Microsoft Windows 8.1 - Full Version ~ Microsoft Windows Top

Windows 8.1 - Full Version

Best of Work and Play

Bring all the aspects of your life together — create, play, discover, connect, and work.

Get to it all from the new Start screen, even your familiar desktop
Discover popular and unique apps in the Windows Store
Personalize with more tile sizes, colors, & backgrounds
Do more with side by side views of apps and sites
Access photos & files virtually anywhere with SkyDrive built-in
Search, browse, and share more securely and quickly

What’s new with Windows 8.1

It Plays as Hard as it Works

Windows 8.1 gives you the power to quickly browse, watch movies, play games, polish your resume, and pull together a killer presentation — all on a single PC. Now you can organize up to three apps on your screen at once in a single view.

The Start Screen

Personalize your Start screen with your favorite news, friends, social networks, and apps. Customizable colors and backgrounds and four different sizes of tiles make your device as unique as you are.

The Apps you Want

In addition to great built-in apps for email, people, photos and video editing – you can also download thousands of popular apps from the Windows Store, including Netflix, ESPN, Skype and Halo: Spartan Assault.

Security

Stay up to date and more secure with Windows Defender, Windows Firewall, and Windows Update.

Speed

Windows 8.1 starts up faster, switches between apps faster, and uses power more efficiently than previous versions of Windows, including Windows 7.

Your Familiar Desktop

From the Start screen, you are just a click away from the familiar Windows desktop you know so you can do the stuff you’ve always done.

Multitasking Made Easy

It’s easy to do more at once. Snap multiple apps side by side in a single view for easy multitasking.

Mouse, Keyboard—and now Touch

Windows 8.1 works harmoniously with various types of devices, including touch, mouse-and-keyboard, or both. Whatever kind of device you have, you'll discover fast and fluid ways to switch between apps, move things around, and go smoothly from one place to another.

Your files, Everywhere

Stay connected to your photos and important files and access them on your phone, tablet or PC with SkyDrive. By signing in with your Microsoft account to any of your PCs running Windows 8.1 and you'll immediately see your own background, display preferences, and settings.

You Keep all your Files

If your PC is running Windows 7, your files, apps and settings will easily transfer to Windows 8.1.

You Keep Familiar Programs

Programs that run on Windows 7 will run on Windows 8.1.

Your Office. Your Way.

Experience Office at its best on Windows 8 devices. Discover new and better ways to create, edit, and browse—using a keyboard, pen, or touchscreen. Don't forget: Office is not part of Windows 8.
Some features require Windows 8.1. Update available through Windows store for Windows 8 users. Internet access required; fees may apply. Don’t forget, Office isn’t included in Windows 8.

The New Windows	Windows 8.1	Windows 8.1 Pro	Pro Pack
Your PC is currently running:	Windows 7, Windows 8	Windows 7, Windows 8	Windows 8, Windows 8.1
Great Apps built in such as Mail, Calendar, Messaging, Photos, and SkyDrive with many more available at Windows Store.	✔	✔	✔
Includes Internet Explorer 11 for fast, intuitive, touch-friendly browsing.	✔	✔	✔
Keeps you up-to-date and more secure with Windows Defender, Windows Firewall, and Windows Update.	✔	✔	✔
Works with new and existing Windows desktop software including the full Microsoft Office experience (Outlook, SharePoint Designer and more).*	✔	✔	✔
Comes with Windows Media Player	✔	✔	✔
Provides enhanced data protection using BitLocker technology to help keep your information secure.**		✔	✔
Enables you to connect to your PC when you’re on the go with Remote Desktop Connection.		✔	✔
Connects to you corporate or school network with Domain Join.		✔	✔
Watch and record live TV with Windows Media Center.***			✔

System requirements

1 GHz processor or faster with support for PAE, NX, and SSE2
2 GB RAM
20 GB available hard disk space
1366 x 768 screen resolution
DirectX 9 graphics processor with WDDM driver
To use touch, you need a PC that supports multitouch
Internet access (fees may apply)
Microsoft account required for some features
Watching DVDs requires separate playback software
Windows Media Center license sold separately

* Refers to programs built for mouse and keyboard that run in the classic Windows desktop environment.
** Data is protected on Windows 8 PCs and removable drives using BitLocker and BitLocker to Go.
*** Requires a TV tuner.

Product Details

Brand: Microsoft
Model: WN7-00578
Released on: 2013-10-18
Platform: Windows 8
Format: DVD-ROM
Number of items: 1
Dimensions: 5.79" h x 5.79" w x .79" l, .21 pounds

Features

Recommended version for upgrading Windows 7 or a full install of Windows 8.1. Running Windows 8? Windows 8.1 is available as a free update from Microsoft
Get to it all from the new Start screen, even your familiar desktop
Personalize with more tile sizes, colors, & backgrounds. Do more with side by side views of apps and sites
Access photos & files virtually anywhere with OneDrive built-in
Search, browse, and share more securely and quickly

Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews
233 of 265 people found the following review helpful.

Better than Windows 8, still not better than Windows 7.
By D. Hentze
Last year, I made the mistake of upgrading my Windows 7 Desktop System to Windows 8. I've been running Windows 8.1 since the Preview version that came out a few months ago, and the official release version that came out this week. While Windows 8.1 does make some improvements to Windows 8, it is still is not an O/S that is desktop friendly. On the positive side, you can now boot directly to your desktop without using a 3rd party utility, and the "Start Button" is back (sorta). On the negative side, Microsoft has still left out the "Media Center", and still charges a ridiculous $99 to purchase the "Pro-Pack" to regain the same functionality that was free in Windows 7(Home Premium). There is still lack of quality Windows 8 apps. Windows 8.1 does very little to improve navigation through the O/S if you're using a mouse/keyboard, and not a touchscreen. At least Microsoft did not attempt to charge Windows 8 users to upgrade.

Windows 8.1 does fix some of the issues people running desktop environments complained about, but it still does not go far enough. If you're running a touchscreen system, then 8.1 isn't bad at all. If you're not, and have Windows 7, I'd think long and hard on whether Windows 8.1 is an upgrade or downgrade from what you have.

Edit: The April 2014 Windows 8.1 Update has further improved Windows 8.1 on a desktop environment. By default, the OS will now boot to your desktop if you're not running a mobile touchscreen device. There are also improvements if you're navigating with a keyboard and mouse. Switching back and forth between desktop apps and modern apps is much easier.
146 of 178 people found the following review helpful.

The worst
By Badger25
What makes Windows 8 such a disaster? Simple--it's an interface designed for a smartphone, not for a PC. Here's what that means. When you power on your PC, what you get instead of a normal Windows desktop is a brightly colored screen with a bunch of "tiles", most of which are advertisements for "apps" that you have little or no use for. There's no start button, no taskbar, no tools, no menus, no links to anything except the useless "apps". It's a huge step backward to the pre-Windows days of computing.

It turns out that if you hover your mouse pointer over certain parts of the screen, various cryptic flyout symbols (instead of easily understood menus) will appear. If you click on these symbols (and don't let your pointer slip off of them or they disappear and you have to go fishing for them again) you're taken into a confusing maze of options that substitute for normal Windows functions and must be explored in linear, sequential fashion. Sound familiar? It's like a smart phone--but, of course a PC is not a phone.

Phone interfaces are designed the way they are because of their size--a fraction of that of a typical computer screen. There simply isn't room for all the useful and practical features that have evolved naturally on desktop and laptop operating systems, so they're buried in underlying layers accessed by swiping and tapping. It's a great system for a pocket-sized touch screen device, but ridiculous and counterproductive when imposed on a full-sized desktop or laptop. The pathetic trying-to-be-trendy nerds who defend or promote this mess as being somehow new and innovative are too dimwitted to recognize that it's just a smartphone interface forced into a shotgun wedding with a hardware platform where it doesn't belong.

Microsoft could fix this mess in a day by restoring the normal Windows tools such as menus, toolbars, files, and, most importantly, the start menu and functioning desktop that comprise the foundation of the Windows operating system. So far all they've done is to release a pseudo-upgrade (8.1) that suggests that the start menu is back when in reality all it does is give users a start button--just the icon--that allows you to toggle back and forth between the godawful "Metro" screen and a completely empty "desktop". It's worse than useless.

Windows 8 has been a disaster from day one, but instead of moving immediately to address their horrendous design mistakes, Microsoft's only response has been to fire Steven Sinofsky and Steve Ballmer, the two Microsoft execs responsible for this fiasco, and to cancel support for XP to try to force consumers to buy Windows 8/8.1. It'll be interesting to see if Microsoft even bothers to continue to "support" 8 a year from now, or if they simply take their customers' money and run on to Windows 9, which has already been rushed into development and is slated for release in early 2015.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful.

Forced to use Windows Live, MS Store
By K. Angus
I downloaded the trial version of 8.1 Enterprise, made it a bootable USB stick and installed, while installing it ask for my e-mail then used that to create the user. That connected me to my Windows Live account, the first thing I did was create a user that was not the admin of the computer and didn't login to windows live. I tried to install Kindle for PC and discovered I had to login to my Live account to reach the store to install the Kindle for PC app. That sucked but the Account Protection crap MS has setup upset me to the point I not longer have an account, I canceled it after being ask to verify my e-mail and then enter the code they would send, that happened 8 times in two hours. It appears to be focused on routing everything you do to one of the many Microsoft cloud products, Outlook, Store, Live, MSN. Since I use this on a 30" monitor the HUGE blocks are almost as bad was some of the MSM web sites, you know, the "new" look where the web page fills he entire screen and scrolls forever.
I'll see what they have to offer for 9, I'm still upset over the "Account Security" crap, I'm sorry but I don't have all-day to play their game.