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I started my PC this evening and was invited to download Windows 8.1.
Shall I or shan't I?
err from what I have heard, NO...
if you do you will just see a black screen.
(check Google)
doesn't do any harm as far as I can see. I've done it on a few machines with not problems. No real advantage other than skydrive working well offline now (which is actually rather nice if you use a lappie and other Win 8.1 machines)
Thanks for the replies. It looks like I wouldn't get any benefit from downloading it, then.
Cheers.
8.1 has some improvements over 8 but nothing massive.
OTOH there is little reason to stay with 8 except bother with upgrade (backup, some driver updates, hour of your life etc.).
err from what I have heard, NO...
if you do you will just see a black screen.
(check Google)
lol. Yes, this Microsoft update will break all PCs.
My Win 8 was brilliant. Upgrade to 8.1 went easily and pretty quickly.
Since then it has been updating numerous extra buts, and three times has stalled during the updates. Fed up of the thing now.. .
It adds a start button and the ability to resize apps which are two reasons that made me glad I went from 8 to 8.1
Beware, it takes a long time!
Decent spec machine here, and it took 2.5hrs (from when it finished downloading!)
I upgraded on my Sony Vaio last week. Advice from Sony was to download and install all recent updates while still on 8 before installing 8.1, as there are a few fixes to drivers and suchlike that won't install once you've got 8.1 on there.
Have I noticed a startling difference - no!
Does everything still work - yes!
I think the problems are with non-Microsoft 'additions' not having been updated to work with 8.1 yet, so if you've added lots of non-Microsoft stuff to your PC might be worth waiting a while for them to catch up. I had a pretty bog standard windows spec on mine so it wasn't an issue.
I don't like my new windows 8. But part of that is that I thought I'd bought a touchscreen laptop and spent an hour jabbing at the icons on the start screen and looking at settings until I realised it wasn't. 😳
Two quick questions for afficionados though:
1) Can you bypass the 'start' screen and go straight to desktop on startup
2) If you do accidentally start one of their rubbish apps with no 'x' in the top RH corner, what's the quickest way to shut it down?
Windows key + D brings up the normal desktop IIRC.
I don't know if there's any point in bypassing the 'start' screen. Just remove all the metro apps from it and put normal ones on (IE comes in two versions iirc) and then you can just treat it like a big start menu.
1) only with 8.1. On 8 you need 3rd party software to do it.
2) Mouse top-left then drag down. You see all the 'app's then close them
If you put 'desktop' as the top left icon on the start screen, you can just hit return to get to the desktop.
marthinhutch
1)Yes you can start straight to desktop - a quick google will give you clearer instructions than I can manage here.
2)Move your mouse to the top of the screen and click and drag to the bottom will close it.
8.1 defaults to using the app photo viewer, music player, video player etc. which can be quite a pain. I found it worthwhile to change the default player / program to be the 'normal' version rather than the app version as the normal versions have the x in the top of the screen.
Ta.
Found 2) Was hoping there was a simpler way... 🙁
EDIT: Ah, new 2) will try that!
midlifecrisis's 2) doesn't work for me. is that an 8.1 thing?
Old alt-F4 works for not-Metro-anymore-tablet apps too.
Download classic shell and then skin it to look like win 7.
My lappy has gone to Win 8.1 no problems apart from the miracast TV adapter, but as others have said above that's because of people other than Microsoft not being bothered to produce up to date drivers.
My desktop however resolutely refuses to upgrade from 8 to 8.1, telling me that it can't secure the system reserved partition and aborting the install. So that'll be stuck on Win 8, which is a shame because 8.1 is in my view much much better than 8.
I think it's much better - I can boot straight to the desktop and I like the start button left/ right click alternating between programmes and settings/ shutdown.