Description

Windows 10 is almost five years old at this point, and although many users initially resisted the change, it’s proved to be one of Microsoft’s most successful operating systems. As always though, there are some die-hard fans of previous operating systems who have yet to make the jump.

Time is running out, however. Now that Windows 7 has reached end-of-life, it’s likely many of those users will be making the leap to Windows 10, and those left clinging on to Windows 8.1 have until January 2023 before it too is killed off by Microsoft.

If you haven’t made the upgrade already (or even if you have but you’re not quite sure what has changed), you’ll find below a comparison between some of the features offered in Windows 8.1 and how they’ve been tweaked for Windows 10.

Windows 10 vs Windows 8.1: Boot time

There doesn’t seem to be any real difference in the boot times between these two operating systems. This is at least true for the two devices we conducted tests with; the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon and Microsoft Surface Pro. Both devices loaded the login screen in exactly eight seconds with both Windows 10 and Windows 8.1, with only milliseconds between boot times on either machine.