isn't able to use their computer very well.Maybe these people would like the on-screen keyboard, then they can click all the keyboard buttons to their heart's content!Personally I've not upgraded from 8 to 8.1 yet. They removed a few things I used and didn't add much.

Personally, I have 2 issues with the use of a start screen compared to a start menu.

The first issue is the simple fact that it's a full-screen feature. In windows 7, I can (and often do) launch a program while reading or watching something on one of my monitors. The appearance of a small box in one corner of the screen is much preferable to the more invasive and jarring transition to a full screen, particularly if it's for a brief moment.

The second issue is with how I use the start menu. I have my most commonly used programs pinned to the taskbar, and a group of less-commonly used programs pinned to the start menu. I don't need these programs often enough to want them taking up space on my taskbar, but I don't want to have to search for them every time I want them either. With the start menu, it takes 1 or 2 clicks and very little mouse movement to access about a dozen additional programs. With the start screen, it would take more mouse movement and more time to launch one of these programs, while again being more invasive to my workflow than the traditional start menu.

It's not that the start screen is nonfunctional, I can and do use windows 8 machines on a regular basis. I just find that my workflow is much better on Windows 7, which works more efficiently with my personal workflow.

E: @jpishgar:

I believe the issue Christopher is referring to is the elimination of line breaks when posting new comments. If you're interested, I have an image which captures the issue, which I experienced in making this post. I'm using Chrome version 33.0.1750.146 on Windows 7x64,

I can understand point 1. You can still change the size and have an app take up half the screen or 1/4 but it is annoying sometimes.

As for 2, you can easily pin the applications to the start screen the reorganize them to be the first ones on the list.

The mashing is the elimination of spaces between sentences (after periods), carriage returns and line feeds.

This happens on IE11 as well, when I comment using the main page. If I use the forums it formats just fine so I don't think this is just a WebKit thing but might be HTML based.

Honestly I am not for WebKit as it is pretty much ActiveX all over again but to each their own.

 

[danwat1234]

What about an update to Explorer.exe so it can fully support file paths longer than 255 characters? Proper storage units like GB vs GiB?

 

[ultameca]

I don't understand why they added a search button, you never had to swipe for it, you just had to start typing on your keyboard.

 

[nukemaster]

I would hope that just typing will still start a search.

I do the same. Win Vista/7/8 are all the same in this respect. Start(keyboard) and type what I want and hit enter.

 

[stevejnb]

So now they're making UI adjustments they should have during beta testing and letting people use screen corners again. Too bad about all the incompatibilities of old games and utilities, buy new ones.I guess they got their phone interface, which was all Ballmer wanted and now they're finally making concessions to standard PC users.

Please post the incompatible programs you can't run in compatibility mode. I've even run dos-based games in Win 8.1, so I'd love to see proof.

Actually, I've got one. Uncharted Waters Online - specifically gameguard. It thinks something in Windows 8 is a game hack and started trying to get it to run in November of last year. I've tried every compatibility mode option you can name.

Granted, I haven't tried since about three months ago, but if by some chance you can figure out how to get the game running on Windows 8, I'd be darned happy. Though, they may well have fixed it on their own again...

Keep in mind, I'm not just doing this as a dig at Windows 8. Look at my post history and you'll see that I generally consider it to be my favourite Windows OS to date. What's more, in the arena of games, I also had similar problems with Windows 7 (AvP 1 in particular) which most Windows 8 haters just gloss over.

 

[nukemaster]

Strange luck. I have played some Nprotect gameguard games under windows 8.

I personally consider Nprotect to be the WORST form of anti cheat(worse than even Punk Buster) it interferes with so many other programs(If I remember I could not even alt tab out of some games without it kicking me). I can not count how many cheaters fill nprotect games(Girlfriend plays Pangya[Albatross 18 before that] and its filled with cheaters). The rootkit like installation of Nprotect is also quite frowned upon. But I guess is you want to play Asian(the general location of almost all games using it) MMO games you almost always have to deal with it.

I also played AVP gold(still had it kicking around in my game pile) under Windows 7(do not remember if I needed to do anything special with it or not).

 

[canadianvice]

Anti-cheat is sort of silly if you ask me... it doesn't seem to ever work. Still, excited about the chance for a start menu!
I think the absolute best solution for MS would be to detect touch or not (regardless, offer the option) and set up accordingly, or even have either a removable Windows feature, so it's not mucking up the HDD.

 

[yousuck]

Admittedly, the ability to close "apps" being limited to manually killing them in the Task Manager has never made any sense to meThat isn't how you close an app. You close it by clicking on the top of the screen when a hand appears and dragging it to the bottom of the screen. The window will shrink and disappear.

 

[nukemaster]

In 8.1 you have to hold in until the card flips too now. Makes closing things a bit more of a pain.

Good old ALT + F4 still works

 

[dokonewski]

The start screen can be reorganized ... I have my 20 or so most commonly used programs on the left side underneath desktop. Takes little mouse movement at all to launch my programs.

I have the most used tools pinned to my task bar as well. Outlook, hyper-v manager etc... maybe it's quicker for you in win7, that doesn't make windows 8 a piece of junk like everyone says.

It does sound like you've tried it, which I feel most others that complain about it who what they "hear" on the net. Kudos for trying it

 

[zodiacfml]

oh my god, they're getting closer but I will still keep my dual boot to continue using win7