Windows 8.1 Preview

I've been an MS pro a long time - having installed every MS OS since DOS 2.0 - so yes - I'm an old guy.

 As many MS Pro's have done - I often installed early beta and "release candidate" builds - running them as my primary OS and then doing one final install at RTM and not look back.   That was true for Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7. 

 At home I run various desktop, laptop, touchscreen all-in-ones, etc. running Windows, MacOS, Ubuntu and Mint.  With any of those OS - I always myself two questions...

 1.  Can I use this day to day
2.  Would I recommend this to others.

 Unfortunately with Windows 8 that answer came back no - the previews were horrible and the RTM was very disappointing.   So the first time in some 30 years - I did not follow that pattern.

So here we are 9 months later with Windows 8.1.   Did things improve ?

Marginally...

The things I really like about W8 are..
  • Installation - very easy and found all of my devices easily
  • Speed - it boots in seconds
  • Stability - rock solid
  • An App Store
Those are still there - and okay MS added a few things...
  • A Start key for Desktop - a nice addition - should have never been removed
  • Easier to place icons on the Desktop
  • Boot to the Desktop - understood for some Corporate Uses - but then why have the Modern UI at All 
  • Things that Windows should have had for years - Right click on an ISO and you have a mount option 
  • Various other navigation and control improvements.
There is still a lot of pain...
  • The native Modern UI apps are still dreadful in my opinion.   MS has been in the software business way too long to let such poor apps out the door.  
  • Music and Video have improved, but when running on a Desktop with a large monitor - they are tremendously inefficient and a pain in the ass to navigate and browse the marketplace. 
  • Mail, Contact and Calendar are still poor - you have a better experience going to Outlook.com from your browser then from the native apps.   Yes I understand they are touch oriented - but they could condensed a lot more and still have a very acceptable UX.
  • Streaming - the new Play is also dreadful and really only supports Xbox - I have some less than 2 year old Samsung and Yamaha gear that shows up in devices - but state they are not certified.  I doubt that I will see firmware updates for those devices - just for that support.
  • Where are the mainstream vendor apps, bank apps, airline apps, etc ? - I feel they are taking a wait and see attitude
  • Where are the mainstream MS apps - why can't you buy Office via the store ?  or an Office 365 Subscription, etc...
So I've have a Windows 8.1 install with Office 2013, and all of my apps from Windows 7 and I try to answer those same two questions...  

1.  Can I use this day to day
2.  Would I recommend this to others.

What I find over and over is - I'll boot into 8.1 - run a few apps. but after just a little while I say so what and go back to Win 7...   and that's a problem... because the answer to those two questions is still no.

In my opinion W8 is trying to be too many things across too many devices and not executing well for many of them.  

I would have much rather seen MS develop a touch only OS and then apply the W8 Core speed/stability improvements to W7 as a SP or 7.1 than take the approach they have.

The hardware ecosystem is not helping things either.  Sure there are some new tablet/hybrid devices out there - but I haven't seen anything that even closely resembles the MBA in terms of Haswell / NGFF Hard Disk / 802.11ac, etc..  Hopefully when they do start appearing this fall they may breath some life into the market.

Last fall in a presentation - I gave a shout out happy birthday to Windows XP when it turned 11 years old and wondered how folks could live with an OS that was that old.

Now here I am saying - okay Windows 7 is 4 years old - can I stay with it for another 2 - 3 years until Windows 9.   Without marked improvement in the W8 User Experience and Apps - I think I will be doing just that...




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