Reply to: Windows 8.1 - verdict?

[Gordon Ice]

A path less travelled

Well I decided to be at the cutting edge, more fool me, and installed the free 8.1 upgrade.

1. Navigate to Windows Store and find that it is offering me the upgrade. Am surprised that it doesn't want me to log on (more on that later).
2. Download starts so leave it to churn.
3. After doing the installation and a reboot, the EULA pops up. If you decline this it will wipe out all changes and leave you at 8.0. This appears to work fine.
4. If you agree to the EULA it eventually lands you at the login screen.
5. Problem. Immediately after logging in it insists that you either enter an existing Microsoft account username and password or create a new one. I couldn't find any keyboard or mouse driven means to skip this bit. Doing the hotmail/live/outlook account sign in brings a whole new set of terms and conditions, many of which I certainly do not agree to.
6. You get to switch on or off various stuff like IE options. Skydrive for all documents is enabled by default.
7. The pièce de resistance - the first time you log into an existing account in 8.1 you get a message about updating Apps from the store, and the background rotates through all the colours of the rainbow in a disturbing fashion that had me thinking of the Ipcress File. I seriously wonder if this screen has a bad effect on epileptics.
8. That little lot done, you find that you are logged in using the credentials of the MS online account, not the one you originally logged in under. It hasn't changed the home directory name though.

Apparently you don't get this MS account sign-on lark if you already belong to a Windows domain, but that ain't going to help those of us who find that the price of Server 2012 is too steep. Cheeky twats want to turn you into an advertising target.

There are way too many non-clickable URLs in both the EULA and the individual setup crap. Unlike Apple's various EULA's there's no option to save or print the buggers either.

Conclusions:

• If you are intending to upgrade to 8.1, wait. Someone will probably come up with a workaround for the MS account sign up. I did manage to delete the knobbled hijacked account from my system, but have no idea at this stage whether that will come back to bite me. Since MS is involved, it probably will.
• It is obvious that MS want to turn non-enterprise users into an advertising revenue stream. That's a fine business model for software which is free, but this software ain't free.

Ah well, just another excuse to look a little harder at alternatives to MS products.

So it seems there's actually a way around this, not particularly obvious, but all the same.. go to TechRepublic to see how: Quick Tip: Change to a local account in Windows 8.1 - TechRepublic

[Sysman]

I've 8.0 installed in parallels on my Mac since it was the cheapest way to get a legit copy of Windows at the time (£25 IIRC). Works OK, even in a VM on a low-spec machine, but I might as well upgrade.

Anyone know if upgrading a VM would be any different to a regular PC? I don't have much installed on it - VC++, Office basically, but an in-place upgrade would be preferable.

Using a VM you are probably less likely to run into driver etc problems than with a real PC.

No VM specific problems seen here. I'm using VMware Fusion but don't see how Parallels should be any different.

For anyone upgrading a VM I'd recommend taking snapshots at convenient points in case of host crashes, loss of internet connection etc. I took snapshots:

• before I began the download
• somewhere at the end of the download - not sure I got this exactly at the right point but I didn't want to start the lot again from scratch
• while sitting on the licence agreement yes/no bit - this way I could try out what happened if I said No.
• before the first login after the update - this is how I managed to back out of having my login linked to an MS online account

[d000hg]

I've 8.0 installed in parallels on my Mac since it was the cheapest way to get a legit copy of Windows at the time (£25 IIRC). Works OK, even in a VM on a low-spec machine, but I might as well upgrade.

Anyone know if upgrading a VM would be any different to a regular PC? I don't have much installed on it - VC++, Office basically, but an in-place upgrade would be preferable.

[redgiant]

For those that want the ISO to do a clean install here is a way to download the Win 8.1 ISO -
http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/wi...-8-product-key

If you don't have a Windows 8.1 Product Key then you need to use one of the generic keys to install the OS and then activate using your Windows 8 product key. You can find the generic keys here - Appendix A: KMS Client Setup Keys

Why do MS make such a simple things so difficult? I shouldn't be surprised but after how easy it was to get Win8 installed using an ISO this is a PITA in comparison.

[ctdctd]

Installed mine with defaults - I already sign in with my MS account.
On a Dell desktop PC originally Visa but clean installed to W8 last year.

First impressions - new Start button is just about usable.
Click on it and go down to Apps to get a tiled Start Menu.
Right click and get useful stuff including shut down

Will leave Start replacement, Start-X, off for a while and see if I can live with it.

SkyDrive looks useful - I use SugarSync for cloud backup at the moment.
Tried SugarSync for sync between PC and two Android devices but had too many issues with duplicate files turning up when it gets confused so might see how SkyDrive compares.

Other than that, it installed and works!

[centurian]

If you are intending to upgrade to 8.1, wait. Someone will probably come up with a workaround for the MS account sign up.

My workaround was to put in dummy details, which obviously fail to authenticate, at which point you get the option to skip that step.

[Sysman]

Skydrive for all documents is enabled by default.

Bad German comprehension by me I'm afraid. It actually says that all piccies and videos will be shoved up to Skydrive by default.

Ah, I didn't mention that bit, did I?

Because I bought the German version originally and then added the English-GB language pack, I got all the licencing crap and installation dialogue in German. The only warning of that was a message during the upgrade that I'd need to reinstall my language packs after the upgrade.

For some reason MS seem to be completely anal about multilingual support...

[TykeMerc]

Seems the trick is to disable the internet during setup...

Cheers for the tip, I'll suggest that to him since it's bound to pop 8.1 as a high priority update and I'd be surprised if a fresh out of the box Dell build doesn't have auto install options all turned on.

I can't say I'm overwhelmed by them trying to make a pseudo corporate net from a bunch of private machines, even if it is just at the login level, too much a case of the thin edge of a massive wedge.

[woohoo]

I installed 8.1 on my Lenovo Helix running win 8. So far...

1. Had to install old graphics driver from Lenovo website. I had issues with one of my dual monitors and a matrox box showing out of range message. Spent a morning attempting various things before reverting to an old driver.
2. Old Cisco VPN software didn't work, ended up editing the registry to get it working. To be fair this is a really old bit of software not supported by Cisco.
3. Sleep mode no longer works and all my power saving settings had been reset. I have to hold the power button down to reset the machine, really annoying.

On reflection I should have waited a while. Still like window 8 though.

[BillHicksRIP]

Have done a fresh 8.0 install, an XP to 8.0 upgrade and an 8.0 to 8.1 upgrade and confirm the bit about pulling the cable out during the setup of the options. You can use the back buttons if you hit the screen and it will still work. It thinks about it for 60 secs then logs in with your previously setup local account.

Search is better as you dont have to pick which category you're searching on, and you can boot straight to desktop and skip Start by using the properties box launched from the toolbar. The return of the Start Button was a bit of a fudge. You can shut down and set options but if you need apps, it's off to the Start screen again.

[Sysman]

Seems the trick is to disable the internet during setup...

Ayup. Confirmed by yanking the (virtual) cable.

Virtual machines with the ability to revert to snapshots are nifty things...



Edit: Found an easier way than yanking the cable.

The first login appears to default to the last user you logged in as under 8.0 (i.e. the one you invoked the 8.1 update from).

Beneath that is a prompt "I am not <username>". Click on that and it chugs away without asking you for a Microsoft account.

Further digging around reveals that they appear to have "forgotten" about the EU mandated browser choice. There's a patch up the spout to fix that, dated 1st October, but it wasn't there yesterday when I looked.

[Cliphead]

I tried hard to like 8 and eventually binned it so 8.1 won't get an airing here. Most of the machines here are Linux with a couple of boxes with XP and 7. The XP box will shortly become a FreeNAS server leaving just the 7 machine to do the music stuff I need it for.

[cojak]

Seems the trick is to disable the internet during setup...

Ooh, good to know - ta stek.

[stek]

Seems the trick is to disable the internet during setup...

[TykeMerc]

Hmm, that's a concern, one of my sons is getting a new laptop in the next week (Dell replacement since they failed horribly to fix his old one under the warranty) and it comes with Windows 8.
I'm likely to be on site when it arrives so I won't be able to intercept the junk if it tries to make him jump through hoops.

I may well have to downgrade the damn thing to Win 7 when I'm back home if it appears to take the mickey too much.