Microsoft will use its annual developers conference to release a preview of Windows 8.1, a free update that promises to address some of the gripes people have with the latest version of the company’s flagship operating system.
Many of the new features have been shown off already. The Build conference, which starts Wednesday in San Francisco, will give Microsoft’s partners and other technology developers a chance to learn more about the new system and try it out. It also will give the company a chance to explain some of the reasoning behind the update and sell developers on Microsoft’s ambitions to regain relevance lost to Apple’s iPad and various devices running Google’s Android software.
There’s also speculation that Microsoft could show off a new, smaller version of its Surface tablet computers. One of the new features in Windows 8.1 is the ability to work well on smaller-screen devices.
Windows 8.1 will be available as a preview starting Wednesday for anyone to download. It will be released to the general public later in the year, though a specific date hasn’t been announced.
Windows 8, which was released in October, was meant to be Microsoft’s answer to changing customer behaviors and the rise of tablet computers. The operating system emphasizes touch controls over the mouse and the keyboard, which had been the main way people have interacted with their personal computers since the 1980s.
But some people have been put off by the radical makeover.
Although Microsoft has said it has sold more than 100 million Windows 8 licenses so far, some analysts have blamed the lackluster response to the operating system for a steep drop in PC sales in the first three months of the year, the worst drop since tracking by outside research firms began in 1994.
Among the complaints: the lack of a Start button on the lower left corner of the screen. In previous versions of Windows, that button gave people quick access to programs, settings and other tasks. Microsoft replaced that with a tablet-style, full-screen start page, but that covered up whatever programs people were working on, and it had only favorite programs. Extra steps were needed to access less-used programs. Settings, a search box and other functions were hidden away in a menu that had to be pulled out from the right. How to do that changed depending on whether a mouse or touch was used.
