Windows 8.1 start button appears
Pics / Playmobil or it didn't happen.
Microsoft's Blue wave of Windows, tools and services updates has started breaking complete with an early glimpse of the Windows 8.1 start button. The company revealed on Tuesday the availability of Windows Server and System Center 2012 RT, Windows Intune and SQL Server 2014 and Visual Studio 2013. MSDN subscribers had started …
As much focus as there is on the missing start button, the problems with Windows 8 are far more than just a missing start button.
Until the make it Windows 7 with the speed tweaks of Windows 8, I won't be buying it. I need my PC to be a workhorse, not a plaything, designed for media consumption at the cost of making it really useless for much else.
And what do tablet users do with a desktop OS on a tablet? see this is the problem. How to get Microsoft into the tablet world without making a scaled up phone.
Enterprise users expect a Windows tablet to work with standard Windows resources, domain controllers etc. Rather than spend months or years adding this sort of stuff to a phone OS they decided to just use the desktop OS as the basis for the tablet OS.
Actually MS has been using the desktop OS on tablet pc since 2003 (XP Tablet Edition) and all later versions are fully tablet pc compatible (The "Starter" may be an exception). Nothing new there, works fine and since the SSD became "mass market" the final durability problems (HDD damage) is gone.
And with a proper tablet pc (Wacom/NTrig inductive stylus equiped) - the system works fine. And without the need to wipe the screen every few minutes to clear the fingerprints.
I don't give a crap what the hell you pansy ass tablet users do with your tablets. Keep your frelling hand off my desktop. Steve Jobs was a dictatorial bastage, and even he wasn't damn fool bastage enough to try to force a tablet OS on his users.
Maybe, maybe if you're a brilliant developer you can have common kernel for your desktops and your tablets and save some development costs. But the fully assembled OSes are vastly different animals and need to be differentiated. If you aren't a brilliant developer, or at least haven't hired a few to oversee your OS development work, you'd probably better keep them separate.
At the risk of a bazillion downvotes: This is exactly, pretty much word for word what was said when XP came out by many many people (myself included). The difference now is the amount of people getting together on the Internet and this amplifying their opinions.
Companies need to be able to develop, otherwise products stagnate. It's not unreasonable to expect someone to put in a modicum of effort to learn a new OS. Something Henry Ford said is appropriate here: "If I made what my customers wanted, I would be making faster horses."
@AC 08:43: Microsoft are of course able to develop, and Windows is stagnating because of it. I would argue that that's as a result of the decisions they've made, and especially the one about the Start button. Reintroducing it is not the solution; it needs to work in pretty much the same way it did on Windows 7.
Why should people be forced to change the way they work if it works for them?
>Why should people be forced to change the way they work if it works for them?
Precisely! The Program Manager from Windows 3.1 worked really well for me - I could organise my programs however I wanted to in a nice big folder, but now Microsoft are making me use this crappy start menu thing.
They need to add an option to Windows 8 to make it work exactly like Windows 3.1 did - why should I be forced into using Microsofts crappy new "user friendly" UI when what they had before worked perfectly fine for me?
"They need to add an option to Windows 8 to make it work exactly like Windows 3.1 did - why should I be forced into using Microsofts crappy new "user friendly" UI when what they had before worked perfectly fine for me?"
The argument I've been using for about the last 10 years.
Program Manager was simply a fancy desktop. If you think otherwise, you're not looking at it carefully enough.
So why can't I have a group of icons on my desktop anymore? Lost functionality.
What can't I minimise / show that group as my tasks change? Lost functionality, kinda shoehorned back in in recent versions in the guise of pinning junk to the taskbar, putting "folders" on desktops.
Why can't my desktop arrangement stay the damn same for the life of my computer like it did back then? (I've given up rearranging desktop icons and now just don't use the desktop at all - Moving to Metro would be... interesting, from the testing I've done, so I've installed Classic Start Menu on Windows 7 so I can at least bring my desktop productivity layout forward if I move - BTW I have a free upgrade to 8 Pro at any time I like, and have had for the last year or so).
Why the hell could a 386 show that menu without so much as a blip of activity on a decent spec, but I still spend a lot of time waiting for "explorer.exe" (which is basically progman.exe) to respond? (All hardware driver, architecture changes aside - why can't I just have a simple menu draw in roughly the same time?)
I used to have a perfect tiled layout on Windows 3.1, and the program did exactly what was asked of it and nothing more. It was a way to group and layout icons to run programs, and keep them consistent. I could have every icon I wanted on the screen and an icon for certain groups that - when clicked - overlaid the window *I* wanted on the interface with whatever icons I've stored in it (i.e. games is overlaid when I open the "work" group of icons)/ But now explorer is a mess of a program that interferes even in file copies.
If CSM had an option to replace explorer with a progman.exe equivalent, I'd tick it.
They need to add an option to Windows 8 to make it work exactly like Windows 3.1 did - why should I be forced into using Microsofts crappy new "user friendly" UI when what they had before worked perfectly fine for me?
I know you're joking but quite frankly that is exactly what they should have done. Because when Windows 95 came out, which basically introduced the start menu to the masses, it still retained the option to use progman.exe, and that feature has been included with more modern Windows versions for a long time. Some people fell back to that but eventually everyone picked up on the start menu.
But I do believe that this is the main reason why Windows 8 is the catastrophe it is today: people aren't given a choice, so they''re simply making one themselves by not getting involved with Windows 8 at all.
"At the risk of a bazillion downvotes: This is exactly, pretty much word for word what was said when XP came out by many many people (myself included)."
With one huge difference: XP still provided a working progman.exe, so if you really didn't like the start menu and wanted to go back to the way it was you could.
People had a choice in the matter, even if it did require some in-depth understanding how this stuff works.
"Something Henry Ford said is appropriate here: "If I made what my customers wanted, I would be making faster horses.""
If people are buying your product thats one thing, if your product is forced upon them then thats something else entirely. Henry Ford didn't insist people bought one of his cars before they could use the road but thats effectively what MS does when you buy a PC.
And FWIW , if its the early 20th century and you're living down the end of a long rutted dirt road or in the middle of nowhere with no roads at all, a faster horse WOULD have been more use than a car.
i wouldnt say its even designed for media consumption. you cant even open an image and then see the next one in win8 and i have to use old media player to create a movie playlist.
for a home device win8 on a touch screen isnt bad. but it needs loads of work. using the desktop at 1080p on a 11.6" screen is a bit of a ball ache and i tend to use a mouse for that. also, you can increase dpi to increase the size of desktop items but then some apps fall in a heap and render off screen. (i have since found that this might be fixable in the shortcut options)
Lol...I thought it was just me. Yes, it's sitting in a VirtualBox, waiting for the day MS fixes that Start Menu permanently, or I break down and decide that StarDock will remain a a must-have feature of Windows 8. I get my Start Menu (and Program Groups, etc.)...Windows 8 gets a chance at running on bare metal, provided there are no other nasty surprises waiting for me.
"The company revealed on Tuesday the availability of Windows Server and System Center 2012 RT, Windows Intune and SQL Server 2014 and Visual Studio 2013.".
Not quite correct. As you can read on Microsoft's techblog they announced the upcoming build preview of Visual Studio 2013, that will be available at the end of the month.
Visual Studio 2013 itself is expected to be available later this year, according to that same blog that is.
M Gale, Please look at Classic Shell on Sourceforge.
If they haven't already, they will have a Start Button fix for Windows 8.1 "Blue" up and running within a couple weeks. looks like they know windows better than MS does.
I have been using their shell on Windows 7 Pro for some time and it is excellent and would assume they can do the same for Win 8
M Gale, Please look at Classic Shell on Sourceforge.
I'd rather not. I have Linux for an OS that separates the UI from everything else. It's designed to let you swap out a shite UI for one that you might like better.
Windows on the other hand, is not designed around this. If 8.1 is anything to go by, it's made by people who are actively hostile to this approach. As you yourself say, Classic Shell needs to have a "fix" for an entirely deliberate problem. To quote the site admin here, "There is no official release of Windows 8.1 yet. At this time it is unknown if Classic Shell will work on it as is or will require modification."
I'll stick with 7 until either Microsoft see sense, Linux takes over the desktop (hah), or it becomes impossible to run anything new in 7.
I'd rather not. I have Linux for an OS that separates the UI from everything else. It's designed to let you swap out a shite UI for one that you might like better.
You've always been able to replace the Windows shell. I don't really understand how you can suggest otherwise given that you yourself then go on to talk about something that does exactly what you suggest is difficult to achieve.
You've only got to write a replacement for Explorer exe then change a registry value:
It's just that most people have never felt the need to bother and don't need to indulge in flame wars with other Windows users about which shell is best.
Precisely, I've done that for years on dedicated kiosk systems where they need to login (auto-login is a feature that's been there for a long time) and setting the explorer.exe replacement for that particular user.
It's staggering just how many developers of "embedded" (kiosk) systems using full Windows don't know this and calmly boot to explorer as the shell then auto-load their application. All it takes is a use to alt-tab and they have total control of the system. If a maintenance user of the embedded / kiosk system needs access to the explorer shell it's a simple matter of running explorer.exe from within the kiosk application and access is given.
M Gale's post is pretty well thought through, and indicates familiarity with alternatives shells for Windows.
The relevant point is that Linux is designed to implement various shells as a feature, not a bolted on afterthought that is likely to break with each new revision of Windows no matter how minor. Sort of like they did with Lotus 1-2-3 and then Quatro Pro until they finally ensconced Excel in that position.
designed to implement various shells as a feature, not a bolted on afterthought that is likely to break with each new revision of Windows no matter how minor
And my point is that the same is true of Windows. There is nothing new about that registry key and nothing new about replacing Explorer. According to Wikipedia that registry value came in with Windows 95:
It aint no 'bolted on afterthought'
Replacing the Windows shell has been a supported, fully documented feature for over a decade. Almost longer than Linux has existed. Now whether or not a particular replacement shell works with all versions of Windows depends - like all executables - on how it was written. But in general most Windows applications run on all version of Windows.
> boot to explorer as the shell
Can anyone enlighten me as to what people consider a "shell" in Windows?
In Unix, the "shell" is the command interpreter (the program) input/outputting to an interactive text interface (in olden days, a line printer complete with fanfold (hell yeah!), nowadays, some window in graphical user interface)
Clearly that's not it.
The "Windows shell" seems to be something on a sliding scale between the whole UI system (corresponds to X, swappable in Unix, not so much in Windows unless you want to look into the kernel), the look and feel of it (Gnome, KDE, XFCE) and some file navigator / application (Dolphin, Konqueror etc.)
> Can anyone enlighten me as to what people consider a "shell" in Windows?
Good question :)
For the purpose of this discussion (ie; 'what's wrong with TIFKAM') the shell would be Explorer. That is an application that uses OS functions to render icons, menus, windows, etc. It does this in pretty much the same way any application does. So Explorer.exe on it's own would be useless. It is reliant on the GDI and USER spaces to render images on the screen.
One thing that most shells have to do is display certain well known aspects of the Windows UI - things like Control Panel. It would be entirely possible to write your own CP but it's a lot of effort and probably further than most developers would want to go. So instead they leverage the existing .CPL libraries. If third party Windows shells are vulnerable to change this is probably where they most are. It's conceivable that MS could get rid of .CPLs in the future and then there'd be problems. Or they might change the way they are invoked.
So is the Windows 'shell' the same thing as 'X'? I think not. I'll confess I don't know much about 'X' but I believe that it includes everything right down to the 'video drivers'. In effect it's a self contained graphical environment. Explorer.exe isn't that. Explorer.exe is just an application that uses Windows to display menus and respond to use input.
Oh and yes, there's a cmd.exe which is a command prompt and might also be called a shell. That's even easier to replace.
So in my view: For the purposes of discussing TIFKAM and how to replace it - Windows has a fully supported and recognised mechanism for doing it. Period.
However it is possibly not as flexible as Unix since 99.9% of shells are going to be reliant on the OS for drawing on the screen and also most likely for rendering menus. Now resources can be changed so that menus look different so I don't know whether it matters that shells ask the OS to render their menus.
Thank you for a genuinely useful post! I had messed around with Stardock stuff, but it was always cumbersome and some themes, though nice, would glitch our here and there, and my worst foible is (was?) that I do actually like Aero, even on Vista, it was so nice that I tired to get 3rd party apps on XP to mimic it, but they were a poor substitute. Then Windows 7 came and I was impressed with the speed and the improvements were excellent.
I'd over looked shells since then, so now I've installed Classic Explorer, with Windows 7 style selected. Seeing an ordered version of old Programs menu is a welcome return.
Oh Windows 8? As a developer I've found it to be a downright nuisance, so after three months of use on a secondary machine, I've disposed of it. Oh and I don't like Unity for Ubuntu either, feels like a copy of MacOS, but nowhere near as bad as Windows 8. The solution for the Linux machine was simple, I switched to Mint.
@Furbian:
What is the problem with Win8 in development? Most time in Development is spent in the IDE anyway with a fistful of additional tools. That works just as well, IMHO better in Win8 since I no longer need to pin stuff on the desktop or taskbar nor do I need the mouse so hands remain on keyboard,
It's handling of multiple desktops isn't very clever so it can be awkward sometimes to keep an application or folder view that you are monitoring visible. More often than not you ending up wasting one or more screens by having the start screen visible.
Always used ctrl + escape to open it. (Since forever - Windows 95 probably).
Now I use the Windows Button and type exactly the same as what any sane person does on Windows 7 anyway.
(The other stuff from the start menu is on Windows + X which is far more convenient to get to stuff than messing around).
I can see people having resistance to change when it wastes time but none of the superficial changes made from 7 to 8 do.
Unfortunately you are a "power user" and have entirely missed the point.
99.999% of Windows users are not not power users. They have not memorised arcane keyboard shortcuts, they often don't even know that there are keyboard shortcuts (especially helped by MS's stupid insistence on hiding them as much as possible). They can just about wield a mouse in anger, often don't understand the shift key compared to the caps-lock key or know how to cursor through text instead of hitting backspace until they find the offending mistake and then retyping what they just deleted.
Users require an indication that there is some functionality available, this is a basic, fundamental aspect of good user interface design. They should not be given an artistically blank and meaningless screen and expected to somehow "know" how to bring up some functionality on it by clicking / thumbing arbitrary screen locations. This is why buttons were created in user interfaces (and hyperlinks in HTML documents) to give a user an indication that there is an action available. Unfortunately now we've gone backwards and the "artistic" (form over function) trend is to hide anything vaguely functional so a user is left having to randomly thumb an interface or patiently wave a mouse cursor over it hoping for something interesting to be revealed.
For what it's worth, I've been a specialist in User Interface design for over 20 years. I also use keyboard shortcuts extensively :)
"Users require an indication that there is some functionality available, this is a basic, fundamental aspect of good user interface design."
This. 1,000 times this. There are no cues for discoverability. In TIFKAM there is no indication that right-clicking does something in most applications, for example.
The installation "point your mouse at the top right" instructions are useless and tell the user nothing. The fact that when you press F1 for help (assuming you know that shortcut) it tells you how to do it on a touch interface first is stupid - MOST OF US DON'T HAVE A TOUCH INTERFACE.
Here's an example:
End of day one using Win8. Mostly okay, as once in the desktop it's just the same as all the other windows versions, save the crappy default applications dumping me in TIFKAM. Anyhow, time to go home, turn off the computer. A simple task usually, but...
After years of MS telling me NOT to use the power button to turn off the machine, I am sat facing the W8 screen looking for "turn off". I think "Oh, I know, in the last iteration it was in Start". I now know to press the Windows button for that, and up comes the start screen. No "turn power off". So next I think, how about if it's where my logon ID is up in the top right, that would make sense, maybe a series of options "switch user, log off, power off, restart, sleep etc". No dice.
So I press F1 type in "shutdown" and am told "Swipe in from the right edge of the screen, then tap Search."
WTF???
I don't know the proportion of users with touch, but I am guessing the non-touch ones slightly outnumber them. Also why do I have to search for a "turn it off" button?
So I read the rest of it and eventually discover I should use the hardware button, for the first time since I had my Amiga.
Where is it discoverable that I should now, after years of conditioning NOT to use the power button, I should now use the physical power button?
Then, and I still can't work this out, using the power button to turn it off keeps my NUMLOCK on reboot, using the software one (move mouse to bottom right of screen, click on the settings cog, then on the power symbol, obvious really. Yep, hidden in an unobvious place in a hidden menu. Yessir, that's a good spot for something used at the end of every day) turns NUMLOCK off, so I can't use the numberpad to login the next time I turn it on. Which I forget, so my alphanumeric password fails every morning.
This drove me nuts, I thought there was some BIOS/UEFI problem, turns out it's just crap windows coding.
Was someone paid to design this stuff? What logic were they using?
I know I can make a shortcut for it - but here's the point - WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO? This is a basic operation, not some complex only 1% of all users ever do it thing.
I think I need to go and lie down somewhere for a while...
As a long time Windows user I've gotten used to a lot of shortcuts for things and there's a basic one to shutdown that still works in DuplOS 8. In Desktop click the actual desktop then ALT+F4. It's the same shutdown menu that's been around since at least Windows 2000.
"Actually "shut down by pressing the power button" is standard since at least Win7"
I think it has been supported since 2K or thereabouts (ever since the hardware folks started using "soft" power switches), but I always assumed the support was just a bit of defensive programming by an OS team who just didn't want a load of whiny lusers giving them grief when the machine booted up into CHKDSK the following morning. That is, no-one was ever *supposed* to shut down the machine by flipping the switch.
Anyway, for many (most) desktop systems, the mouse is sitting under your palm whereas the power button is "over there" or "under there".
.. Is how people get so caught up in tifkam. These same people will often talk about how windows 7 is enough and they won't change until there is a start button. As a desktop user with no touch interface, I embraced (somewhat hesitantly) windows 8 and instead found a minor annoyance in tifkam and a major boon in analytics, optimisation, specialisation and customization. So many features that I.T. Pros would have silently begged for, but never asked (or thought to ask for) are there but it seems I.T. Pros are the ones who can't see the menu for the tiles. Windows 8 has so many below the surface innovations and these are things you (win 7) lovers go without. Does windows 8 have its problems? Sure. But so did win7 and winXP when they were first released into the wild. I bet it is the same people who were railing against those OSs that are now bitching about 8.
Bottom line... Windows 7 looks outdated now. Also it is slower. Clearly benchmarked as slower in fact.
But live and let live I say. Enjoy that slow ignorant OS from the past
I guess you've never spotted the other posts I've made here, where I've quite clearly stated that neither I nor, that I can see, anybody else is complaining about faster.
I'm complaining about the UI. It's shit. If I want an Xbox, I'll buy an Xbox, thanks all the same.
While we're about "innovations", can you show me anything in 8 that's impossible in 7? No, I don't mean "live tiles", which what Microsoft used to have in 7 as desktop widgets until they removed them as a security risk. I don't mean a new exclusive version of a web browser I'm never going to use either, or an SDK for a mobile platform that's only exclusive to 8 because, dammit, you're going to have 8 if Microsoft have to choke the living shit out of you.
Enjoy the crap UI that does nothing but get in the way, negating any improvements there might have been.
This is the problem here mate. "The crap ui" as you put it does not get in my way. It is irrelevant. I work almost exclusively in desktop mode.
Things you can do on windows 8 that you can't do on win 7.
1. Boot up in under 12 secs. (With ssd)
2. Do almost anything faster
3. Analyse how fast data transfers are occurring and also why it is slow (if slow)
4. Change startup programs in task manager rather than msconfig
5. 2 click access to device manager, uninstall programs, control panel, System, and so much more.
6. Highly Detailed information on performance of CPU/ram/HDD which previously you would have had to download 3rd party app for.
7. Intelligent driver sensing.
8. Far superior unified search.
9. Superior WiFi controls in one-click
10. End process, actually works - immediately
There is 10 reasons for a power user to get win8.
Each. A. Great. Reason.
>1. Boot up in under 12 secs. (With ssd)
I've found that both 7 and 8 are quite fast to get to the desktop when installed on an SSD. Shame it takes a minute or so for anything else to work.
>5. 2 click access to device manager, uninstall programs, control panel, System, and so much more.
Hey just like on my (ClassicShell) Start Menu!
>8. Far superior unified search.
It's *still* embarrassingly bad compared to the OS X and Linux offerings. Admittedly it was particularly awful in Vista and 7.
I had to use Google (no really) to find out how to shut down a Win8 laptop*. MS have a webpage titled How do I shut down (turn off) my PC?. When you need to have a help page on how to do something so basic, you have screwed up - there is no argument.
I don't care if it's a superb UI for touch screens, I have two 24" monitors on my desk that are far enough away so that I can read them, so surprise, I need a UI optimised for mice & keyboards. Not some big icons (tiles) that are sorted randomly and flow about instead of a nice ordered list.
* Some clarification
- Power button made computer sleep (ok that's the OEM's decision)
- Logging off, clicking another button to find the shutdown option is not a sensible method, so there had to be a better option.
- It's a laptop - I don't want it to sleep. If I shut the lid, I don't want it to consume any power while I'm driving to the train station.
- Having the user find a magic pixel at the top right of the screen to simulate a swipe gesture (I think) is not a sensible UI decision.
>1. Boot up in under 12 secs. (With ssd)
Takes 45s (without SSD) here. Then another minute before it starts responding to input enough to do anything. A whole 15s faster than XP for something I expect to do once a week at worst (if only Win8 was that stable)
>2. Do almost anything faster
...compared to a tired, badly maintained Win7 install. Test against an equally fresh copy and the supposed advantages vanish. It does handle my HD,USB and network faster than XP but if anything else is faster than switching 32->64bit can explain I've not noticed it. But the faithful can keep on believing the placebo works.
>5. 2 click access to device manager, uninstall programs, control panel, System, and so much more.
Just like I had with the control panel parked in my XP start menu root and right click context menu?
>7. Intelligent driver sensing.
Is that why it kept installing bad 64bit drivers and repeatedly reminded me the 'oh shit, I don't know how to carry on' exception screen is still blue? Having to override an 'intelligent' system intent on borking my PC isn't my idea of improvement.
>8. Far superior unified search.
Eventually I'll find time to read the manual and make it do the simple but powerful file searching I used to have in XP! Another 'not an' improvement.
>9. Superior WiFi controls in one-click
Really wouldn't know. Win8 instantly BSOD when I tried to use my WiFi dongle. Then BSOD again when I let it update the bad drivers with more bad ones. Never did find working drivers so more dead hardware.
>10. End process, actually works - immediately
Not here. There are less processes it can't kill, +1 for that. But some still take their time dying, some still refuse to die. Particularly annoying it's just as unreliable killing DirectX apps as it's always been.
But that's all pointless since it takes so long summoning task manager to life, I just quit it then relaunched and waited 12s for it start. 12seconds reloading from cache. 30s is more typical and I've seen it take much longer when something serious needs killing.
And of course that assumes task killer will even respond when launched. I'm using the reset button a lot more now because once the desktop crashes it tends to take every GUI app with it, including the task manager. And it crashes a lot if you dare to leave explorer windows open for extended periods.
2 click access to device manager, uninstall programs, control panel, System, and so much more.
Unless you're a user like me who uses a non-privileged user account. When I run certain msc files I need to raise my privileges. On Windows 7 this means right click on the option and "run as administrator". With this great Windows 8 that has become impossible because you're already using a context menu (you need to right click to access this menu) yet one which only starts msc files without being privilege aware.
Therefor on Windows 7 its a meagre 3 click option for me: click the start menu, right click (for example) "my computer" and click "manage". Due to my privileges and because I'm trying to access 'my computer' the system automatically picks up that I need to raise my privileges.
And well; because the control panel sits in my start menu as a menu option I too can reach all these with 2 clicks (start -> hover -> click).
Do almost anything faster
Like what? When working on Windows 7 I heavily use the "recently started programs" section which dynamically changes based on the software I often use. This allows me to almost every time use 2 clicks to start the software I need the most. Better yet: because it's dynamic I don't have to do a thing myself.
Try that with Windows 8.
Woah seems WIn8 really is for the Power User Master Race.
"A major boon in analytics, optimisation, specialisation and customization! Superior WiFi controls in one-click! End process, actually works - immediately!"
Really! Don't know whether "Babby's First Computer" or a Microsoft Marketing Campaign.
Where is mmeier btw?
GET OUT OF HERE!
How DARE you comment on something you've tried and found to your liking!
RULE 1 of the Register comments
"You must choose blind allegiance to a single vendor, device or product. Any changes to aforementioned devices, vendors or products are immediate to be disapproved without any trial or usage, of said devices, vendors or products"
RULE 2
"You are only allowed to comment on subjects you have no idea about"
RULE 3
"Any express of an opinion that goes against the general sprit of the thread, is to be immediate down voted by those correctly adhering to rules 1 and 2"
Do you still need to install third party anti-virus and anti-malware software on windows 8.
After all this time and all the problems with security, I sincerely hope so.
No third party (lack of) security software on my machines thank you, but they are running openSUSE, PCLinuxOS and Mint.
It's far more like "move your mouse to an invisible zone on the right hand edge of the screen, which you were told about the first time you logged on."
If you load a new OS and ignore the instructions it gives you, the os is hardly the party to blame.
Move to the right, the charm bar appears, click settings.
Not difficult. I find it odd that the supposed "super users" here are revelling in not being able to operate an OS, when they have been given instructions how to carry out the tasks they're complaining about.
>Not difficult.
Who said it was? The argument here is that it's unintuitive because most people don't associate the action of shutting a computer down with "settings" or a gear icon. Also that the vast majority of windows users are used to shutdown being located in the bottom left corner, and 2/3 of the non-standard screen edges for the taskbar have it in the top left corner, and all of a sudden it's on the right edge of the screen for no real reason.
I noticed that there's some instructionals over at the MS website, but they want me to install Silverlight to view them so I'll just have to give it a miss and ask why they don't come with the OS, to be presented in the help center to anyone who thinks to look there before giving hits to rival search engines. And really, isn't having to read a manual or hit up google to learn how to do basic tasks the sort of FUD that gets pinned on Linux?
"which you were told about the first time you logged on"
Whilst I realise it is possible for an OEM (or perhaps even a nice sysadmin) to give you your new machine in a state that displays this tour on *your* first login:
they probably didn't, and
anyone who is offered a "Tour of the new features in your software" and actually takes it, is certifiable.
There has never been a "Tour of your new ..." that wasn't a complete waste of time. (The Win8 tour is no exception, being 99% concerned with trying to convince you that you no longer *want* to be able to use all your existing PC expertise on your new machine and would instead like to be transformed into a dribbling newb who knows nothing.) It is utterly unreasonable to expect users to sit through such a thing. Microsoft's inclusion of a tour merely demonstrates how little they understand of interface design (and human beings generally).
Anyone that understands basic design principles; must surely realise. Hiding basic tasks such as making a shortcut on the desktop (via the Start Screen), hiding shutting option. Not only goes against Windows philosophy but common sense.
Windows 8 isn't the worse OS on the planet, especially if MS were to listen to user feedback. Until then suck it MS
isnt there a desktop shortcut by default? i have one and i dont recall making it. my acer tablet did come with a handy power down button but in fairness i hardly ever use it bar for when i need to reboot for updates.
its instant on from sleep and battery doesnt seem to go down when in sleep mode (it obviously must use some juice but it must be a miniscule amount)
with a few tweaks it could be a great OS. nice for touch, desktop for power stuff and i can have steam, origin and play old games on my tablet. i still dont know why they didnt include a start button, stupid for me and the photo and video viewers need some love as they are crap as stands.
What use is a Desktop shortcut with Win8s Modern? I had quite a few in Win7 since I prefer my taskbar only to show only running programs. Problem is to get at them with 6+ windows open I need to right click in taskbar and "Show desktop" and than back with another right click and "Show open Windows" In Win8 my shortcuts (all 60+ if I want) are on Modern, just one "Win" key away. Faster, easier, no mouse needed / no hands off keyboard
And during install you still have the option available to clutter the desktop if you prefer that
Switching off / shut down by power button is standard since at least Win7. Why click around when a button press is enough.
"And during install you still have the option available to clutter the desktop if you prefer that"
I must've blinked when that option flashed up on screen. I recall taking an Asus gaming laptop out of its box, assembling the parts (battery, power supply, etc) and turning it on for the first time.
Windows 8 Standard was of course, preloaded. I never saw any such option. I dare say this is going to be the user experience many Windows 8 users will have — the OS comes with the machine, already configured, no "installation".
For us, Windows 8 lasted 30 minutes … being a business we needed something that would join our domain, and Windows 8 Standard wouldn't … it got an exorcism with a Windows 7 Pro disc (OEM; bought with the machine).
I thought it a very retrograde step to force desktop users to use a simplified multiple window model which severly limited the windows that could be displayed at the same time.
This seemed to me extremely stupid given that it's easy to attach 2 or 3 large monitors to PCs these days. These are not tiny tablet setups.
And when you do have a windowing system which allows multiple windows to overlap, what could be more sensible than some drop shadowing to make it clear which white window is over which.
Is this all possible in Windows 8? If not, then it really screw me over.
you can use multiple windows in desktop mode. or am i not understanding your post?
i tend to use TIFKAM when i want touch and desktop when i want proper windows access.
i wonder if i can use black title bars with white text? oddly i hate having light title bars and all the hacks ive used just fuck windows up.
I wasted half a day trying to retheme the window chrome to something with more visual clues. Turns out they didn't just create pastel, low contrast themes, they decimated the theming options so it's hard to create anything else. With less granular control every thing you change has unforseen consequences somewhere else. At one point I thought I'd cracked it, only to discover dialogs were showing text black on black!
Even the hi-contrast settings don't help, they have the same problems. They look so ugly because they can't be made nicer and still work everywhere.
If you really want to restore some much needed chrome you'll need a 3rd party theming engine to restore more settings. UxStyle works nicely and with the Royale 8 theme a casual observer would think I'm running XP.
(And UxStyle is an early casualty of Win8.1. Thanks MS ;( )
...your read it in MS release notes, or a journo parroting them...
It's quite cunning really, only the dedicated MS fans will put up with a full Win8 reinstall when it RTMs or the backup/test/restore bother now. So telemetry and manual feedback will again be highly skewed and another round of denial can begin.
I first used Start8 to get the start button and menu functionality back. I switched to Classic shell and it's better. It allows me to open Metro UI apps from the start menu, or desktop apps. I can easily get back to the desktop from my second monitor. If 8.1's start button doesn't give me the Windows Start menu with programs, that I'm getting from Classic Shell, I'll just reinstall that. Not touching the preview. Waiting for the final version.
Many more than you want to believe.
And in defence of those that have sensibly avoided it: everything I thought I'd hate about Win8 before I tried it, 6-7months of use in and I was right about every single one of them and it's actually broken in ways I didn't expect.
If it looks obviously wrong sometimes it's because it really is wrong.
Tried the Note 10.1. Compared it to both Atom and core-i Win7 and Win8 tablet pc. Sold the Note, returned to a weighty but powerful Win8 tablet pc / convertible (Privat/business). Desperatly waiting for 10'' Baytrail tablet pc so I can ditch my Note Smartphone as well (I demand Stylus so currently N7xxx is the only smartie I can/will use) and use Win8 only.
Note was (10.1) / is (Note 2) not stable with SNote, HWR is not even WinXP level, can not exchange editable notice files with the OS everbody else around me uses (Windows 7/8), can not print on cheap laser printers (can't see them - only the costly ones or cloud based printing supported) and having two eco-systems in UI etc. is a PITA.
ARM is cheap(billig) and lower weight/better endurance than my Win8 units. The former will remain - the latter is already solved (Dell Latitude 10 i.e) and Baytrail will seal the tomb over ARM in that department
i use my tablet daily. not much power user stuff more general browsing and games.
still, every time you use it it does something to annoy you. but then again i can find faults with iOS and android, which both annoy me too. at least with windows8 hp i can do much more.
its all swings and roundabouts really.
I have the enviable job of assessing Windows 8 for corporate use and have to put up with it on my laptop. After all these months I hate it as much now as I did when I first started using it and not just because of TIFKAM, the start menu and the insane user interface design. There are other irritations too in the areas enterprise application compatibility ; general bugs ; anyone with a Windows 7 roaming profile can only use a Windows 8 machine once the profile is 'converted' and that the conversion process fubars the profile so badly that they have to start from scratch with an empty one in the end anyway.
From a corporate perspective, we do not want all our users farting about creating Microsoft accounts so they can use the noddy TIFKAM apps.
Speaking as a daily user my assessment is that it is "pants". I want Windows 7.1 which ports over the back end improvements, fixes the bugs and keeps the Windows 7 compatibility and user interface.
What Modern apps are useful in a corporate environment? The once I have seen so far are functional for privat use (Mail, Kindle) but for corporate use one wants the full Monty (Outlook/Notes i.e). And Win8 supports "side loading", deploying Modern apps without the MS Store and therefor a Live account
Roaming profiles not being compatible has happened before (XP->Vista) and there is a way to handle that prior to the first time a user logs in by having two pathes set up and a copy of the Win7 in the second path.
With roaming profiles migrating from XP->Vista or XP->Win 7 they automatically made a copy into a new directory and appended V2 so the user could use either platform. Win 7 -> Win 8 buggers the profile up in place automatically and without warning.
I know the TIFKAM apps are generally all personal noddy crap but once a user has a machine then they're bound to want to play with them which means they'll all sign up for a MS account and as they get put into TIFKAM by default they'll know its there. Deploying Classic Start menu or Start8 in a corporate environment is not really an option and even in 8.1 being set to boot to the desktop, the start button will still take them to TIFKAM.
TIFKAM needs to die and to die soon. Its a complete waste of time except as a poor attempt by Microsoft to imitate Apple and Google so they can get in on the act of taking a cut of developer's hard work.
Don't think I've got a downer just on MS though. I dislike Unity and the latest crappy GUI attempts on Linux just as much. Frankly I'm rather concerned that this madness will continue and spread so that all possible computing platforms will end up being steaming piles of dingo's kidneys. User interfaces all seem to have jumped the shark lately and it is a shame.
Well I only really boot into W8 when I want to play certain games, and whenever I try to do anything outside of that narrow use-case I inexplicably end up cursing things. I managed to remove quite a few of the annoyances by using ClassicShell to circumvent most of TIFKAM, but it still manages to surprise me with things like borderless windows being the wrong size, setting my 1440p monitors to 1080p and my portrait monitor back to landscape when I unplug the fourth screen for whatever reason, and all sorts of other nuisances that make me question its worth and refuse to recommend it to anyone.
It's the fact that Windows 8 schizophrenically switches between full screen, 'massive touch screen interface' Metro apps and windowed standard apps. The contrast when it does this couldn't really be any more stark or jarring to the user.
Metro UI is just awful for desktop users (particularly people who use multiple monitors) and Microsoft somehow translated this as, "Oh, they want their Start button back".
I look forward to whatever miraculous solution lets me seamlessly drag'n'drop between monitors using just touch.
...though now I remember, they need to repair drag'n'drop first because there's nothing seamless about Win8 stopping to think when a drag leaves or enters a new region :(
@Shirley:
What is wrong with Drag&Drop in general? Just tested it on a core-i5 unit, works fine with the mouse.
Can not test it with touch (and I doubt you can) since I do not have two touch / pen capabel monitors (Cintiq are a tad pricey after all). But Pen should work fine since it works "like mouse" for that job.
@Citizen Kane.
The point is that Desktop users do not want to see Metro, or whatever it is called, full stop.
I have Windows 8 and once you have got classic start menu installed, set it up to go straight to desktop and not to use metro under any circumstances, then it is an OK OS. It is a bit better than Windows 7, but not enough for all the setup that was needed to get it palatable.
If you are a tablet user, then it is a no-brain purchase, but for enterprise users the small improvements are not worth the upgrade, unless there is an under the bonnet Windows 8 feature you just have to have.
Sticking a start button on the taskbar rather than it popping up when you hover your mouse at the bottom left will not change this, especially since it pretty much takes you to the same place.
Microsoft, upgrade the desktop experience and then maybe desktop users will want to upgrade to your new OS, otherwise it is not worth the price and pain of the replacing of Win 7.
The most annoying thing about Win8 is how crippled the "power user menu" is (right click on start menu activation area).
Unfortunately this still applies to 8.1 apparently.
If they'd allow us to customise that menu with groups and add whatever we wanted to it (without 3rd party tools) so we really did have a choice between the start screen and this menu then I'd be happy and I'm sure most others would as well.
Oh and it'd be nice if they told people it existed as well!
...not to mention the slow@ss operation of Windows 8 when compared to Windows 7 (eg explorer.exe, launching high-end 3rd party apps etc.)
It's still a pile of unfinished crap, period - and remember, BALLMER AND HIS MINIONS MUST GO, ASAP.
I'm talking about actual use, not bootup or UI impression - it is remarkably slower in many cases, not to mention 3 BSODs in 6 months vs my prev WS with zero for at least a year.
Yes, it was a clean install, with actually less crap installed. And yes, plenty of 3rd party Windows apps run slower or even crash sometimes.
Using Win8 on multiple systems, had none of the above problems with software written for XP or better. Systems (non "designed for Win8") are stable both new installs and upgrades. Used for development, general writing, games. With and without touch/stylus, with and without non Intel graphics.