Windows 8.1 'Blue' preview: It beats Windows 8

Yesterday at the Microsoft Build conference in San Francisco, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Windows dev chief Julie Larson-Green introduced the one-and-only "Milestone Preview" of Windows 8.1 (aka Windows "Blue"), touting its remarkable improvements over the much-maligned Windows 8 and Windows RT.
In the 24 hours since, I've had a chance to kick the Preview's tires a bit and look under the hood, employing the jaundiced eye of a longtime Windows veteran who isn't the least bit impressed with Windows 8's Jekyll-and-Hyde approach. What I see leaves me more convinced than ever that Microsoft is running Windows into the ground.

Here's the good news: Windows 8.1 isn't worse than Windows 8.
If you're forced to use Windows 8 or if you're one of the 1 percent (OK, 5 percent) who actually prefer Win8 over Win7, Windows 8.1 and Windows RT 8.1 are shaping up to be must-have updates.

While most of the features in Windows 8.1 should have been in Windows 8, my hat's off to the engineering work done on the update. Microsoft has put together an enormous number of improvements, and it's well on the way to shipping them in less than a year. That has to be the fastest "version 2.0" of a major product in Microsoft history. Plus, it establishes a cadence of annual, substantive updates that Microsoft claims it can maintain.
You can install and run the beta, but it would be wise to understand the limitations first. The final version of Windows 8.1 is widely expected in August or possibly September.

Windows 8.1 'Blue' preview: Well, it beats Windows 8 | Microsoft Windows - InfoWorld

 

[Wenda]

You can create a local account, but as yet I have not been able to create an Admin account (apart from the MS one), only 'user' accounts..

Maybe i'm missing something, but what's wrong with creating a new account, going into the account properties and changing it from Standard to Administrator?

I do notice that if you use the Metro UI to change the user to Administrator, I get "an error occurred". But if you open up the Manage Accounts applet from control panel, you can do so without a problem. this is most likely a bug. It also does the same thing if you try to change from Administrator to Standard.

Did you see the words 'as yet' in the comment you quoted?

It would not work for me last night, and I was too knackered to keep playing with it. Yes, it may have been a bug, as you say.

However, it took some updates this morning (don't know if that's related) and now I can set my local account as Admin.

All is now rosy.


Wenda.

 

[Joan Archer]

I'm waiting for my new external hard drive before I do anything about it. Got restore DVD that I made just after getting this Asus Notebook but when I've got an image done I might put the review on a separate partition.

My 8 came installed on this Notebook and I didn't upgrade to Pro.