Welcome to Summer!.. Well with only one month before it officially starts, and with our recent weather here in Melbourne summer can’t come soon enough!

In late October though, Microsoft released the latest Windows 8.1 update from the Windows store.

This is a FREE update for all Windows 8 users, although at around 3GB, the download from the windows store can be very painful to download and install, so if you are having problems give us a call and we’ll give you the upgrade on a DVD.

Microsoft have focused on a number of features to help improve the user experience from version 8.0, including enhancements to the search function, the Graphical User Interface (GUI) has also been improved (by integrating the new Internet Explorer 11) to give people more choice with backgrounds, tiles and improve the ways of working with up to 4 applications viewable on any given screen at once.

Version 8.1 also brings back the trusty old ‘start’ button when in ‘desktop’ mode, although it only takes you back to the tile pane. We still recommend our clients to download and install ‘classic shell’ to get the proper ‘start menu’ and program launcher everyone is used it with every previous version of Windows.

Interestingly, Microsoft have already reported problems with this software release on their Surface tablets. The upgrade has reportedly crashed the devices and Microsoft have had to temporarily remove the RT version from the Windows Store.

We have noticed a few issues as well, with many 3^rd party software applications having to be re-installed after the upgrade to 8.1 as they exhibit failures when launching.

So, is it worth upgrading to 8.1? Well, it’s definitely not a ‘ground breaking’ release, but if you think of it more like a ‘windows service pack’ then yes its worth upgrading due to the patches and updates.

In other news, we have been busy bees here at EtherTech   upgrading and migrating ALL our hosted Exchange clients from Exchange 2010 over to the latest Exchange 2013 release.

This release brings a range of speed, security and functional benefits, all at no cost to our subscribers as part of our obligations for providing best-of-breed solutions.  Features like auto-unsubscribe, Bing Maps integration, automatic meeting and action detection and a revamped web app are now available to those running Outlook 2013.

If you would like more information on this or how we can help you get ahead please contact us on 1300-ETHERTECH!

See you next month!