Monday, 21 October 2013 06:41

Weekend Update Woes For Windows 8.1 Users

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Over the weekend all of the talk was about the issue with Microsoft pulling the Windows 8.1 RT update from their store. This update has been heralded as the “fix” for what ails Microsoft’s latest OS including the return of the start button (but not the start menu). However as the few people that own a Surface RT began the download there was a number of them that ended up with a broken tablet before the upgrade could complete. Microsoft, to their credit, reacted quickly and pulled the update from the store and within hours someone had provided a fix for people who had bricked their device.

This news eclipsed some of the more mundane issues that people reported about Window 8.1 for PC including booting to a blank screen after the update was complete, ending up in a reboot loop, or the update failing over a WiFi network. On top of simple (yet annoying) issues with actually getting the OS updated there are reports that the latest version of Internet Explorer has some issues with common websites including Microsoft’s own Outlook Web Access pages.

Microsoft made an announcement back in July about this because they were removing the MSIE token from the user-agent string. To remedy the issues there is a patch for Exchange 2013 while Exchange 2010 and 2007 users will need to use compatibility mode to use all of the features found in OWA. Or you can simply chose not to use IE and Opt for FireFox where things work just fine.

Another VERY common complaint is that the update forces your display to enlarge to 125% if you are running at resolutions above 1366x768. This is happening to almost every system we tested it on and appears to be happening to make touch work better. Instead it makes the display appear… well it makes things look like crap to be honest with you. The reason someone wants 1920x1080 or higher is because they are looking for a clean and sharp look (not to mention desktop area). To enlarge all Icons or tiles to make touch work better was a foolish move on Microsoft’s part.

It is clear that Microsoft has made some changes under the hood to the OS and not all of them are working out as planned. There are many that are enjoying the updates to the OS and it is a cleaner look (after you set things back to 100%) to those that want to push Windows 8.1 to look like older versions of Windows. On the other side it still looks like Microsoft does not really understand what people want from their OS. Most enterprise customers are still not interested in the OS due to work flow issues and integration problems while consumer uptake is certainly not where it should be at this stage of its life. Maybe Microsoft will get it right with Windows 8.2…

Tell us about your experiences with Windows 8.1 in our Forum or on Facebook

 

Read 3317 times Last modified on Monday, 21 October 2013 08:28

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