Why You May Not Be Able To Upgrade Windows 8 In Windows Store

Features Of Windows 8.1

Perhaps the most familiar of Windows 8's native apps is Tweet@rama, a three-pane program listing updates, your own recent posts and a list of the people you're following. There's also a button for uploading photos alongside your status message and the built-in spellchecker even tosses an accent mark over words like "cliché." Between the panes and the black background, anyone with TweetDeck experience should feel at home, though don't expect any functionality in the way of checking and responding to direct messages, searching key words or monitoring mentions. Also, remember we said Windows 8 doesn't play nice with our multitouch trackpad right now?

On computers running the RTM release of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, Windows Update no longer defined when to install updates. Instead, Automatic Maintenance is used for that purpose, minimizing activity during active computer use. Windows Update on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 computers https://www.ehctech.org/services/pc-optimization/ also has new restart logic that defaults to forcing a restart 3 days after the installation of updates instead of 15 minutes. To avoid unintended data loss, forced restarts also no longer occur if a user is not actively using the machine, able to see the restart notice, and save their work.

The preprogrammed results for musical artists are particularly helpful because they not only contain key information about the artist such as a biography and photos, but also show a list of popular songs you can listen to, just by clicking them. For example, when we searched for Lady Gaga and clicked on a couple of her top songs, they immediately began playing in Xbox Music for free. However, after we clicked the third song, we got a 30-second video pre-roll ad. Users who want to avoid ads can sign up for Xbox Music Pass, which costs $9.99 a month.

Several notable features have been removed in Windows 8, beginning with the traditional Start menu Support for playing DVD-Video has been removed from Windows Media Player due to the cost of licensing the necessary decoders (especially for devices which do not include optical disc drives at all) and the prevalence https://www.ehctech.org/services/pc-optimization/ of streaming services such as Netflix For the same reasons, Windows Media Center is not included by default on Windows 8, but Windows Media Center and DVD playback support can be purchased in the "Pro Pack" (which upgrades the system to Windows 8 Pro) or "Media Center Pack" add-on for Windows 8 Pro. 110.

A few select partners and testers will likely be provided privately with some more release candidate/release preview builds so they can see the final set of tweaks the Softies make to Windows 8 before the operating system is released to manufacturing (RTM). Among the coming tweaks is the removal of the current Windows Aero https://www.ehctech.org/services/pc-optimization/ interface , as Microsoft officials acknowledged in a blog post (buried toward the bottom) earlier this month. Another is an expected under-the-hood code change that will prevent users from adding third-party-developed Start Buttons or altering their systems to boot directly to the Desktop, avoiding the Metro Start Screen.

Jumping back-and-forth between Metro and desktop is hugely disorienting and, at least in the early days of Windows 8, you'll be doing a lot of that. The simple task of switching between apps using the mouse has become painful. In Windows 7 it's just a matter https://www.ehctech.org/services/pc-optimization/ of clicking in the task bar on the icon of the one you want. Now, if it's a Metro app you want back it's a matter of going to the upper-left corner, then dragging down and trying to figure out which of the little pop-up windows is the one you want.

This shouldn't come as much of a surprise - the cat's already out of the bag - but Microsoft updated the Start Screen with two additional tile sizes. You'll probably notice the supersized ones first; these take up about as much space as four regular ones, and are especially https://www.ehctech.org/services/pc-optimization/ well-suited to email or weather updates - things where there's a lot of information to see. Additionally, Microsoft added some extra-small tiles, which take up a quarter of the space of a standard tile. Maybe you want to use that option with apps you rarely access.