This article will be a test of my blog writing skills, please tell me if this needs any improvements

Introduction

Windows 8.1 is the best Windows version I've ever used in my life, it was my main operating system during 2013-2017, was truly a great operating system that ran flawlessly on my Core 2 Duo machine at the time.

The successor of 8.1, Windows 10, really dipped in quality in my opinion, that thing was much slower.

I'll be talking about both desktop and mobile.

Desktop

The thing people hate the most about it, the metro UI.

A lot of people criticize Windows 8.1 because of it's Metro UI which was introduced with Windows 8, but I honestly LOVE the Metro UI in Windows 8.1, the start screen is the most customization Windows has ever gotten out of the box.

As you can see here, there's a lot of backgrounds to choose from, and you can also change the colors, that's somehow the most Windows ever gotten for customization (if we don't count the Windows 9x UI color changing).

Metro isn't that bad on desktop if you get used to it, but it is the best UI for touch screens as seen in the video below.

Windows 10 and 11 lack a lot of these gestures that make Windows more usable on touch screens, infact I think no desktop OS is this good on touch screens (besdies GNOME).

Though I have to admit, applications themselves are a bit lacking, but they aren't any better on Windows 10 tbh.

It's the best choice for a legacy Windows version

Something most people don't know is that Windows 8.1 is far more optimized than Windows 7, at least according to my own testing, which was done in a virtual machine (QEMU/KVM to be specific), on a Hitachi hard drive I found in trash, results were as following: Windows 8.1 booted 1.5 minutes faster than Windows 7 (30 seconds vs 2 minutes), that was with fast boot off.

Also keep in mind that it's more recent than Windows 7, so more apps support it, it also has a lot of features that Windows 7 didn't have, such as full UEFI suppor, a better version of Bitlocker, NVMe support, and it added the quick access menu (accessible by right clicking the start button).

Mobile

I won't say much here, I just love the shit out of Windows phone 8.1, it had a great UI, it was GREAT if you had an amoled screen, the keyboard was the best touch keyboard ever AND NOTHING replicated it yet, it was the first operating system ever to introduce swipe typing, the thing was smoooth as fuck even on the low end devices, yes it had a lack of apps, but it was a phone that got shit done.

Windows 10 mobile ruined all of that, it was laggy and choppy, the UI was worse, the keyboard felt fucked for some reason.