Windows 8.1 Preview | Hacker News Reader

Windows 8.1 Preview

blogs.windows.com

73 pointscyanbane87 comments

I like it. Nearly all the features shown off in that video make me go "want!". The additional start screen organizing features are precisely what i'm looking for.

Now all I want is more and better fullscreen apps. Not the "your favourite news source" apps. They're bullshit on phones and they're even more bullshit on PCs or big tablets. Real, useful apps. Like a barebones spreadsheet that fits in a sidebar. Zen-writing text editor. Extensions for IE-in-fullscreen-mode. Music player that doesn't suck and doesn't want to be all "cloud".

They're getting real close here. I really hope app vendors follow suit.

(p.s. if you try Win8 without a touchscreen, you didn't really try it at all)

I can't get past the fact that I hate full screen at all.

Well, Windows 8 probably has the best handling for screen sharing out of any tablet OSes- the whole "snap" functionality is very clever. Not so for desktops, of course.

personally, i don't care about Windows on a tablet ... i develop software and create graphics using a 24" monitor ... i don't like seeing full screen anything. Windows 8 is a disaster for serious content creators and productivity professionals like me.

What, all because of a fullscreen start menu? Start8 lets you configure it to open in a smaller popup overlay if you'd prefer. Or indeed have an old Windows 7 style menu instead.

I actually really enjoy Windows 8 and will probably just wait for 8.1 to be released. Its cool their listening to their customers but I hope they don't force the start menu back on everyone. At least boot to desktop will be awesome considering my "D" key is broken and clicking the "Desktop" tile takes an eternity.

How did you type this?

ASCII code for D.

If you move the Desktop tile to the top of first tile group then you can just press "Enter to launch it"

I clicked through to the live feed on http://channel9.msdn.com/ from the link there. I was right in time for the presenter to click on the new windows button which makes an incredibly jarring animation of tons of randomly colored tiles pop up over the screen. The presenter then says "not at all jarring ... not at all jarring". Sure, right, I think you need to get out of that reality distortion field - it's not working.

Have you actually used Windows Phone or Windows 8 for any length of time? The animations are very subtle on actual devices and work very well with the flat look.

Can't speak for the animations being screencasted across the internet via streaming video though which can introduce lag, jitter, FPS drops and artifacts, especially for fast moving scenes like animations. I'll reserve my judgment till I install the preview.

The full screen, multi-colored tile metro screen is subtle and not jarring? The one that pops up whenever you want to launch a new program, completely removing any context of what you are currently working on? Is that what you're actually saying?

The strange rotating 'subtle' animation you are trying to say makes up for this just makes it all the worse by putting completely unnecessary 'bling' all over a workstation.

So you haven't used it, then?

Clearly he hasn't.

'Jarring' is different from 'subtle'. Jarring implies that the transition between states is abrupt and confusing, nothing about how obvious of a transition it is. In fact, in order to not be jarring, a transition should be very obvious to the user.

The metro interface can and will continue to be jarring when its allowed to change the contextual relevance on screen in situations where I may not want that.

It's the same reason why you sometimes walk into another room and ask "now what was I coming in here for?"

REALLY hope I can turn off the start button.

Same here. That thing is useless.

Is its function the exact same as pressing the Windows key (bringing up all the app tiles/metro UI thing)? I already do that whenever I want to start something. I tend to navigate using only my keyboard when possible, so when I open stuff up I just hit Windows key and start typing what I want ("chr" and then Enter would start Chrome, for example).

The only downside to the technique I use is that they separate Apps from Settings/Utilities (whatever word they use), so if I want control panel type stuff, I have to arrow down to that filter to see the search results that I want. I hope 8.1 consolidates that (or that there's an option to make it work that way)

Before today I was under the impression that the start button they were bringing back would be like the Windows 7 start button.

People wanted a start menu that didn't take up the whole screen. They just put in a button.

I just want less full screen shit.

You can also use Windows + W to search in Settings.

So brave.

It's nice in remote desktop. When you aren't in full screen mode it was annoyingly difficult to get the mouse exactly on the single-pixel-or-two hot corner.

Its impossible to make everyone happy

It still feels like an OS designed purely for tablet computing.

I think it is amazing a company as big as MS has converged work station, tablet, phone and Xbox One UIs in such a short amount of time. Not saying I like all the changes, just amazed at the short amount of time it has taken.

I cant really cosign this one, by converging they shoehorned 2 different UI's into 1 OS, and dont seem to have given any one of the three groups what they really wanted.

I'm not stating they did it well, just saying that for those 4 different platforms (excluding xbox one until release) they already have stuff "in production". The ship has sailed, and they put the farm on it.

I guess it's just taste, too.

I, for one, love the combination. When I'm coding, I'm nearly only in desktop mode. Browser with 20 open tabs, developer environments, consoles, the whole shebang.

Then, when I want a break, I hit start and open Twitter or fullscreen IE10. I'm suddenly on a tablet (with a dock that's always attached, but ok). My ongoing work is still there but hidden from my view and my mind. I stop using the mousepad, and browse with touch only. IE10 has a really excellent user experience on a touch screen, it makes Chrome on Android tablets feel ridiculously ancient.

Then, when I'm done with HN, private mail, and the weather, I hit Win+D and poof, my tablet became a PC again.

It may be a coincidence, but Microsoft essentially made a two-mode OS that precisely matches the two ways I use a computer.

Haste makes...something something.

By my reckoning they haven't really converged anything, just duct-taped the two different paradigms together and given us the worst of both worlds.

At first, I thought this was a sarcasm.

So did the mad doctor in the Human Centipede. With similar results.

I wanted to shout "Get your touch screen shit out of my server rack." Then I realize that I can run Server 2012 without a GUI or not. (evil smile)

The one good thing about Windows 8 in my world is that it's forcing people to make decisions they have been putting off for years.

> The one good thing about Windows 8 in my world is that it's forcing people to make decisions they have been putting off for years.

What do you mean?

I think he means admin'ing your servers from CLI. Using the metro UI in Windows Server 2012 will make you want to hurl yourself out a window to avoid having to do it again.

CLI/PowerShell.

Also there's the meta-decision that comes from questioning Redmond's judgment and actually looking at alternatives.

That, someday humanity will have to adapt NUI.

If I think dirty thoughts will my file system become corrupted? :)

But unless you plan on just using remote powershell to manage that server, you'll need the Remote Server Admin Tools package that supports Server 2012 --and it's only available for Windows 8+.

The 2012 Server Manager gui is very nice. When I have to work on 'legacy' servers running 2008 R2 I miss it.

As well as the convergence of tablets/laptops/PC/touch screens.

I gave my folks a touchscreen all-in-one PC and it's surprising how much you will touch the screen once it's available.

After all the negative buzz around Windows 8, I wanted to try for myself. So I walked in to a Microsoft store and sat down in front of a 27" touch screen...without even intending to, I constantly found myself touching. It feels incredibly natural!

(Not to say there aren't downsides to the OS as well. Just that I never thought I was missing out on touch until I tried it.)

Oh dear.

I have used Windows 8 (work on IT, I am forced to). Windows 8.1 seems to look, and behave just the same as Windows 8. Adoption not happening here.

That's curious. If it looks and behaves exactly the same then adoption (as in updating) shouldn't be a problem.

Bing integrated all over the place? Does Microsoft honestly think they'd lost enough market share that they are no longer viable candidates for antitrust lawsuits?

Obivously, and I'd argue rightfully. Microsoft HAS lost market share, especially if you include tablet/smartphone OSs in the mix. I cannot seem to find it now, but not too long ago I ran across a survey which included portable devices into their calculations of OS marketshare percentages, and determined that Microsoft now has a minority share of the global OS market when those numbers are included.

Microsoft still dominates on the desktop, but the desktop doesn't matter like it once did. I doubt that the government will express much interest here, and rightfully so.

Microsoft never had enough market share in search to warrant antitrust lawsuits[1].

[1]That doesn't mean the EU won't use totally unrelated market share stats from 5 years ago to continue treating Microsoft like a money pinata.

I doubt even the EU will act against the only meager competition to Google's absolute dominance. Not to mention that devices with Google as default are the majority these days because of iOS, Android on phones and tablets with declining PC sales. Bing is only default in IE which in nullified in EU because of the browser ballot, Google pays off Mozilla and some OEMs to have it as the default.

You can turn all of the integration off, if you choose. Europe may still go after them.

I guess I'm a little shocked at how willingly everyone just thinks this is ok. Bundling like this is not in the best interest of the consumer. Why would interested in artificially inflating a company's market share in an unrelated space because you forget to disable it?

Are you going to be ok if Microsoft introduces ad tiles in Metro?

Tightly integrated products have many benefits to consumers. Bing isn't being integrated (solely) to "inflate" its market share, it's being integrated to improve the Windows user's experience. Google doesn't even necessarily support all of the APIs that are needed for the integration, and you can always use it via a browser if desired.

Yeah, what if Apple force-bundled their maps service on the iPhone and gave it OS-level hooks that no other apps were allowed? We'd all be in upro- oh, wait

EDIT: below was a conversation with rdouble, who decided to delete his entire half of the thread.

Bing controls less than 20% in US and probably less than 5% in EU.

What I'm surprised is why EU, at least, allowed Google to buy more market share by paying Firefox

Available on MSDN subscriber downloads in x64 ISO form now.

Downloading at a pitiful 600k/sec :(

Maybe this shows a generational gap...but I don't think I could ever consider downloading at 600k/sec pitiful.

We need some nice speed simulators so people can see what it's like downloading text over 300 baud; 1200 / 75 bps; 9,600 bps and 14,400 bps.

You can read the text as it downloads. You use interlaced jpegs so that people can see something while the rest of the image downloads.

Sloppy[1] is a really old tool that does this. For iOS development specifically, I've been told of Network Link Conditioner[2], and supposedly, Fiddler[3] and Charles[4] both includes some of this functionality.

1. http://www.dallaway.com/sloppy/

2. http://mattgemmell.com/2011/07/25/network-link-conditioner-i...

3. http://fiddler2.com/

4. http://www.charlesproxy.com/

well to be honest this line usually gets 1200-1500k/sec but it just rained which knackers it for a day at average. The joys of ADSL.

Agree in a way though. I still remember being utterly jaw droppingly surprised when I got a 128k ISDN instead of my lowly 28.8k Hayes+POTS setup.

Installed.

Don't like it at all. The apps screen is a disaster and it's clunkier than Windows 8 was originally.

Not impressed and rather annoyed that I wasted another evening.

All I see is Metro demos, which I want nothing to do with. Anyone have a list of the actual features?

The Verge has a rundown: http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/26/4465888/windows-8-1-previe...

spoiler: it involves a lot of Metro, what with it being the Windows UI now, and all.

> and website owners can create separate Live Tiles that can be pinned to the Start Screen to access RSS feeds.

That little tidbit really stood out as interesting to me. I seriously hope that MS does this well, and I can have live tiles for all my favorite sites that actually update with their new content.

Yeah, I would like less metro please and no more horizontal scrolling. Oh yes and less full screen shit.

Would be nice.

Project Spark looks like a fun toy.

Can anyone confirm whether or not this includes ReFS support? That's probably more important to me than any other feature 8.1 could possibly offer, having encountered silent data corruption just a few months ago (thanks, WD).

ReFS is includes since Windows 8's initial release but only on Server editions.

Yes, hence wanting to know if it's included in 8.1 preview as it has been in the leaked prerelease. http://www.winbeta.org/news/leaked-windows-blue-build-9369-h...

the video doesn't show a single desktop improvement. as a purely desktop user (never once having used a metro app), is there anything for me in 8.1?

Yup, tweaks to what they're calling the "Power user menu" Start+x and Display Scaling and of course now you can boot right to the desktop.

http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/hands-windows-81

I'm sure there are several, though I don't know if there's a comprehensive list. For instance, DPI scaling can now be set per-monitor.

You can boot to desktop, turn of the hot corners, and there's a start button with a nifty right-click menu. So there's something.

Live video of the keynote at BUILD http://channel9.msdn.com/

Live blog http://live.theverge.com/live-microsoft-build-2013/

Ballmer being his usual trademark excitable self. http://d35lb3dl296zwu.cloudfront.net/uploads/photo/image/130...

Thanks, always a pleasure to see the monkey man.

Will 8.1 still come with the NSA backdoor. If so, I do not want.

Try Linux.

Honest question, isn't there NSA written code in Linux via the SELinux patches that were integrated?

Worse...they were the original developers of it.

Yes, but given that it's open-source I imagine if there was a back-door in it, someone would have found it by now. That said, they could purposefully have excluded security triggers for vulnerable kernel exploits which haven't been found yet... but as far as being some direct back-door in it by now I highly doubt that.

Yes and No. I honestly don't believe there are backdoors in SELinux but it still follows the same path of Truecrypt. A lot of privacy advocates are wary of Truecrypt despite being open source because:

1. No one has yet thoroughly audited the source codes. Its too large and complex that it warrants a good amount of time and money.

2. The identity of the founders/maintainers are unknown.

3. The binary offered for download cannot be efficiently verified to the source.

One of the things I have learned is that just because something is closed source, doesn't mean it has a backdoor and just because something is open source it doesn't mean it is secure. Always assume what you din't write is insecure and proceed accordingly.

Look at the OpenBSD IPsec fiasco and ask yourself that again.

Yeah, and weren't those found to be totally and completely false?

"possibly" is the answer to that question. They found a few flaws but not necessarily anything conclusive.

Although the original code was published by the NSA, RedHat and several other groups and companies have been involved in SELinux development over the past 12+ years. The paranoia of having a backdoor in SELinux (very unlikely) has probably made it a more frequent target of audits compared to other parts of linux.

They don't have to back door your OS. They just tap the fiber backbones.

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