Microsoft Previews Windows 8.1: One More Step Towards a Great Hybrid OS

At the Microsoft Build conference in San Francisco Wednesday, Microsoft unveiled their preview of Windows 8.1, the much-anticipated update to their ambitious Window 8 operating system. After outcry from Windows users about certain lacking features, and promises of improvements, it appears that Microsoft has delivered. How well? We'll just have to see.

Start Button

The preview of the system looks promising, as Microsoft has kept its promise to bring back one feature that Windows fans found sorely lacking in Windows 8 - the Start button. However, Microsoft delivered just what it promised and nothing more: clicking the Start button takes you to the tiled "Start" screen, and does not open the basic Start menu that Windows operating systems of old had always used.

So some people were probably hoping for a full return of the old Start button and menu. Still, as Microsoft tries to move on to a mobile-friendly operating system, the Start button seems like a good compromise, especially considering that right clicking the Start button will bring up a menu with the Control Panel, task manager, and search, run, and shut down options. This basically means that if you're using Windows 8.1 as a desktop OS, complete with a mouse, you'll have to get used to a slightly new look, layout, and function, compared to the old Start menu, but it's all basically still there.

Booting Up

Another change that some of the old-school desktop Windows users will like is a new capability to boot your computer directly to the desktop, just like the old days, instead of going through options in the tile system to get there. In fact, you can boot up to lots of different screens, like your App list or individual apps.

Customization

Windows 8.1 has some new personalization options, including more backgrounds, live wallpapers for the Start screen and an option to set up your own background for the desktop and Start screen. The lockscreen got a little prettier, because now you can set up a slide show with pictures from your hard drive or photos stored in SkyDrive.

App Improvements

Microsoft has baked in more options and features into some of the Windows 8.1 apps. The Camera app, for example, gets new features to edit photos like color enhance, brightness, and contrast adjusters. There's also a red-eye remover and six filters to auto-enhance photos - this compared to the simple crop feature in the Windows 8 camera app. When you snap a photo with the Camera, it can shoot 8 frames per second before, during, and after you push the shutter button, so you'll have fewer mess ups, or at least a decent shot among 7 other mess ups.

Other apps and system features have some incremental improvements as well. The Music app has a neat ability to create a playlist based on a selected artist from a search. With the Mail app, you can sweep away unwanted marked emails in a single action. And Windows 8.1's search feature now incorporates results from your PC, apps, and Bing's web search in a single graph view.

The Windows Store has been redesigned for a cleaner look and better previews of apps, and is adding a lot more apps, according to Microsoft.

Layout is a Snap

Tiles and apps both are resizable in Windows 8.1. Using "Snap views," you can have up to four apps on the screen at the same time, and if you have fewer than the maximum apps open, you can resize how much space each app takes. Or take multiple open windows and snap them next to each other, custom-sized, depending on how you're using each one. Also, if you have more than one monitor connected, you can keep your Start screen open on one, while using multiple apps on the other - making multitasking a lot easier.

So...

Windows 8.1 throws in a mix of lots of little improvements, and it makes some concessions to old-timey desktop Windows users, making navigation and especially customization to use Windows as a desktop-only experience a lot easier for them. But it's not giving up on the mobile touchscreen emphasis, which is a good thing.

Windows 8.1 isn't the last answer to the question of how to make a dual-purpose operating system. But as more hybrid devices are being released, each promising to provide the best of both worlds - the old school computing and mobile touchscreen ease - at least Microsoft is trying.