Intel Corp (INTC)

[mmoy]

Windows 8.1 is a mess for desktop users.

I was typing in another window when the banner appeared asking me if I wanted to upgrade to Windows 8.1. It does this every week or ten days and I hit cancel. Unfortunately I happened to be typing along and the banner grabbed keyboard input and took the default return as confirmation that I wanted to upgrade and I couldn't figure out how to stop the process. So 90 minutes later I have Windows 8.1 and I have to create a Microsoft account and provide personal information (you can't get to the OS without this) and then I eventually figure out how to get to Windows and this bright orange background appears on my two large monitors. It was rather blinding - I guess fine for a tablet but not for the desktop.

I looked around the desktop and noticed a OneDrive icon and looked at it and found that Windows 8.1 sets you up with OneDrive. It's apparently integrated into the operating system and it saves your desktop and other things to the cloud automatically. That's not something that I particular care for so I tried to figure out how to disable it. Microsoft doesn't make it easy to do - you have to use the Group Policy Editor to disable it.

I am back to up and running.

If they don't fix this crap in 9.0, I'm never going to buy another Windows device.

In Mac OS X, you have to enter the Administrator password for Admin operations so you can't accidentally upgrade the operating system. Windows 8.1 penetration is embarrassingly low and I guess this is how Microsoft is trying to get it up. I don't want a Microsoft cloud account and I don't want all of the tablet crap.