How to get the most out of wireless network on Windows 8

<div class="timetxt" style="font-size:0.75em;line-height:12px;font-family:arial;color:rgb(111,111,111);margin:0px;padding:0px 0px 0px 10px"><br></div> <div class="photo" style="padding:10px 0px 10px 10px;font-size:0.75em;font-family:arial;color:rgb(111,111,111);line-height:14px"><img border="0" src="http://m.timesofindia.com/thumb.cms?msid=25260532&width=283&resizemode=4" style="width: 286px; height: 209px; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); float: left;"><div class="clear" style="clear:both;height:3px"> </div>Here are some tips that can help you in making the most out of wireless connectivity on Windows 8 platform.</div><div style="font-family:'Times New Roman';font-size:14px;padding:5px"></div><div class="storycontent_outer" style="font-size:0.91em;line-height:20px;font-family:georgia;margin:0px;padding:1px 5px"> <div class="storycontent" style="font-size:16px;line-height:normal;margin:0px;padding:5px">Connecting to a wireless network in Windows 8 is far less painful than it was in Windows 7. However, a few things that should be easy and obvious are in fact a bit tricky. <br> <br>You may be having problems connecting to a wireless network in Windows 8, or find that you're regularly entering PEAP credentials each time you want to get online. You might find that your device connects to the wrong wireless network, or simply want to use it as a wireless hotspot. <br> <br>While none of these things are clear from day to day use of Windows 8, they are, however, easily done - once you know how. <br><br><strong>Connecting to a wireless network in Windows 8</strong> <br><br>We'll start with the basics - how do you connect to a wireless network in Windows 8?<br> <br>By default, most new Windows 8 computers will be set to connect to wireless networks automatically as the operating system boots. As such, you should see an alert informing you that a network has been found; an open network will be connected to, with Windows asking you how you wish to treat the connection (as a trusted, "home" network or as a less secure option, "work"). Secure networks will require authentication, of course. <br> <br>What if Wi-Fi isn't already enabled in Windows 8? <br><br>Begin by swiping in from the right to open the Charms bar and select Settings. Here you should see an icon labelled Unavailable, with a red circle and cross accompanying a typical wireless network symbol. Tap this, and switch Wi-Fi to On in order to prompt the computer to check the nearby network connections. When you're ready to go online, tap a network name and then Connect, adding any further information (such as WEP, WPA or PEAP authentication) when prompted.<br> <br>If you would rather do things the old-fashioned way, open the desktop view and browse to Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center > Setup a new connection or network > Manually connect to a wireless network. <br> <br><strong>Changing the priority of Wi-Fi networks natively</strong> <br><br>As you may have noticed, there are various things from Windows 7 that didn't make it through to Windows 8. One of these was a wireless network manager, enabling you to prioritise a particular wireless network to connect to if several were listed. In Windows 8 this isn't possible within the user interface (neither the mouse driven traditional desktop view, nor the "Modern" touch menu), so the default action is to skip tapping the Connect automatically, making the whole connection process a lot more manual. <br> <br>Fortunately, there is a way around this that doesn't rely on third party tools (although some are available).<br><br>Begin by switching to the Start screen and typing command to search for the Command Prompt tool (simpler to use than you might think); in Windows 8, this will be listed twice, Command Prompt and Command Prompt as Administrator. Choose the second option, agreeing with the user access warning. In Windows 8.1, the search results will simply list Command Prompt once - you'll need to right-click and select Run as administrator to continue. <br> <br>At the prompt, enter: netsh wlan show profiles <br><br>The resulting list will show all wireless networks detected to date by your Windows 8 machine, those you've connected to and some you have not. You'll probably also notice that your preferred network isn't at the top of the list. <br> <br>Using the interface and profile names, you can resolve this.netsh wlan set profileorder name="[WIRELESS_NETWORK_NAME]" interface="Wi-Fi" priority=1For instance, if I wanted "citadel" to be my preferred connection, I would enter: netsh wlan set profile order name="citadel" interface="Wi-Fi" priority=1Note the use of the "priority" condition, which can be used throughout the list to specify a preferred second, third and fourth connection; as many as are required. <br> <br>To confirm your change has worked, use the netsh wlan show profiles command again. You should now see that your preferred network is listed first. <br><br><strong>Use third party tools to set preferred wireless networks</strong> <br> <br>If the steps above seem too much like the dark arts to you, then you might prefer the Wi-Fi Profile Manager 8 donationware app, available free online from The Windows Club. If you're not sure what donationware is, our guide to researching free software should explain.<br> <br>Wi-Fi Profile Manager 8 offers tools that allow you to: <br><br>View the preferred network profiles, change list order, export to XML, import from XML and remove profiles.<br><br>This useful app is an executable and can be quickly run (as opposed to installed), enabling you to set a primary wireless profile by right-clicking and selecting Make Default. Other profiles can be repositioned in the list using the Move Up and Move Down options in the same menu, and older profiles discarded with Remove. <br> <br><strong>Remember PEAP authentication in Windows 8</strong> <br><br>Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol is a modern wireless networking protocol that offers improved security over WEP and WPA. It is supported in Windows 8, but unlike the more widely used WEP and WPA, connecting to a wireless network using PEAP requires you to enter your username and password and the intended domain each time you connect. <br> <br>This is, of course, inconvenient. Fortunately, Windows 8 can be configured to save your PEAP Wi-Fi connection details. <br><br>Open the Charms menu to begin, select the PEAP network connection and right-click to display the context menu; choose View connection properties to continue, displaying Wireless Network Properties. From here, open Security > Advanced Settings. <br> <br>On the 802.1x tab, put a check in the box to activate Specify authentication mode and ensure that the User authentication option is selected, followed by Replace/Save credentials. Following this, enter the network credentials, click OK and then reconnect - you won't need to update these details again! <br> <br><strong>Turn Windows 8 into a wireless hotspot</strong> <br><br>What about sharing your Windows 8 computer's Internet connection? Can you turn a Windows 8 device into a wireless hotspot? <br><br>Well, as a matter of fact, yes you can. Using Connectify - available from <a href="http://www.connectify.me/download">www.connectify.me/download</a> in free and premium ($25/year, $40/lifetime) versions - you can set up your Windows 8 computer as a wireless hotspot, sharing Ethernet, Wi-Fi or even connections from a 3G/4G dongle!<br> <br>Once installed (you'll need to reboot your PC afterwards), all you need to do is create a name for the hotspot, specify the connection you're sharing and generate a password, before clicking Start Hotspot. Anyone nearby will then be able to use your computer as a wireless hotspot to gain access to the Internet. You can also use Connectify to create ad hoc local networks for file sharing between computers! <br> <br>Note that there are other tools; however, Connectify is the best option we've found for this so far. <br><br><strong>Maximise Windows 8's wireless networking capabilities</strong> <br><br>Some of you reading this might be thinking "why doesn't Microsoft include all of these tools and features as standard within the desktop or modern user interface?" After all, mobile devices can be turned into wireless hotspots with native software, so why not PCs? <br> <br>The answer, of course, lies somewhere between "don't know" and "Microsoft provide a platform for developers to fill in the gaps." However, the fact that Windows 7 includes the ability to easily prioritise a particular wireless network over others, while the same feature in Windows 8 can only be accessed via the command line, is one that can leave you perplexed.</div> </div>

How to get the most out of wireless network on Windows 8

Here are some tips that can help you in making the most out of wireless connectivity on Windows 8 platform. Connecting to a wireless n...

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Windows 8.1 apps The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want

<div dir="ltr"><h1 class="" style="font-size:32px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-1px;vertical-align:top;margin:0px 0px 8px;padding:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Windows 8.1 apps</h1><h2 class="" style="font-size:20px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-0.5px;margin:0px;padding:0px;color:rgb(102,102,102);font-weight:normal;font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want</h2><div><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The built-in apps in Windows 8 ranged from beautiful (the Travel and News apps) to disappointing (the Mail and Calendar apps) and frustrating (Xbox Music). They're almost all improved - for one thing, they're all significantly faster - and there are some useful new apps included too.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Windows RT users don't need it as much now that they get the desktop Outlook built in, but the Mail app in Windows 8.1 is a huge improvement.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">In fact it has so many neat new features (many of them drawn from<span class="">Outlook.com</span>) that many people may not need Outlook.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">If you found that messages weren't downloaded in the background (a random bug in the old Mail app), that's fixed on every system we tested. Attachments even download in the background as long as you're plugged in. And you can drag and drop messages into folders.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Mail builds filters that show your most frequent correspondents on the folder list as favorites so you can see immediately when they send you mail (and other people you talk to a lot are on a similar list that appears when you choose the People button). You can also favorite specific folders to add them here.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn0.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/new%20Mail-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">Mail knows who you exchange mail with a lot and highlights them<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">If you use <span class="">Outloook.com</span>, Mail automatically sweeps newsletters and updates from social networks into their own folders, and you can setup your own "sweeps" to deal with specific types of mail.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">If you get coupons and special offers, getting Mail to delete any older than ten days keeps your inbox uncluttered. You can also set automatic replies, like Outlook's out of office messages.</p> <h3 style="font-size:20px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-0.5px;width:480px;margin:20px 0px 10px;padding-bottom:10px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Everything in order</h3><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> Xbox Music still has the clever playlists and ways to explore all the music on the Xbox service, but it also catalogues the music you have on your PC and shows that to you first.</p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn0.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/xbox%20music-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">Xbox Music shows your own music first<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">It also has a clever feature: when you're looking at a page that mentioned several songs in the modern version of IE, you can use the Share charm to send the page to Xbox Music and get a playlist of those sounds from the free Xbox Music streaming service.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1 review" src="http://cdn2.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Microsoft/Windows81/music%20web%20playlist/music%20web%20playlist%20working-580-90.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">Get a playlist of the music mentioned on a web page<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">It can be slow to find songs, and it certainly didn't work on every web page with a list of tracks that we tried, but when it does work it really adds something to a web page.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1 review" src="http://cdn3.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Microsoft/Windows81/music%20web%20playlist/music%20web%20laylist%20nothing%20found-580-90.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">The Music app couldn't find the song details on some of the pages we tried<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">We love the Reading List that lets you collect interesting links from IE and Windows Store apps to come back to later (perhaps on another PC as they sync) and the Alarms app has a clean, fresh look that's quirky and reminiscent of Windows Phone at its most appealing.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The Camera app now has Photosynth panoramas built in. Tap the panorama button and start moving your tablet around (this would be awkward on a notebook but easy on a tablet) to stitch together images into a scene that can cover as much of 360 degrees as you have patience for.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The stitching is good - especially if you don't move too fast - and both faster and more accurate than in the preview.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The new Scan app doesn't work with every scanner we tried, but it's a nice, simple way to do scanning.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The Photos app is a shadow of its former self with Flickr integration gone and many of the features app moved to the Lock screen. It's now a very basic interface for viewing - but it also has far more editing options beyond rotating and cropping. The vignettes and filters are the kind of thing you find on smartphone apps but the Color Enhance options are impressive.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Drag the marker onto a color in the image and move the slider around the circular control to saturate or fade out that color throughout the image.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Drag it to another color and choose a different level. You can use this to make an image more vibrant or give it a muted effect. You can also change the color temperature, tint and color saturation by using similar circular controls. It's impressive, if something of a niche feature compared to the auto-fix options.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">That's even more true of some of the other apps that you have to wonder about Microsoft spending time on. Health & Fitness is a great dashboard for Microsoft's Health Vault service, but that continues to have few features outside the U.S.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">And Food & Drink is a nice demo of waving your hand in front of a webcam to scroll through pages when you have cake batter on your hands, but it's hard to see it competing with the dozens of other food apps on the market.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">However, the Windows Store app is also much improved so it's easy to find the new apps that are starting to arrive for Windows now.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Facebook and other big names apps are arriving on Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn0.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/windows%20store-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580"></div> <div><br></div></div>

Windows 8.1 apps The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want

Windows 8.1 apps The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want The built-in apps in Windows 8 range...

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Windows 8.1 apps The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want

<div dir="ltr"><h1 class="" style="font-size:32px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-1px;vertical-align:top;margin:0px 0px 8px;padding:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Windows 8.1 apps</h1><h2 class="" style="font-size:20px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-0.5px;margin:0px;padding:0px;color:rgb(102,102,102);font-weight:normal;font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want</h2><div><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The built-in apps in Windows 8 ranged from beautiful (the Travel and News apps) to disappointing (the Mail and Calendar apps) and frustrating (Xbox Music). They're almost all improved - for one thing, they're all significantly faster - and there are some useful new apps included too.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Windows RT users don't need it as much now that they get the desktop Outlook built in, but the Mail app in Windows 8.1 is a huge improvement.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">In fact it has so many neat new features (many of them drawn from<span class="">Outlook.com</span>) that many people may not need Outlook.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">If you found that messages weren't downloaded in the background (a random bug in the old Mail app), that's fixed on every system we tested. Attachments even download in the background as long as you're plugged in. And you can drag and drop messages into folders.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Mail builds filters that show your most frequent correspondents on the folder list as favorites so you can see immediately when they send you mail (and other people you talk to a lot are on a similar list that appears when you choose the People button). You can also favorite specific folders to add them here.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn0.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/new%20Mail-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">Mail knows who you exchange mail with a lot and highlights them<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">If you use <span class="">Outloook.com</span>, Mail automatically sweeps newsletters and updates from social networks into their own folders, and you can setup your own "sweeps" to deal with specific types of mail.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">If you get coupons and special offers, getting Mail to delete any older than ten days keeps your inbox uncluttered. You can also set automatic replies, like Outlook's out of office messages.</p> <h3 style="font-size:20px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-0.5px;width:480px;margin:20px 0px 10px;padding-bottom:10px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Everything in order</h3><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> Xbox Music still has the clever playlists and ways to explore all the music on the Xbox service, but it also catalogues the music you have on your PC and shows that to you first.</p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn0.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/xbox%20music-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">Xbox Music shows your own music first<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">It also has a clever feature: when you're looking at a page that mentioned several songs in the modern version of IE, you can use the Share charm to send the page to Xbox Music and get a playlist of those sounds from the free Xbox Music streaming service.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1 review" src="http://cdn2.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Microsoft/Windows81/music%20web%20playlist/music%20web%20playlist%20working-580-90.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">Get a playlist of the music mentioned on a web page<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">It can be slow to find songs, and it certainly didn't work on every web page with a list of tracks that we tried, but when it does work it really adds something to a web page.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1 review" src="http://cdn3.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Microsoft/Windows81/music%20web%20playlist/music%20web%20laylist%20nothing%20found-580-90.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">The Music app couldn't find the song details on some of the pages we tried<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">We love the Reading List that lets you collect interesting links from IE and Windows Store apps to come back to later (perhaps on another PC as they sync) and the Alarms app has a clean, fresh look that's quirky and reminiscent of Windows Phone at its most appealing.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The Camera app now has Photosynth panoramas built in. Tap the panorama button and start moving your tablet around (this would be awkward on a notebook but easy on a tablet) to stitch together images into a scene that can cover as much of 360 degrees as you have patience for.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The stitching is good - especially if you don't move too fast - and both faster and more accurate than in the preview.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The new Scan app doesn't work with every scanner we tried, but it's a nice, simple way to do scanning.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The Photos app is a shadow of its former self with Flickr integration gone and many of the features app moved to the Lock screen. It's now a very basic interface for viewing - but it also has far more editing options beyond rotating and cropping. The vignettes and filters are the kind of thing you find on smartphone apps but the Color Enhance options are impressive.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Drag the marker onto a color in the image and move the slider around the circular control to saturate or fade out that color throughout the image.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Drag it to another color and choose a different level. You can use this to make an image more vibrant or give it a muted effect. You can also change the color temperature, tint and color saturation by using similar circular controls. It's impressive, if something of a niche feature compared to the auto-fix options.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">That's even more true of some of the other apps that you have to wonder about Microsoft spending time on. Health & Fitness is a great dashboard for Microsoft's Health Vault service, but that continues to have few features outside the U.S.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">And Food & Drink is a nice demo of waving your hand in front of a webcam to scroll through pages when you have cake batter on your hands, but it's hard to see it competing with the dozens of other food apps on the market.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">However, the Windows Store app is also much improved so it's easy to find the new apps that are starting to arrive for Windows now.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Facebook and other big names apps are arriving on Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn0.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/windows%20store-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580"></div> <div><br></div></div>

Windows 8.1 apps The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want

Windows 8.1 apps The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want The built-in apps in Windows 8 range...

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Windows 8.1 desktop The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want

<div dir="ltr"><h1 class="" style="font-size:32px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-1px;vertical-align:top;margin:0px 0px 8px;padding:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Windows 8.1 desktop</h1><h2 class="" style="font-size:20px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-0.5px;margin:0px;padding:0px;color:rgb(102,102,102);font-weight:normal;font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want</h2><div><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The return of the Start button to the desktop is the most obvious change in the Windows 8.1 desktop (and no, you can't just turn it off again). There are other subtle differences though.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn0.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/desktop-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">The Start button is back on the Windows 8.1 desktop<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">You can turn off the trigger in the top right corner that shows the charms bar when you use your mouse and the one in the top left corner that shows a thumbnail of the next app running in the background.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">When you use the Search charm on the desktop it opens the Search pane beside what you're doing, rather than throwing you out to the Start screen and if you pick your result from the Search pane instead of opening the full search view, you don't have to leave the desktop.</p> <h3 style="font-size:20px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-0.5px;width:480px;margin:20px 0px 10px;padding-bottom:10px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Hidden libraries</h3><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> Libraries no longer show up in Explorer automatically, even though they're still the way you put media into the Xbox Music and Video apps and the first place Mail looks when you add attachments. They're right there in the File Picker when you use Windows Store apps - but you have to add them back to Explorer, which is downright confusing.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn4.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/add%20libraries-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">Windows Store apps can find Libraries but you have to add them back to the Explorer navigation<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">When you right-click on folders in Explorer the option to add them to a library is still on the context menu, but if you want to find and work with them in Explorer you have to turn them back on in the navigation pane.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Instead you see This PC where you're used to seeing Computer, along with SkyDrive which is installed as part of Windows (in both 8.1 and RT 8.1). By default, Windows 8.1 saves your new files on SkyDrive, so they're available on every PC you use, and syncs some of your files from the cloud automatically.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">To avoid filling all the storage on a tablet with a small drive, all you get by default is the Documents and Pictures folders from your SkyDrive. You can see your other folders and the names of all the files in them, and when you click on a file Windows 8.1 automatically pulls it down from SkyDrive and caches it offline and syncs changes to it.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">You can also select files in the modern SkyDrive app to use offline, but there's no longer a separate desktop interface for picking folders to sync. And the SkyDrive app is where you go to see sync progress, if you want to know whether files have uploaded or downloaded yet.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn0.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/see%20SkyDrive%20sync%20progress-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580"></div> <div><br></div></div>

Windows 8.1 desktop The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want

Windows 8.1 desktop The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want The return of the Start button to...

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Windows 8.1 Internet Explorer 11 The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want

<div dir="ltr"><h1 class="" style="font-size:32px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-1px;vertical-align:top;margin:0px 0px 8px;padding:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Windows 8.1 Internet Explorer 11</h1> <h2 class="" style="font-size:20px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-0.5px;margin:0px;padding:0px;color:rgb(102,102,102);font-weight:normal;font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want</h2> <div><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Internet Explorer 11 continues Microsoft's evolution to a fast modern, standards-compliant browser - at least for the standards Microsoft believes are ready.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The first thing you'll notice is how fast it is. Even with multiple tabs set as your home page, on a Surface Pro the browser opens and starts loading pages almost faster than you can time.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">It's also impressively fast at rendering complicated content like WebGL - faster than the latest Chrome and Firefox, in fact. That's thanks to the fully hardware accelerated rendering engine that's also the reason IE 11 isn't available on anything before Windows 7.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn1.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/fast%20ie-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">Using the GPU to render Web pages faster is paying off for IE<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">IE 11 feels a little faster in the desktop version because you can see that your tabs are loading, but the immersive full-screen IE is actually equally speedy. It's also rather more powerful than the full-screen IE in Windows 8.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Instead of just 10 tabs you can have up to 100 tabs open at once (so opening more tab no longer closes the ones you had open), and you can open a second copy of the browser and have another 100 tabs in there as well.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Switching between different tabs is extremely fast but it also didn't make our test machine use a lot of CPU or memory to keep the tabs open.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Swiping back to a page you've already looked at is far faster than in IE 10 - you don't have to wait for it reload, it's just there pretty much as soon as you swipe.</p> <h3 style="font-size:20px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-0.5px;width:480px;margin:20px 0px 10px;padding-bottom:10px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Browse fast</h3><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> Another thing that speeds up performance, especially with the Flip Ahead option from IE 10 that works out what the next page in a multi-page story is going to be, is the way IE can preload up to two pages so they're already there when you swipe forwards.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn4.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/ie%20app%20bar-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">Tab tiles now show at the bottom in IE 11<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">IE 11 makes more use of the app bar. A tiny slice of the bottom of the browser has the three dots that mean a More button in Windows 8 and Windows Phone (you'll also find that in other apps like Mail).</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">When you tap that, or swipe to open the app bar, both the address bar and the different tabs show up at the bottom of the screen.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">If you're on a large screen, you can pin the app bar open all the time, with the address bar and small versions of the tab button.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">One change takes some time to get used to because it's not the same in the desktop browser. When you press and hold on a link, instead of a context menu over the web page you get the app bar at the bottom giving you the choice of seeing it in a new tab or a new window - which is a quick way of opening a second browser.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn4.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/always%20address%20bar-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">If you can sacrifice the space, you can see tabs and addresses all the time<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">You can see and manage a lot more information in the modern version of IE, too. You can see the folders you've organized favorites into, and you can move favorites into the right folder there, as well.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">You can also see which sites you've saved passwords for (which will sync between all the PCs you use your Microsoft account with) and remove them if you don't want the password saved any more.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">If you were looking at a site on a different PC, you don't have to search for it or try and remember the URL: you can see the list of tabs from your other PCs and open the site you want.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">You even get the "back stack" so you can browse back through the pages you were on before you clicked the link to load the most recent page in that tab. It's like time travel and remote access all at the same time.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">If you know you'll want to refer to a page later you can share it to the new Reading List but this requires less planning ahead.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn0.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/tabs%20on%20other%20PCs-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">Tap the Tabs button in the app bar and you can see recently opened pages - on your other PCs<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">And there are a couple of improvements that just make life easier, especially on tablets with no keyboard or trackpad.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Web sites that have hover menus and drag and drop work reliably with touch instead of you having to press and tap and fiddle to tap in exactly the right place - or have the menu activate and send you to a link on the hover menu when you only wanted to look at it.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">And when you hit an email address field or a phone number field in a web page that's been coded for it, you'll get the special keyboard layout for email or numbers in the onscreen keyboard.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">That's the kind of convenience we're used to on a smartphone but even if you don't want your Windows PC to feel like a phone, IE 11 is an excellent update.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Even if you don't use a single new feature in the browser, you'll love the new performance. And the session restore - where IE offers to re-open tabs you had open the last time you were using Windows - no longer cripples the desktop browser by trying to open dozens of copies of your home tabs.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The one problem you'll run into is sites that don't treat IE as a modern browser. Microsoft has tackled this by changing the way IE 11 identifies itself to web sites: it doesn't call itself Internet Explorer any more, so you won't get old, limited versions of sites intended for old, limited versions of IE.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">But websites that only code their features for Webkit-based browsers like Chrome and Safari, instead of using the HTML5 standards that do the same thing, won't always work correctly in IE 11. That's not a problem with IE 11, but it is a problem for IE 11 users.</p> </div></div>

Windows 8.1 Internet Explorer 11 The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want

Windows 8.1 Internet Explorer 11 The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want Internet Explorer ...

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Windows 8.1 desktop The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want

<div dir="ltr"><h1 class="" style="font-size:32px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-1px;vertical-align:top;margin:0px 0px 8px;padding:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Windows 8.1 desktop</h1><h2 class="" style="font-size:20px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-0.5px;margin:0px;padding:0px;color:rgb(102,102,102);font-weight:normal;font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want</h2><div><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The return of the Start button to the desktop is the most obvious change in the Windows 8.1 desktop (and no, you can't just turn it off again). There are other subtle differences though.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn0.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/desktop-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">The Start button is back on the Windows 8.1 desktop<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">You can turn off the trigger in the top right corner that shows the charms bar when you use your mouse and the one in the top left corner that shows a thumbnail of the next app running in the background.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">When you use the Search charm on the desktop it opens the Search pane beside what you're doing, rather than throwing you out to the Start screen and if you pick your result from the Search pane instead of opening the full search view, you don't have to leave the desktop.</p> <h3 style="font-size:20px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-0.5px;width:480px;margin:20px 0px 10px;padding-bottom:10px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Hidden libraries</h3><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> Libraries no longer show up in Explorer automatically, even though they're still the way you put media into the Xbox Music and Video apps and the first place Mail looks when you add attachments. They're right there in the File Picker when you use Windows Store apps - but you have to add them back to Explorer, which is downright confusing.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn4.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/add%20libraries-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">Windows Store apps can find Libraries but you have to add them back to the Explorer navigation<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">When you right-click on folders in Explorer the option to add them to a library is still on the context menu, but if you want to find and work with them in Explorer you have to turn them back on in the navigation pane.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Instead you see This PC where you're used to seeing Computer, along with SkyDrive which is installed as part of Windows (in both 8.1 and RT 8.1). By default, Windows 8.1 saves your new files on SkyDrive, so they're available on every PC you use, and syncs some of your files from the cloud automatically.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">To avoid filling all the storage on a tablet with a small drive, all you get by default is the Documents and Pictures folders from your SkyDrive. You can see your other folders and the names of all the files in them, and when you click on a file Windows 8.1 automatically pulls it down from SkyDrive and caches it offline and syncs changes to it.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">You can also select files in the modern SkyDrive app to use offline, but there's no longer a separate desktop interface for picking folders to sync. And the SkyDrive app is where you go to see sync progress, if you want to know whether files have uploaded or downloaded yet.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn0.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/see%20SkyDrive%20sync%20progress-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580"></div> <div><br></div></div>

Windows 8.1 desktop The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want

Windows 8.1 desktop The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want The return of the Start button to...

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Windows 8.1 Internet Explorer 11 The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want

<div dir="ltr"><h1 class="" style="font-size:32px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-1px;vertical-align:top;margin:0px 0px 8px;padding:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Windows 8.1 Internet Explorer 11</h1> <h2 class="" style="font-size:20px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-0.5px;margin:0px;padding:0px;color:rgb(102,102,102);font-weight:normal;font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want</h2> <div><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Internet Explorer 11 continues Microsoft's evolution to a fast modern, standards-compliant browser - at least for the standards Microsoft believes are ready.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The first thing you'll notice is how fast it is. Even with multiple tabs set as your home page, on a Surface Pro the browser opens and starts loading pages almost faster than you can time.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">It's also impressively fast at rendering complicated content like WebGL - faster than the latest Chrome and Firefox, in fact. That's thanks to the fully hardware accelerated rendering engine that's also the reason IE 11 isn't available on anything before Windows 7.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn1.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/fast%20ie-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">Using the GPU to render Web pages faster is paying off for IE<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">IE 11 feels a little faster in the desktop version because you can see that your tabs are loading, but the immersive full-screen IE is actually equally speedy. It's also rather more powerful than the full-screen IE in Windows 8.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Instead of just 10 tabs you can have up to 100 tabs open at once (so opening more tab no longer closes the ones you had open), and you can open a second copy of the browser and have another 100 tabs in there as well.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Switching between different tabs is extremely fast but it also didn't make our test machine use a lot of CPU or memory to keep the tabs open.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Swiping back to a page you've already looked at is far faster than in IE 10 - you don't have to wait for it reload, it's just there pretty much as soon as you swipe.</p> <h3 style="font-size:20px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-0.5px;width:480px;margin:20px 0px 10px;padding-bottom:10px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Browse fast</h3><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> Another thing that speeds up performance, especially with the Flip Ahead option from IE 10 that works out what the next page in a multi-page story is going to be, is the way IE can preload up to two pages so they're already there when you swipe forwards.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn4.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/ie%20app%20bar-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">Tab tiles now show at the bottom in IE 11<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">IE 11 makes more use of the app bar. A tiny slice of the bottom of the browser has the three dots that mean a More button in Windows 8 and Windows Phone (you'll also find that in other apps like Mail).</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">When you tap that, or swipe to open the app bar, both the address bar and the different tabs show up at the bottom of the screen.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">If you're on a large screen, you can pin the app bar open all the time, with the address bar and small versions of the tab button.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">One change takes some time to get used to because it's not the same in the desktop browser. When you press and hold on a link, instead of a context menu over the web page you get the app bar at the bottom giving you the choice of seeing it in a new tab or a new window - which is a quick way of opening a second browser.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn4.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/always%20address%20bar-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">If you can sacrifice the space, you can see tabs and addresses all the time<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">You can see and manage a lot more information in the modern version of IE, too. You can see the folders you've organized favorites into, and you can move favorites into the right folder there, as well.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">You can also see which sites you've saved passwords for (which will sync between all the PCs you use your Microsoft account with) and remove them if you don't want the password saved any more.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">If you were looking at a site on a different PC, you don't have to search for it or try and remember the URL: you can see the list of tabs from your other PCs and open the site you want.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">You even get the "back stack" so you can browse back through the pages you were on before you clicked the link to load the most recent page in that tab. It's like time travel and remote access all at the same time.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">If you know you'll want to refer to a page later you can share it to the new Reading List but this requires less planning ahead.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn0.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/tabs%20on%20other%20PCs-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">Tap the Tabs button in the app bar and you can see recently opened pages - on your other PCs<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">And there are a couple of improvements that just make life easier, especially on tablets with no keyboard or trackpad.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Web sites that have hover menus and drag and drop work reliably with touch instead of you having to press and tap and fiddle to tap in exactly the right place - or have the menu activate and send you to a link on the hover menu when you only wanted to look at it.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">And when you hit an email address field or a phone number field in a web page that's been coded for it, you'll get the special keyboard layout for email or numbers in the onscreen keyboard.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">That's the kind of convenience we're used to on a smartphone but even if you don't want your Windows PC to feel like a phone, IE 11 is an excellent update.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Even if you don't use a single new feature in the browser, you'll love the new performance. And the session restore - where IE offers to re-open tabs you had open the last time you were using Windows - no longer cripples the desktop browser by trying to open dozens of copies of your home tabs.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The one problem you'll run into is sites that don't treat IE as a modern browser. Microsoft has tackled this by changing the way IE 11 identifies itself to web sites: it doesn't call itself Internet Explorer any more, so you won't get old, limited versions of sites intended for old, limited versions of IE.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">But websites that only code their features for Webkit-based browsers like Chrome and Safari, instead of using the HTML5 standards that do the same thing, won't always work correctly in IE 11. That's not a problem with IE 11, but it is a problem for IE 11 users.</p> </div></div>

Windows 8.1 Internet Explorer 11 The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want

Windows 8.1 Internet Explorer 11 The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want Internet Explorer ...

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Windows 8.1 snap views The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><h1 class="" style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 32px; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">Windows 8.1 snap views</h1><h2 class="" style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 20px; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: -0.5px; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want</h2><div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; width: 500px;">When you do open Windows Store apps, you're no longer restricted to snapping them into one large and one small window. On a small screen like a 10-inch Surface RT or Surface Pro, you can make a window a third, half or two thirds of the screen - but we could still only get two apps on screen at once on a 10-inch screen.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;">Larger screens let you drop three or more apps side by side, dragging them to any other multiple of 50 pixels to fit in the screen resolution. If one of the Windows is the desktop you can still snap two windows side by side on the desktop as well.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;">Having two apps take up half the screen makes it easier to do real work in both of them at once. It also means you can have a desktop program and a Store app open side by side, instead of having the desktop turn into thumbnails as soon as you make a Store app large enough to use.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;">Some windows pick their own size - opening an attachment from the Mail app uses two thirds of the screen for an image or half the screen for a web page.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;">Open another app once you already have two windows open and the icon waits on screen for you to drag it into the window you want it to use.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;">If you don't drag it into a window straight away, the icon hangs there on screen, twitching slightly to remind you to pick where you want it. That means you don't get the new app straightaway, but it also means it doesn't replace something you were looking at without giving you a choice.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikQjsaey_7V7PlC5pC7OxCqfxyDiEUf7RHojLeVLOizP-Lcby9zw3w7BAE6gXPWRFH1ezkYvl3kAlw6l8TEDxb16nt9gcuCyZ0qpxLFY9fuWvYDVVfTdysFWfwr7lud8pdNiDGaTxcW3lw/s1600/where+do+you+want+the+app-580-100.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikQjsaey_7V7PlC5pC7OxCqfxyDiEUf7RHojLeVLOizP-Lcby9zw3w7BAE6gXPWRFH1ezkYvl3kAlw6l8TEDxb16nt9gcuCyZ0qpxLFY9fuWvYDVVfTdysFWfwr7lud8pdNiDGaTxcW3lw/s1600/where+do+you+want+the+app-580-100.jpg" /></a></div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;"><br /></div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;"></div>Store apps wait for you to pick which window to put them in<br /><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; width: 500px;"></div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;">On a larger screen, you can have three apps open side by side, or even four (and again you can choose whether to have each window take up a third of the screen or have two wide windows and one skinny one or any other way of filling the screen).</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;">And if you have two screens, you can put multiple Store apps on both of them, so with the right screens you can have seven or eight apps at once.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;">Whether you see three or four apps on a screen depends not just on the screen size and the resolution but also the DPI and scaling ratio of the screen.</div></div><div><br /></div></div>

Windows 8.1 snap views The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want

Windows 8.1 snap views The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want When you do open Windows Store a...

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Windows 8.1 interface changes The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want

<div dir="ltr"><h1 class="" style="font-size:32px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-1px;vertical-align:top;margin:0px 0px 8px;padding:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Windows 8.1 interface changes</h1> <h2 class="" style="font-size:20px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-0.5px;margin:0px;padding:0px;color:rgb(102,102,102);font-weight:normal;font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want</h2> <div><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">If you want to skip the Start menu entirely, being able to set Windows 8.1 to boot into the desktop is a big change (although you'll still use the Start menu to launch any programs you haven't pinned to the taskbar).</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The other big new interface changes are the new smart search and the way Windows 8.1 handles multiple modern app windows on screen - especially on large monitors. When you use the Search charm - which you get to with the Windows-S keyboard shortcut that once launched the snipping tool as well as from the charms bar - you get the a list of matching apps to launch, settings to open and other searches you might be interested in.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">But now, those all show up in the Search pane itself, rather than in a distracting full-screen list of results. And both apps and settings show up in the same list rather than in separate lists that can fool you into thinking Windows doesn't have any way to change settings. The suggestions come from Bing (although you can turn that off) as well as from apps like People.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">What you don't get is the ability to run the search in different apps if the results you want aren't in the list.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Microsoft has told us in the past that mail messages will show up in results, although that hasn't started happening yet - but if the results you want are only visible when you search from an app, you have to launch that app first and use its own search tool. Again, this is a small step back for power users but a simpler approach for most people.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn2.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/search%20in%20charms-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">See search results and suggestions right in the search charm<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">You can still see search results in a full-screen view (by pressing Enter after you type or search or tapping the icon in the search field) but what you get is no longer just a boring list of tiles and titles.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Bing combines results from your PC and SkyDrive, from the content inside your apps and from the web. If you have documents and pictures or music that match your search, they show up first. If you're searching for a person, you see their details from the People app; not just their picture but options to send them an email, Skype them, talk to them on Facebook or twitter or find their address in Maps.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">But Bing will also try to find a person, place, band, album or other entity that matches what you're looking for and build an instant "smart search" that's like a mini app full of content.</p> <h3 style="font-size:20px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-0.5px;width:480px;margin:20px 0px 10px;padding-bottom:10px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Searching smart</h3><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> What you get depends on what you're searching for. If it's a person, you get Wikipedia information (other apps will be able to suggest content like this but Wikipedia is the first) and photos. If it's a place, you get directions and reviews and opening hours and links to book on OpenTable or call them with Skype. For a band or album you get videos and music tracks - that you can play from Xbox Music.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn1.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/smart%20search-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">Smart search combines your documents and media with live online information from Bing<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">You can swipe through the search view to see the full overview, pinch to get a semantic zoom view that shows the categories of results or tap to get more details (like a bigger map) without launching a different app.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">This is useful when you have a lot of information to look through as well as an appealing presentation for more fun information. And if you don't want a big-screen experience to browse through, remember you can get at individual results quickly from the search pane.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Windows 8.1 search is a great example of the way Windows is moving towards the tablet future. If you just want to find a file, stick to Explorer (which has all the Windows 8 features, as long as you go in and put Libraries back in the navigation pane). If you want to see results from your documents and the web side by side, in an interface that beckons you to explore further and brings you lots of Bing features you might not know about, try the full screen search.</p> </div></div>

Windows 8.1 interface changes The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want

Windows 8.1 interface changes The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want If you want to skip t...

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Windows 8.1 interface changes The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want

<div dir="ltr"><h1 class="" style="font-size:32px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-1px;vertical-align:top;margin:0px 0px 8px;padding:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Windows 8.1 interface changes</h1> <h2 class="" style="font-size:20px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-0.5px;margin:0px;padding:0px;color:rgb(102,102,102);font-weight:normal;font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want</h2> <div><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">If you want to skip the Start menu entirely, being able to set Windows 8.1 to boot into the desktop is a big change (although you'll still use the Start menu to launch any programs you haven't pinned to the taskbar).</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The other big new interface changes are the new smart search and the way Windows 8.1 handles multiple modern app windows on screen - especially on large monitors. When you use the Search charm - which you get to with the Windows-S keyboard shortcut that once launched the snipping tool as well as from the charms bar - you get the a list of matching apps to launch, settings to open and other searches you might be interested in.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">But now, those all show up in the Search pane itself, rather than in a distracting full-screen list of results. And both apps and settings show up in the same list rather than in separate lists that can fool you into thinking Windows doesn't have any way to change settings. The suggestions come from Bing (although you can turn that off) as well as from apps like People.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">What you don't get is the ability to run the search in different apps if the results you want aren't in the list.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Microsoft has told us in the past that mail messages will show up in results, although that hasn't started happening yet - but if the results you want are only visible when you search from an app, you have to launch that app first and use its own search tool. Again, this is a small step back for power users but a simpler approach for most people.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn2.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/search%20in%20charms-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">See search results and suggestions right in the search charm<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">You can still see search results in a full-screen view (by pressing Enter after you type or search or tapping the icon in the search field) but what you get is no longer just a boring list of tiles and titles.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Bing combines results from your PC and SkyDrive, from the content inside your apps and from the web. If you have documents and pictures or music that match your search, they show up first. If you're searching for a person, you see their details from the People app; not just their picture but options to send them an email, Skype them, talk to them on Facebook or twitter or find their address in Maps.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">But Bing will also try to find a person, place, band, album or other entity that matches what you're looking for and build an instant "smart search" that's like a mini app full of content.</p> <h3 style="font-size:20px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-0.5px;width:480px;margin:20px 0px 10px;padding-bottom:10px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Searching smart</h3><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> What you get depends on what you're searching for. If it's a person, you get Wikipedia information (other apps will be able to suggest content like this but Wikipedia is the first) and photos. If it's a place, you get directions and reviews and opening hours and links to book on OpenTable or call them with Skype. For a band or album you get videos and music tracks - that you can play from Xbox Music.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn1.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/smart%20search-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">Smart search combines your documents and media with live online information from Bing<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">You can swipe through the search view to see the full overview, pinch to get a semantic zoom view that shows the categories of results or tap to get more details (like a bigger map) without launching a different app.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">This is useful when you have a lot of information to look through as well as an appealing presentation for more fun information. And if you don't want a big-screen experience to browse through, remember you can get at individual results quickly from the search pane.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Windows 8.1 search is a great example of the way Windows is moving towards the tablet future. If you just want to find a file, stick to Explorer (which has all the Windows 8 features, as long as you go in and put Libraries back in the navigation pane). If you want to see results from your documents and the web side by side, in an interface that beckons you to explore further and brings you lots of Bing features you might not know about, try the full screen search.</p> </div></div>

Windows 8.1 interface changes The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want

Windows 8.1 interface changes The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want If you want to skip t...

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Windows 8.1 Start screen and lock screen

<div dir="ltr"><h1 class="" style="font-size:32px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-1px;vertical-align:top;margin:0px 0px 8px;padding:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Windows 8.1 Start screen and lock screen</h1> <h2 class="" style="font-size:20px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-0.5px;margin:0px;padding:0px;color:rgb(102,102,102);font-weight:normal;font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want</h2> <div><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn3.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/win81%20startscreen-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">The new-look Windows 8.1 Start screen, with more tile sizes<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Microsoft is still convinced that Windows can scale from an 8-inch tablet all the way up to the 27-inch twin screens on your desk at work. Windows 8.1 makes that work better, with changes to the Start screen and new ways of laying out multiple apps side by side on screen.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Almost all the configuration options from the control panel make it into PC Settings, except for new options like boot to desktop and controlling whether you see the tiles you pin to the Start screen or a simple list of apps. For some reason, these stay on the desktop (right-click on the taskbar to get them).</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn0.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/boot%20to%20desktop-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">If you want to start with the desktop or the list of all your apps, you can do that in Windows 8.1<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The Lock screen turns into a photo gallery, powered by the same Microsoft Research tech behind the screensavers in Windows Media Center and the Windows 8 Photos app, picking related and timely photos automatically.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">You can unlock the camera or answer a Skype call quickly without needing to fiddle with a password. If small tablets get popular, that will be useful and Windows 8.1 is generally much better suited to a mini tablet.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">It has built-in support for Bluetooth LE, the way wearables like the <a href="http://www.techradar.com/reviews/gadgets/fitbit-flex-1124344/review" style="text-decoration:none;color:rgb(0,153,204);font-weight:bold">Fitbit Flex</a>communicate with phones, as well as the NFC support from Windows 8. And more and more apps like Facebook and Flipboard (and the built-in Camera app) feel more like smartphone apps.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn3.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/customise%20start%20screen-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">Choose tile sizes and name tile groups<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><h3 style="font-size:20px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-0.5px;width:480px;margin:20px 0px 10px;padding-bottom:10px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">A new Start</h3><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> The Start screen gets new large tile sizes so you can see more information at once. Apps have to be specially built to use this, but many of Microsoft's own apps are. That means you can read the three most recent emails or see full details or your next couple of meetings.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">You can pick from far more colors to customize the Start screen backgrounds - some of which animate subtly as you scroll sideways - or you can use your desktop background, in which case your tiles scroll but your background is fixed.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The Start screen backgrounds don't include all the designs from Windows 8; some of our favorites are gone and the new designs don't always work well in different color schemes. In this case, the more restrictive options might have worked better.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn1.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/personalise%20startscreen-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">Pick a color scheme or use your desktop background for the Start screen<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">If you're used to the small swipe you use on the Windows 8 start screen to select a tile, get unused to it. That now swipes you down to the Apps screen instead (although the small swipe still works inside apps like the Windows Store, at least in this version).</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">To select a tile, press and hold on it. You can still select multiple tiles and now you can do useful things to all the tiles you have selected at once.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">You can also select multiple tiles on the Apps screen and pin them to Start as a group. As this is the only place you get tiles for newly installed apps, it's a useful option.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Sorting the Apps screen by how often you use apps gives you a quick list of frequent apps you haven't pinned yet. And once you've done all that work, your Start screen syncs across all the PCs you use the same Microsoft account with so you don't have to do it again.</p> </div></div>

Windows 8.1 Start screen and lock screen

Windows 8.1 Start screen and lock screen The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want The new-lo...

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Windows 8.1 Start screen and lock screen

<div dir="ltr"><h1 class="" style="font-size:32px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-1px;vertical-align:top;margin:0px 0px 8px;padding:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Windows 8.1 Start screen and lock screen</h1> <h2 class="" style="font-size:20px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-0.5px;margin:0px;padding:0px;color:rgb(102,102,102);font-weight:normal;font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want</h2> <div><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn3.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/win81%20startscreen-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">The new-look Windows 8.1 Start screen, with more tile sizes<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Microsoft is still convinced that Windows can scale from an 8-inch tablet all the way up to the 27-inch twin screens on your desk at work. Windows 8.1 makes that work better, with changes to the Start screen and new ways of laying out multiple apps side by side on screen.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Almost all the configuration options from the control panel make it into PC Settings, except for new options like boot to desktop and controlling whether you see the tiles you pin to the Start screen or a simple list of apps. For some reason, these stay on the desktop (right-click on the taskbar to get them).</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn0.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/boot%20to%20desktop-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">If you want to start with the desktop or the list of all your apps, you can do that in Windows 8.1<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The Lock screen turns into a photo gallery, powered by the same Microsoft Research tech behind the screensavers in Windows Media Center and the Windows 8 Photos app, picking related and timely photos automatically.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">You can unlock the camera or answer a Skype call quickly without needing to fiddle with a password. If small tablets get popular, that will be useful and Windows 8.1 is generally much better suited to a mini tablet.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">It has built-in support for Bluetooth LE, the way wearables like the <a href="http://www.techradar.com/reviews/gadgets/fitbit-flex-1124344/review" style="text-decoration:none;color:rgb(0,153,204);font-weight:bold">Fitbit Flex</a>communicate with phones, as well as the NFC support from Windows 8. And more and more apps like Facebook and Flipboard (and the built-in Camera app) feel more like smartphone apps.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn3.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/customise%20start%20screen-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">Choose tile sizes and name tile groups<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><h3 style="font-size:20px;line-height:1em;letter-spacing:-0.5px;width:480px;margin:20px 0px 10px;padding-bottom:10px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">A new Start</h3><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> The Start screen gets new large tile sizes so you can see more information at once. Apps have to be specially built to use this, but many of Microsoft's own apps are. That means you can read the three most recent emails or see full details or your next couple of meetings.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">You can pick from far more colors to customize the Start screen backgrounds - some of which animate subtly as you scroll sideways - or you can use your desktop background, in which case your tiles scroll but your background is fixed.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">The Start screen backgrounds don't include all the designs from Windows 8; some of our favorites are gone and the new designs don't always work well in different color schemes. In this case, the more restrictive options might have worked better.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"></p><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn1.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/personalise%20startscreen-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px auto; display: block; height: auto;" width="580">Pick a color scheme or use your desktop background for the Start screen<p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif"> </p><p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">If you're used to the small swipe you use on the Windows 8 start screen to select a tile, get unused to it. That now swipes you down to the Apps screen instead (although the small swipe still works inside apps like the Windows Store, at least in this version).</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">To select a tile, press and hold on it. You can still select multiple tiles and now you can do useful things to all the tiles you have selected at once.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">You can also select multiple tiles on the Apps screen and pin them to Start as a group. As this is the only place you get tiles for newly installed apps, it's a useful option.</p> <p style="font-size:14px;line-height:20px;width:500px;margin:10px 0px 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Sorting the Apps screen by how often you use apps gives you a quick list of frequent apps you haven't pinned yet. And once you've done all that work, your Start screen syncs across all the PCs you use the same Microsoft account with so you don't have to do it again.</p> </div></div>

Windows 8.1 Start screen and lock screen

Windows 8.1 Start screen and lock screen The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want The new-lo...

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<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><h1 class="" style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 32px; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">Windows 8.1 review</h1><h2 class="" style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 20px; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: -0.5px; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want</h2><div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; width: 500px;">From Facebook to the full-featured Mail app and modern Outlook to a "peek" bar in the modern version of Internet Explorer 11 to the new Windows Scan app to the new Bing logo, you now get nearly all of the promised Windows 8.1 extras.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;">We are still waiting for the touch versions of the Office apps but that's the way things work in Microsoft's new 'continuous development' world. And of course you get the interface changes and SkyDrive integration we saw in the Windows 8.1 Preview.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;">The Start button is back, you can boot to the desktop and use the same image for your Start screen as your desktop background.</div><div class="" style="border-left-style: none; border-top-color: rgb(178,178,178); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; color: #333333; float: right; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 10px 0px 10px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; width: 180px;"><strong style="display: block; font-size: 16px; padding: 10px 0px;">Ratings in depth</strong><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn0.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/techradar/Reviews%20scores/Design/design_4-580-100.jpg" style="border: none; display: block; height: auto; margin: 0px auto; vertical-align: middle; width: 178px;" width="580" /><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn0.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/techradar/Reviews%20scores/Features/features_4.5-580-100.jpg" style="border: none; display: block; height: auto; margin: 0px auto; vertical-align: middle; width: 178px;" width="580" /><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn3.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/techradar/Reviews%20scores/Performance/performance_5-580-100.jpg" style="border: none; display: block; height: auto; margin: 0px auto; vertical-align: middle; width: 178px;" width="580" /><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn4.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/techradar/Reviews%20scores/Usability/usability_4.5-580-100.jpg" style="border: none; display: block; height: auto; margin: 0px auto; vertical-align: middle; width: 178px;" width="580" /><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn3.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/techradar/Reviews%20scores/Value/value_5-580-100.jpg" style="border: none; display: block; height: auto; margin: 0px auto; vertical-align: middle; width: 178px;" width="580" /></div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; width: 500px;">SkyDrive is built in to sync files - on both Windows 8.1 and Windows 8.1 RT - as well as settings and the layout for your Start screen and desktop taskbar.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;">But Microsoft's second bite at the convergence of PCs and tablets doesn't back away from what we still want to call Metro; in fact there are more built in modern apps than in Windows 8, more settings you can change without jumping to the desktop and more options for how you place modern apps on screen.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;">The question is how well these two worlds sit together, and how much of an improvement Microsoft has been able to deliver in a year.</div><h3 style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.5px; line-height: 1em; margin: 20px 0px 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; width: 480px;">Installing Windows 8.1</h3><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; width: 500px;">If you already have Windows 8, upgrading to Windows 8.1 is very simple. It will be the first app you see every time you open the Windows Store and the installation happens very quickly.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;">You don't have to reinstall your desktop applications or your Windows Store apps, and all your files are still there (as are libraries and the icons pinned to your taskbar.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;"></div><img alt="Windows 8.1" src="http://cdn4.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/tiles%20to%20download-580-100.jpg" style="border: 0px; display: block; height: auto; margin: 0px auto; vertical-align: middle;" width="580" />Update Windows 8.1 Preview to RTM and you get your Start screen layout but you have to click the tiles to install apps<br /><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; width: 500px;"></div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;">If you sign in with a Microsoft account you haven't used before, you might have to use a code that Microsoft emails or texts to you (if you've set that up in the past) to confirm it's you; that works like trusting a PC in Windows 8 but you don't have to do it as a separate step.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;">If you have Windows 7 (or earlier versions), you have to install Windows 8 (the same process as when Windows 8 first came out) and then upgrade to Windows 8.1.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;">If you've been trying the Windows 8.1 Preview, you can't upgrade directly to the RTM version (which Microsoft warned people about all along).</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;">If you can't revert to Windows 8, you still do the update from the Windows Store and your files will stay on the system, but you'll have to reinstall your desktop programs.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;">If you've already upgraded another PC using the same Microsoft account you'll see tiles for the Windows Store apps you have installed on that other PC (marked with a little download icon) and you can tap on the tiles to install them.</div><div style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; width: 500px;">Once you've got into the Windows 8 and 8.1 world, upgrades become almost seamless (previews aside). You just have to get there.</div></div></div>

Windows 8.1 review The new version of Windows 8 is what you're expecting and probably what you want From Facebook to the full-featured...

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