win 8.1 Poll: Windows 8.1 Preview Experience (How do you like it?)

[V23]

- I can't seem to pin programs to the start screen without using a workaround, right-clicking and selecting 'pin to start' does nothing.

- I also can't move (drag) my desktop icons at all.

 

Anyone else having these problems or know a solution?

 

Thanks.

[zhangm Supervisor]

Installation is good. Some apps are more polished, and I like the new Alarm app.

 

Overall performance seems to have suffered substantially - there is noticeable lag, and keystrokes are even dropped if you toggle Search with a shortcut and start typing too quickly.

 

They've made Skydrive integration much more substantial - this is good in some respects, but then they also decided to make the Photos app meticulously figure out what files (even local ones) are synced, and REFUSE to display them.

[Mandosis]

I like all of the new features but the new start button. I really don't like it sitting there taking up space on the task bar. Did anyone notice the new options Modern Interface style IE 11?

[spaceelf]

- I can't seem to pin programs to the start screen without using a workaround, right-clicking and selecting 'pin to start' does nothing.

- I also can't move (drag) my desktop icons at all.

 

Anyone else having these problems or know a solution?

 

Thanks.

I had to use Refresh my PC to fix the first problem.

[Knife Party]

made the jump, overall not bad, but some layouts are still so illogical, not even funny. Solid update (Y)

[JayPhi]

Overall, not so bad. Though I still have to get msyself used to the new start button. I got used to the hot corner start button so much that I find the start button now a bit weird, but oh well. It's just a matter of time.

 

One other thing they should have kept is the behaviour of right-clicking on a tile.

 

On Windows 8, when you right-click on a tile, it was only selected and the bottom appbar came up and when you right-click on it again, it did the reverse: unselect and the bottom appbar went down. That's it. Nothing else. If you wanted to re-name a group you had to semantic zoom it, and then edit the group name. Which I think is the better way to do so than on Windows 8.1. It also is more consistent and looks better.

 

On Windows 8.1, when you right-click on a tile, the tile gets selected and the bottom appbar comes up as on Windows 8, but now there's a little zooming-out animation on the entire start screen and you can edit the group name of every group. And when you right-click on the same tile again, it unselects it and the bottom appbar collapsed as you would expect, but now the start screen stays in the group-name-edit-mode, which I find annoying. Only when you LEFT-click into an empty space, it zooms in into the normal start screen mode.

 

Anyone had the same experience?

 

Oh, on a little side note:

 

There is a inconsistent bug with the selection mark on live tiles. Try to select a few live tiles on the start screen and you will notice that the selection mark appears in the center of a tile instead of on the upper right corner, and on some tile you can see the selection mark at all. This behaviour varies from time to time on different tiles. Try to semantic zoom and select a few other tiles again, then you will notice this behaviour with the selection mark on a different tile.

 

Must be a bug. Hope they fix this in the RTM.

[neo1911]

One other thing they should have kept is the behaviour of right-clicking on a tile.

 

On Windows 8, when you right-click on a tile, it was only selected and the bottom appbar came up and when you right-click on it again, it did the reverse: unselect and the bottom appbar went down. That's it. Nothing else. If you wanted to re-name a group you had to semantic zoom it, and then edit the group name. Which I think is the better way to do so than on Windows 8.1. It also is more consistent and looks better.

 

On Windows 8.1, when you right-click on a tile, the tile gets selected and the bottom appbar comes up as on Windows 8, but now there's a little zooming-out animation on the entire start screen and you can edit the group name of every group. And when you right-click on the same tile again, it unselects it and the bottom appbar collapsed as you would expect, but now the start screen stays in the group-name-edit-mode, which I find annoying. Only when you LEFT-click into an empty space, it zooms in into the normal start screen mode.

 

Anyone had the same experience?

 

Yes agreed. When us desktop users want Microsoft to reduce clicks, they do the opposite.

 

I think the engineers at Microsoft write their UI ideas in chits and head management draws out a winning chit from a bowl "Lotto style". 

[francescob]

The 90s just called and want to know if the Mail app of 8.1 finally allows asking for read receipts. Can somebody please check?

[George P Global Moderator]

The 90s just called and want to know if the Mail app of 8.1 finally allows asking for read receipts. Can somebody please check?

 

 

The mail app in the preview is the same one you have on 8.0.  The one they demoed in the keynote isn't coming till later they said so no one knows if it does or doesn't.

[Tilt090]

1 dpc latency spikes

2 cant disable cleartype systemwide easily

3. metro nonsense stll gets in the way but is way better than win8.0

4. multi boot is a pain requiring a reboot after selecting a non win8 os

5. dwm laggy

6. ie.11 laggy

 

back to xp.

[grayscale]

I like how search works now. It no longer takes up the whole screen and the "Everything" is what I missed from Windows 7. I hope they give us the option to have the desktop apps as priority on search results, though (I doubt it but hey, they gave us that option in the All Apps screen). I'm just wondering why they had a separate winkey+s shortcut when it does the same as winkey+q. Do you think they will still push through with the context-sensitive search?

[Studio384]

I really thought they'd support those large tiles in the Calendar app. It'll be great to see more future events from the tile rather than just 1. I love those tiny tiles because apps like Store, Mail, and others that are just meant to notify, as well as desktop apps, can turn into smaller files. I love the way the desktop application tiles are displayed. now (background color). Eye-candy-wise, definitely an improvement. The ability to customize multiple tiles at once is a huge plus as well.

The Calendar app (and People and Mail app) aren't updated yet. The versions in the Windows 8.1 Preview are the same as you can find on Windows 8.0, which, of course, don't support this tile size. At Build, they showed off a new Mail, Calendar and People app (redesign and so on), those will be available in the upcoming months and most likely: they do support large tiles.

 

Still just as ****ty. Who decided it was a good idea to automatically clutter the hell out of the start screen when you install programs? Installing VS takes up an entire screen just itself.

So, in other words "I'm to lazy to try Windows 8.1 and say it sucks with arguments that are completly incorrect, because I don't tried it!"

[Dot Matrix]

The Calendar app (and People and Mail app) aren't updated yet. The versions in the Windows 8.1 Preview are the same as you can find on Windows 8.0, which, of course, don't support this tile size. At Build, they showed off a new Mail, Calendar and People app (redesign and so on), those will be available in the upcoming months and most likely: they do support large tiles.

 

Hopefully, third party apps will be soon on board with the larger tile sizes.

[McKay]

After sorting out the stupid Wifi drivers I can actually use it again. However one bug I can replicate 100% of the time is if you have a Metro search window open in the background, mouse over the top left to that the metro apps in the background appear, and middle-click on the search window to close it. My entire system locks up.

[devHead]

Is anyone finding that the bing all in one search is lagging, slow compared to before?

Mine's more than slow; it hangs Explorer.exe and I have to restart.  I haven't gotten the  search function to work yet except for a few settings on my PC.

[count0nz]

No issues on my PC (Specs in Sig...

 

I Do like the Search...

Seems Faster when Windows 8..

Better Interface Design... (Please let us hide the Start button) never needed it myself fine with Win Key.

 

All my games run fine..

 

IE11 .... mega.co.nz (issues?) Firefox is fine

[neo1911]

As windows 8 will progress in its revisions, I think 8.2 or 8.3 will see Classic Control Panel getting the axe. 

 

Finally somewhere around Windows 9, the Desktop tile will cease to exist. Everything will be Modern UI only. No legacy registry editing, fiddling or experimenting. Maybe 3-4 years will be plenty of time to get used to all these half baked touch friendly apps on our PCs.

 

They are a delight to operate with a mouse. Clicking areas are bigger and lesser precision is required.

  :rofl:

[the better twin]

Decided to revert back to stable 8.0. Too many issues. The driver it tries to install for intel graphics leaves me with a black screen with just a cursor, it removed my blu ray player software, the battery drained far quicker and everything seemed laggy and slower, especially scrolling. Tbh most things were only little changes I can live without for now.

[PGHammer]

What lag when scrolling large pages?  Yes - I am utterly serious; IE11 lags less than any browser on large pages, including Flash-heavy pages.  I only keep Chrome and/or Firefox for those pages/sites full of Chrome-isms or Firefox-isms.

 

As opposed to a "canned" benchmark, I use a real site for browser testing - that of Publishers' Clearing House (pch.com). The PCH site and subsites thereof are a decided browser obstacle course - it was notorious for bringing IE10 or earlier to its knees.  Firefox fared little better - only Google Chrome performed decently.  However, all three browsers have been updated since the last run through the course, and now it's IE11 racing through like Barry Allen after his Dunkin Donuts run, Firefox 22 in second, and Chrome (yeeks) dragging like a half-dead dragon.

[DrCheese]

"Metro" is better, but I still blew it away after an hour with start8.

 

It annoys me that I can't uninstall certain metro apps anymore either, like "photos" as such it's still set itself the default for when I double click on a photo in Explorer. That's just damn annoying.

[PGHammer]

For those of you with site-related issues, it could well be a new feature (in Windows 8.1 and IE11) called Enhanced Protected Mode - it basically blacklists pages (and sometimes whole sites) with poor reputations (malware, piracy, etc.).  (It's been present in Windows Server since 2003R2.)  MEGA could have run afoul of this feature - it does in Windows Server.

[PGHammer]

That is, in fact, default WINDOWS behavior for any new application - if the new application supports a file-format, it takes over the association; it's NOT new to 8 or 8.1 (I have had to deal with that since 3.x).

 

That is why right-clicking on files is still useful.

[George P Global Moderator]

I agree that we could see the classic control panel get the axe in time but I don't think it'll be soon.  There are lots of advanced option they still haven't even changed from their original Win9x days, old dialog windows etc.  Look at IE's internet options for example, that things been the same since IE5 I bet. 

 

It's going to take quite some time to redo all that and work it into the new PC Settings area, though I think if they do it then fine.  In the end it's best to have one area for things and not 2 or 3.  As for the desktop, nah, not going away but I expect more changes to it.  I think the systray will be replaced once they add a notification center/area as part of metro which I fully expect is going to happen.

 

Right now though I'm much more interested in the 4,000+ new APIs they've added to 8.1 and what developers can do with those as far as metro apps go.

[johnporter29]

Had it installed now for 30 mins, still configuring it to my tastes but so far, think the changes are great, really like the start screen using the desktop wallpaper ;)

[MaxBurke]

Yay the start button is back but wait.... clicking it takes us back to the god awful start screen instead of the apps menu. Fail 

 

Still can't close metro apps without going back to said god awful start screen, scrolling to the left and then closing

 

It was rumoured that shutting down the PC was going to be simplified.... did I miss something?

 

I see the visuals have improved slightly, but after been treated to Areo Glass in Win7, This is still ****.