When Windows 8 hit the market last October, the reaction was decidedly muted. All the “start me up” excitement of the past launches seems to have petered out.
The sales figures may have compared favourably with Windows 7 – in May the tech giant said it had to date shipped more than 100 million licences – but the new operating system hasn't won unqualified support from long-term Microsoft users who had been comfortable with the status quo: a start button, a basic desktop view, and the mouse and keyboard combo.
The touch optimised Windows 8 was primarily intended for tablets and hybrid devices – those with a keyboard and mouse, but also the option of using the touch screen. Although it’s possible to use the operating system quite effectively without the touch screen input, to really get the full effect of Windows 8, it’s essential.
And controversially, it ditched some of the most familiar Windows elements: the start button and menu was gone and the desktop was relegated to an app.
Instead, there was a start screen, apps that were displayed as tiles and a search function that left some mystified.
Major difference
The company has now backtracked a little and taken some of the feedback on board. The result is Windows Blue, the update to Windows 8, takes away some of those niggles and annoyances and makes it an altogether more pleasant system to use.
That version went out last week as a preview for the pioneering souls willing to run it on their Windows machines so we rolled up our sleeves, installed Windows 8.1 – with a little trepidation – and got down to the serious task of putting it though its paces.
The major difference is the reported U-turn on the start button. Despite dumping the familiar icon from the screen in favour of a sprawling start screen with apps as tiles, it seems people just couldn’t let go and move on. Microsoft has decided to bring it back in a new form.
But it’s not really that much of a backtrack. Under Windows 8.1 the desktop app has regained its link to the start menu, but it brings you to the start screen you had under Windows 8. So there is no return to the pop up menu, and the change is largely cosmetic.
But that start button does have a few hidden advantages. Right click on it, or long press if you have a tablet, and you get an enhanced admin menu, with options to open the task manager, control panel, and power options. You can even shut the computer or tablet down from that secondary menu.
Familiar territory
Perhaps one of the biggest returns to familiar territory is the ability to now boot to the desktop. Now your Windows 8.1 machine looks just like your Windows 7 one did at startup. It's not the most obvious thing to find though – it's under the taskbar and navigation properties tab – so unless you have instructions to hand, be prepared to dig around. The same menu also allows you to turn on and off the smart corners, and show the apps view automatically when you go to the start screen.
Speaking of which, the start screen itself has been changed too. No longer are you faced with every app you’ve ever installed on one screen; now the start screen includes only a few apps, with the remainder only a swipe away in a full list. You can customise what apps you want on the main start screen, but it’s far less daunting when you open Windows 8 than it was before.
And you can have your desktop background as your start screen background too, so it feels a little less like two separate entities and more like one cohesive system.
There are new ways to sort apps, including the ability to put all desktop apps first in the queue, should you decide to sort them by category. It makes it quicker to find the programs you need, and Windows 8.1 just feels a little more user friendly as a result.
One of the big things about Windows 8 was the Snap Apps, the ability to run two applications side by side, with one at 25 per cent of the screen. The concept changes a little in Windows 8.1. Now you can use up to four, and you can decide how big or how small the apps sit on the screen. If you are working across a larger than normal display, or multiple displays, you have a lot more leeway, but we were able to work on a word document and check email on a fairly small screen; ditto with Netflix running on one side of the screen while attempting to work on the word document and check email. Although productivity may have dipped in the latter case, it was still possible to do it.
Microsoft has taken a hard look at some of the key elements of the system including the Windows Store, which the company is setting up as a rival to Apple and Android in the mobile and tablet space. There may not be anything approaching the same number of apps as rival platforms have available, but at least it’s all showcased in a nicer shop window now.
And new apps are being added all the time; at the last count, there were more than 99,000 apps available for Windows 8 devices, close to the 100,000 milestone that both Apple and Android celebrated in 2009 and 2010 respectively. More are appearing all the time as Microsoft persuades developers to support the platform.
Search is a significant change. Swiping in from the side when on the start screen used to bring up the search menu, which trawled through the list of apps and software you had installed on the machine. Now it will search everything; installed apps, files stored on your PC, images and web search results. It's far more useful than before, though you don't get a choice of what search engine it uses (Bing of course).
New apps
There are some new apps to get to grips with in the standard release of Windows 8.1. Reading List allows you to bookmark things to read at a later date and access it all from one list, right on the Start screen.
There’s an alarm app too, so you can use your tablet as a bedside alarm clock should the mood take you, and a revamped but still very useful calculator is also included. A voice recorder is a nice addition too.
Falling into the nice to have, but not essential category are the health and fitness, and food apps. The health and fitness app, as the name suggests, allows you to keep track of diet and exercise, with suggested activities, a symptom checker and a nutrition tracker to keep you busy.
The food app has one good trick; allowing you to use a front facing webcam to flick through pages by waving your hand over the screen. It’s called Hands-Free Mode, and can be enabled within specific recipes.
This may not be a big deal to those familiar with Samsung’s galaxy handsets, but it’s a useful addition nonetheless. The sensitivity of the gesture control seemed to cause a few issues though; at times, it refused to recognise a gesture or two, but the trick seems to be to make each gesture deliverate and slightly slower than your natural incliniation would be.
If you are a fan of Microsoft’s own browser, the latest version of the operating system upgrades you to Internet Explorer 11, which allows side by side browing and syncing across devices.
Windows 8 still isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but then, what operating system is? The tweaks in the 8.1 update, however, should make it a more palatable experience for current users, and may even persuade a few more people to jump on the bandwagon.
