For all intents and purposes, this is only a minor change, and were this any other operating system or graphical environment, it would never warrant an entire news item. However, we’re talking Windows, the most popular desktop operating system of all time, here. After 17 years of trusty service, Microsoft has removed the Start button from the taskbar in the upcoming Consumer Preview release of Windows 8.
When Windows 95 was launched, one of its most important changes over Windows 3.11 and earlier versions was the inclusion of an entirely new graphical user interface. At the very heart of this interface and the Windows 95 marketing campaign was the Start menu and the button that activated it. In the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, to be released at any moment now, the Start button is gone.
The Consumer Preview has already been leaked all over the web, and it has been confirmed that it no longer contains the Start button (or orb, since Vista) or the Start menu. This is actually not all that surprising, considering the start menu’s functionality had already been reduced severely in previous beta releases. Now, it’s gone completely, with the Windows 7 taskbar in Windows 8’s desktop mode now acting solely as a taskbar.
The Verge has confirmed with its sources at Microsoft that the start button has been replaced by a hot corner (for mouse operation) and a gesture (for touch) which essentially serve as a means to switch between the Metro interface and the traditional desktop. On mouse activation, a thumbnail will appear of the mode you’re switching to (Metro or desktop).
The decision is supposedly not entirely final, and there’s a minute chance that, given enough feedback, the button might return. Still, everything is pointing towards the full death of the Start menu and button. Let’s face it – 17 years of service is an eternity in the computer world, and in all honesty, I do feel somewhat sad for its demise.
For many, it’s a cornerstone of computing, and now it’s gone. We need to come up with a new “press start to shut down” joke.
Gnome 3, Unity, OSX, KDE 4, and now Windows 8!
If it ain’t broke dont fix it!
Well, it is broke. (At least for me.) The WIMP model sucks, and I’m glad that everyone is trying to fix it. I don’t like all the new innovations that are being tried, but I think we’re finally on the path to better user interfaces.
Yeah it’s fine to make some changes or try new things, but to remove tried an true features and replaced them with some committee’s idea of a better way is ridiculous, its like buying a car and finding out that the steering wheel has been replaced with 3 rubber knobs and one combined Gas/Break pedal.
Well fucking said.
It seems that Microsoft are changing things just for the sake of changing. They need an excuse for getting a new version and selling every some time.
What a lame company and “OS”.
Edited 2012-02-06 14:35 UTC
I think they needed an answer in the tablet space, and this is an attempt to provide a common interface across their OS stack. I can now buy a Windows Phone, Tablet and PC have all my “apps” and the same interface on all devices. There is something to be said about a common paradigm that works on all devices. However, for us power users it doesn’t make sense.
Even the yahoo product gal, who is such a shill her answer to every product she reviews is “buy it! Buy it now!” said “Wait on Windows 8 until you get a touch enabled device with it and then you’ll be happier” which translates to “This &^%*&^%&^% doesn’t work worth a crap without a touchscreen!”
BTW do you know how many desktops and laptops sell WITH a touchscreen? less than 3% and most of those are for kiosks. Do you honestly think that is gonna do a 180 in less than 7 months? When you can buy a 25 inch widescreen monitor for $150 while a lousy 17 inch touch is over $300?
Mark my words windows 8 will be the OS that finally kills the Vista and Bob jokes, its gonna suck THAT bad. Please don’t take my word for it, type “Download windows 8 developer preview” and try it yourself. This thing is a trainwreck and they are planning on releasing the consumer beta at the end of this month which means they think its almost done…wow, what stupidity!
Linux devs, if any of you are here NOW is the chance. give me a nice reliable desktop with 10 years of support so I don’t have to worry about upgrades breaking drivers and me and every shop across the land will be your support network. We’ll give you so many locations you’ll make the apple store look like a bad joke. Because between the mess that is Win 8 and the great XP dieoff piling up insanely overpowered off leases frankly we’re all gonna be up to our butts in boxes and laptops, they could ALL be yours. Just don’t give us this lame upgrade deathmarch junk, even LTS gives less than half the time of a typical Windows, that’s no good.
This is your last shot guys, after this uberfail I have no doubt Billy won’t be able to save Ballmer’s butt anymore and he’ll get told to “pursue other interests” so NOW is the time, don’t miss the boat.
On OpenSUSE kde 4 I have a lizard for a start button. Frankly a start menu is a very very useful thing to have in a GUI.
Lol…while true, I’ll argue that the Gnome 3, Unity, and KDE 4 didn’t entirely remove the start button. They altered its usage. Personally I really like Gnome 3 and if I miss the traditional menu style I use the Mint Shell Extensions of put a traditional menu on-top of Gnome 3.
KDE 3.5 line was technically busted. So Gnome 3, Unity and Windows 8 you have some grounds.
KDE 4 just lacked the smooth transition. I have a felling Windows 8 is going to be a nice big thump as well.
My GOD! The button, where is the button? Nooo….
LOL
I actually like the idea.
The more I see of Windows 8 the more I think their design specs involved taking a screenshot of Metro and a screenshot of Windows 7 and stapling them together. The UI is so disjointed it’s not even funny. It’s like they heard what Gnome 3 and Apple were starting to do and decided midstream they wanted to copy it, with precisely none of the smoothness either of those environments possess.
On the plus side, if Win 8 crashes and burns spectacularly it may just be the firm kick in the teeth the tablet overype squad needs to be jolted back into objective reality.
What smoothness are you talking about here? The smoothness of the device containg *ANY* of these environments as it flies through the air after you hurled it across the room?
Speak for yourself. Gnome 3 may not have all the functions of Gnome 2 re-implemented yet, but the core paradigm they’re going for has been executed extremely well. 3.0 was the smoothest “point zero” release I’ve seen in well over a decade of using Linux in one form or another. Most everything that was implemented makes sense within the metaphor they were shooting for. Things flow smoothly if you work with the design instead of trying to bend it into something else that it clearly isn’t.
Am I saying everyone should like it? Nope, couldn’t give a damn less what the rest of the world uses to be honest. It’s all personal preference anyway. What I am saying is people need to learn to look at designs and intents outside of their own personal biases and preferences.
To me this is a major news item. I remember waiting in line outside my local Best Buy on the morning of Windows 95’s debut launch. I found Windows new interface to be a big step up from that of Win 3.1. When Windows NT adopted it with version 4.0 I quickly moved to that. It was exciting times! Of course since then, I’ve bid Windows adieu when I made the permanent switch to Linux around 2003 or so. If I had a nickel for every time I instructed a computer novice who has having computer problems to click the start menu… I would be a wealthy man. I sure hope Microsoft knows what it’s doing with Metro. I must have missed the memo stating that most people are using tablets and touch interfaces instead of traditional desktops and laptops. May our beloved Start Menu rest in pieces…
Too true, IMHO – It was a pretty big step-up from just about anything that was available on an affordable home computer at the time.
I was still an Amiga user, and I remember not thinking to kindly of Windows 3.x and DOS, but 95′ was a revelation, and a 486 dx2 with a vesa local bus graphics card – it really ran very well too. This was of course the key, to find hardware (drivers) that ran right with it.
Now days, I use Windows 7 for the desktop, but I find the revised start menu is just too busy. It certainly isn’t always intuitive to use. The simplicity of the old menu was lost, but overall the operating system is still nice to use.
I do have fears about Windows 8. The previews have left me pretty cold. I don’t really “get” Metro (which maybe explains so much of my previous comments/posts.) I guess I have the mindset of “how am I going to get my work done?” and it seems so much of the new design gets in the way of that mentality.
The old interface just plain works – I think Microsoft is not always aware of the assets it actually possesses, especially while it’s “chasing” it’s competitors.
I think you have hit the nail right on the head.
I do have fears about Windows 8. The previews have left me pretty cold. I don’t really “get” Metro (which maybe explains so much of my previous comments/posts.) I guess I have the mindset of “how am I going to get my work done?” and it seems so much of the new design gets in the way of that mentality.
I think the new UI paradyme in Redmond must be as follows.
To boldy go where no other UI has gone before and get in the way of anyone doing anything useful whilst keeping the user reminded whom they are beholden to for even allowing them the priviledge of using a computer.
I just wish that there were some registry or group policy thing I could set that told the OS that get out of my face. Don’t ask for admin privs for doing a directory copy and all that other crap you think you must put in place to ‘protect me’, I just want to get stuff done.
And there is a squadron of pigs flying over Battersea Power Station as I speak.
{In other words, fat chance of that happening}
I really hope that this is only for the “Home” style versions of winodws, and the Corporate, or Professional versions still have this start menu…
I use the start menu all the time at work… I have all my normal programs pined to the task bar, and my sometimes programs pinned to the start menu… I also like how I can pin frequently used files to the sub menu of those pinned programs (For example I have the RDP client pinned, and then in the sub menu the comptuers I frequently RDP into)… This means that I only have to go back to my desktop for rare things that I need to do…
If I hate going back to the desktop, I sure as hell am going to hate going to the stupid “Metro” interface to get things…
It’s been said before, since when is removing good features moving computing forward? It’s more like dumbing it down…
For my style of computing the Metro interface is horrible. I hate having icons on my desktop, much less the Metro interface, where the only place to house anything is all over the screen in huge tiles. This will make things go from neat and organized to cluttered and messy. Hopefully, as you said, Enterprise editions will be more traditional since this is the only place that I use Windows any more. Also, I can not see the Metro interface being productive any time in the near future for actual work purposes. This will make the PC into a glorified tablet that makes work almost impossible to get done.
Maybe I am overreacting, but at this moment and with what I have seen from Win8 I cannot help but feel Microsoft is taking a step too far in the wrong direction without giving people a life raft to hold onto.
This is going to be hilarious… I am so glad I don’t work supporting home PC users anymore.
Edited 2012-02-06 00:35 UTC
Yeah, I don’t care if they remove the start menu, but I hope they have some kind of ‘launcher’ in there for classic desktop. Granted, I know there’s probably about 15 dozen different apps you can install for this, but in corporate environments where you’re not allowed to install any software, the start menu is still a nice place to pin apps that you don’t want pinned to the task bar.
“a hot corner has replaced the Start button orb”
So Microsoft is copying Gnome Shell this time.
It does appear that they are once again copying Linux window managers. Win7 felt much like KDE when I first used it and Win8 is much in the direction of Gnome shell. I do feel like Gnome is still much more suited to multitasking than Win8 is. That may be just a personal opinion and not a fact, but Gnome shell still lets you work around a task bar much more readily and gives a better view/easier access to what is currently running.
I’m looking forward to seeing what Microsoft does with Win8 in the near future with the beta though, as I really do want to see if they can work the kinks out of the new Metro interface. At current, I see it nothing more than a gimmick for a PC window manager. On a tablet it will work great, but not on my desktop, or anyone’s desktop that really needs to get a lot of work done.
Uh… What? Where do you people GET this stuff?
I thought I got it and to be honest, I was very excited (and I’m an Apple guy), but when I used the public version last year I “un-got” it. I now have no idea what MS is trying to do.
But I’ll give W8 the benefit of the doubt and hold my opinion until it is released (as you should), but right now, I’m not excited anymore…
I did think the Start Menu it the first public beta was a shambles, so it’s good to hear they are looking into that, I thought they would.
So true. I grabbed the beta wondering if it was going to actually jump past what Apple is doing only to discover that Ballmer is out to move more people to other platforms.
Windows 7 fixed a lot of Vistas unusable slowness even if it still has some annoying Windows issues, but Windows 8… Bizarre UI/UX for a desktop, ditto for a tablet. Half colored squares, half windows, all messed up.
To be fair, I was referring more to KDE 3.5. In this respect it was the large task bar and overall feel of the GUI that reminded me of it. As far as Win8 being like Gnome shell, this stems from the lack of “Start” menus or drop down menus (read as Gnome 2) and consolidating in a screen that completely overlaps your desktop.
I’m sure not everyone felt this way, but those were my impressions upon using it.
When first beta of the Windows 7 appeared, many people noted the similarity between Gadgets and Plasmoids.
For example in this infamous screenshot (don’t be fooled by the date): http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/8498/emuelldesktopgadgetsc6d.png
Which were similar to Dashboard in OSX, which was similar to Konfabulator, which was similar to Longhorn’s gadgets, which were similar to Microsoft’s original Active Desktop.
Your point?
I said that many people were reminded of KDE 4. And it is easy to find such posts via Google e.g. http://teilnehmer.ws/blog/?p=444
I did not come across posts claiming similarity to Dashboard or Konfabulator at the time (but then again, I didn’t look very hard).
So it explains very well where the GP got “this stuff”.
Speaking of which, when was the last time anyone said anything about a Dashboard app. I never, ever, ever, use them. Where as on KDE, the plasmoids are actually kind of useful at times. At least the folder plasmoids and webslices.
From my perspective, it very much feels like Win 7 is a bastardized version of KDE 4.
What really happened is KDE took some good ideas from windows 7 and made them better. Plus, its smooth Linux underneath just makes it feel so much better than jerk-tacular windows. Its really frustrating and limiting when I have to muck around windows 7.
Using hot corners and mouse hovering/mouseover to activate items is neither new, nor thanks to Gnome.. Sorry to rain on your parade.
Well, the metro interface is definitely unique by MS it was not used by any of the open source project, while I remember I used ribbon interface way back in 2001 in one of the KDE’s app.
On start button removal… I will say change is the only persistent thing! Because of change, we have much stable Windows 7 OS. Also MS has to keep improving and changing cause competition is not going to sit quite.
I don’t care who they’re copying or not copying. What they are doing ISN’T removing the start button. They’re just making it invisible.
How is that an improvement? Everyone who isn’t familiar with computers will now have to look for hidden spots that does something. The point with GUI:s is that you are supposed to see what you can do.
Also, in the developer preview, the “hot corner” does things even when I’m doing other things. Like playing a game in full-screen, which isn’t helpful at all.
I have been out of the loop for quite some time because I found something that worked for me, I am happy, and I just stopped caring. I have to say though, Windows 8 looks beautiful. I don’t know if I would ever be persuaded to buy it or try it though.
I find it odd that I seem to be in the minority that think a menu button (whether it say “start” or is just an icon) seems fairly useful on an actual desktop. I know I rarely use my menu on my desktop as I usually hit alt+F2 and type a command to launch most apps. I do have a baker’s dozen worth of icons between my various panels and several of them are simply running scripts I’ve written to automate some of my more common tasks. Even with all that I still occasionally use my menu on Xfce as it seems like a quicker way to navigate between lots of apps than large visual menus, and it feels less obtrusive on my workflow.
I view the desktop and the tablet as separate beasts that require different interfaces. My android smartphone works well for its purposes with a touchscreen and lack of menus, but I retrieve data and consume information and media on it. Creating anything of reasonable complexity requires a keyboard and I ‘feel’ (I recognize that is subjective) that a trackpad is a less obtrusive and quicker to use (you don’t need to leave the keyboard) to use than a touchscreen on a desktop/laptop.
As I don’t ordinarily use Windows, I probably don’t have any skin in the game to cry about how their interface should look. Best of luck to Redmond with their changes, I’m just glad that Olivier Fourdan seems to plan on keeping the option of a menu available on Xfce.
You aren’t. The majority just don’t post here on OS News.
Not sure why, but the start menu is one of the things I hated most about Win9x-7.
The Win7 taskbar IMO is certainly a step in the right direction, looks like the 8 taskbar will be similar to the dock on NeXT, which is probably the the best desktop I’ve ever used.
I am so dammed sick hearing this crap about whenever MS, Gnome, KDE, anybody changes anything, this bunch of people pipe up and spew this “dumbing down” crap. People, streamlining user interaction is not “dumbing down”, just because it is different than the same crap you’ve been using since 1995 does not mean “dumbing down”, its just different.
Now, I for one don’t care much for the changes Apple has made in 10.7, thats why I’m sticking with 10.6 for now. But, you don’t hear me spewing this “dumbing down” BS. So, people, stop and think for a second, is it really a “dumbing down”, like say MS Bob, or is really some change that is just different that what your used to, some change that you don’t like for some personal preference?
Yelling “dumbing down” isn’t productive, but just taking any old change as gospel isn’t either.
The developer preview of Windows 8 was akward to use on a non-touch screen device. It simply doesn’t lend itself for smooth mouse interaction. I can see the ease of use when you can flick through it with touch control, but my guess is that widespread use of touch desktops will not materialize before or after the launch of Windows 8.
Of course people will rail against the replacement of a finetuned, well worked through paradigm by what seems to be an unfinished experiment. After the launch of Windows 8, whatever MS has tacked on, is what you will be stuck with in the future.
I don’t really get the return to dumping all icons on the desktop and calling it new. They just enlarged them to fit back to back. Yes, they are “live”, which makes them a cross between icons and desktop gadgets. I’ve never really cared for either of ’em, a cross between them the least.
Not that I ultimately care. I’m happily using Gnome 3 with Cinnamon at home. Windows 8 will one day be rolled out on the machines at my employer and if it works or not, I’ll have to make do with it then. Before that, I can just cynically wonder where all these brave new desktops will lead to.
the windows 95 start button was badly designed in term of usability (putting the hit zone a few pixel from the corner was a bad idea).
And after a few installs the start menu could be a few screen in heights.
The windows XP menu mitigated with a search field, but still.
Personnally I don’t think that mac OSX or iOS are good in that regards, and unfortunately windows 8 seems to be heading that direction.
I agree that the windows start is great for discoverability and less invasive than the “program manager”, but perhaps a new path is the key to find a good replacement.
It never occurred to me to think there’s anything wrong with the shutdown option in the Start Menu. After all, for most electrical appliances, you push the on button to turn something off. Maybe it’s because I was born just before the notion of turning something off was going out of fashion? I certainly was just in time to witness DOS going out of use. And I’ve never found Windows hard to use: nested menus, hierarchical filesystems where you had to remember what you named a file…
Same, when I saw the ‘Start’ and ‘Shutdown’ to my it was merely stating, ‘Start the shutdown sequence’.
Not really. Most electronic devices had either an On/Off switch, which is pretty self-explanatory, or a “Power” button which–you guessed it–switches the power on or off based on its current state. Both of these make sense.
But “Start > Shut Down > OK” really doesn’t make sense. Especially when Microsoft designed the Start menu to “start” just about everything you wanted to do from it. It was ironically also the place to go to restart or stop what you’re doing.
It makes no sense, but well… it works. So I can’t really complain. It’s gotta go somewhere, I guess… and apparently no one at Microsoft felt like coming up with a better place for it. Programs, Documents, Pictures, Music, … Shut Down? Okay… whatever.
I still don’t understand the difficulty, because when you click the start button, the shutdown button is one of the first things you see. And back when everything was done through the start menu, it was hard to avoid.
Again, maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m one of those people that tend to adapt well. I work on z/OS mainframes in my day to day job and I didn’t find it hard to adjust to them either. I certainly didn’t understand why everyone was telling me “it’s so different from what you’re used to” when it was almost the same to my mind: hierarchical – just a different set of hierarchies – but still hierarchical.
Personally, I can’t stand any type of start button. I think it’s because it feels like a dumping ground, where everything gets put into deeper and deeper nested menus.
As long as I’m whinging about the Windows user interface, I also hate the taskbar. The idea of having every window represented by a tiny “window” at the bottom of the screen seems silly to me.
I prefer pretty much any other type of desktop user interface, such as the interface used in CDE, Mac OS X, or even Windows 3.1. I currently use Window Maker.
Unfortunately, the start button + taskbar is so popular that there doesn’t seem to be many alternative options nowadays.
Even so, for some reason I love Haiku…
+1 on those words !
it felt like me talking
Every major UI has a “taskbar-like” paradigm, even if it isn’t in a fixed bar at some portion of the screen. There has to be some way to “see” what apps are not active and might be hidden, and to bring focus back to them. Keyboard shortcuts are not enough, we are visual creatures.
I, on the other hand, happen to like the Start menu and Taskbar concept. I also appreciate the changes to the taskbar in Windows 7 (and the ribbon, but *only* in certain programs), but I despise most of the changes forced onto users in the Start menu of Windows Vista.
My main complaint about the Start menu was always that nothing seemed to be organized… you’d have some programs making a useless “Company Name > Program Name” group to put its files, and often a readme and uninstaller would find their way there too. Which is pointless; just open the readme after install if requested, and as for uninstalling the program… that’s what Add/Remove Programs was always for! Then there’s this stupid separation between “all users” and current user” than is just confusing.
The Start menu was just always unorganized because software developers just had to put a folder of their name in there and load it with crap. And don’t get me started on those programs that have a bunch of parts that all get dumped in different subdirectories under the folder named after their company… like Roxio and Nero.
Exactly. Although the change I do like is the ability to type in the program or file name to bypass the stupid organization of some start menu entries.
Yup. And that is exactly one of those (maybe the only?) changes that I thought was useful myself. But I thought it should have also been added to the “Classic” Start menu.
BTW, I think my timeline may have been off–I think users did still have the option of the classic menu in Vista; it was definitely Win7, for sure, that did not allow turning back.
Who really cares? Removing the Start Menu is not a bold move, its righting a nearly 20 year-old wrong. At the end of the day it is still Windows, its still a pile of dung.
The author of this article really needs to get out more.
time to remove the windows button from the new keyboards
naw, it’s the summon metro button now.
Well get rid of the Windows logo and put something better on there… like a Linux logo or a naked chick or something. Hell, anything that doesn’t allude to a piece of software that may not even be installed on the computer in the first place.
A nakid’ penguin? Or Linus!? :shudder:
Naked ballmer (with led icons a naked ballmer dancing)
I’ve never used it
So we’ve come full circle with the god old program manager?
Was the start menu ever that big a deal?
no.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0AJM6HMYjM
Hah, I would mod the above post/response +1 Funny if I could.
Seems like they are continually trying to dumb down user interfaces. I fear that some day having an OS that isn’t just a big search box in the middle of the screen will be like driving a manual transmission.
I don’t mind the search box idea at all. This is what made the Win7 start menu incredibly nice. The issue is removing the search box from an easily accessible location and instead adding a very cluttered and messy alternative.
Its one thing for a Gnome like interface for people like us. We know what we are looking for. But what about all the computer illiterate people out there or people who use other’s computers frequently. How the heck do I find a program by text if I don’t know what I am looking for? Thats the whole point of nested menus. A logical grouping that can be viewed showing all choices. This is going to be REALLY bad for the 90% of users who don’t understand that firefox is an internet browser the same as chrome, safari, ie. I have F16 with gnome and when I type internet browser into the app search engine I get nothing.
Either start typing at the Start screen or choose Search, and a listing of all installed apps appears, grouped similarly to how they would be in the Start Menu.
Only alphabetical sorting made it into the Developer Preview:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/imagegallery/images/products/win…
The Beta (Consumer Preview) also groups by what would be a folder in the Start menu, similar to this:
http://img-us2.generation-nt.com/windows-8-start-screen_01150911.jp…
I guess there will be ways to get this Start Menu back, won’t it? Anyways, computer interfaces are all becoming toyish looking.
…will the windows button on the keyboard still work? If so I don’t care that they are getting rid of the button…too much. It is quite bold of Microsoft to throw away ‘tradition’ and I for one await to see if the end result is a blunder or a success.
I think removing the start menu is a horrible idea, especially if it’s being replaced by a search box which requires keyboard use. There are cases where a keyboard wouldn’t even need to be connected to a pc, only a mouse, so requiring a keyboard just to navigate is completely stupid.
Also, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for people to complain about the start menu being unorganized when you can arrange it however you want. I do agree that the default structures are often dumb and bloated with useless crap (like links to README files and uninstall as someone else pointed out). But, if it’s that big of a problem for ‘you’, you can change it to your liking.
I don’t believe there’s a universal (g)ui that works well for both touchscreen input and keyboard/mouse input. They’re not the same thing and trying to treat them as if they are is a mistake.
It is a clasic misunderstanding. The author refers to Windows as “the most popular desktop operating system of all time”. Bill Gates became so staggeringly wealthy by striking very aggresive and very exclusive deals with ALL hardware manufacturers. Then (17 years ago), you couldn’t buy a PC with any other operating system than Windows because of Bill’s marketing prowess. Still today, you are hard pressed to get one with a decent operating system. Your average “Joe” wouldn’t even think to ask.
These constraining contractual arrangements where Microsoft will come down hard on any PC maker with the temerity to offer anything else has result in a massive market penetration. Such market dominance gives you a ubiquitous product, not necessarily a popular one. It is a common mistake, of which this author is also guilty.
Deny choice and you get the same bland, insecure product everywhere. Only if choice were permitted, and people still chose an unstable, locked down, malware prone product, could you then rightly claim that that product is popular.
Force it on to an unsuspecting public and you have ubiquity not popularity. Please use the right word.
Oh, and the start button matter? Well, it’s a small but telling example of how little choice you get with Microsoft. You can’t change this, and you won’t be able to change whatever else the Redmond millionaires dream up in its stead, because that will be thrust upon you too probably.
Edited 2012-02-06 20:08 UTC
Even with choice, the market would’ve standardized down onto one or two major players. Having half a million options sounds fantastic in theory, till you try to make all of it interoperate and get work done smoothly.
Next thinik you know they will take away Clippy!!!!!
marksporr you make the mistake of suggesting consumers are denied choice. They are not. You make the mistake of assuming Windows isn’t popular. It is.
At some point, people should stop making excuses and concede the fact that every OS has it’s own list of strengths and weaknesses. None are perfect and none are complete crap. Windows, like it or not, is a good product with millions of satisfied users.
There’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all in the OS world. Let’s not pretend it does.
this is a big deal despite what some here have said. win8 this year is the biggest thing for them since 95. it is going to be on phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, servers, and except for servers it is all metro. metro metro metro.
that said yes they are retarded for replacing menus with a list. this is the new programs menu: less a menu, and more a list that scrolls to the right for… forever http://img-us2.generation-nt.com/windows-8-start-screen_01150911.jp…
the goal here is to simplify what is already the most simple gui element. so the result is nothing. everything is just flat lists like rocks on the ground. obviously this is retarded for power users. but they’ll move up from this rock bottom, and we’ll hack the desktop to work for us in the mean time. classicshell here we come
…that the Microsoft anti-fanboys will have to retire their all-time favorite lame joke? You know, the one that goes “lol u haev to click start to shut down your computer lol how stupid is that lol”.
Don’t worry. If you tried to use the mouse to shut down the windows 8 developer preview, you will find that almost equally stupid.
Fortunately, Alt-F4 works. But then again, it does in previous windows versions as well.
Looks like Windows 7 will be the only quality version of Windows ever created, I have no clue where they are coming from trying to foist on us a smartphone interface on a 30″ monitor, the Engineering world will most likely reject this one out of hand.