JoshQ

Blender 2.81 has arrived and introduces several improvements to sculpting, the modeling part got slightly updated with new options for snapping, a new file picker and some new icons. There’s better performance and new rendering options plus several bug fixes. The installer creates a new directory so it won’t upgrade 2.80 but you can import settings and addons and it seems remaking plugins from 2.80 to 2.81 won’t be necessary or at least the handful I use are compatible. A con is that this version drops support for 32bit systems across the board. 

After installing, Windows 10 got confused and didn’t know what version to use but you can fix it by opening a command prompt on Blender 2.81’s folder and write: 

blender -R 

After pressing the enter key it will make 2.81 the default program, enable thumbnails for blend files on explorer and other small stuff. 

I don’t know if this will be enough for all the people who are used to 2.79, what I can tell you from experience is that both 2.80 and 2.81 are accessible for absolute beginners and there’s plenty of tutorials on the web so give it a try.

 And here’s the customary teaser for future CC: