Most of our clients are fairly conservative users of computers, adhering to the maxim “If it ain’t broke…” So we’ve encouraged users to stick with Windows 7 and hold off on Windows 8 during its first year. With the arrival of Windows 8.1 we want to give a cautious ‘go for it’ recommendation. We’ll have some details in the coming weeks, but here are a few reasons for optimism:

It looks much better

This may seem like a trivial thing, but if you use your computer for long stretches of the day, you’ll realise that Windows 8 is a lot more pleasant to look at. Type looks better. Graphics are clearer. Subtle visual effects are more realistic. After using Windows 8 for a few day, when you go back to Windows 7, it looks a bit ‘cartoonish’ by comparison—just as Windows XP does compared with Windows 7. I would say that Windows 8.1 cures people of the visual ‘Mac Envy’.

Internet Explorer 11

Finally, IE looks and performs on a par with Firefox and Chrome. Arguably, it also looks even better (again, the design is much nicer and more readable. There are still a few security concerns, but these are largely due to the massive installed base. In other words, these aren’t problems intrinsic to IE, they are the price of success. All popular browsers now get caught with security flaws, largely because each has a significant audience.

Desktop

There are lots of little improvements here. Again, no huge standouts, but things like moving files around or finding (Search) just ‘work’ better, requiring fewer keystrokes. You can see little previews of everything you’re working on in the taskbar. In general it’s just better organized and ‘tidier’.

Data Recovery

Windows 7 already had some real treasures in terms of data backup. Windows 8.1 exposes these to ‘regular people.’ The new Disk Image functions make it simple for anyone to make a perfect backup of your entire PC in just a few minutes that you will be able to recover in case of disaster using nothing but Windows itself. No more worrying about ‘backup programs’ for most users.

Now the elephant in the room is still ‘Metro’ and the absence of a Start button. Frankly, after a year, we still almost never use that side of Windows! We still think of Windows as a ‘schizophrenic’ operating system. In future articles, I’ll try to walk you through my journey to learn to love the other personality living on my desktop. For now, we’re trying to make the effort because Microsoft is starting to differentiate between Windows 8 and Windows 7. Until now, there really was no such thing as a ‘Windows 8 program’, unless you were writing a mobile app.

But there are new programming standards emerging from Redmond, WA and very soon you’ll start to see that programs written for Windows 8 are a bit different. There will be Windows 8 versions of most of your applications that take advantage of the inner workings of the operating system. Since that’s the case, we’re making an extra effort to embrace Windows 8 and we recommend that you do as well. If that seems a bit unnerving, don’t worry. We’ll be right there with you for the journey!