For those few of you who use Windows 8 beware the 8.1 upgrade that came out today - the upgrade that was to fix all the users complaints.
Forget that it doesn't really solve what I think are a lot of the problems with Windows 8. It doesn't as far as I'm concerned. The problem is the update itself. Here was my experience and I can only hope that your upgrade goes well.
First off I have two Windows 8 computer: one that is my daughter's, the other at work.
This morning I tried to get the update going on my daughter's computer (Comp 1, for short). The first problem was figuring out how to get the update. You would think it would just be right there in Windows update. Nope.
Ok, so I searched the Internet for information. I discovered a note that it was in the Windows Store (an app that is part of the Windows 8 experience (HA!)). So I went to the Store thinking it would be the top item. Nope again. Ok, I'll search for the upgrade in the Windows Store. Let's try "Windows 8.1". Nada. "Windows 8 upgrade". Zilch. I don't remember actually all the search parameters I tried, but I couldn't find it.
Back to the Internet. There I found an article that took me to a Microsoft help page that provided the answer, in a way. By the way I want to note that when I searched the Internet, I did the search on Microsoft's Bing search tool using Internet Explorer. You might think that Microsoft would have prioritized their own page. But again... NO!
The Microsoft help page actually wasn't all that intuitive, but I found a link to the Windows Store that was a link to the actual upgrade.
On Comp 1, however, I only got a response to the affect that Microsoft was unavailable. Try again later. I kept trying all morning long, but got the same response.
Now we move to the work computer (Comp 2). Fortunately, after the experience of this morning I knew exactly how to get to the upgrade. I had to do a search on the Internet. Open up an article, click on the link that took me to the Microsoft help page, and then click on the link to the Windows Store. YEAH! The upgrade was there. I click on the download button and.....
It went to the home page of the Windows Store. Was it downloading? How do I know. Long story short, there was no way to know whether it was in fact downloading. I must have repeated the entire process of getting to the Store download page and chosing to download the upgrade dozens of times. I check all the browsers to make sure none of them were performing the download. Finally, I checked Task Manager and noted that there was some unusually high network traffic. But why? Was it the download? I had no idea.
Finally, I decided to leave Comp 2 alone. After some time had passed a message popped up to the affect that the update would likely delete any programs that had been installed. Would I like to proceed. I chose to proceed.
Again the computer was silent. Was it going to upgrade or what? I had no idea. Had I accidentally chosen not to proceed? After a while I decided to again go through the process of downloading the upgrade. Again nothing. Again, I decided to wait.
After some time another message came up telling me I had to reboot the computer to complete the upgrade. Let's do it!
As Microsoft warned me, when Comp 2 rebooted all of the apps that had been installed were deleted. I was flabbergastered. I could not believe Microsoft would really do that.
Now I should note that I had Windows 8.1 Preview installed on my computers. That may have been the reason for Microsoft's illogical, unreasonable delete-all-your-apps upgrade. But let this be a warning to you all.
On a final note. In the evening I opted to again proceed with the 8.1 upgrade on Comp 1 only to be met with the message that the Windows Store is currently unavaible. WTF MS?
Oh, I do have one other note. Today was also the release of the latest upgrade to Ubuntu's Linux operating system. That upgrade went without any problems on both my daughter's computer (yes, she has a dual boot computer!) and on another work computer. Way to go Ubuntu!
