Review by Dale in Texas

I build professional extreme computers, from 10 - 20 per month. I have loaded all of them with Windows 8 pro 64 bit system builder. I have actually grown to love it. After one of my builds, I decided to try the final version of the beta 8.1. What a joke! So you get the start button back. Big deal. It is not functional like the older versions of windows. Additionally, 8.1 is app oriented, and I use my computers for business and gaming, and maintenance on other computers, so the apps other than Skydive are not a big deal for me. If you are young, and like the apps in Windows 8, then maybe it is for you, but not for me. I ran the 8.1 for about 3 hours playing with it, and frankly I liked the original version better. Additionally, I was unable to download the 8.1 update from a local Windows 8 account. I had to sign into my Microsoft account, which is a load of crap. I am also a Microsoft tech partner, and I have posted about 20 different important fixes on forums regarding Windows 8 pro, and as bad as you Windows 7 lovers are going to hate this, I love Windows 8 pro, just the way it is. It works well, it is very fast, and has no driver problems! 8.1 is a joke. I ran it 3 hours, and I reformatted the SSD and did a new clean install of plain Windows 8 pro. In my opinion, Windows 8 is a good operating system with a very fast interface. 8.1 is all about apps and the Windows store. It is more marketing hype than it is functional. Obviously it is as are all big corporations; about making more money selling apps, and not about making the O/S more functional. So if you are not an app hog, you will not be happy with this update. I personally, cannot recommend this update to anybody that is happy with Windows 8 or 8 pro, and if your computer is used for business, 8.1 is not necessary, nor does it fix anything, because if 8 is properly loaded it will work trouble free. I have about 80 machines I have loaded with 8 pro, and not one return, not one blue screen, and no calls on how to use this or that. One really good tip. I you have a question about Windows 8, Google the question and read. Most of the fixes through Google are actually better than the fixes offered by Microsoft, and some of the Google searches will actually take you to the Microsoft forums where the fixes will be accurate and good. If you don’t have Primo PDf download it for free. Then you will be able to print those fixes to PDF and save them to your computer info file or a file you create. If you do download International Primo PDF, you will also have to download the older Net Framework versions for Primo to work. This creates a problem with disk cleanup, because there is no restart to configure those older Net Framework updates. The fix is easy. Run Disk Cleanup, check all the boxes, and when you hit the delete key it will hang on the windows update cleanup. Let it run for about 10 minutes in that position. Then go to your power button in Windows 8, and restart the computer. You will get a light blue screen which says preparing to configure Windows do not turn off your computer. Believe me, don’t turn it off or reset it, or you will ruin you load of Windows 8 with log file errors. Let it run, and it will take from 50 minutes to an hour and ¹⁄₂. Whatever you do, do not touch the machine until it reboots. When it reboots, you will have all of the updates configured properly, and an error free machine. you can then confirm that by opening the command prompt in the administrator position, and type sfc /scannow. This will run the system file checker and let you know if you have an error free load of Windows 8, and if you did it right, you will.

Dale in Texas