At the risk of sounding optimistic about a Windows 8 release, I’m kind of optimistic about Windows 8.1. It looks like it addresses most of the things that I truly, deeply, and passionately hate about using Windows 8. Because let’s be clear — I hate Windows 8. They announced some changes last week, and on paper they seemed like good ideas. Today they released a video actually showing off some of the new features.
Sure, it’s only four and a half minutes, and mainly focuses on the tiled Start screen that I don’t particularly care for, but it gives me some hope that this other partition on my laptop could finally get some use.
As stated in the blog announcing the changes to 8.1, the Start screen will be much more customizable, and will actually have features users want and need. The slideshow of pictures on the lock screen and photo tile is a little superfluous, but I know I’ll end up loading it with pictures of my daughter so I won’t complain.
The search looks beautiful, but more importantly it looks useful. Getting from one screen to another, and finding anything in Windows 8 is one of my biggest points of contention with the operating system. Bringing up a link to what I’m looking for in a search menu isn’t ideal. I’d prefer things to be in a logical spot I can get to easily, but I’ll take what I can get out of Windows 8 at this point.
They’ve also made looking through all your apps much easier, and even offer ways to sort them quickly by mostly recently used, and even most recently installed. Multitasking also gets much easier in 8.1 with the ability to intuitively split the screen and adjust the size of each section.
The video shows Windows User Experience team member Jensen Harris going through the 8.1 changes on a Surface, and it seems like the updates will work particularly well on the tablet. Hopefully they translate as well to other devices — specifically my laptop.
(via Business Insider, image via YouTube)
- Microsoft described these changes last week
- I’m still holding out hope for the rumor that they’ll let me boot into a classic desktop
- Microsoft is also updating the Xbox. Meet the Xbox One
