03 May Five Reasons To Love Windows 8.1

We believe Microsoft is the best choice for a student computer, and that Windows 8.1 is a great platform for learning; it has all the tools students need, enhanced protection for browsing, account protection and parental controls. The updates that have been made to Windows 8 mean that your tablet always starts up quickly and the apps run fast.

Here are our top five reasons why we love Windows 8.1:

1. New Account Type for User Accounts – Child

When editing user accounts in Windows 8.1, you can assign one of the following three types: Administrator, Standard User and Child.

Child is a new user type that must be assigned in order to enable parental controls for your child. If a user account is not set as Child, you cannot enable parental controls for it. Parental controls allow you to control or monitor your child’s internet usage – read more about how to use this feature here.

2. Great Touchscreen Typing

Window 8.1 learns as you type, offering you suggestions based on what you’ve written before. This is a time saving and intuitive feature that really improves user experience and makes typing much easier for students.

3. A Better Start Screen

Some improvements have been made to the original Windows 8 start screen which greatly enhance its appeal and usability. You can now choose from a wider variety of sizes for the tiles: small, medium, wide and large; the larger ones able to preview much more information, which is great for apps. You can also choose to have the same background image as your desktop, which makes the transition between the start screen and desktop much more fluid.

BUT if you don’t want to use the start screen, you can bypass the modern-style Start screen entirely, and boot straight to your desktop. To turn on boot-to-desktop, right-click the Taskbar and choose Properties, and then Navigation. Finally, under Start screen, check the “Go to the desktop instead of Start when I sign in.”

4. The New Snap Feature (Use Multiple Windows At Once)

You can use Snap to arrange windows side by side, which makes it easier to simultaneously work in two apps. This feature is especially helpful when comparing two documents or when moving files from one place to another.

5. Improved Multi-Monitor Support

Although it is not necessary to plug our tablets into an external monitor, if you do want, or need, to work on a larger screen then you have great control over how content renders on a second display, giving our tablets more flexibility.