Windows 8.1 Preview

Microsoft has announced that the Windows 8.1 Preview is available for download.

Go to this site.

Please take note of the warnings from Microsoft before installing the preview and make certain you have a verified backup on hand.

People are saying they put back START but clicking it takes you to Metro! Oh well! That can be done easily without having Start do it!

I may download it later on to see what all the excitement is about. However, I'll be sure to run it Parallels 8.0! Keep us posted Dennis.

I'm downloading the ISO now. I'm with you chscag - this will very much be a test inside of a virtual machine.

I'm interested to see if the platform has become more usable as a desktop operating system. It sure seems that they've been listening to people who rightly claimed that the design is not conducive to efficiency on the desktop.

dtravis7 said:

People are saying they put back START but clicking it takes you to Metro! Oh well! That can be done easily without having Start do it!

Click to expand...

That's exactly what it does. It's such a half-hearted gesture, it's almost laughable.

It works slightly better than it did before... if you click the Start button, the metro interface pops up and the Start button remains (so you can hide it with another click and revert back to the desktop). However, if you happen to move your cursor off the Start button while in the Metro interface, boom, you're now locked in the Metro world. The only way to get out? Either click on the Desktop tile, or do that weird swiping from right to left, starting at the edge (or trying to invoke a hot corner, which is not always responsive).

Why can't the Start button have a place on the Metro screen permanently? And why can't we have an option to enforce the default UI? When I first heard about Windows Blue, I was hopeful... now I realize that they are still laboring under the same old delusions.

I actually kinda like the Metro interface (I suppose I should call it "Modern" instead), but during the times I've tried to work on Windows 8 machines, it simply gets in the way.

vansmith said:

I'm downloading the ISO now. I'm with you chscag - this will very much be a test inside of a virtual machine.

I'm interested to see if the platform has become more usable as a desktop operating system. It sure seems that they've been listening to people who rightly claimed that the design is not conducive to efficiency on the desktop.

Click to expand...

I've had it running in a VM since this morning. I will say that it is less power hungry (I don't hear my fans kick up immediately upon booting like I do with Windows 7/8), but that's about the only thing going for it. The newly reintroduced Start button isn't going to win any fans amongst the Windows 8 detractors.

Perhaps I'm missing something.