How the Start Menu beats the Start Screen

That's not entirely true. I have learned to use some software programs without any training at all (such as Sony Vegas Movie Studio). While it is true that training can vastly improve the experience of using software, not all software requires training.

I personally don't feel that most people will need training to use W8. However they're always a certain amount of people who require training on any new OS.

My wife has not had any issues using W8. She couldn't remember how to restart the other day. I told her just try and within 30 seconds she had restarted her computer. It's not as hard as everyone is acting.

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Friday, April 27, 2012 7:52 PM

6

@Bobby J Cannon, with all due respect. I asked for a convincing counter-argument of how the Start screen improves over the Start screen - not just the same statements I made with a negation or "Start screen does the same things better" copy-paste. How do you (and other Windows 8 fanboys) feel does the Start screen is an improvement in any way over the Start menu?

Friday, April 27, 2012 10:01 PM

@Bobby J Cannon, with all due respect. I asked for a convincing counter-argument of how the Start screen improves over the Start screen - not just the same statements I made with a negation or "Start screen does the same things better" copy-paste. How do you (and other Windows 8 fanboys) feel does the Start screen is an improvement in any way over the Start menu?

I'm telling you that it's different. Different doesn't mean worse like you are trying to spin it. Different is just that different.

You may not like the change. I will agree that it took time for me to even get used to it. However I accept change easier than others. I learn the new ways of accessing the same information. I simple adjusted to the changes. Something that everyone just has to learn to do because that's how life works.

I was simple trying to show you that some of your statements are not fact as you think they are. You perceive them worse than they actually are. Just take a few minutes to learn the new ways of accessing the same features that are still there. You may not like it and I think that's fine but don't run around saying the sky is falling because you "feel" like they are.

I'm not a fanboy just because I don't agree with you. I personally like the W8 changes that doesn't mean I'm a fanboy.

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Edited by Bobby J Cannon Friday, April 27, 2012 10:02 PM

Sunday, April 29, 2012 11:44 AM

Bobby:

I personally don't feel that most people will need training to use W8.

However they're always a certain amount of people who require training on any new OS.

That's a nice idea:

1st force the tablet-only oriented UI (devised for tablets only) onto desktops

2nd try to persuade users that it's a progress to throw out their full-featured UI and replace it with cramped UI

3rd call it "laziness" when the user do not want to reduce her effective way of work, and do not want to return to the way PCs were used in the nineties (why do you think the ordinary desktop user is not able to use a smartphone UI? personal experience? Sinofsky's instructions? To earn your given tablet?)

On desktops, Windows 8 (Win v.6.2) is NOT a new OS!
It's Windows 7 (Win v.6.1) with tablet-only UI implanted.

vjj

Edited by vjj Sunday, April 29, 2012 11:47 AM

Sunday, April 29, 2012 12:54 PM

Answerer

Here's how I think the Start Menu is better compared to the Start screen.

- No full-screen requirement, it doesn't disturb your workflow and gets out of the way quickly

this is my BLOCKER issue with Metro.

"A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code"

Sunday, April 29, 2012 2:27 PM

Looking for similar counter-argument in such a list style on how the Start screen is better.

Lots of smart people with lots of experience and who know how people work have looked at this turkey and no such counter-argument has ever surfaced.

It's simply not going to happen.

The best that people can do (and bless Bobby's heart for trying to keep positive about Windows 8) is show how under some conditions it's not much worse.

I'll probably upgrade to it, though like Vista I may wait a little while after initial release - even though I'm normally an early adopter. I'll CERTAINLY run the release version on a virtual machine first and give it a good workout before ever considering putting it on my hardware.

It's good that the 3rd party developers have already swung into action to adapt Windows 8 to desktop systems and have come out with some quite good solutions. There will no doubt be more of that to come, and it's almost a certainty such developers will wrap enough stuff around the excellent Windows 8 kernel to make the system usable overall. I know I'll be using as much 3rd party stuff as ever.

Don't know what can possibly become of Windows 9, though... Even with smart geek fixes I don't think Windows 8 is going to be a commercial success in the computer market amongst the masses, and scenes from Pinky and the Brain come to mind when I think of how they're going to fare in the tablet market (hint: the mice always failed to take over the world). Even dyed-in-the-wool Microsoft people bow down to the iPad. Apple isn't just going to stop and wait for Microsoft to catch up!

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBook:
In development:

Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

Sunday, April 29, 2012 3:36 PM

It's simply not going to happen.

There isn't one thing I could say that you would accept anyway. You guys will continue to hate Windows 8 and Metro no matter what. Nothing anyone says will change that.

Doesn't mean I won't continue to share my thoughts on why I like about W8. No one has to agree with me. All I ask is that just accept that these are my thought and to pleas stop with the petty childish comments. Earlier I was blamed to have called some people "lazy" and trying to persuade peoples thought. I never did either of those.

I'm simple stating just like you guys what I think about W8. I'm not a fanboy out here trying to get everyone to accept W8. I have my own issue with W8 but I don't feel that I need to share them because other have already stated the issue. Maybe not the way I would have approached it but it's already been stated. For instance I do feel that discovery of certain options are way too hard. Who is someone going to know to run their mouse cursor into the bottom left corner?

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Sunday, April 29, 2012 6:44 PM

It's simply not going to happen.

I know it's not going to happen. :P I asked the question on purpose so if someone does come up with a way in which the Start screen does something in a way superior to the Start menu from any aspect, we can add it right away to Classic Shell. :)

Monday, April 30, 2012 11:01 AM

It's not that simple. Scrolling the Start Screen can take a long time, and if I am trying to follow instructions on a Web page, this becomes impossible.

That seems weird to me. Your start screen is a personal thing. It's organized like you organized it. Typically, no 2 start screens will look the same I would think. It seems pointless to follow instructions from the web to do something in a 100% customized screen. Or did you mean something else?

Actually, it takes longer in Windows 8.

Yes, shutting down takes a few more clicks now. Is this really that much of a problem? Do you shut down your pc every 5 minutes?

This does not include links to Computer, Control Panel, Devices and Printers, or Help.

Most of these can be found very easily in other ways: settings or a context menu on the desktop. If these features are that important to you, there's also nothing stopping you to pin them as the very first tiles on your start screen I would think.

Besides, the Start Screen fills up with programs on its own, meaning that the Start Screen becomes a chaotic mess that includes programs that I never use and have to remove manually, which is a waste of time

You only have to remove them once after installing. Is that really such a big deal? Do you install new programs every 5 minutes? Besides, isn't it common place to do a bit of configuring every time you install a new suite? I would also think that frequently used programs should be pinned to the desktop taskbar... That will also give you the advantage of being able to use jumplists (which, btw, will include your recent documents most of the time etc).

"The start screen is neatly organized."
No, it isn't

It seems to me that that is entirely upto you. It's you who organizes your own startscreen.

It depends. What if there is something in the Taskbar that I need to see or look at?

You go to the startscreen to start applications. When you need to see your taskbar, you'll probably be on your desktop anyway I would think...

Actually, I found search to be poorly organized in Windows 8, and I should be able to navigate results without the keyboard

I don't understand the 'without keyboard' comment. But I agree the search results could be a lot better.

Yes, it's possible, but the Start Screen quickly becomes poorly organized when everything is in a small format.

Again, this seems entirely upto you?

That's not entirely true. I have learned to use some software programs without any training at all (such as Sony Vegas Movie Studio). While it is true that training can vastly improve the experience of using software, not all software requires training

Honestly, I don't see how any experienced windows user would need training to use win8... 15 minutes of playing around and you'll have figured it all out. I know I did with the dev preview...

Inexperienced users, like my dad for example, need some explanation. He also needed some explanation when I moved him from XP to 7.

Monday, April 30, 2012 12:17 PM

And a lot of us have also already explained to you that many of the negative things you people state really aren't that negative.

I fully agree with Bobby here. "Different" is perceived as "negative" and "bad" by a lot of you.

Different is not necessarily worse (or better). It's just different.

In my view, windows is simply morphing to accomodate for new hardware and a changing computing landscape. I personally don't think that microsoft has any choice here.

It's either that or sit back and stand by to watch how companies like apple and google will eat away their enterprise market share, percentage by percentage.

Microsoft has to act now. And I don't think it would be a wise idea to respond with more of the same. Windows 8 is a fundamentally different approach compared to apple and google and that is a great thing.

And the way they did it happens to be liked by me.

Sue me. Spam me. Stalk me. Call me an idiot and a moron who "doesn't do real work". Act like a bunch of little kids all you want. Because that is exactly the kind of replies both me and Bobby (and others who agree) have received.

Here's an idea: try to be a bit constructive instead of demanding microsoft to return windows to the state it was in 2002 with XP.

Monday, April 30, 2012 12:38 PM

Microsoft has to act now. And I don't think it would be a wise idea to respond with more of the same. Windows 8 is a fundamentally different approach compared to apple and google and that is a great thing.

And the way they did it happens to be liked by me.

I'm refreshed by the new different approach. I think Metro is spot on for some application but not all. I love the mail and calendar apps for quick and simple daily tasks. Other times I end up being in the desktop using Outlook.

The good thing is that I can do either. I'm not limited by one.

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Monday, April 30, 2012 3:38 PM

Obviously some of the things can't be done the same way anymore but I can give a list of how achieve some of the same things WITHOUT the Start Menu. Maybe you'll still prefer your way of working but I rarely use the Start Menu in 7 or 8, maybe that's why I don't find 8 such a deal breaker like some people.

- Full Screen issue. I won't argue that it will bother some people. If I know I have to get something from the Start Screen that will be my current priority and I won't be there long(or often as you'll see), the Desktop will be there when I get back. Going to the Start Menu/Screen in itself is an interruption in workflow either way. I can see the "reading instructions" scenario but the first step is usually to run something, you can do that without having to constantly refer to the full set of instructions. I can't focus one eye on the Start Menu and one on the Desktop anyway. If there is something pending that's so very important that I have to get at immediately I won't be in the Start Menu anyway.

- Had quick access to shutdown. Yeah totally dumb, I made shortcuts on the Taskbar for that. Liked it so much I do it for 7 too.

- 1-click special folders, Expandable recent docs, jump lists, frequent programs. That would be your TASKBAR. Put Control Panel, Explorer and frequent apps on there. Pin any CP applets, files, folders etc to the appropriate app. The recent and jump lists are there too. It's faster than the Start Menu and you don't have to even look at the Start Screen. Your open apps also have the "recent" functionality.

- Neatly organized All Programs. I guess I'm a heretic but I prefer the full-screen Apps view and I get to it with Win+Q. I'll use that about once a year because all the needed stuff is already on the Taskbar or Desktop. The full screen and large icons make it easier to scan and find something that maybe I forgot what the name was. I agree that it could use a visual cleanup and maybe an expand/collapse option for the groups. If I install a new app the icons are dumped to the Start Screen(that's another issue!) and are easily found.

-Does not cover taskbar and notification. Agree, but again if I'm in the Start Menu that's the current priority. Notifications are audible too.

- Unified search results. Yes! Definitely need that as a configurable option.

- Context menus on Start Screen. Taskbar as above. I agree too much mousing distance. But there is a better way so you don't have to use it much.

- No context menu options for settings and files. What are you trying to do that isn't quicker than the taskbar, Control Panel or Win+E(pin all the good things in Favorites,Drives included)? What are you doing in the Start Screen? You hate it! :-)

- Launch multiple apps quickly. Many ways to do that without even thinking of the Start Screen.

- Less items fit. Huh? I'd say it's the opposite(App List, Win+Q). Or use semantic zoom and have the groups organized, Ctrl+Mouse Scroll Wheel. A lot more scrolling and mouse precision required in the smaller Start Menu.

- Hot corner discoverability. I think it has already been stated they are going to have a quick run through of the new features the first time you logon. The hot corners do need some adjustment they are hard to use in multi-monitor setups. I'd rather have a button really.

So I really get by just fine and I like that the Metro option is there. If I had to only use Metro I wouldn't touch 8. I don't like the full screen and multitasking. But I don't have to. It will interesting to see how it evolves...oh and it is a CP so hopefully some of the smaller gripes will get smoothed out...Unified Search being the big one for me. That alone deprecates the Start Menu for me.

Monday, April 30, 2012 3:38 PM

I find it mildly insulting when people imply that folks not loving all the new stuff are just resistant to change.

Some of us have been working with computers for longer than some of you have been alive. We certainly know what works and what doesn't and how to deal with change. We've seen it before. We are also capable of sensing the direction of a corporation by looking at its products.

Apparently some of the young folks can't imagine that another person in the industry could have accumulated wisdom.

Virtually ALL of us are early adopters (or we wouldn't be here talking about the Windows 8 CP, would we?), which means we are all willing to embrace change more than most. To say that "Different" is perceived as "negative" and "bad" by a lot of you just comes across as dismissive ad hominem. Do we need that here?

With Windows 8 it's loud and clear: Microsoft is no less than abandoning the serious computer market - at least temporarily - and choosing to avoid making real operating systems in preference to running toys. It's no more complicated than that. Since they have a real hit on their hands with Windows 7, which will keep the lights on at Microsoft, they probably figure they can play around a little. Who can blame them?

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBook:
In development:

Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

Edited by Noel CarboniMicrosoft Community Contributor Monday, April 30, 2012 3:42 PM

Monday, April 30, 2012 4:27 PM

"I think Metro is spot on for some application but not all. I love the mail and calendar apps for quick and simple daily tasks. Other times I end up being in the desktop using Outlook. The good thing is that I can do either. I'm not limited by one."

Bobby, don't downplay the controversial issue. The main problem is the weird idea to offer "the best of two worlds" in one unified UI.

The two worlds (pc/laptops vs. tablets and other mobile devices) have way too different usages, with rather marginal overlaps. Tasks requiring a lot of input (like writing, researching, programming, even "serious" gaming) need keyboard + mouse until someone invents anything better (a touchscreen doesn't get the same things done). On the other hand, mobile devices are more suited for tasks where the user is more interested in the output (listening music, playing a movie, surfing the web, overviewing financial assets...).

As a consequence, the unified UI is anything but unified. The Metro start screen is a superficial link between two interfaces (Desktop and Metro view) which remain completely different, are managed differently and are used for different things. So, the question returns: Why not allow both user groups to customize their parts independently from each other? Of course, a start menu is a pain for touchscreen users and a start screen (with more tile-grouping and reduced clutter) suits their needs better. But inversely, the main disadvantage of a Metro start screen for desktop users is that's not a part of the desktop itself, forcing anyone to truly adventurous ways to do the most simple things. Not that they couldn't be learned by training or intuition - but why? Only to fulfill some OS designer's dreams?

BTW, Aroush's "windows is simply morphing to accomodate for new hardware" is only half the truth. The other is that hardware manufacturers fear being forced to new implementations (say: touchscreens) which would increase their selling prices = decrease the sales.

Understanding Windows is like understanding women.

Monday, April 30, 2012 4:47 PM

I think the two worlds might seem "weird" now but when Windows 8 tablets become widely available it will be appreciated to have that functionality on all of your devices. Think of the advantages for developers. I don't think the burden is so large that it results in a completely unworkable OS. I do see the compromises though and I also see easy workarounds whether native or third party. Everybody thinks they are being forced. You can choose and maybe Microsoft will pay the price -- we'll see, interesting times.

The lines between mobile devices and Desktop are going to get very blurry. Thinking they are consumption only is pretty myopic. Think of an x86(for now) tablet with more power than your Desktop that has wireless keyboard, mouse and display connections.

The main goal of Metro(notice Metro, not Windows 8) is not Desktop unification it's to get a workable OS for tablets. Apple is dominating that market and Microsoft is very late.

I'm not sure too many hardware vendors are afraid to rake in some of the profits Apple is making right now. They are busting down the doors to get into that market. Increased prices with the same margin = more profit. They just need to provide competitive solutions.

Monday, April 30, 2012 5:06 PM

I find it mildly insulting when people imply that folks not loving all the new stuff are just resistant to change.

Some of us have been working with computers for longer than some of you have been alive. We certainly know what works and what doesn't and how to deal with change. We've seen it before. We are also capable of sensing the direction of a corporation by looking at its products.

Apparently some of the young folks can't imagine that another person in the industry could have accumulated wisdom.

See this is what I mean. When did I ever insult you? I've never insulted you and if I did then I apologize. You may think my disagreement with you is insulting and for that I cannot help. It's OK to not agree. Definitively please don't take my comments personally.

Now for me I've been specifically called out just because of my comments of liking the new changes. If I had done this to you then you would have every right to feel insulted or upset. However I have not done this.

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Edited by Bobby J Cannon Monday, April 30, 2012 5:06 PM
Edited by Bobby J Cannon Monday, April 30, 2012 5:07 PM

Monday, April 30, 2012 5:21 PM

With Windows 8 it's loud and clear: Microsoft is no less than abandoning the serious computer market - at least temporarily - and choosing to avoid making real operating systems in preference to running toys. It's no more complicated than that. Since they have a real hit on their hands with Windows 7, which will keep the lights on at Microsoft, they probably figure they can play around a little. Who can blame them?

With W8 my Samsung Slate is an efficient tablet and a great "desktop" computer. It's has a quad core with 4g of ram. I have a dock at work and one at home. At the end of the day I hit the power button and throw it in my bag. I go home dock it and turn it on. Within moments I'm back to work. I'm running Office, Visual Studio, OneNote (killer app), LINQPad, Remote Desktop (both version), etc. I'm running all the apps I need to get real work done.

Then I can at anytime just undock my tablet and open up my Kindle metro app and start reading a book. I can switch to Mail and check out my mail without worrying about a mouse and / or keyboard. I can switch to my Sketchbook app and do a little doodling. I can launch "Cut the Rope" and have a little fun.

Go back to my desk and dock it and get back to work on my "next big thing" projects. Again IMO it's so powerful and elegant. Much more than an OS running on a toy. This is how I want my computing to work.

If I need more power I just switch over to my desktop running W8. It's has an i7, 24g of ram, sweet video card, SSD, raid1 and raid10 drives. This thing is smoking fast. I can run a couple of virtual servers and play WoW without even knowing they're other servers running. The really interesting thing is how the tablet and the desktop interact. I change my background on my tablet and my desktop changes. I save favorites in IE and they sync to the other device. BTW, I don't use IE but rather I use Chrome. You see what I'm saying. My devices are finally starting to play nice together. W8 will bring shared data to multiple machines by using the "cloud". Now I know you can do this today with W7 and I'm not arguing that. What I'm saying is W8 brings this feature to everyone. People like my wife which wouldn't be able to do all that on W7. With W8 she's doesn't even have to think about it. Just configure it and go.

All I'm saying is W8 is not a mere toy OS as you are trying to claim. There are people like me that are going to benefit greatly and I cannot wait for the next version or for it to go gold. Which ever comes first.

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Edited by Bobby J Cannon Monday, April 30, 2012 5:22 PM
Edited by Bobby J Cannon Monday, April 30, 2012 5:24 PM

Monday, April 30, 2012 5:22 PM

I find it mildly amusing that he's mildly insulted :-) Just kidding Noel, nothing personal. I'm not a spring chicken either.

"abandoning the serious computing market"

Hyperbole much? You can't expect people to reply to things like that without a bit of conviction. That's pure hand waving and your tone is abrasive to others with the very same experience as you though they may have different views.

Stick with 7. Good point, maybe they know that's their fallback.

Monday, April 30, 2012 5:33 PM

...

All I'm saying is W8 is not a mere toy OS as you are trying to claim. There are people like me that are going to benefit greatly and I cannot wait for the next version or for it to go gold. Which ever comes first.

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Fantastic real world example Bobby. It's odd that people keep harping on the "consumption only" nature of tablets. There is already a dominate tablet maker in the market with apps that are clearly not just "consumption" even though most people choose to use them for that purpose. The dual nature of Windows 8 will allow a smooth transition to these new work scenarios with better support for currently available *Desktop* apps.

Monday, April 30, 2012 7:31 PM

Sue me. Spam me. Stalk me. Call me an idiot and a moron who "doesn't do real work". Act like a bunch of little kids all you want. Because that is exactly the kind of replies both me and Bobby (and others who agree) have received.

Here's an idea: try to be a bit constructive instead of demanding microsoft to return windows to the state it was in 2002 with XP.

I will point out that I have never posted anything with malicious intent. I strongly feel that Metro is entirely the wrong direction for Microsoft to go, and I may have gotten carried away in my complaints.

It was never my intention to offend or annoy anyone with my forum posts or blog comments. Please, do not think that it was.

Edited by WindowsVista567 Monday, April 30, 2012 7:33 PM
Edited by WindowsVista567 Monday, April 30, 2012 7:53 PM

Monday, April 30, 2012 7:33 PM

WindowsVista567

As far as I can tell, Metro runs on top of the desktop in Windows 8, and Metro is built on the same core Windows components that have been powering Windows for 17 years. How will the Metro UI keep my PCs from getting viruses, or prevent it from being slowed down by poorly written applications?

I have an answer: with Microsoft's current design, it simply will not happen. Microsoft needs to create a new application model that can work with the existing Windows user interface, not put a smartphone UI on real computers.

You need to look harder. They already did and it doesn't use "core components" other than the kernel. The old Desktop software stack is completely separate.

Metro apps have a whole new security model that is integrated with the a new app model, it's called WinRT. There has been major kernel work too. Kernels are extremely generic and a well designed one will be relevant and usable for many years.

Whether you agree with it "working with the existing interface" is another matter. I would like to see Metro apps in windows on the Desktop too but I don't see that as a major issue. If you don't understand the need for a touch based UI that works well and integrates with their existing software maybe you will when the new hardware is released. You can always stay with Windows 7 too.

Edited by dgobe Monday, April 30, 2012 7:34 PM
Edited by dgobe Monday, April 30, 2012 7:36 PM

Monday, April 30, 2012 8:39 PM

"abandoning the serious computing market"

Hyperbole much?

In this case, not at all. I stand behind that statement. By all means, please propose another reason why they should do things like deprecate Windows Backup, claiming "not enough people use it", or remove a perfectly functional Start button.

Someone really does need to be and stay serious about making computer operating systems. There is still a need for computers. Maybe not every Joe Public needs one, but a significant number do.

I used a tablet earlier today to order some dog food online while in the waiting room at the vet. I also checked some forums. It (our iPad) worked fine but these things were just about as serious a thing as one could expect to be able to do on a toy while being "out". Anyone who claims real work gets done on a mobile device is deluded. Even doing simple things like these on the computer at home would have been easier and taken less time.

My point here is that Windows 8 can be the basis for a real computer system, but it simply hasn't advanced the art any. With some effort it can be made no worse than its predecessor. But in 2 years it's just not better.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBook:
In development:

Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

Monday, April 30, 2012 10:07 PM

"Anyone who claims real work gets done on a mobile device is deluded."

More of the same.

Did I miss something? What happened to the built-in software that offers a functional backup? The lack of a Start Button and the old Start Menu does not remove all of that functionality. There are compromises and I don't like all of the changes but you can easily get your work done with some adjusting. You will disagree, I know.

Would you agree that the computers you were getting "real" work done on several years ago are far less powerful than today's SoC and x86 based tablets? Does the tablet form factor preclude getting any of that work done(think of the docked setup)? What about Bobby's clear example above? Is he deluded? If you qualify that by saying touch only input you have a better argument. The problem with mobile is the input methods and display size not processing power for most people. That's the tradeoff with the upside being mobility and battery life. But you get both with a "docking" setup and you only need one device.

I didn't know every new OS release had to be a quantum leap. They added a new supported hardware architecture and a completely new written from the ground up run-time and the developer tools to go along with it. Slackers.

The fact is you got your dog food and didn't have to make a trip or do it when you got home -- real work however trivial in that specific case.

Monday, April 30, 2012 10:59 PM

Anyone who claims real work gets done on a mobile device is deluded.

Eh? Am I deluded? I'm get work done all the time on my tablet without keyboard and mouse. You do realize that mouse, keyboard and touch are not the only inputs to tablets correct? Did you forget there was the stylus? I use OneNote all the time to design and spec out new software. It's one of the best ways to brain storm. You just jump on the couch, go outside, or your favorite "think tank" open up OneNote and let the ideas flow. Much to your misunderstanding this is getting real work done. Am I sitting at my desk typing out code? No but all I have to do is go back to my desk drop my tablet into the dock and boom I'm coding on my 37 inch HDMI monitor with full mouse and keyboard. All on a mobile device. Not deluded just productive. I'm not making this up.

If you've ever and I'm sure you have tried to use any version of Windows to control a tablet style device then you know how frustrating it can be. I've been using tablets and such for years with XP, Vista and even W7. This is my real world example on how I use W8. My tablet is a dream and a joy to use. They have really made Windows on the tablet and the PC seamless. You may not agree but I have real world experience using only W8 for every day for all my computing needs on all my devices (PC and Tablet).

This paragraph doesn't really have much to do with W8 but I figured I would add it as an example on how all this works together. I love the fact that OneNote syncs to my phone. Yes it's a WP7 device. I can add a new recipe to OneNote on my desktop. By the time I get to the store to purchase the ingredients the recipe is on my phone. When I get home I grab my tablet and boom the recipe is on my tablet. I can go in the kitchen and get to work. OneNote works great on my tablet with both pen and touch input. Just one more feature I love about the integration of OneNote and my Live account. And anyone can do it because setting up the accounts are as easy as just entering your Live credentials. It's so awesome! Now you can call me a OneNote fanboy because I will evangelize it everywhere I go. It's easily my most favorite app for tablets or PC.

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 6:47 AM

Bobby, for all this stuff the full-screen metro style is not necessary. Win 7 style + (metro) apps in the desktop environment, and (nearly) all would be happy.

BTW, do/did you also have the so called bezel problem as reported in the web?

Edited by karlx Tuesday, May 01, 2012 6:49 AM
Edited by karlx Tuesday, May 01, 2012 10:29 AM

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 7:25 AM

Eh? Am I deluded? I'm get work done all the time on my tablet without keyboard and mouse.

I've been using tablets and such for years with XP, Vista and even W7. This is my real world example on how I use W8. My tablet is a dream and a joy to use.

Bobby Cannon

Nice, very nice, Bobby. Yes, you are deluded, you are immersive, you are stupefied by your shinning tablet. Thus, why do you continue to denunciate all DESKTOP users that have troubles with your beautiful toy tablet UI on their working desktops? Like Aroush? Just another Sinofsky's boy?

vjj

Edited by vjj Tuesday, May 01, 2012 7:32 AM
Edited by vjj Tuesday, May 01, 2012 7:33 AM
Edited by vjj Tuesday, May 01, 2012 7:35 AM
Edited by vjj Tuesday, May 01, 2012 7:35 AM
Edited by vjj Tuesday, May 01, 2012 7:36 AM

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 12:04 PM

I'm not arguing that Metro apps must be full screen. I don't mind them and it works for me. Don't forget you can snap Metro apps to one side of the screen and if supported they become 1/3 of the screen. You can run a Metro app side by side with a desktop app.

I'm not having the bezel problem. My tablets is a version of the Samsung Series 7 tablet. It's the one they gave away at the Microsoft build conference.

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 12:09 PM

Nice, very nice, Bobby. Yes, you are deluded, you are immersive, you are stupefied by your shinning tablet. Thus, why do you continue to denunciate all DESKTOP users that have troubles with your beautiful toy tablet UI on their working desktops? Like Aroush? Just another Sinofsky's boy?

vjj

Did you even read my post? I'm using my tablet for more than the shiny new Metro UI. Just go back and read my post. I'm using my tablet to it's fullest potential. Even right now I've got it dock and using a 26inch flat screen with a full USB keyboard (dasKeyboard even) and mouse.

This tablet is so powerful you can and I am using it as a desktop replacement. I use W8 in both tablet and PC forms. For me it works great and I'm not hindered my Metro. It actually makes it more fun to use. I like the Metro design. I've been a fan of the design since day one.

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 12:25 PM

5

Noel:

The thing that bothers me most about this "dual nature of Win8" discussion is none of our counterparts on the tablet side can show how removing the start menu from the desktop improved anything. They will wail and complain that "we've got it all wrong", "it's not THAT bad", "there are ways around it", and of course the more steadfast (categorical liars) will try to explain, in passionate terms, how if only we could go with the flow we too would just roll over as they did and enjoy the sensation.

I wouldn't give a rats ass about Metro and the hideously out of place "Start Screen" on my desktop and laptop if I had an option to boot into the desktop, and if I had my start menu. In fact it might have made for the perfect "evolution". Need Metro, want Metro? Its right there. Don't want it, don't need it? Its only there if you do.

But what they have now is frankly disgusting and outright pig-headed. It is nothing LIKE dual-purpose, it FORCES you to interact with elements that have NOTHING to do with what you want to accomplish. Now I understand since Metro is so terribly limited that they must use the desktop, but that shouldn't bother me, but what MS did is break my desktop in deference to the toy interface.

This is so simple its stupid. Put the start menu back, 90% of us will be happy. Provide a means of booting to your preferred interface, you capture the other 10%. Yes, there will be those still complaining about having to "bear the burdon" of having metro on their systems when they don't want it at all, but I guarantee you if you told these hold-outs the option was having metro tag along or being saddled with this cluster-f the DP and now CP represent, they'll take Metro with a smile so long as they have the start menu and ability to select boot.

Me? I want to login using the picture password and get dumped to the desktop with a start menu. I want the picture password expanded to do a rotation of pictures (slideshow of sorts) and once I click on one it freezes to allow me to finish the login. See, I like ONE part of Win8. and they thought I was being close-minded!!

Seriously, tablet folks, give it up. Removing the start menu did NOTHING to improve Win8's desktop. The instant you try to argue is DID improve something, that's the instant you get discounted as having your head up your ____ (fill in the blank).

Stop arguing that the removal of the start menu was acceptable. It categorically was NOT, is NOT, and will never be. It was an act of sheer arrogance and an attempt to force desktop users to "embrace" the nex "paradigm". Epic failure. EPIC.

DAS

Edited by Ronnie VernonMVP, Moderator Saturday, May 19, 2012 9:49 PM edit

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 1:00 PM

>Anyone who claims real work gets done on a mobile device is deluded.

Could have fooled me, I've been getting real work done on my slate.

(purchased, not the BUILD version)

When I went on vacation last month I only took my slate and was able to

do everything I needed to do for work with it. (I'm the only permanent

IT guy in the whole company so I basically work all the time, vacation

or not -- I just get longer breaks when on vacation.. <g>)

Bob Comer - Microsoft MVP Virtual Machine

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 1:02 PM

This tablet is so powerful you can and I am using it as a desktop replacement. I use W8 in both tablet and PC forms. For me it works great and I'm not hindered my Metro. It actually makes it more fun to use. I like the Metro design. I've been a fan of the design since day one.

Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

I'm trying to follow your way. I'm using my tablet to its full potential, too. To dock tablet while in a office and use it as a mobile device otherwise, that was my earlier fantasy. Unfortunately, the tablet does not have 8 cores, 32 GB RAM, and powerful graphic card to serve ALL of my needs. So I'm using my Acer Aspire notebook instead, and there's no improvement in using tablet's Metro UI on large displays while docked, on the contrary.

You are fascinated by the give-away from the DevCon, and you are trying to deserve it. Just as I've said before, just another Sinofsky's boy, Aroush, Cannon, Comer, et al. No real arguments expected.

vjj

Edited by vjj Tuesday, May 01, 2012 1:10 PM
Edited by vjj Tuesday, May 01, 2012 1:11 PM
Edited by vjj Tuesday, May 01, 2012 1:13 PM

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 1:03 PM

Noel:

The thing that bothers me most about this "dual nature of Win8" discussion is none of our counterparts on the tablet side can show how removing the start menu from the desktop improved anything. They will wail and complain that "we've got it all wrong", "it's not THAT bad", "there are ways around it", and of course the more steadfast (categorical liars) will try to explain, in passionate terms, how if only we could go with the flow we too would just roll over as they did and enjoy the sensation.

I wouldn't give a rats ass about Metro and the hideously out of place "Start Screen" on my desktop and laptop if I had an option to boot into the desktop, and if I had my start menu. In fact it might have made for the perfect "evolution". Need Metro, want Metro? Its right there. Don't want it, don't need it? Its only there if you do.

But what they have now is frankly disgusting and outright pig-headed. It is nothing LIKE dual-purpose, it FORCES you to interact with elements that have NOTHING to do with what you want to accomplish. Now I understand since Metro is so terribly limited that they must use the desktop, but that shouldn't bother me, but what MS did is break my desktop in deference to the toy interface.

This is so simple its stupid. Put the god damned start menu back, 90% of us will be happy. Provide a means of booting to your preferred interface, you capture the other 10%. Yes, there will be those still complaining about having to "bear the burdon" of having metro on their systems when they don't want it at all, but I guarantee you if you told these hold-outs the option was having metro tag along or being saddled with this cluster-f the DP and now CP represent, they'll take Metro with a smile so long as they have the start menu and ability to select boot.

Me? I want to login using the picture password and get dumped to the desktop with a start menu. I want the picture password expanded to do a rotation of pictures (slideshow of sorts) and once I click on one it freezes to allow me to finish the login. See, I like ONE part of Win8. and they thought I was being close-minded!!

Seriously, tablet folks, give it up. Removing the start menu did NOTHING to improve Win8's desktop. The instant you try to argue is DID improve something, that's the instant you get discounted as having your head up your ____ (fill in the blank).

Stop arguing that the removal of the start menu was acceptable. It categorically was NOT, is NOT, and will never be. It was an act of sheer arrogance and an attempt to force desktop users to "embrace" the nex cluster-f "paradigm". Epic failure. EPIC.

DAS

OK let me first set a few things straight. These are in no particular order just responding as I read your post.

I'm not on the "tablet" side. I'm have all three screens. PC, Tablet, and Phone. I use them all.
I don't have to prove that removing the start menu improved anything. Matter fact I could care less that it's gone. It hasn't hurt or helped me. It's just different. I can still do all the things I was able to do with the button so I have no issue with it being gone.
I've never tried to explain "there are ways around it". I have simple stated the fact that the feature are still there and how to access them. I'm not trying to provided a way around anything. I'm simply trying to tell people how to do certain task in W8 where they have change how to access them.
You say hideous start screen where I say beautiful start screen. This is your opinion as it is mine but you try to state it as fact. It's not fact.
Metro is not a toy interface. It's a focused on content and better for touch interface. Metro will NOT replace all applications on your PC. It's not designed to either. This is why the desktop still exist and will exist for many years. We cannot say how long because we cannot read the future.
No one ever said removing the start menu improved the W8 desktop but we are also saying that it did nothing to hinder it either.
I will argue that removal of the start menu is acceptable because it's does not affect me therefore I find it as acceptable. Don't like it? SO I have my opinions also and it is just my opinion just like your thoughts are just your opinion.

W8 is going to be awesome! I cannot wait to see what else is going to change. :P

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 1:23 PM

I'm trying to follow your way. I'm using my table to its full potential, too. To dock tablet while in a office and use it as a mobile device otherwise, that was my earlier fantasy. Unfortunately, the tablet does not have 8 cores and 32 GB RAM to serve ALL of my needs. So I'm using my Acer Aspire notebook instead, and there's no improvement in using tablet's Metro UI on large displays while docked, on the contrary.

You are fascinated by the give-away from the DevCon, and you are trying to deserve it. Just as I've said before, just another Sinofsky's boy, Aroush, Cannon, et al. No real arguments expected.

vjj

Well you have to have the right tablet to even attempt to do a desktop replacement. Here is a link to one that you could use.

There's nothing to fix about the Metro UI on larger screens. It scales very nicely.

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Edited by Bobby J Cannon Tuesday, May 01, 2012 1:25 PM

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 1:54 PM

The thing that bothers me most about this "dual nature of Win8" discussion is none of our counterparts on the tablet side can show how removing the start menu from the desktop improved anything.

I'm not on the tablet side. Probably won't even buy a Windows tablet and I don't own one. I prefer laptops for mobile and I always have my phone(which I rarely use but for PHONE).

I agree they should have an option to go straight to the Desktop and put back the Start Menu and it should be the default with an icon pinned to the Taskbar that would launch the Metro Start Screen. Or make it an install time option. It would be easy and it would please the a lot of people. But if that doesn't happen I can find a way to work with no loss of productivity, already have.

I never argued against the Start Menu, only showed how you can get the same functionality without it. I think Metro by itself isn't great on a Desktop though the right apps could change my mind. But I do understand their overall strategy.

@vjj

Your comments are a shining example of higher education.

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 2:07 PM

>I never argued against the Start Menu, ...

Same here, and I actually wish they'd put it back, as well as a way to

boot to the desktop. But if they don't it's not enough of a reason to

not use Windows 8 for me as it's working quite well for me as is.

Bob Comer - Microsoft MVP Virtual Machine

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 3:14 PM

Bobby:

Epic failure on your part too.

"

I've never tried to explain "there are ways around it". I have simple stated the fact that the feature are still there and how to access them. I'm not trying to provided a way around anything. I'm simply trying to tell people how to do certain task in W8 where they have change how to access them."

In essence, you are so entrenched in this so deeply, you can't even realize when you make my case for me. In the same bullet point you explain how ways around isn't really ways around? Dear God my good man, have you no shame?

Actually, you are Aroush are a hoot. I used some of the posts he made during the DP in my own posts here, and he argued with me like I was some sort of idiot for saying such a thing. It was an inside joke with a couple other posters here, so the entertainment value was worth the price of admission. That's the glory of TechNet, you can find most anything if you look for it. Basically neither of you are being honest, you are here to be arguementative and little more.

DAS

LOL, We are being honest. I think you and the other trolls are a "hoot". You guys should just give your opinion without all the "troll drama". Everything I've stated has been my opinions, experiences and I've never suggested anything more.

You guys want to run around like children and attack other people for having their own opinion. I've not once told anyone on the forums they were wrong except when they are TECHNICALLY wrong. Then all I do is offer the FACTS. I've never attack someones opinion. You don't like Metro and I think that is perfectly valid. I would never suggest that you were "wrong". However I can disagree and enjoy the Metro experience.

To summaries, please quit attacking people and just have a discussion. You need to get used to having people disagree and how to live with it. This is life.

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 3:14 PM

I think he means the functionality is still there and you just get to it differently as opposed to having functionality REMOVED, which is what many claim.

I don't see his OPINIONS as argumentative at all. I'm sure your inside jokes really impressed the boys club. Godwin is going to arrive shortly, I can feel it.

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 8:24 PM

Well you have to have the right tablet to even attempt to do a desktop replacement. Here is a link to one that you could use.

There's nothing to fix about the Metro UI on larger screens. It scales very nicely.

Bobby Cannon

that's a joke, isn't it. The power of the tablet referenced corresponds to the notebook I've been using ten years ago.

I have had the privilege to test one of the first touch screens on Apple's laptop about thirty years ago and I liked it. So nothing new with Windows 8 for me, at least.

I do not see any merit in fixing Metro UI for desktop. It's designed for tablets only (ask its developers, not Sinofsky). No scaling can substitute for windowing.

I do understand that you are very satisfied with Metro UI, but that's no excuse for forcing this tablet-only oriented UI on other desktop users.

vjj

Edited by vjj Tuesday, May 01, 2012 8:25 PM
Edited by vjj Tuesday, May 01, 2012 8:25 PM

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 9:01 PM

>that's a joke, isn't it. The power of the tablet referenced

>corresponds to the notebook I've been using ten years ago.

?? It's actually got a second gen i5 processor that's a lot faster than

any PC processor 10 years ago, not to mention it has a fast SSD drive

-- enough to make it feel faster than my first gen i7 laptop.

Bob Comer - Microsoft MVP Virtual Machine

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 9:30 PM

And the conversation just degrades... One can't hope to express an opinion without offending someone else. Sigh.

Those on one "side" think those on the other "side" are misguided or naive or just plain wrong. This is clearly true of both camps. It is what it is.

Thing is, Microsoft has been working to polarize our viewpoints to their gain. We've all been manipulated. The very fact that we're debating this hotly is good for them - it keeps Microsoft in the news.

Whatever they release, we're all going to end up figuring out some way to use it. It's just not the advancement of the state of the art that some of us expected.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBook:
In development:

Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 9:50 PM

Those on one "side" think those on the other "side" are misguided or naive or just plain wrong. This is clearly true of both camps. It is what it is.

Thing is, Microsoft has been working to polarize our viewpoints to their gain. We've all been manipulated. The very fact that we're debating this hotly is good for them - it keeps Microsoft in the news.

From Aroush:

Sue me. Spam me. Stalk me. Call me an idiot and a moron who "doesn't do real work". Act like a bunch of little kids all you want. Because that is exactly the kind of replies both me and Bobby (and others who agree) have received.

Here's an idea: try to be a bit constructive instead of demanding microsoft to return windows to the state it was in 2002 with XP.

Aroush's comment here proves your point. Aroush complains that he has been accused of not doing real work, but then he turns around and accuses me of not being constructive and wanting Microsoft to return to 2002 (neithier of which is actually true). I don't want Windows to be outdated; I just don't think the Metro UI is a good idea.

Edited by WindowsVista567 Tuesday, May 01, 2012 9:50 PM

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 9:52 PM

?? It's actually got a second gen i5 processor that's a lot faster than

any PC processor 10 years ago, not to mention it has a fast SSD drive

-- enough to make it feel faster than my first gen i7 laptop.

Bob Comer - Microsoft MVP Virtual Machine

CPU is not the only speed factor. Limited RAM slows down the whole system under real load. I accept it's not needed for Bob's and yours immersive style of "work". But I need machine with at least two i7 processors and at least 32 GB of RAM. And no Metro UI while docked. Of course, I would prefer fully customizable Aero UI while mobile, too.

Once more, what's the reason the Metro boys continue to impose the Metro UI on others that either do not want it or do not like it? Just state once that you like it. You will not help others by repeating this simple fact, in the least. I want Windows 8 as flexible as possible, with possibility to modify desktop, start menu, etc. , with possibility to have as many windows as I like, either docked or overlapped. The fact you like your immersive Metro UI will neither help me, nor others.

vjj

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 10:27 PM

Once more, what's the reason the Metro boys continue to impose the Metro UI on others that either do not want it or do not like it? Just state once that you like it. You will not help others by repeating this simple fact, in the least.

Can you do the same about not liking the Start Screen? The old Start Menu is just a very simple menu system in an operating system after all.

Look what I wrote about having the Start button and Menu back. I agree with you. Maybe they'll change it for the RC or before it goes gold. Let's hope so.

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 11:22 PM

>CPU is not the only speed factor. Limited RAM slows down the whole system

> under real load.

True, but I had very few machines with 4G of RAM back then. (they

didn't even make RAM that fast) and the SSD doing the swapping is quite

a bit faster than a 10 year old hard drive.

>I accept it's not needed for Bob's and yours immersive style of "work".

When my tablet doesn't have the RAM I need, I remote to my desktop that

does -- but still I'm using the slate productively.

>But I need machine with at least two i7 processors and at least 32 GB of RAM.

That is definitely not a typical PC, no normal desktop have 2 i7's, and

32G of RAM -- you need workstation or server class hardware to get that

and I can bet it was quite a bit more expensive than my slate.

>Once more, what's the reason the Metro boys continue to impose the Metro UI on

> others that either do not want it or do not like it?

I'm not imposing anything on you, just responding to arguments that

don't fit the facts from my viewpoint.

Microsoft is the one that designed and programmed Windows 8, don't

blame us...

>The fact you like your immersive Metro UI will neither help me, nor others.

I'm just stating my opinion, just like you.

Bob Comer - Microsoft MVP Virtual Machine

Wednesday, May 02, 2012 9:53 AM

5

It's simply not going to happen.

There isn't one thing I could say that you would accept anyway. You guys will continue to hate Windows 8 and Metro no matter what. Nothing anyone says will change that.

Doesn't mean I won't continue to share my thoughts on why I like about W8. No one has to agree with me. All I ask is that just accept that these are my thought and to pleas stop with the petty childish comments. Earlier I was blamed to have called some people "lazy" and trying to persuade peoples thought. I never did either of those.

I'm simple stating just like you guys what I think about W8. I'm not a fanboy out here trying to get everyone to accept W8. I have my own issue with W8 but I don't feel that I need to share them because other have already stated the issue. Maybe not the way I would have approached it but it's already been stated. For instance I do feel that discovery of certain options are way too hard. Who is someone going to know to run their mouse cursor into the bottom left corner?

We hear your arguments...not better, but different...However, the challenge was to provide some proof that "different" is better. Why change anything if the change is not better? Just for the shake of a change? The term "fanboy" describes a fan that follows a trend without a clearly logical explanation as to why his/her choice is better.

Unfortunately, the Microsoft choices with Metro/WinRT are quite transparent. MS wants to turn as many desktops and laptops into glorified tablets in order to create a critical mass for its portable solution. MS feels that the road forward in gaining market share with a distinct portable OS is closed. Windows Phone 7/7.5 has been a commercial disaster. MS marketshare now in portable computing hovers at about 1.5% of the total market. Thus, MS executives have decided that the only way of making progress was to bolt a portable OS (Metro/WinRT) to every copy of Windows, turning as many machines as possible into portables (tablets). Thus, you have two runtime modules totally incompatible with each other: WinRT (the portable OS) and Win32 (the desktop OS). You have full screen, non-windowing, non-user manageable apps running in one (WinRT) and windowing, user manageable applications running in the other (Win32). MS hopes that by turning as many desktops as possible into huge tablets, it would give its developers a good consumer base to sell their apps and that it would condition users to buy its portable solutions.

This much is clearly transparent. That many users would fall prey to this tactic, such as you, is also inescapable. There is always a group of people who go along with the "fashion". There is little doubt that MS is betting heavily on "fashion" (the "new" touch interface) without having to prove any specific advantages to users. In fact, MS is proceeding along this path knowing very well that the "touch-first" policy leads to loss of productivity in the desktop. But it hopes to be able to sell on "fashion", for the reasons that I mentioned.

MS is absolutely scared stiff that it will be shut out from the portable OS market...and for a good reason. Win8 is Microsoft's "last stand" to gain some kind of foothold in that market. It is a naked, transparent ploy that can only work because of Microsoft's relation with OEMs. Hundreds of millions of pre-loaded Win8 will be sold. But if the Win8 installed base does not reach at least 30% after 3 years, this marketing ploy would have turned into a disaster.

Wednesday, May 02, 2012 3:59 PM

We hear your arguments...not better, but different...However, the challenge was to provide some proof that "different" is better.

So I could start a new thread called "What makes the Start Screen worse than the Start Menu?" then you could come and tell us why you "think" it's worse but it's still your opinion.

Just because someone challenges to describe how the start screen beats the start menu doesn't mean the start menu is better. It's subjective at best. All these post are opinions and not "fact". It all depends on the user on whether or not the changes are better or worse.

In the end the majority could be considered fact but we don't have that data yet and won't until the product goes gold. There is no way for Microsoft to read into the future. All they can do is try to adapt to the changing market and see what happens.

At least we get some good passionate discussion out of it. :P

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Wednesday, May 02, 2012 6:30 PM

...you have two runtime modules totally incompatible with each other: WinRT (the portable OS) and Win32 (the desktop OS).

Well worth repeating. This sums it right up in a nutshell.

Some of us futilely imagine that they could have been compatible, with maybe just a little smarter engineering.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBook:
In development:

Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

Wednesday, May 02, 2012 6:56 PM

Some of us futilely imagine that they could have been compatible, with maybe just a little smarter engineering.

Maybe. I think the idea was a clean break with no backwards compatibility code required. No dependencies or security issues related to that either. Lean code to run on the types of devices that Metro will be best on.

There is Hyper-V if you want to run full screen Metro apps in a window with virtually (no pun intended) no performance hit...with the exception of graphically intensive apps. Not the most convenient thing but it does work. I'm guessing VMWare Workstation might have some interesting updates too.

Thursday, May 03, 2012 4:32 AM

Did consider for a number of years to redo the start menu myself. So I was obviously annoyed with it. It did not handle the complexity of having a multitude of apps and tools installed at the same time.

Now I have switched to running my workflow on Win8. Works must better ...

The Start Screen is swift and fast to use - especially with the keyboard shortcuts in my case (don't have a touch screen).

I guess I use the Start Screen much like I would use the Taskbar on the Desktop to organize the programs I use the most - only I can have more icons or tiles there - and organized into groups in a more readable manner (i.e. aka whitespace on web design and coherence)

If I need to go and start something else I go WinKey + Q - and get that apps list. It's pretty easy to browse - especially with those blue colored headings. So I don't yet need to use the search option that WinKey + Q defaults too when entering that list.

Before Win8 I would actually take i.e. a video tool like VLC and throw it into a subfolder \Start Menu\Programs\Tools\Video or something like that.
No need to do that now ...

So the great thing is that I can actually use the new Start programs system out-of-the-box - much like I could with the redesigned Taskbar in Win7 ...
I think that's great news for users ...

I did have concerns initially when just looking at that flat view in the apps list. However, I think to criticize it - you need to have been using it. It's much better than what was there previously ...

So the in the real world … Start Screen and the Apps list is a innovation or reinvention of starting programs in Windows.

Besides that, most users will still use launch. That is - in the perspective of starting programs - to start programs indirectly by activating data i.e. documents (not using Start Screen, Apps List or legacy Start Menu). I.e. I don't need to have the PDF-Reader on my Start Screen or TaskBar - and I was always annoyed to have it around in the legacy Start Menu. Fortunately now it can be back propagated to the Apps List.

Regards,
Computermensch

Thursday, May 03, 2012 11:04 AM

Some of us futilely imagine that they could have been compatible, with maybe just a little smarter engineering.

Maybe. I think the idea was a clean break with no backwards compatibility code required. No dependencies or security issues related to that either. Lean code to run on the types of devices that Metro will be best on.

There is Hyper-V if you want to run full screen Metro apps in a window with virtually (no pun intended) no performance hit...with the exception of graphically intensive apps. Not the most convenient thing but it does work. I'm guessing VMWare Workstation might have some interesting updates too.

A much, much cleaner solution would have been for Microsoft to have released their WinRT portable OS for devices that can get benefit from it and allow WinRT apps to run in a window in the desktop. This is possible today (there is a number of solutions) for Android apps. The same for OSX; it can run iOS apps in a window. I have difficulty believing that this would have not been possible for a company with the resources of Microsoft. Instead, Win8 is an amazing kludge with two poorly bolted OSes, two different kinds of apps and a total mess in UIs. There is no doubt that some would find this mess appealing as a mess that needs to be "understood" and "trained for". Those who would point the weird inconsistencies are going to be branded as persons "resisting change".

Microsoft is terribly scared to take its portable OS (WinRT) to the fight against Android and iOS alone. It feels that it needs to bolt it to Windows proper and force it on users to stand a chance. This utilization of the installed base to get a leg up in the portable OS fight is one of most cynical plays I have seen for some time. It is totally devoid of value for the desktop/laptop user.

Thursday, May 03, 2012 12:40 PM

The two worlds (pc/laptops vs. tablets and other mobile devices) have way too different usages, with rather marginal overlaps

There was a time when they said that about cell phones.

Thursday, May 03, 2012 12:46 PM

"I find it mildly insulting when people imply that folks not loving all the new stuff are just resistant to change"

And I find it mildly insulting when people imply that folks that like the new stuff are people that "don't do real work". Which is something you have become infamous for on this forum.

Some of us have... We certainly know... We've seen it before. We are also capable...

It's funny when a paragraphe filled with such a condescending tone is followed by this:

To say that"Different" is perceived as "negative" and "bad" by a lot of you just comes across as dismissive ad hominem.

"Microsoft is no less than abandoningthe serious computer market - at least temporarily - and choosing to avoid making real operating systems in preference to running toys"

You have stated this more then once in just about any thread on here. Not once did I actually see any support of that statement. There's a desktop part in windows 8 that lets you do just about everything windows 7 lets you do. Do you really seriously believe that the loss of the start menu is enough justification for that statement?

Tell it to the thousands, millions of people who don't even use the start menu and are just as productive as you are.

Thursday, May 03, 2012 12:51 PM

Hi, I'm a desktop user.

Edited by Aroush Thursday, May 03, 2012 12:52 PM

Thursday, May 03, 2012 12:54 PM

Nobody is forcing anything. If you don't want it on your desktop, then stick with 7 - which will still be relevant for years to come.

Thursday, May 03, 2012 12:57 PM

I wasn't talking to you nore did I mention you. The fact that you feel targeted says more about you then me.

I was talking about all the whiners who keep yapping about how windows 8 is not like windows XP.

Thursday, May 03, 2012 1:20 PM

"Microsoft is no less than abandoning the serious computer market - at least temporarily - and choosing to avoid making real operating systems in preference to running toys"

You have stated this more then once in just about any thread on here. Not once did I actually see any support of that statement.

No support is needed, because it is obvious to anyone.

But for you I'll sum it up...

Every version of Windows that has been released has needed tweaking and some stuff added to it (at the very least, applications, but also many accessories) to set it up to be the most productive possible working environment. This is different for every person, but it's been facilitated by Microsoft through the features and functions they provide with Windows.

Lately it's been taking more and more effort to do so. I didn't say it was impossible, and in fact up above, in this very thread, I said that with unprecedented effort Windows 8 can actually be made into a happening system that would warm the heart of the most serious geek. I've done it, and I'm about to release a book to show anyone how to do it.

But something is different this time: Microsoft has been actively, almost spitefully, REMOVING the features and functions that allow people to customize Windows to be the OS that drives their business desktop. Things like deprecating the Backup & Restore facility, removing the ability for people to start applications the way they want, removing the ability for people to customize the look and feel of their desktop, removing the ability to deconfigure idiot-proofing features like UAC, adding useless defaults like HomeGroup networking...

All these add up to a clear direction change: Microsoft is aiming what was once a real, serious computer Operating System at the mass market, to run peoples' toys, leaving serious users behind.

I'm talking big picture direction here, the kind of thing interesting to executives and investors in planning. Fortunately for we geeks there's still enough "real, serious" left in Windows 8 to make use of it.

It's okay if you don't agree with my assessment. I don't mind a bit. But it doesn't change it and I don't plan to stop saying it just because it hurts your feelings.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBook:
In development:

Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

Edited by Noel CarboniMicrosoft Community Contributor Thursday, May 03, 2012 1:29 PM Changed "any idiot" to "anyone". It is not my intent to insult.

Thursday, May 03, 2012 1:23 PM

No support is needed, because it is obvious to any idiot.

Oh that's why I didn't get it. I'm not an idiot. hehe

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Thursday, May 03, 2012 1:32 PM

Microsoft is terribly scared to take its portable OS (WinRT) to the fight against Android and iOS alone.

Not scared but rather smart. They know it would be foolish to create a portable OS for just tablets, a phone OS for just phones, and an OS for just "desktops". W8 will be the OS for all three devices. Windows Phone will eventually run on the core of W8. Not sure if it will be WP8 because they've stated that they're not sure they can pull it off in time. Why have three OSes when you can have one that will work on all devices? It's putting Windows on all screens. And it's the smart thing to do.

Before anyone is confused by me saying Windows Phone will run W8 doesn't mean you will even see W8 or know that it's changed. WP8 will end up looking like Windows Phone. However Windows CE will be replace with W8 core.

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Thursday, May 03, 2012 1:38 PM

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w8itprogeneral/thread/18b53644-6c6b-4d32-820a-53134a0913f3

But something is different this time: Microsoft has been actively, almost spitefully, REMOVING the features and functions that allow people to customize Windows to be the OS that drives their business desktop.

I probably don't need to mention the big list of features and configuration options removed from Windows 8 that xpclient compiled, but I will anyway:

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBook:
In development:

Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

Thursday, May 03, 2012 1:44 PM

>Oh that's why I didn't get it. I'm not an idiot. hehe

Not only an idiot, but a delusional idiot. </sarcasm>

So disrepectful of others experiences and opinions...

Bob Comer - Microsoft MVP Virtual Machine

Thursday, May 03, 2012 2:03 PM

Lol, it doesn't hurt my feelings. I'll leave "feeling hurt" by criticism of my platform of choice to mac-boys.

I just think you are heavily exagerating.

I agree something is different now. In the sense that this windows release is giving consumers more love where as in the past all the loving went to enterprise users. But I don't agree that enterprise users are really being hurt by it.

I'm an enterprise user. We have several win8 machines here already, being used to develop metro companions to our existing products. Some of these might even be completely replaced by a metro app.

We work on these things on a practically daily basis and we do just fine.

There's off course always room for improvement and previous windows versions were no exception.

Thursday, May 03, 2012 2:05 PM

But something is different this time: Microsoft has been actively, almost spitefully, REMOVING the features and functions that allow people to customize Windows to be the OS that drives their business desktop.

I probably don't need to mention the big list of features and configuration options removed from Windows 8 that xpclient compiled, but I will anyway:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w8itprogeneral/thread/18b53644-6c6b-4d32-820a-53134a0913f3

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBook:
In development:

Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

Just by scanning that list you will quickly realize that this HUGE list of missing features is not missing "features" at all. Most of it is opinion or "features" like the windows logo being removed on boot? I'm pretty sure that the windows boot logo is not a feature. What about "The ability to boot directly to the desktop". This in't a missing feature because it was never a feature in W7. Basically I feel the list is padded by "non features" to just pad the list. There are not many features "missing" and the ones that are missing are the ones that Microsoft feels need to change based on USAGE METRICS they have gathered. Their decisions are being backed by data and not "feelings" of a few.

There are some items in the list that are valid but every OS has little things like "Device Manager no longer shows Non-Plug and Play Drivers/hidden devices." that are going to happen. It's what happen when you revision software. Features or options that become no longer relevant get remove or changed.

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Thursday, May 03, 2012 2:07 PM

It's the internet. People get carried away and/or other people take things in a way they weren't intended to be taken.

It's all good.

Thursday, May 03, 2012 5:21 PM

Thank you, Aroush. That's nice of you to say, and I'd like to back it up: I'm sorry if the way I've said things has bothered anyone. Perhaps I do tend to overemphasize my viewpoints using provocative language. I am definitely not here to try to insult anyone or put them or their work down and I for one greatly appreciate that everyone here is contributing their opinions. We're all learning from this.

I hope that everyone can follow Aroush's lead and take others' points of view with only the best intentions.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBook:
In development:

Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

Thursday, May 03, 2012 7:38 PM

@Aroush

Actually, you posted that comment as a reply to something I posted, so I assumed that you were replying to me. My post is marked as "Deleted," because I removed it after I read your post. Here is your post in the thread view:

"The fact that you feel targeted says more about you then me."

Please, do not say that. Remember that I have never posted anything to this forum with malicious intent. What it does say about me is that I live according to a very strict code of conduct, and I do not want to do anything to annoy or offend anyone.

My complaints about Metro are my actual opinions, and are not intended to offend anyone in any way.

Edited by WindowsVista567 Thursday, May 03, 2012 7:42 PM
Edited by WindowsVista567 Thursday, May 03, 2012 7:42 PM
Edited by WindowsVista567 Friday, May 04, 2012 1:10 AM

Thursday, May 03, 2012 10:21 PM

This thread gets an interesting direction. Originally, the question (or assertion) "How the Start Menu beats the Start Screen". I'm not too concerned about this one. The Windows 7 start menu isn't the ultimate solution, too, containing too much useless stuff (for me) like "libraries", "most frequent used programs" and the like. There are better ways to manage these things like task bar pinning, etc. The Metro start screen from CP, on the other hand, is an unorganized screen clutter that needs much and more fine tuning to present any easy navigation (it's improved in the upcoming Release Preview). But - a central advantage of the start menu model (from Windows 95 until today) gets lost in the current "make-it-touchscreen-easy" trend: being able to reach the most essential parts of the OS from a single point (control panel, start/shutdown options, computer contents, etc.). I'm really tired of hearing that you can also access the same features in the Metro environment, with a bit more effort, of course. "Change" doesn't mean things are evolving necessarily to the worse but, inversely, it doesn't mean they evolve to the better. So, I see no need in being more catholic than the Pope only to defend wrong decisions which may be corrected by the time-flow.

Think of it: Most of the changes we're discussing here can be circumvented by home-made or 3d party solutions. That means two different things, 1) there can't be any intrinsic need for the current UI enforcement, and 2) the decision for the "start screen predominance" is merely deliberate.

Understanding Windows is like understanding women.

Friday, May 04, 2012 3:10 AM

5

Microsoft is terribly scared to take its portable OS (WinRT) to the fight against Android and iOS alone.

Not scared but rather smart. They know it would be foolish to create a portable OS for just tablets, a phone OS for just phones, and an OS for just "desktops". W8 will be the OS for all three devices. Windows Phone will eventually run on the core of W8. Not sure if it will be WP8 because they've stated that they're not sure they can pull it off in time. Why have three OSes when you can have one that will work on all devices? It's putting Windows on all screens. And it's the smart thing to do.

Before anyone is confused by me saying Windows Phone will run W8 doesn't mean you will even see W8 or know that it's changed. WP8 will end up looking like Windows Phone. However Windows CE will be replace with W8 core.

Not smart...just scared, and scared stiff. I think that Microsoft was traumatized by the dramatic failure of Windows Phone 7/7.x. Within a couple of years, its market share, which was about 25% when it decided to retire WinMo 6.5, has declined to 1.5% and it is likely still falling. Of course, the WP7/7.x executives were fired or re-assigned and even WP7/7.x is being retired (including the devices).

Thus, in order to gain market share, Microsoft has decided to foist its mobile OS to the desktop users. Now, everybody buying a Win8 desktop or laptop has automatically bought Microsoft's mobile OS. These purchasers (read suckers) would be subjected to sales pressure to buy ridiculous portable (read Metro) apps that have little utility in the desktop. It is really a comedy of immense proportions. Microsoft is attempting to turn every desktop/laptop into a glorified super-sized smartphone or tablet.

Any other decent company would have provided a super desktop OS for desktops and laptops and provided also a way to run in it all kinds of mobile apps if the users wanted to do this. Microsoft could have made their desktop OS a compelling proposition allowing the users to run in it not only WP7/7.x/8 apps but also Android apps (which can be done with 3rd party programs). Instead of dumbing down computing, it should have made its OS so incredibly rich and capable, as to become the "unavoidable" OS. But Microsoft does not have any such guts. It is a gutless wonder, resorting to cheap tricks.

Microsoft is terribly afraid of becoming irrelevant in the consumer space. However, it has never been a consumer-driven company. It was mainly an enterprise-based company. At the life of any company, a moment comes when a decision to focus on core expertise must be made. IBM had no difficulty making it and it is very profitable today although probably irrelevant to the consumer. Microsoft's inability to make this decision may destroy the company, if others can take advantage of its mistakes.

Even the best of projections do not have Microsoft gaining anything more than 15% of the mobile market by 2016 and this even highly optimistic. My own guess is that MS is not going to fare nowhere as well. Its tablets are already well behind iPad's specs!!!! ICS 4.0 on tablets is so much better than WinRT/Metro, it is not even funny!! User experience in Win8 is degraded in comparison to Win7 Microsoft is sleepwalking to its Waterloo.

Edited by ADRz Friday, May 04, 2012 3:12 AM

Friday, May 04, 2012 4:19 AM

I think that Microsoft was traumatized by the dramatic failure of Windows Phone 7/7.x. Within a couple of years, its market share, which was about 25% when it decided to retire WinMo 6.5, has declined to 1.5% and it is likely still falling. Of course, the WP7/7.x executives were fired or re-assigned and even WP7/7.x is being retired (including the devices).

Sadly, the "failure" of Windows Phone doesn't exactly come down to the executives in the WP7/7.5 team, but rather Microsoft's lack of advertising. I'm not sure how much advertising there was in the US, or any other country, but here in Australia, I've seen no advertising for WP7/7.5. None. Even the Telcos and Phone retailers had little/no in-store advertising. I only knew that WP7 was coming, because I was looking for a replacement for my Samsung Omnia Icon (a WinMo 6.5 phone). Only recently, with Nokia's push, have I seen anything WP7 related (two Telco stores in the Brisbane CBD have the Nokia Lumia 800 out the front of the store. It is the first thing you see when you walk in). Lack of advertising can kill a product faster than the product can (think Sega Dreamcast).

For Windows 8 to survive, and even WP8 and MS, there needs to be much more advertising. I think even WP7.5 could make a slight comeback, if MS advertised it.

I can see, and agree, that there are good points to Windows 8, but there are things that MS are doing that are causing a lot of grief for tech enthusiasts, and "self-appointed" hard workers (no offence intended). Everyone has their opinions, about our favoured OS, the company behind it, the way each of us work, and how we achieve our effectiveness in our chosen OS. Personally, I don't think that Metro is quite right for tech enthusiasts just yet, but for the average consumer, or users who seem to adapt faster, Windows 8 and Metro may work for them. I know at least two people in my family who could use Windows 8 with a little training (one of whom needed training to use Windows 7). For me, Metro is close, but not quite there yet. I like the live tiles, but I hate that software installations "spam" my Start Screen with icons. I like the ability to sort out my tiles as I see fit, and group them accordingly, but I hate they way that All Apps appears to be a big mash of icons, albeit marginally grouped. I like the security/isolation idea behind Metro Apps, but I hate the fact that they run fullscreen and not windowed.

IMO, Metro is neither better, nor worse than the Start Menu. It is harder to find some things, and it takes longer to access others, but Metro can evolve, just like the Start Menu did. We need to give it a chance, regardless of how inept it currently seems.

Friday, May 04, 2012 5:09 AM

I much prefer my tablet running a tablet OS running tablet apps, my desktop / laptop pc running a desktop / laptop OS running "full-blown" apps and cloud services syncing / sharing data amonst my devices. As much as I like Metro I don't think it belongs on traditional desktops / laptops - on tablets or touch-screen devices, absolutely.

Friday, May 04, 2012 12:32 PM

Sadly, the "failure" of Windows Phone doesn't exactly come down to the executives in the WP7/7.5 team, but rather Microsoft's lack of advertising. ......

For Windows 8 to survive, and even WP8 and MS, there needs to be much more advertising. I think even WP7.5 could make a slight comeback, if MS advertised it.

I can see, and agree, that there are good points to Windows 8, but there are things that MS are doing that are causing a lot of grief for tech enthusiasts, ................. but I hate the fact that they run fullscreen and not windowed.

I disagree in some of the details here. For WP7/7.5, I do not think that this model failed because of lack of advertizing. It failed (a) because of lackluster hardware, (b) lack of differentiation among vendors and (c) because of Microsoft's business model. Microsoft's business model is to attract corporate partners that incorporate its solutions in their products. In terms of WP, none of its partners had any enthusiasm for it. Why would LG, Dell, Samsung, HTC and others be enthused about WP? Their sets using this OS are unremarkable and lack differentiation. On the other hand, all of these manufacturers can strongly differentiate themselves with Android. HTC with the One X and Samsung with Galaxy SII/SIII are doing just that. Android allows these manufacturers to push the envelop in terms of hardware and software and to create a strong brand presence. WinMo allowed the same level of customization, but WP herded all manufacturers into the same mantra. Microsoft attempted to merge its business model (doing business with partners) with the Apple one (only one device) and it was all a disaster. Now, Dell and LG have abandoned WP and Nokia is slowly sinking.

As for Win8, Microsoft is doing the wrong thing again. Having removed most customization possibilities from the user, it has removed those from the manufacturers as well. Win8 tablets are going to look alike, whatever the manufacturer. What incentive is there for OEMs to try to sell undifferentiated consumer devices??? On the other hand, Android 4.0 allows them to build highly differentiated, brand-enhancing solutions while giving consumers access to a better interface and a better ecosystem. There should not be any doubt here that Android 4.0 for tablets is a far more flexible and far more polished solution than Windows 8. I am sure that Android 5.0 will soon add a lot more distance between the platforms. Microsoft is a day late and a dollar short in portable OSes.

Wednesday, May 09, 2012 1:21 AM

They know it would be foolish to create a portable OS for just tablets, a phone OS for just phones, and an OS for just "desktops". W8 will be the OS for all three devices. Windows Phone will eventually run on the core of W8. Not sure if it will be WP8 because they've stated that they're not sure they can pull it off in time. Why have three OSes when you can have one that will work on all devices? It's putting Windows on all screens. And it's the smart thing to do.

Why is this the smart thing to do? Portable devices and desktop devices are very different environments. The massive difference in screen size is just one example. Do you see Apple forcing the same OS onto both Macs and iPads? No, because they understand it would be counterproductive. So there is OS X and iOS. Now, do these operating systems share some common code and frameworks? Yes they do, but the user interfaces are quite different between the two. That's the key.

I don't understand why choice is perceived as a bad thing now. If you (and others) like Metro on the desktop so much, fine, but why deny others the choice not to use it? There's no reason for Windows 8 not to have a pure desktop mode that can be booted into without Metro (it would be completely unloaded, not just hidden). Then you can also have a pure Metro mode with Win32 completely unloaded, which would be the default for tablets. Finally, you can have a hybrid mode for using both, like Win8 is currently structured. I would never use that mode, but if others want to use it, then why not? More choice is good.

Lack of choice is the biggest problem with Microsoft right now. I tried discussing that here in another thread.

Thanks for reading,
Sarah

Wednesday, May 09, 2012 2:47 PM

There's no reason for Windows 8 not to have a pure desktop mode that can be booted into without Metro (it would be completely unloaded, not just hidden).

It's all because Marketing is driving the ship. Said in a word: Greed. They feel that forcing people through Metro will keep it fresh in their minds and make them apt to buy more toys through the App Store.

Products reflect the personality of the business leaders. When a technical visionary steps aside and gives the reigns to business people, this is the expected outcome.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBook:
In development:

Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

Wednesday, May 09, 2012 4:34 PM

Dear Start Menu,

Why is it, that everything good in life eventually fades into oblivion? I'll miss you so much. I tried to forget you, but metro reminds me of you each passing moment. Now that you are gone, I remember how your face became flushed every time I touched you with cursor. The Taskbar feels lonely without you. It's the same way I lost Advanced Tag Editor from Windows Media Player 12.

And now you have left me with broken heart for the second time.

Always yours,

Sushobhan

আলোকের এই ঝর্নাধারায় ধুইয়ে দাও

Thursday, May 10, 2012 12:47 AM

There's no reason for Windows 8 not to have a pure desktop mode that can be booted into without Metro (it would be completely unloaded, not just hidden).

It's all because Marketing is driving the ship. Said in a word: Greed. They feel that forcing people through Metro will keep it fresh in their minds and make them apt to buy more toys through the App Store.

Products reflect the personality of the business leaders. When a technical visionary steps aside and gives the reigns to business people, this is the expected outcome.

I am not sure that marketing is driving this. I think that desperation is. What is now Microsoft's share in mobile OSes? 1.5%? If that. iOS and Android dominate and dominate decisively. In the last 2 years, Microsoft's share has plummeted. Now, their solution is to convert all the desktop/laptop users into their mobile OS (WinRT) users. With this, they achieve two things:

(a) They condition users to their UI and make them more prone to buy "Windows" phones or tablets

(b) They deliver tens of millions of users to their developers, so that they can jump-start their ecosystem. How otherwise would they reach the 500,000 apps in the Apple store???

It was this desperation that made them remove the Start Button. They knew that as long as the Start Button was there, users would be able to easily live in the desktop. They did not want this. They wanted the users to go through the Start Screen every time. This much is really transparent, they are not fooling anybody (maybe they are fooling some, who knows).

As I posted elsewhere, Microsoft does not appear to have learned the lesson from Windows Phone. They abandoned WinMo which had a 25% market share as it was the only portable OS that could be secured. They replaced it with the Metro-driven Windows Phone 7, a clearly consumer-driven portable OS that borrowed heavily from the failed Zune (another flop). This OS could not be secured, and the enterprise had no reason to remain with Microsoft. Consumers never warmed up to it. So, from 25% to 1.5% in just a couple of years, by abandoning the enterprise and chasing the consumer. They are repeating this with Win8. They never learn.

Of course, with Windows Phone, they are reversing course with WinPhone 8. Amazingly, this system is going to be compatible with WinMo (God rest its soul); it would also be secure and appropriate for the enterprise. Talking about closing the gate after the horses have bolted out!!! If Win8 follows the same pattern, then Win9 may be decent...but by then, Microsoft may just be too wounded to matter.

Thursday, May 10, 2012 12:55 AM

They know it would be foolish to create a portable OS for just tablets, a phone OS for just phones, and an OS for just "desktops". W8 will be the OS for all three devices. Windows Phone will eventually run on the core of W8. Not sure if it will be WP8 because they've stated that they're not sure they can pull it off in time. Why have three OSes when you can have one that will work on all devices? It's putting Windows on all screens. And it's the smart thing to do.

Why is this the smart thing to do? Portable devices and desktop devices are very different environments. The massive difference in screen size is just one example. Do you see Apple forcing the same OS onto both Macs and iPads? No, because they understand it would be counterproductive. So there is OS X and iOS. Now, do these operating systems share some common code and frameworks? Yes they do, but the user interfaces are quite different between the two. That's the key.

I don't understand why choice is perceived as a bad thing now. If you (and others) like Metro on the desktop so much, fine, but why deny others the choice not to use it? There's no reason for Windows 8 not to have a pure desktop mode that can be booted into without Metro (it would be completely unloaded, not just hidden). Then you can also have a pure Metro mode with Win32 completely unloaded, which would be the default for tablets. Finally, you can have a hybrid mode for using both, like Win8 is currently structured. I would never use that mode, but if others want to use it, then why not? More choice is good.

Lack of choice is the biggest problem with Microsoft right now. I tried discussing that here in another thread.

Thanks for reading,
Sarah

Sarah,

I stated much the same in other forums. Of course, Microsoft does not want you to have choice, otherwise the whole idea behind Win8 would defeated. If the majority of users never go through the Start Screen (as it would happen), Microsoft would fail to establish their portable OS (which you would buy along with Windows in Win8). They need Metro/WinRT users so that developers create for them a competitive ecosystem (unlikely, but hope lives eternal). So, it is a pretty clear and very transparent calculation.

Microsoft has already determined that very few users will upgrade. It expects to sell tens of millions of licenses of Win8 with new computers. So, Microsoft does not really care, unless if you downgrade to Win7 when you buy a new PC. But many would simply buy a Win8 machine and install a Win7 (a double caching for Microsoft). So, you do not really count. Not yet, anyway.

Sunday, May 13, 2012 12:49 AM

ADRz,

you know that I share most of your opinions, aside from your pessimistic view. "...by then [Windows 9], Microsoft may just be too wounded to matter", nah. No, I'm not the optimistic counterpart, rather a believer in the so-so confirmed law "too big to fail". Looking at the development of Windows since Windows 95 (that should be enough), two important decisions were first: 1) merging the two worlds of a very unsafe and unstable "consumer Windows" (mostly based on DOS) and the safer and more stable "business Windows" (based on NT), 2) cutting even more of backwards compatibility in favor of security, stability and overall performance with the "Longhorn" project (released as Vista which had the major disadvantage that the hardware of the time was a bit behind the real OS requirements, thus causing slowdowns, crashes and so on). The third step introduced some unexpected ambiguity: 3) Windows 7 was a proof that the Vista/NT foundation - with some overhauls - was capable to run smoothly on less-than-highend-machines. At the same time it came up with gimmicks which now are recognized as steps to a "consumerization": all these beautiful themes, those li'l gifts for touchscreen lovers (big taskbar and icons, even the lately to-be-shortlived WMC a scroll-around adventure), last but not least the poisonous attempt to protect the system from the user (with highlights like "hide known extensions" - a welcome backdoor for camouflage malware). The best of it - at the time of those OS innovations the correspondent hardware was nearly non-existant. And now the latest, not really biggest step: 4) Windows 8. From a mere technical viewpoint, it's another great improvement. Integrating all those fine things like the new task manager, the "system refresh" ability, the Hyper-V virtualization, etc. into the near-perfect Windows 7 interface would have been a real plus (look at the latest Linux GUI's - they didn't reinvent the wheel, too, giving the impression of a somewhat unpolished Windows). But the Windows developers felt an urge to be ahead of the hardware sector, again. They imagine a world of extremely smart phones (the most correct part, even if the MS market share is modest, here), of widely used tablets (less correct because the price doesn't allow mass production, yet), slates (even more incorrect, for the few people who can afford them, today), decreasing laptop sales (who provided THESE telemetry data*? Looking at any electronics shop, laptops and phones are by far the most sold articles) and a niche market for desktop pc's (correct, again, a mere IT pro & gamers' domain).

Now, that's a bold decision. Forcing users to live with an interface (at the moment, it's nothing more than this - an optical gimmick) that does not suit their hardware, nor does it provide any additional functionality (when it comes to launch a program slightly different from your urgent "what's the weather now?" need - ah, the sun shines, lucky Metro user I am to discover that), aside from making your usual work really "fun" and "immersive", is an enormous step to conquer markets. Markets that yet have to emerge from their present nothingness! It reminds me of Apple and the iPad. Before they created this wonderful toy, nobody felt a need for it. They created it, and BOOM! what a success. I don't know what Microsoft plans for the counterattack are. To create a market for "convertibles", as the new OS design suggests? And that will be done with and by the current OEM ecosystem? Wow! Looks like the fabulous "consumerization" is just another attempt to revive a computer market that is, altogether, quite saturated.

* The devaluation of Media Center by the "telemetry" results is similarly astonishing. If those data are reliable, no family in the world would own and buy TV sets. All are busy with viewing "streaming media" - even those with bad connectivity -, downloading their daily soaps, etc. etc. In this fictional reality, all TV tuners could be cut out from the tubes, as no one needs them anymore. Only monitors everywhere!

Understanding Windows is like understanding women.

Sunday, May 13, 2012 2:07 PM

Because decisions are driven based on telemetry, many users don't have touch screens. Therefore they should deprecate and remove touch-based everything from their OS. :P

Monday, May 14, 2012 12:01 AM

ADRz,

you know that I share most of your opinions, aside from your pessimistic view. "...by then [Windows 9], Microsoft may just be too wounded to matter", nah. No, I'm not the optimistic counterpart, rather a believer in the so-so confirmed law "too big to fail". Looking at the development of Windows since Windows 95 (that should be enough), two important decisions were first: 1) merging the two worlds of a very unsafe and unstable "consumer Windows" (mostly based on DOS) and the safer and more stable "business Windows" (based on NT), 2) cutting even more of backwards compatibility in favor of security, stability and overall performance with the "Longhorn" project (released as Vista which had the major disadvantage that the hardware of the time was a bit behind the real OS requirements, thus causing slowdowns, crashes and so on). The third step introduced some unexpected ambiguity: 3) Windows 7 was a proof that the Vista/NT foundation - with some overhauls - was capable to run smoothly on less-than-highend-machines. At the same time it came up with gimmicks which now are recognized as steps to a "consumerization": all these beautiful themes, those li'l gifts for touchscreen lovers (big taskbar and icons, even the lately to-be-shortlived WMC a scroll-around adventure), last but not least the poisonous attempt to protect the system from the user (with highlights like "hide known extensions" - a welcome backdoor for camouflage malware). The best of it - at the time of those OS innovations the correspondent hardware was nearly non-existant. And now the latest, not really biggest step: 4) Windows 8. From a mere technical viewpoint, it's another great improvement. Integrating all those fine things like the new task manager, the "system refresh" ability, the Hyper-V virtualization, etc. into the near-perfect Windows 7 interface would have been a real plus (look at the latest Linux GUI's - they didn't reinvent the wheel, too, giving the impression of a somewhat unpolished Windows). But the Windows developers felt an urge to be ahead of the hardware sector, again. They imagine a world of extremely smart phones (the most correct part, even if the MS market share is modest, here), of widely used tablets (less correct because the price doesn't allow mass production, yet), slates (even more incorrect, for the few people who can afford them, today), decreasing laptop sales (who provided THESE telemetry data*? Looking at any electronics shop, laptops and phones are by far the most sold articles) and a niche market for desktop pc's (correct, again, a mere IT pro & gamers' domain).

Now, that's a bold decision. Forcing users to live with an interface (at the moment, it's nothing more than this - an optical gimmick) that does not suit their hardware, nor does it provide any additional functionality (when it comes to launch a program slightly different from your urgent "what's the weather now?" need - ah, the sun shines, lucky Metro user I am to discover that), aside from making your usual work really "fun" and "immersive", is an enormous step to conquer markets. Markets that yet have to emerge from their present nothingness! It reminds me of Apple and the iPad. Before they created this wonderful toy, nobody felt a need for it. They created it, and BOOM! what a success. I don't know what Microsoft plans for the counterattack are. To create a market for "convertibles", as the new OS design suggests? And that will be done with and by the current OEM ecosystem? Wow! Looks like the fabulous "consumerization" is just another attempt to revive a computer market that is, altogether, quite saturated.

* The devaluation of Media Center by the "telemetry" results is similarly astonishing. If those data are reliable, no family in the world would own and buy TV sets. All are busy with viewing "streaming media" - even those with bad connectivity -, downloading their daily soaps, etc. etc. In this fictional reality, all TV tuners could be cut out from the tubes, as no one needs them anymore. Only monitors everywhere!

Understanding Windows is like understanding women.

Well, we agree on most all items. I think that the Microsoft strategy is doomed to failure for the following reasons:

(a) Creating a "convertible" market: For that to occur, one has to have an adaptable system with much more powerful hardware than what is available today. Let's say you have a touch tablet that you dock to a "desktop". For any kind of success, this tablet should offer a "touch-based" interface when undocked and revert to a "desktop" interface when docked. As things stand today, you get the same interface, docked or undocked. So, scratch this. Personally, I think that the "convertible" idea is a "rationalization" of choices already made and it was never part of the original strategy. Furthermore, these convertible systems would never make adequate desktop machines. The technology is not there to give the slate the capability of running the hardware that powers modern desktops; and it would not be available for a long, long time.

(b) Microsoft does not have a "moderate" share in smart phones. It has no share, unless you call 1.5% moderate. Windows Phone 7.x was a "reboot" that failed, to be followed now by the incompatible Windows Phone 8.x which would likely fail even worse (the few WinPhone 7.x users will be very upset to find out that their OS has been orphaned and that their handsets are not up-gradable).

(c) The iPad success is based on the "worship" of Apple. It is a unique phenomenon that has not been extended to the "tablets" as a category. When Apple releases the mini-iPad for about $300, I think that this would be the end of it for all others. If Google finally releases its Google slate (it has been kicking this around for some time), this would be another nail to Microsoft's hopes. Of course, Amazon will be advancing the Kindle aggressively. The only play that I can see here is Microsoft providing the OS for B&N Nook. Again, very, very limited. By the way, I am laughing when I see people having bought the top line iPad and then have bought an expensive case and keyboard.

Microsoft has never been a success with the consumer. Why this company, that only understands the corporate market, would like to play in the consumer space is beyond me. Maybe Microsoft feels that this the way Apple is going dominate computing and it is determined to have a counter-strategy. This strategy consist of turning their desktop users into their "mobile OS" users; it was conceived at least 2 years ago. Microsoft has not changed strategy to accommodate changes in the market. Thus, the Win8 train wreck is still "on course".

Telemetry is used "selectively" by Microsoft only when it suits it. Microsoft knows that the telemetry data is skewed. For example, in the enterprise, most of the laptops "live" in docking stations connected to high resolution displays. These data are not captured by telemetry. However, the skewed data were utilized to explain why "metro" was designed for a low resolution, small-size screen. It is all marketing, all the time. It is interesting that Microsoft is in the process of killing "Media Center" based on "telemetry". The irony here is that "Media Center" was the first application to use a "Metro-style" UI!!

Regarding Metro as a UI: It is uninteresting and it has been a spectacular failure so far. Media Center failed; Zune has failed; Windows Phone 7.x has failed. Despite all this, Microsoft is coming back for more. Does this company remind you of a punch-drunk pugilist or not??? Metro failed for the following reasons: It is not "modern"; it is not "aesthetically" pleasing; it is not customizable (or poorly customizable); and it is not efficient. Android's combination of widgets and icons is far, far superior as a GUI. Widgets are similar to self-updating tiles but they are far more customizable, more efficient and far more aesthetically pleasing. One can adjust many elements of a widget (size, location in the screen, design, type of information displayed, etc), but one cannot do this with a Metro tile.

Regarding WinRT (The portable OS behind the Metro UI): I do not see any innovation here. This system seems to replicate some elements of iOS and Android, but it does not advance the state of computing one bit. In fact, I believe that technically, it seriously trails Android 4.0. For the time being, given the choice, I would always select an Android 4.0 tablet over a WinRT tablet (not that I have any use for tablets). Not only is Android technically superior, but it also provides for a much richer ecosystem. Does anybody have any rationale as to why any user should buy a WinRT tablet???? I would like to know (seriously)

Monday, May 14, 2012 3:01 AM

I'll chime in on the "Media Center has failed".

Of course I can't argue that it hasn't been largely adopted by the masses, but the user interface a failure?

Quite frankly I think its a brilliant UI as designed for "10ft". I NEVER EVER use the cable guiode, I have the much better Media Center interface for that.

The HUGE difference, is people (should) naturally understand you don't want Windows explorer for TV and media activities on a TV, you want something that lends itself well to the "long distance" viewing. In that regard, I've tried them all, and Media Center is the hands-down winner by such a wide margin that the others just don't even merit consideration.

The problem with Media Center adoption is people didn't EXPECT to watch TV with their PC. That's it. When I tell people I've got Media center, they wonder why I would want to use media center when "God created TVs for that". They simply don't "get" that monitors far outshine TVs in every aspect, and how "my TV" (monitor) looks very much better than their consumer TV ever will.

This is a failure of Microsoft AND the TV on a pc (hardware) community to fail to advertize the experience for all its worth. MS treated media center as "yeah, we've got that for the geeks" instead of actually trying to SELL it to the public.

I've got two dedicated HTPCs in the house, and my workstation (desktop w/2 PCs) consists of a "work" machine and a Gaming/HTPC rig that most times is used as a HTPC. While I'm working on the one machine, the other is playing music, playing live or recorded TV, or even streaming movies from the internet providers.

Media center failed only because MS was too greedy , too fond of its cashflow to MAKE it work, basically to SELL it.

DAS

Edited by Win7Tester Monday, May 14, 2012 3:02 AM

Monday, May 14, 2012 6:13 AM

I'll chime in on the "Media Center has failed".

Of course I can't argue that it hasn't been largely adopted by the masses, but the user interface a failure?

Quite frankly I think its a brilliant UI as designed for "10ft". I NEVER EVER use the cable guiode, I have the much better Media Center interface for that.

The HUGE difference, is people (should) naturally understand you don't want Windows explorer for TV and media activities on a TV, you want something that lends itself well to the "long distance" viewing. In that regard, I've tried them all, and Media Center is the hands-down winner by such a wide margin that the others just don't even merit consideration.

The problem with Media Center adoption is people didn't EXPECT to watch TV with their PC. That's it. When I tell people I've got Media center, they wonder why I would want to use media center when "God created TVs for that". They simply don't "get" that monitors far outshine TVs in every aspect, and how "my TV" (monitor) looks very much better than their consumer TV ever will.

This is a failure of Microsoft AND the TV on a pc (hardware) community to fail to advertize the experience for all its worth. MS treated media center as "yeah, we've got that for the geeks" instead of actually trying to SELL it to the public.

I've got two dedicated HTPCs in the house, and my workstation (desktop w/2 PCs) consists of a "work" machine and a Gaming/HTPC rig that most times is used as a HTPC. While I'm working on the one machine, the other is playing music, playing live or recorded TV, or even streaming movies from the internet providers.

Media center failed only because MS was too greedy , too fond of its cashflow to MAKE it work, basically to SELL it.

DAS

I hear you. But your description of the "Metro" interface and its utility in Media Center summarizes its problems in Windows 8 quite well. It is not an interface really designed for the desktop/laptop and it shows.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012 12:49 PM

I hear you. But your description of the "Metro" interface and its utility in Media Center summarizes its problems in Windows 8 quite well. It is not an interface really designed for the desktop/laptop and it shows.

That's your opinion. It's the perfect interface for all screens. I love it on my desktop, laptop and tablet. I think it's great solution for all screen sizes. I couldn't imagine going back to W7.

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Tuesday, May 15, 2012 5:01 PM

It is not an interface really designed for the desktop/laptop and it shows.

That's your opinion. It's the perfect interface for all screens. I love it on my desktop, laptop and tablet. I think it's great solution for all screen sizes. I couldn't imagine going back to W7.

Bobby Cannon

Bobby, I'm tired of your feeble arguments.

You can't label the FACT ("It is not an interface really designed for the desktop/laptop and it shows") confirmed by Metro designers with the term "opinion".

You can express your personal tastelessness, with all respect, but it's ridiculous to compare your PERSONAL OPINION with the FACT above.

vjj

Tuesday, May 15, 2012 5:32 PM

Bobby, I'm tired of your feeble arguments.

You can't label the FACT ("It is not an interface really designed for the desktop/laptop and it shows") confirmed by Metro designers with the term "opinion".

You can express your personal tastelessness, with all respect, but it's ridiculous to compare your PERSONAL OPINION with the FACT above.

vjj

What has given you the power to dictate your OPINION as fact? Just because you consider it fact doesn't mean that is reality. Like I said my opinion is that METRO and all the current changes (minus the weird corner deal) is perfectly fine for the desktop. No better or WORSE that W7.

Sorry but you don't get to define what is "fact". These are both our opinions. Only time will be able to determine them as FACT. That cannot happen until the product is RELEASED. It's not even RELEASED and you've already determined based on your OPINION that it's not suitable for desktop and laptops. Here is a fact. Based on your OPINION it's not.

Sorry but I've been using it exclusively since the developer preview and in my opinion it's very suitable for desktop, laptops and tablets.

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Edited by Bobby J Cannon Tuesday, May 15, 2012 5:33 PM

Tuesday, May 15, 2012 6:29 PM

What has given you the power to dictate your OPINION as fact?

Bobby Cannon

I did not stated my opinion. Try and read slowly once more. Metro UI has not been design for desktops and laptops is a FACT stated by its designers. Confirmed.

As for the Metro usefulness, what should the final release decide?
You've been using it exclusively since the developer preview and in your opinion it's very suitable for desktop, laptops and tablets.
I've been using it exclusively since the developer preview and in my opinion it's very unsuitable for desktops, and laptops.
There's nothing to decide, just two different opinions.

vjj

Edited by vjj Tuesday, May 15, 2012 6:33 PM

Tuesday, May 15, 2012 6:44 PM

I did not stated my opinion. Try and read slowly once more. Metro UI has not been design for desktops and laptops is a FACT stated by its designers. Confirmed.

vjj

Link or it didn't happen. I very seriously doubt that Microsoft is going to state that the Metro UI has not been designed for desktops. Every time I've watch any video from Microsoft describing Metro they have clearly stated it's designed for screen sizes from phone to wall size displays. It's the UI for all screen sizes.

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Edited by Bobby J Cannon Tuesday, May 15, 2012 6:45 PM

Tuesday, May 15, 2012 7:01 PM

I very seriously doubt that Microsoft is going to state that the Metro UI has not been designed for desktops. Every time I've watch any video from Microsoft describing Metro they have clearly stated it's designed for screen sizes from phone to wall size displays. It's the UI for all screen sizes.

Bobby Cannon

Again, try and read slowly once more. Your are talking about Microsoft's marketing. They are not Microsoft's designers! Ask them face in face. Read WinRT technical documentation.

vjj

Edited by vjj Tuesday, May 15, 2012 7:03 PM
Edited by vjj Tuesday, May 15, 2012 7:04 PM

Tuesday, May 15, 2012 7:07 PM

Again, try and read slowly once more. Your are talking about Microsoft's marketing. They are not Microsoft's designers! Ask them face in face. Read WinRT technical documentation.

vjj

Again link or it didn't happen. You link it and I'll read it. I'm very interested in any technical documentation for W8. In case you don't get it I'm really enjoying W8. Even though I still need to make time for my W8 application... Just have so much to do. Don't have much free time.

Are you a member of a secret club that has access to internal documentation or something?

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Edited by Bobby J Cannon Tuesday, May 15, 2012 7:08 PM

Tuesday, May 15, 2012 11:02 PM

Okay fellows, lets take the idea that Metro is a necesaary change to allow accommodation to all the various devices on the market and go from there:

1) there is no doubt as presently presented the Start Screen is a mess: if a new user faced with the dozens of unrelated tiles , you can bet

there will be screams across the landscape louder than what you are now hearing

2) for goodness sake we only need five or six tiles showing upon installatio:

System Tools, Applications, Communications, Multimedia Tools, Security and maybe Getting Started which would open to house

all the apps under these initiating tiles.

Should the Start Menu on the Desktop screen be retained? We'll have to wait to see how the MS boys develop what they have started, although one

cannot accept the argument that it should be removed to force us to learn how to tile (only a niave techie would suggest such nonsense).

Tuesday, May 15, 2012 11:45 PM

From what I see by preliminary Windows 8 RP screenshots, the "start screen" will be reduced to the following tiles: "Desktop" (showing background), "IE", "Store" and some "IT" (settings?), "7" (Windows 7 programs?) and "8" (Windows 8 apps?) tiles.

Understanding Windows is like understanding women.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012 2:14 AM

Start button still missing, Sanmartin?

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBook:
In development:

Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

Wednesday, May 16, 2012 12:13 PM

I'm patient and waiting for a more finished version. As long as the "Minority Report" style is becoming less intrusive (you remember Tom Cruise gesturing wildly in front of the screens?), the direction is right.

Understanding Windows is like understanding women.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012 9:41 PM

Answerer

http://media.ch9.ms/ch9/c690/562af53a-a713-4447-9b0d-b12caa86c69/EnhancingWin8forMultipleMonitors_high.mp4

Start button still missing, Sanmartin?

yes, according to the latest pictures and demo video:

http://www.neowin.net/news/huge-multi-monitor-enhancements-coming-in-windows-8

"A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code"

Thursday, June 28, 2012 6:14 PM

So windows RT isn't new, the core and all the changes aren't new? The fact that we are finally moving off WinNT isn't new? It's all the same only changed the GUI, that's it. I'm thinking you said the same thing when we moved from 8bit to 16bit to 32bit to 64bit(now we are adding ARM) but none of these were changes or improvements they were just GUI changes? That's why I'm working on a PC with 16GB-32GB of ram and have servers with 32GB+

Yes you are right being able to run Hyper-V with W7 on one screen and W8 on another screen on the same hardware all native booted isn't a new feature of function because it's just W7 6.2... The OS booting so fast that a special option for delayed booting had to be added so you have access the bios isn't new and doesn't show the OS is much faster. 2 second resume times on tablets isn't new. I could go on and on and these are just surface level changes not even the core under the hood major changes.

Once more they said this about W98, WXP, W7 and now W8. Nothing new just GUI changes but if you look at W98, WXP and W7 from this side of the curve you can see they were major changes.

Vote for Freedom - Vote to Protect our Country

Thursday, June 28, 2012 6:15 PM

get a second, third or fourth screen.... Cost $120+ productivity saving MASSIVE!

Vote for Freedom - Vote to Protect our Country

Thursday, June 28, 2012 6:34 PM

No one even knew about Xbox smart glass until 2 weeks ago. But now with it's release any smart tablet, phone or slate will be able to work with your W8 PC, so all PC's need to be able to handle touch, pens, Kinect, voice, keyboard, mice, xbox controllers, cars and much more coming. Everyone keeps saying this only works on tablets and is only for tablets. But starting with W8 and Smart glass you will be able to use your tablet or other new touch devices coming out on your workstation so the GUI must be able to handle it all. The cost of touchscreens and MS release of new ultra-fast responsive screens will help bring touch to every home.

Microsoft knows more than you do and is working on project you haven't even dreamed of. http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/touch-101711.aspx the new GUI needs to be able to handle them all for the next 10-20 years as this core takes over.

It's NOT ABOUT TABLETS it's about the big long-term picture you aren't seeing.

This isn't just about tablets it's about a massive interface and input change coming over the next 10 years as the non-digital generation dies off. If I told you 5-10 years ago that there would be a tablet with voice, touch running off the cell network and smart phones in almost ever house-hold in America most people couldn't even dream of it. But now there is even to the point that bookstores have closed down in-light of all the digital readers. In 5 - 10 years from now we'll have moved twice to four times the speed we did the last few years and Microsoft wants to lead not follow.

Vote for Freedom - Vote to Protect our Country

Thursday, June 28, 2012 6:38 PM

@jbenisek I wish I could up vote your post more than once. The Metro UI is about one UI to fill all form factors. Every screen from a phone to a wall. And like you said to be controlled with voice, touch, keyboard, mouse, etc. Some people are just not getting it.

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Thursday, June 28, 2012 6:54 PM

Bobby, Bobby; and you think that for this scifi computing they M U S T drop the choice metro-nonmetro, start menu -start screen?

And everybody needs to face this childish , cluttered start screen, in a desktop environment too?

I think YOU just do not get it!

Edited by karlx Thursday, June 28, 2012 7:01 PM

Thursday, June 28, 2012 7:15 PM

http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-killed-the-start-button-because-it-wasnt-used

OK here is my last word, and it's not my word it's Microsoft's. So if you haven't seen this then I hope this helps. MS isn't stupid they have the numbers and proof to back it up.

Windows 8 brings many new features to the table but one thing the platform will remove, is the traditional start button. If you had been wondering why Microsoft made this controversial decision to remove button, we finally have some insight and the news comes from TechEd Europe.

PCpro was able to ask Microsoft this question and their response was that the button was no longer being used to the same frequency as previous versions of Windows. Chaitanya Sareen, principal program manager at Microsoft, said that "We’d seen the trend in Windows 7" that users were no longer using the start button but instead pinning applications to the task bar:

When we evolved the taskbar we saw awesome adoption of pinning [applications] on the taskbar. We are seeing people pin like crazy. And so we saw the Start menu usage dramatically dropping, and that gave us an option. We’re saying 'look, Start menu usage is dropping, what can we do about it? What can we do with the Start menu to revive it, to give it some new identity, give it some new power?

The evidence that Microsoft gathered stated that keyboard shortcuts and pinning items to the taskbar was reducing the functional utility of the traditional start button. By switching to the Metro start screen, you unlock an entire new set of experiences and avenues to display relevant information.

While many may object to this trend, data does not lie. If this is what Microsoft was seeing on their end via the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program, then maybe they were right. But the question is, do you still use the start button or did keyboard shortcuts and pinning items reduce your usage as Microsoft suggests?

Source: PCPro

Thanks for the tip Gregg!

Vote for Freedom - Vote to Protect our Country

Thursday, June 28, 2012 7:19 PM

While many may object to this trend, data does not lie. If this is what Microsoft was seeing on their end via the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program, then maybe they were right. But the question is, do you still use the start button or did keyboard shortcuts and pinning items reduce your usage as Microsoft suggests?

My point exactly in that they have data. Everyone else has their opinions or the opinions of their "small" groups. The point is agree or disagree the only option Microsoft has is to let the data direct the decisions.

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Thursday, June 28, 2012 7:50 PM

Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

While many may object to this trend, data does not lie.

Oh for... You've got to be kidding.

Serious users opt out of telemetry or block it. Other users still being watched by big brother may only NEED the start button once in a while, but when they do it's darnned handy to have! Still others actually using computers for real work realize that they need a real computer operating system, not a toy optimized for the masses.

Does the phase "dumbed down" sound like a good thing to you? How about "prepare the sheep for fleecing"?

Reminds me a bit of an old joke, of which there are many variants:

An engineer, a scientist, and a statistician were asked an identical question: "What's 2+2?"

The engineer pondered the question, then answered, "You've only given me one significant digit to work with, so by my calculations it's 4.0 +/- 1.0.

The scientist couldn't be bothered with a solution as he was pondering a new form of math that had just popped into his head in which + is redefined relativistically.

The statistician, who had previously worked for a policical polling company, leaned forward and asked quietly, "What would YOU like it to be?"

I hear that last guy works for Microsoft now.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBooks:

Edited by Noel CarboniMicrosoft Community Contributor Thursday, June 28, 2012 7:52 PM
Edited by Noel CarboniMicrosoft Community Contributor Thursday, June 28, 2012 7:53 PM
Edited by Noel CarboniMicrosoft Community Contributor Thursday, June 28, 2012 7:54 PM

Thursday, June 28, 2012 7:53 PM

@Noel Carboni

You have jokes they have data. Who do you think wins?

Your statement is incorrect about serious users opting out. I don't opt out so they have my usage statistics.

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Thursday, June 28, 2012 8:12 PM

Good lesson to learn if you want to be heard or not to loss out you should not opt-out. I opt-in all my systems just for this. Xbox is dumped down but I still play it way more than PC's because I can just put a game in and play no hours-to-days of downloads, updates, bugs, performance issues... same applies for MAC, IPAD, IPOD.... Other than Androids which a lot of my user are getting tired of and app weary.

Vote for Freedom - Vote to Protect our Country

Edited by Jbenisek Thursday, June 28, 2012 8:14 PM

Thursday, June 28, 2012 8:28 PM

Good lesson to learn if you want to be heard or not to loss out you should not opt-out. I opt-in all my systems just for this. Xbox is dumped down but I still play it way more than PC's because I can just put a game in and play no hours-to-days of downloads, updates, bugs, performance issues... same applies for MAC, IPAD, IPOD.... Other than Androids which a lot of my user are getting tired of and app weary.

Vote for Freedom - Vote to Protect our Country

I'm not sure about you guys but I just want stuff to work. Like you say you can just jump on your Xbox and boom you're playing a game that just works. I want the same experience with my PC and apps. They just work.

Now do you have to have Metro and W8 to do that. No, but Metro is putting focus back on the content and not the chrome flashing configuration crazed applications. Sometimes you need "advanced" applications like Visual Studios and Adobe Photoshop. They'll always be the desktop for these type of applications. The desktop is not going away. However they're plenty of times when a Metro application like Mail is just a better option than a Win32 application like Outlook. I like having both to use depending on what I'm trying to do or what device I'm on.

Basically Metro will be great for application that just work. You'll still have Win32 applications like Visual Studio and Photoshop for doing more advanced computing.

Thanks,
Bobby Cannon
BobbyCannon.com

Thursday, June 28, 2012 8:51 PM

Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

Your statement is incorrect about serious users opting out. I don't opt out

I'll refrain from saying more.

And no thanks, I have no desire to be watched by folks incapable of making technically competent leadership decisions in the vain hope that they'll make the operating system work right by watching how I use it.

It's no surprise Windows 8 seems pretty reliable as well as compatible... Hardly anything has changed under the covers, save for the carving-out of a bunch of features.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBooks:

Thursday, July 12, 2012 8:23 PM

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/10/11/reflecting-on-your-comments-on-the-start-screen.aspx

I wanted to post this blog from MS that talks directly about the issues here and the concerns. I feel much better about Start Screen and MS after reading the research and work(logic) which went into Metro.

Please read this as it answers most of the issue raised above. If you still aren't happy please post to this blog or the MS blog.

-----

Reflecting on your comments on the Start screen

Rate This

Steven Sinofsky

Microsoft Corporation

148,409 Points 5 3 4

Recent Achievements

First Forums Reply Blogs All-Star Blog Commentator III

View Profile

Tuesday, October 11, 2011 3:00 PM

Comments 767

We've been having a lot of discussion regarding the two recent posts on the Windows 8 Start experience. Those of you who have used the Developer Preview are contributing to our understanding of your individual usage patterns and what is easier or more difficult than in Windows 7. As a reminder, we released Windows Developer Preview build with the full product "enabled" even though we still had much feature work to do in the user interface. We did this in order to foster the dialog and we want folks to understand that the product is not done. We've seen some small amount of visceral feedback focused on "choice" or "disable"—a natural reaction to change, but perhaps not the best way to have a dialog leading to a new product. We’re going to focus this post on making sure we heard your constructive feedback around the design as we continue to evolve it. Marina Dukhon, a senior program manager lead on the Core Experience team, authored this post focused on specific comments and the actions we are taking based on what you have said. --Steven

On behalf of the team, I want to thank everyone for their active engagement on the Start screen blogs over this past week. We have been following all of the comments and responding as much as we can. We know major changes like this can be controversial and we are looking forward to continuing this dialog with you. I wanted to address some of the specific topics that have been brought up so far as they pertain to the design. I know this doesn’t address all of your questions, but rest assured that we are listening and will be continuing this ongoing conversation.

Does the data support all customers?

@Andrew wrote:

"I'd like to point out that this data you collect is most likely from non-corporate users, you're basing all your statistics around home users and not business users. Most enterprises will turn off the CEIP by default in Group Policy as a security precaution and to prevent chatter from the network."

Andrew, while it’s true that some enterprises choose not to enable the CEIP (Customer Experience Improvement Program, which gives us anonymous, opt-in feedback about how people are using Windows,) we still receive a huge amount of data from this program, including from enterprise customers. In addition, knowing the region, language, edition, and deployment attributes of the product allows us to further refine the data as needed. We often refer to this data as a full "census" (again noting that the data is opt-in and anonymous) as the number of unique data points is magnitudes beyond a "sampling."

In addition to the CEIP program, we have a wide variety of channels to our corporate customers to understand their needs. For example, we collect feedback continuously during direct engagement with customers (such as during on-site visits and in our briefing centers around the world), from advisory council and early-adopter program members, and at public events such as TechEd and //build/. We also work closely with industry analysts (via consultations and their research) and execute a wide range of our own research studies directly. From these interactions, we know the kind of functionality and control that enterprises want over the Start menu and we are definitely taking these into account as we are designing and developing the changes for Windows 8.

When you look at the data, we can see that enterprise customers do, in fact, have some different experiences with their Start menus:

While 81% of home users have the default links like Control Panel, Games, and Documents on right hand-side of the Start menu , fewer than 2% of our enterprise customers have this experience.
Most people have removed some items in this part of the Start menu (with Games and Media Center entry points most often removed).
Enterprise users are launching pinned Start menu apps 68% more often than home users, but the usage of pinned items is still less than 10% of the sessions.

What are we doing with this information?

In general, individual enterprise customers are using Start menus that their administrators have customized. Using this research and our engagement with the enterprise community, we are working on special features that can help address the need for customization in the Start screen. For example, enterprises can remove items like Games and Help & Support from the Start screen. For Windows 8, we support deployment scenarios that include Start screens with a layout of tiles that matches their business group’s needs, allowing for an even greater number of pinned apps to be pre-defined for their users. We also support the managed lockdown of customization of the Start screen so that it is consistent across the corporation. These features have been built especially for our enterprise customers, taking into account the existing functionality that we have provided in the past and the needs that we perceive they will have in the future. And as many know, tech-savvy individuals can use these customizations as well.

Is Start less effective for “at a glance” viewing of my PC?

@mt327000 wrote:

"The Start Screen feels like a mess of icons, having all of the problems with the Start Menu you described and adding some of its own. I keep a very neat and orderly desktop, and can see everything on my computer in a glance in the "All Programs" view introduced in Windows Vista. To me, the Start Screen just doesn't work, nor does it have any advantages over the superior Start Menu."

The comments have been very clear that knowing what’s on your PC and seeing it at a glance is an important aspect of feeling in control. Let’s talk a little bit about how this works in the Start menu and how it compares to the Start screen.

In the Start menu today, when you expand the All Programs flyout, by default you can see a total of 20 apps without scrolling, regardless of how big your monitor is. In one of our studies, we found users launched an average of 57 different apps over the course of several months. And this doesn’t even include the large number of websites that people use day to day (for the purposes of launching and pinning we believe counting websites is important), some of which may evolve into Metro style apps. So you can see how a little window that shows 20 items does not prove scalable in this scenario. The comments have been clear that this scale is routine for those that are reading the blog, and we believe your usage would skew in this direction.

All Programs on the Start menu

Once apps are installed on the machine, you’ll likely need to scroll All Programs view in order to see all app folders

In addition to the limited real estate, apps in All Programs are buried under folders and subfolders of hierarchy, without any iconography to help you navigate to the right place. To make matters worse, things are often jumping around as you expand and collapse folders looking for the right app, making the experience even less efficient. Some have noted that this limitation is a design regression from the Windows XP Start menu. While technically that is true, we are fundamentally working with a menu, and as such, it is a single column with hierarchy that requires significant dexterity to navigate. The feedback around the scale of the old Windows XP design was resoundingly negative over time and led to the redesign for Vista and Windows 7.

In Windows 8 we assume that there are even more apps (and sites) than the XP/Vista/7 eras and so we needed even more scale. We also wanted to provide an at-a-glance view and a navigation model that requires much less dexterity. By using the full screen, we can now show more apps without the need to scroll or navigate hierarchy. By flattening the hierarchy, we provide a way for you to leverage the iconography of the apps and remove the burden of clicking through folders trying to find an app under its manufacturer’s name. Over time this will also address another common complaint, which is that when renaming, combining, or reorganizing folders (which you might do in order to keep the menu from wrapping) you would lose the ability to uninstall cleanly, and thus subject yourself to a periodic garbage collection of your Start menu to avoid dead links.

As we will talk about later in this post, the dexterity required to navigate a very large menu interface is inconsistent with good user interface design. Even if the items you wish to target are rarely targeted, the whole experience is degraded when constrained to a menu. Some have suggested that using XP-style menus that wrap around the screen, or increasing the size of today’s Start menu would “solve” the issues we are working to solve. Below we will talk about Fitts’ Law and how no increase in size or wrapping will address this. As DPI and monitor sizes increase, it becomes increasingly difficult to zig-zag around the menu to hit narrow buttons. Here is a screen shot submitted via a comment by @Bleipriester, where you can see the mouse “path” required as well as the additional navigation aid of the down/up chevrons. Keep this in mind as we discuss Fitts’ Law below.

@Bleipriester’s Start menu proposal, with 3 columns of navigation

@Bleipriester’s evolved Start menu, showing several columns of navigation

Thus as your monitor gets bigger, the Apps screen (an all-apps view of the Start screen) becomes more powerful. Here is how the number of apps that show up in the Apps screen grows across different monitor sizes in our latest builds:

Likely form factor	Size (inches)	Resolution(s)	# Tiles on 1 page of Apps screen	# of Items on 1 page of All Programs
Laptop	12.1	1280x800	36	20
	13	1366x768	40	20
	13.3	1440x900	42	20
Desktop	21.5	1920x1080	80	20
	23	1920x1080	80	20
	27	2560x1440	150	20

Estimated number of apps visible on the Apps screen across different monitors

Your comments have been clear and we agree with many of the design issues you’ve raised. Some of you have mentioned how it’s difficult to find an app when its folder name is no longer available and how completely removing the folder structure has made it difficult to find an app that came in a suite.

To cite @aroush:

“The current metro-list of all apps is not suitable, since that lists everything alphabetically and I don't know the names of all those additional programs."

We are working on addressing this feedback as we speak. Here is our latest design of the Apps screen, which would add back the structure that you’re used to with folders in All Programs today.

You can see here that, as in the Start menu, suites of apps are now organized in groups, instead of in one alphabetical list. This way, if you are looking for something that you know came in your Visual Studio suite, but can’t recall the exact name of the app, it should be much easier for you to find. And your alphabetical list should no longer be cluttered with app tiles that have obscure names because the developer was relying on the folder name to convey the actual name of the executable.

In addition to adding folder structure to this screen and organizing apps within their respective suites, we are also making this view denser. Fitting even more content helps you see what your computer has installed at a glance and decreases the need to scroll. It also decreases the need to navigate a wrapping menu structure or maintain folders or nested folders of programs.

With this design, we improved the scannability of your system, giving you confidence about what is on it at any given time.

Does the new Start support the kind of customization I require to be productive for my work?

@Ed1P wrote:

"While I can see that the Metro style Start replacement works well for touch screens on small form-factor computers it will dramatically reduce my productivity on a desktop with a large widescreen monitor. I have 50 apps+folders that I visit regularly during the course of a working session. I do not now use my customized Windows 7 Start Menu (yes you CAN customize it, and do all the things Alice says are impossible, just by right-clicking on 'All Programs' at the base of the start menu and rejigging the Program Folders), Instead I now use the free Stardock Fences app which allows me to group these as immediately accessible tiles on the screen.

I recognize the similarity between my groups of Stardock Fences and Metro Start Screen 'pages', however the one big difference which makes Fences more productive than Metro is that I can have them grouped and pinned vertically on the left hand side of my screen, leaving the right hand side free for live update gadgets and the center as a very workable 1200x1024 area --- I can happily code or 3D model in this area and instantly switch what I'm doing while still keeping an eye on Live updates. I rarely use the taskbar, it just becomes an autohide alert area.

Metro would be much more usable for my desktop layout if it were possible to use it vertically and pin it to the side. Even better, if it can be split in two vertically scrollable areas - Live updates/gadgets in one area and app, folder/file launching in another, leaving me a large area of working screen real estate in the center."

Thanks for writing this up. You’ve obviously taken a lot of time to customize your machine to get it how you like it. This is a good example of how Windows is able to provide flexibility to our wide breadth of users. We will continue supporting such flexibility in Windows 8 and we expect there to continue to be a wide array of 3<sup>rd</sup> party launchers available to users to meet their specific needs. A good deal of obvious extensibility was intentionally omitted from the Developer Preview and will be there in the final product—colors and backgrounds, for example. But let’s focus on this advanced level of customization.

The level of customization that you have applied to your machine is certainly something that we consider an “advanced” user might do. Your level of advancement is also apparent in your app and folder usage within a working session. The table shows what we see people doing on their machines during the course of a working session:

Peak number of open windows	% of sessions
0-5	20.40%
6-9	49.30%
10-14	21.30%
15-19	4.60%
20-24	2.69%
25-29	1.30%
30-39	0.23%
40-49	0.08%
50-59	0.03%
60-79	0.03%
80-99	0.01%
100+	0.03%

The maximum number of windows people have open at a given time during a session

So you can see that your numbers are certainly beyond our “average” user, but we do have users of all levels using our system. At the low end, some folks might say this represents a “quick” session where you log on to do one thing and then log off (and even professionals do that). At the high end, this data might also include people who inadvertently launched malware and had tons of open windows. That’s why when looking at the data in aggregate we are confident that the averages tend to work out to be realistic. We know that there’s a tendency to try to use data to make one point or another—that’s why we want to provide the full context of the data here and make sure any limitations are understood. We provide this data to illuminate choices in the design, not to prescribe them.

While some might say we design the system for the low-end, that is not the case at all. At the other end of the spectrum, we hope everyone can see that designing the system for the high end would put a conceptual burden on broad set of customers. Our design point is to focus on a sweet spot and to provide the flexibility for the high end. There's nothing new to our approach here and it is how we approach Windows design overall.

One of the popular aspects of Fences is that you can group your items together in a logical manner and even name your groups. But you also pointed out the difficulty in this design – the groups are on the desktop, which inherently sits underneath all of your open windows, making it difficult to get to while you’re in the midst of working on something. Since I don’t know what your setup looks like, it’s hard to know if my assumptions below are correct, but perhaps I can assume what at least some with this approach might have to manage around routinely (though from the sound of things you work hard to find a careful balance). One would spend time reorganizing the workspace to allow open windows to sit next to your launcher, allowing yourself to quickly access the launcher and keep an eye on the live updates, but at the cost of less screen real estate and more manual and fragile window management.

The value of arranging content on a 2-D plane

Another important aspect of Fences is the spatial arrangement that you can use to organize shortcuts. We know that remembering where something is located is much easier in a 2-dimensional space than in a 1-dimensional list. Our brains are naturally inclined to remember location, in addition to other properties like color and size. So finding an item that you already remember is in the top right of your screen is often faster than scanning through an alphabetical list. Another common critique of Start menu folders is that they all start with the same letter and differentiating requires reading several words in (for example, graphics professionals have a lot of folders starting with "A" for one manufacturer of those tools).

There is a large body of research to support that having multiple characteristics or attributes makes it easier to locate a specific item quickly and efficiently. Windows already takes advantage of this, by showing details about files or search results, or showing both a thumbnail and a title for windows you have open. We designed the Start screen to take advantage of characteristics of human cognitive processing. These characteristics are basic neurological patterns baked into the evolution that got us to using computers in the first place:

Human spatial memory - Your ability to remember where you put something or where something will appear. This also includes taking advantage of spatial relationships, how different items are located in space relative to each other.
Muscle memory - A motor task that becomes automatic and can be performed without conscious effort.
Chunking – Grouping of items to make them easier to recall later.
Signal detection theory – Your ability to identify an item of interest even when there is lots of ”noise” or items which are not of interest.

We wanted to create a design that capitalizes on these attributes. With the All Programs view and the Most Frequently Used (MFU) or Pinned lists in the Start menu, we were very limited in terms of space and layout. It is impossible to develop a rich spatial framework with a one-dimensional list. With the Start screen we can take advantage of a two-dimensional space. Microsoft Research has demonstrated in a series of different research studies, including their work on spatial memory for document management, for information retrieval, and on the Task Gallery, that it is possible to improve retrieval of items, even after 6 months of disuse, by adding richer organization over one-dimensional visual text lists. We wanted to take advantage of this effect to make it faster to locate specific apps on the Start screen.

Many have mentioned using large monitors or multiple monitors. While the immediate reaction has been that the Start screen is less optimal for this approach, our design goal has been precisely to bring enhanced functionality for this environment. As with many cases, it should be no surprise to learn that the development team comprises a large number of very high tech power users with multiple HD+ screens running many Win32 applications all the time. The Start screen on a central monitor allows for the most rapid “in and out” of launching and switching when you are using a large number of apps and sites. And at the same time, the ability to have a heads-up display of status across a variety of (yet to be written) business applications will provide a new level of functionality.

Taking advantage of spatial arrangement on the Start screen

The grouping of tiles in the Start screen was designed with these principles in mind. We know that sizes of groups will naturally vary based on the kinds of items that you’re throwing together. Not only does this flexibility help with organization, but it also helps by creating a heterogeneous layout where shapes and sizes vary from group to group. This makes it easier to find a tile when you know it’s in a small group with an uneven edge on its right side or in a large group that looks like a full rectangle.

A schematic representation of the Start screen layout

Start screen layout takes advantage of position, shape, co-location, and color to help you find apps

In addition to group sizes and shapes, I can leverage several other factors to find my tile. Whether it’s because it is at the top right of a group (the red tile), next to the wide green tile in the big group (the black tile), the first square tile at the top of my big group (light blue tile), or the last tile in my Start screen (yellow tile), I have several attributes I can now rely on to find something. The same thing happens when you look at groups of tiles – I can use general color and group shape to identify the group that contains my games or the group that contains my news apps as I scroll through the screen.

Explaining spatial recognition through evolution

From an evolutionary perspective, this type of recognition is rooted in our most basic survival skills in our subconscious. Humans use more than one sense to map a stimulus. You need to locate each stimulus (where is it?) and triage it (will it eat me?). You also need to remember it for future processing and comparison. The key to making this fast and fluid is to present enough information that you can select correctly and remember your selection, without taking so much processing that your brain needs to pause to interpret what it has just perceived.

If all of this sounds familiar, it is basically why iconic presentations tend to be more efficient. It is also why irregular patterns can provide visual cues that reduce the need to process information, and rely just on sensory-motor skills. And of course, it is why large blocks of similarly formatted text in a menu (or graphical buttons) can take the most time and brain processing power. Here's a good layperson's article on elements of visual perception and of course there are many deep technical articles as well.

Incidentally, some folks have suggested we use less spacing, more transparency, or rounded corners to add more visual "candy" to the design. The clarity of spacing, solid edges and backgrounds, and rectangles is a significant improvement in the ability to identify your programs and to prevent overloading your brain causing headaches and the like (see this University of Massachusetts examination of the edge enhancement illusion and this one on the value that colors provide). Essentially these aesthetic additions trick your brain into thinking it needs to spend more time "understanding" the stimuli rather than just reacting to what it perceives.

How we are making customization better

In terms of customization, you are definitely correct in saying that today you can customize the existing Start menu. The method that @Ed1p mentioned allows you to rename folders (breaking uninstall), move around files (breaking per user and per machine setup) and basically reorganize the tree of apps that exist on the system. For those brave souls out there who want to use drag and drop within the Start menu, this is also possible (albeit highly error prone).

However, these are very advanced ways of customizing your system, and unfortunately do not scale to a broad set of customers even if we initially intended them to. Not only do they take a lot of time, but the method is indirect since you’re not actually working within the Start menu. So it requires a lot of burdensome back and forth between Explorer windows and menu flyouts to get to the final result.

The personalization of the Start screen is one of the features that we want to make great, and we’re still iterating on it and to make it better. In the Windows Developer Preview, you can already try flexible group sizes, unpinning tiles, and resizing wide tiles to square tiles. And in the Beta, you’ll also be able to use other improvements based on this dialog, in addition to creating, naming, and rearranging groups.

@drewfus pointed out:

"When i said 'The list of apps (and hence tiles) on a PC is neither known nor fixed', i was alluding to the fact that this list is not constant - it grows over time, but more importantly that the chronological order of additions in no way matches the importance of new additions (except by coincidence), resulting in a constant impact on the users existing Start layout."

This is a good point – your set of apps is likely going to continue to grow and change over time and you may find your new favorite apps months after you first organized your Start screen. Our goal is to balance your ability to keep control over your Start screen (i.e. not impacting what you’ve already organized when you acquire new apps by putting them at the end), while also making it simple to change it when you want. Group rearranging helps enable the particular scenario that @drewfus mentions – as you get more apps over time, it’s quite possible that your new favorite apps are now at the end of your Start screen. With group rearranging, we make it easy for you to move an entire group of apps to the front, without having to move them one tile at a time and you can just as easily demote a group of apps and put them at the end.

The Developer Preview was obviously incomplete in this regard, and given the importance we attach to this, we fully expect to land on a solution that combines flexibility with overall improvement that justifies the change from previous products.

The ability to put apps where you want them in a spatial layout, to use groupings to better enable recognition, and to move the tiles around on the screen should be a vast improvement over the Start menu. We believe this opens up a whole new world of organization and customization that will dramatically improve working with extremely large sets of apps and shortcuts.

Did you just make us invest in jump lists and then take them away?

@tN0 wrote:

“Implement Jump Lists to the Live Tiles at the Start screen. Swiping up on a tile or right click could bring up a Jump List.”

Having a way to quickly access content within an app is a great feature and we're happy to see the enthusiasm and increasing usage for jump lists in Windows 7. We have developed something new for Metro style apps that builds on the jump list concept. We think it will be even more powerful for end-users and an even richer opportunity for app developers. But first, some background on jump list usage in Windows today.

Current usage of jump lists

Though jump lists are often referenced with positive energy by our enthusiast users, the fact of the matter is that the usage of jump lists in the Start menu (most recently used documents for an app, for example) has not really gained as much traction as on the taskbar. To compare, 20% of sessions record a click to open a taskbar jump list, while only 1.2% of sessions record a click to invoke a Start menu jump list. People also use hover to invoke the Start menu jump list (and drag to invoke the taskbar jump list), but it’s difficult to use these numbers because we can’t tell whether the menu was opened intentionally or simply because the mouse was hovering over the item long enough to trigger it. Either way, even with accidental activations via mouse hover, at best, the Start menu jump lists are used half as often as those of the taskbar.

Applying this to Metro style apps

Given this data, we knew it was important to keep jump lists on the taskbar for your most commonly used desktop apps. But, we wanted to build something more customized for Metro style apps. The downside of existing jump lists is that they’re limited to what Windows understands best– files. This is great for file-centric apps, but apps today are moving away from the notion of files and turning to hosted content, which makes the concept of document jump lists less relevant.

Instead of building on and promoting file structure, our view for Metro style apps is more app-centric. The apps know better what kind of content they host: whether it’s an RSS feed, an album, a score tracker, or a person’s profile, and they can do a much better job exposing quick access to this content to the user. This content doesn’t involve files on the system that Windows knows about – it’s knowledge within the app. We’ve expanded the jump list concept to provide semantically richer links.

But we don’t want to have to manage several lists of our favorite stuff. One of the promises of the Start screen is that it is your personal place to host the apps that you love. We based the secondary tiles feature, on the notion that people want fast access to app content that they require for work, and they want a single, predictable place to access it. With this feature, any Metro style app can allow a user to pin a new tile to their Start screen that can navigate them to any part of the app. The tile can even be live, providing updates for that specific content. There's no reason a file-centric app would not provide this same functionality for files. We know from usage data that people are fairly meticulous and deliberate in reusing common documents—MRUs composed of pinned files are extremely popular in Office apps and on the taskbar. The support we provide for developers makes this straightforward.

For example, I can have a social tile of my best friend pinned to my Start screen and keep up to date with her updates. Or I can track the XKCD feed from my RSS reader. Or quickly jump to a playlist that I like to listen to in the morning the same way I would have from a jump list. We expect line of business applications to allow this “deep linking” to specific machines for monitoring, account information, or other exception handling (as we described with our bug tracking application). All from the Start screen. All of these organized among other apps that I like to use, so they are fast to access and get me quickly to the content that I want to consume.

Building on secondary tiles

We’re continuing to invest in enabling Metro style app developers to provide personal and rich content to their users through live tiles. Secondary tiles will be a big part of making your machine feel more useful and personal, and something that you love to use. To help, we’re building even more live tile templates into our catalog so that developers can enable more scenarios for their users.

Overall, isn't this a real usability problem?

@mt327000 wrote:

"All the requests for a return of the classic Start Menu are not just complaints about change. To me, the new Start Screen actually feels less efficient than the Start Menu. I will admit, some commenters on this blog have gone too far and resorted to mudslinging to make their point, but from a scientific perspective, if you measure usability of Windows 7 and of Windows 8 in terms of click counts, Windows 7 wins hands down. This is not simple complaining, but a real usability problem that Microsoft will hopefully fix."

We do have to assert that efficiency, that is, time to accurately complete a task, is of paramount importance in design. We never say "most important" because we consider a broad range of attributes in designing how a feature works (resource utilization, reliability, accessibility, localizability, security, training, discoverability, and so on). As we work to improve our products, both in terms of efficiency and usability, we consider several factors for user interface approaches, such as mouse mileage, target size, loading time, parsing time, and mouse click counts (among others). It’s likely that in any change, there are efficiency gains and sometimes efficiency losses, but we take great pains to achieve a net gain in efficiency when all of these are considered.

One common theme in the comments has been an immediate rejection of change with the assumption that any change will reduce productivity so much that it will never be regained. One analogy we use looks at improvements in roads or traffic flow—for example, a new lane or exit. These types of projects might take years and during construction, we all might get frustrated at how much time we lose. But once the project is done, our use of the road is improved every single day, and so is the usage by everyone else—the net gain is to the whole universe of travelers, present and future. This comes at some near term cost to current users, but the net is an improvement for everyone. Yet we know that during construction we're all the type of folks who sit and calculate whether we will ever make up for the time lost—this is the concern we hear. Unlike road construction, we design our changes to Windows so the payback comes for everyone in the span of hours, days, or perhaps weeks. If improving traffic flow started from the premise that no one would be interrupted even for a little bit, then there would never be any improvements and everyone’s usage would gradually decay. With Windows we see the same challenges—we need to improve the product for new uses and new hardware capabilities, and as such, there is always some transition. Much like engineering roads, you don’t keep both paths open and operational in parallel. But fortunately, unlike construction, you can control your own PC and can choose to switch when you want. This is especially the case for businesses as we commit to a 10-year minimum lifecycle.

One small example of this net gain is the ability to press the Windows key and immediately start typing to search for an app. Even though the search box doesn’t appear on the screen, we did extra work to make sure you can type right away, thus protecting the efficiency of searching for apps. Our design choice means that there is a short period before people discover this feature, but once they do, they see a huge efficiency gain. As a practical matter, the discoverability of this feature usually happens within hours of usage of Windows 8, as we have seen in the tweets regarding usage of the Developer Preview. Even if it doesn't, the search command is in fact still there—the edit control is two clicks away. And we make things better for everyone by not having the UI clutter.

Vote for Freedom - Vote to Protect our Country

Thursday, July 12, 2012 8:24 PM

Part 2

---

Mouse distance and mouse clicks

There has been a common thread in the comments when discussing efficiency that focuses on number of mouse clicks and mouse travel distance. Though these are important measures of efficiency, another factor that strongly plays into this equation is the target size. Many of you already know about Fitts' Law, but let’s do a quick summary of what this is and how it applies to software.

Fitts' Law is named after Paul Fitts, a psychologist at Ohio State University, with expertise in aviation. He developed his research to model cockpit ergonomics and created a model that was formulated to project how quickly a human can point at a physical button. Soon after, people started applying this model to software, tracking how quickly someone can target something on the screen with a mouse.

The mathematical formula is somewhat complex, but the basic premise is as follows:

The farther away a target is, the longer it takes to acquire it with a mouse
The smaller a target is, the longer it takes to acquire it with a mouse

So the speed with which a target can be clicked on with a mouse is a factor of both size and distance:

The closer the target, the faster you can hit it. The larger the target, the faster you can hit it.

One common formula that can be used to compare two hit targets more mathematically is the Shannon formulation:

T = a + b log 2 (1 + D/W)

Where:

T is the average time taken to acquire the target.
a and b are empirical constants determined through linear regression.
D is the distance from the starting point to the center of the target.
W is the width of the target measured along the axis of motion (how close to the target you need to get to acquire it.)

How does Fitts’ apply to Windows 8?

One of the most obvious ways to apply this in Windows 8 is with the Start button. Although we optimized Charms for touch (with the Start button accessible with a swipe from the right edge of the screen,) we preserved the notion of a control in the far left corner for mouse users. The corners are considered infinitely wide when it comes to Fitts’ Law, which makes UI in this location the easiest to target. It was important to keep the efficiency of the Start button high for our users, so we were adamant about making sure that this is not something we lost as we created a new UI paradigm.

The other obvious example of Fitts’ Law in action is the Start screen. In general, tiles are further away from your mouse cursor than entry points in the Start menu, but they are also larger in size, which helps negate the efficiency loss that was introduced with distance, and even brings efficiency gain.

We took a look at desktop monitors, and by controlling for constants a and b because we’re on the same device, and varying D and W based on the targets in the Start menu and Start screen, we calculated the speed of acquiring an app link. We then applied a heat map to show the results and see the following comparisons:

Heat map of time to reach items in the Start menu from the Start button
(green items are the fastest to get to, red items are the slowest)

Heat map of time to reach tiles in the Start screen from the Start button
(green tiles are the fastest to get to, red tiles are the slowest)

If you count the number of items that show up as green (delineated with the white line,) it is considerably larger on the Start screen (about 17 square tiles) than on the Start menu (2 apps). So there are many more items that you can reach more quickly on the Start screen.

In the Start menu, the top item (which is usually the most frequently used app or your favorite pinned app) is closer to the darker red, which is unfortunate. Lists are generally ordered top-down, which is why the Start menu used this logic, but to really emphasize efficiency, it would have been better to flip the order here and put it at the bottom of the list. Whereas in the Start screen, the bottom left tile is the easiest thing to get to with the mouse and even easier than any item on the Start menu.

Items at top of Start menu are red, indicating it takes more time to reach them; items at bottom are green, indicating less time required.
The app that you’re using most frequently is further away on the Start menu than on the Start screen

It took us much iteration over the course of many months to get to the final size and shape of the tiles. As you can imagine, we iterated through many possibilities and tried many of them out in the lab. We asked test subjects to target a variety of buttons, much as you could imagine Fitts optimizing an air force cockpit design. Mouse distance (and touch target size) is just part of the story. In addition to these, we also considered the following factors when coming up with the tile size:

Screen size – How many apps should be visible on one page of the screen across monitors?
Form factors – How does your usage of different form factors affect your need for something to be smaller or larger (e.g. when you’re sitting on the couch with a slate vs. sitting further away from a large monitor on your desk)?
Efficiency of scanning – How do we provide enough breathing room to make it easy to scan the content, while also providing enough density and useful information?
Layout – What layout works best for scanning a grid of content, and how should different tile sizes relate to each other for easier parsing?
Space for live content and app branding – Tiles need to be big enough to provide useful information, but not so large that the amount of information displayed is overwhelming. And this also needs to be balanced with being able to actually launch your apps without requiring a lot of scrolling.
Visually pleasing shapes – The tiles need to be visually pleasing, and the shapes that they create when laid out on a page also need to appeal to the eye.

This is just a sample of some of the questions that we were asking ourselves when designing the size of tiles and the density of the Start screen. The end result is our attempt to balance efficiency of mouse movement, mouse targeting, parsing, and ability to see live data at a glance across various form factors and screen sizes to make the system feel powerful and efficient to use.

So, how many clicks does it take?

As Alice mentioned in a previous blog post, the current Start menu is primarily used for launching infrequently used apps, while users continue to launch more frequently used apps from the taskbar and Explorer. In fact, 88% of app launches are from outside the Start menu today. Instead, most launches are from the taskbar (41%) and the remaining are split between Explorer and the desktop (47%). So it was clear to us that the Start menu was trending away from being useful and we had an opportunity to redesign it to make it more useful and valuable. We want to be careful in this dialog of spending a lot of energy debating what amounts to a “long tail” usage case.

However, once we left that old paradigm, the next question was – how can we complete the same tasks without requiring more clicks? We kept this in mind throughout the design process, and once we had a design, we picked a couple of different tasks to compare click-to-click.

Launching an MFU or pinned app

How many clicks does it take to launch an app on the left side of the Start menu?

In Windows 7, if we assume your favorite program is in the left pane of the Start menu, it takes 2 clicks: one for the Start button and one for the app itself. It was important to us to keep this parity for the Start screen, so if an app is in the first page of the Start screen, it also takes 2 clicks to launch it.

However, the number of apps that gain this “2-click” benefit varies across the two UIs. By default, the Start menu provides 2-click access to 10 of your favorite apps, plus 10 special folders that Windows adds for you – few of which are used frequently. The highest usage item here is the Computer folder, with about 8% of sessions using it, and the numbers for the rest of the items drastically drop off. Also, while this area of the Start menu allows some limited customization, 81% of home users keep the default behavior.

In comparison, the Start screen provides 2-click access to many more apps and allows you to control the full layout of the screen. If you don’t want a link to Help and Support, don’t put it there – instead, use the space for your favorite app. And the number of apps that get this ability only increases the larger your monitor is. Incidentally, we made the customization much easier and you will no longer break out add/remove programs when you organize things. You can see below how many more tiles you get on one page as your monitor size increases.

Form factor	Size (inches)	Resolution(s)	# of tiles in 1 page of Start screen	# of items in Start menu
Slate	10.1	1366x768 1920x1080	12 wide or 24 square	10
	10.6	1366x768 1920x1080	12 wide or 24 square	10
	11.6	1366x768 1920x1080	12 wide or 24 square	10
Laptop	12.1	1280x800	16 wide or 32 square	10
	12.1	1366x768	20 wide or 40 square	10
	13	1366x768	20 wide or 40 square	10
	13.3	1440x900	25 wide or 50 square	10
Desktop	21.5	1920x1080	36 wide or 72 square	10
	23	1920x1080	36 wide or 72 square	10
	27	2560x1440	42 wide or 84 square	10

How the Start screen scales with larger monitor sizes, compared to Start menu

In addition to the difference in the number of apps shown, the logic for what you see after you click the Start button has changed. The Start menu uses heuristics to calculate the MFU (most frequently used) apps that appear there. Unfortunately, these complex heuristics are sometimes wrong, and so the set of apps that you see here changes over time, adding a level of unpredictability into the launcher. On the other hand, the Start screen puts more value on user control and predictability, encouraging customization and increasing confidence about where things will be—a design goal that we followed as we designed the taskbar as well.

Launching an app from the All Programs list

The number of clicks to launch from the All Programs list varies depending on what you’re launching (is it closer to A or to Z?) If we were to generalize to a user who has some apps installed on their system, the most likely workflow is something along these lines:

Start button –> All Programs button –> Scrollbar button –> Expand the folder of the app I’m looking for (cross your fingers it’s the right one!) –> App = 5 clicks

In the Start screen this flow is different, but looks like this for the same scenario:

Start button –> Hover in corner –> Search button to launch Apps screen –> Scrollbar –> App = 5 clicks

This comparison leads to the same number of clicks when using the All Programs feature as when using the Apps screen, assuming you expanded the right Start menu folder the first time. Also, since you’re using more of your monitor with the Start screen, it is more likely that you won’t need to use the scrollbar to find the app, decreasing this to 4 clicks in Windows 8. You can see how other tasks, like launching one of the items in the right side of the Start menu (e.g. Control Panel or Computer) would also show the same number of clicks between the 2 UIs.

We would find the same results relative to keystroke counting as well. We have been careful to at least maintain parity and often improve relative to these measures.

Launching from other parts of the system

As I mentioned previously, 88% of app launches don’t actually originate from the Start menu. The rest of the launches are from the taskbar, Explorer, and the desktop, and the math here does not change in Windows 8. In order to be complete, however, it’s worth mentioning that there is a one-time additional click to get to your taskbar or desktop when you start up your machine, since we boot the machine to the Start screen. In the grand scheme of things, with all of the clicks that you do throughout your working session, one additional click to get to the desktop does not impact your overall efficiency, but since some people are asking about this, I thought it would be worth talking quickly about why we do this.

Since the Start screen is a launcher (and can also be the switcher) for both Metro style apps and desktop apps, we take you directly to the Start screen when you first turn on your machine. It is your new home base. This allows you to make a choice in terms of what app you want to launch first – it may be a desktop app or a Metro style app. It also provides an opportunity to see the dashboard of latest updates from your favorite apps without requiring you to launch them before you get into your day-to-day tasks. I know many folks have commented on not wanting to ever see such notifications or a dashboard. We would note two things.

First, even from above comments you've told us about the importance of apps that do report notifications or gadgets.

Second, given that this is a Developer Preview release, we all have to recognize that we simply don’t have many Metro style apps available yet, so our natural inclination is to always go to the desktop – making it seem silly for us to start here. But once your machine is packed with apps that you love, this should make a lot more sense. And if your main goal is still to use desktop apps, you can easily do this by clicking the Desktop tile and using the taskbar, or you can customize the Start screen to put your favorite desktop apps at the beginning of the Start screen and launch them directly. It is important to keep this in mind—today you might be going to the desktop so you can immediately get to the task bar. You can always put the taskbar apps on the Start screen and launch (or switch) from there, or just put the first one you always use right there in a Fitts-friendly location. And of course we should not forget that there are substantial savings yet to be had in logging on from a lock screen (in terms of number of clicks), and so there's an immediate savings to overall workflow which fully accounts for the extra key.

How are we continuing to improve the efficiency of Start?

As we continue to build upon what we’ve shown in the Windows Developer Preview, we are keeping efficiency close to heart. Based on your feedback, one of the things that we’re doing to make it faster to get to All Programs is to take you directly to the Apps screen when you click Search in the desktop. This potentially removes another step from this task, making it even more efficient in Windows 8 to launch an app from the desktop relative to Windows 7. Another thing that we’re doing is increasing the number of rows of tiles that you can see on large monitors so that you can fit even more of your favorite apps closer to your mouse and make it faster to launch apps than before.

In conclusion, we are striving to help you gain efficiency with the new Start screen. This sort of analysis is generally difficult since we’re not comparing apples to apples. In some cases, there is a loss because of mouse distance, while in other cases there is a gain because of target size. In some cases, spatial arrangement or color can make it easier to find an app, in other cases having an app right under your mouse makes it really easy to click. The efficiency gain of the Start screen may not be in all of the same ways that you’re used to, and there may even be some efficiency gains that you don’t expect (for example, having a live tile tell you the latest stock quote so you don’t need to take time to launch the app is a great efficiency gain that is hard to measure quantitatively.) We are continually testing the efficiency of the new UI and we will continue to improve it.

If you've made it this far, you might be wondering why we put all of these issues in one really long post, and yet we still have more feedback and questions to answer. Our intention is to build on the unprecedented transparency we provide in building Windows and to bring you inside the development of the product. By now you can see that building Windows 8 is a complex endeavor with tons of variables and choices to be made, lots of data, and in considering all that, we go through a great deal of work when making even the smallest change. We simply love the dialog we're having with you, and the opportunity to describe the depth of the work we do to bring you Windows. All of us on the Windows team are devoting our professional careers to building a great product, and so the opportunity to talk with passionate and informed people about the details of what we do is itself an added bonus.

--Marina Dukhon

Vote for Freedom - Vote to Protect our Country

Thursday, July 12, 2012 10:43 PM

Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

Do us all a favor and just post links please. That's just ridiculous.

If it's all for the good, why not leave the "classic" features in the OS but make them optional - deconfigured by default - yet available for those wishing to approach the migration on their own terms? If so much research and thought has gone into it, why did it evolve in such an amateurish way as we've seen during the progression of pre-releases? Why does it barely function with a mouse? Anyone who knows what they're doing with computers can see they're making this stuff up as they go along.

There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who are swayed by fashion and salesmanship and those who care about function above all else. There are times all through history when one group has tried to overwhelm the other, but both groups survive. It has always been thus (reference the old story of "The Emperor's New Clothes").

What's keeping it from imploding completely? The fact that someone, somewhere realizes that they're going to have to use it themselves sooner or later to make the next new version of Windows.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBooks:

Friday, July 13, 2012 11:09 AM

Do us all a favor and just post links please. That's just ridiculous.

If it's all for the good, why not leave the "classic" features in the OS but make them optional - deconfigured by default - yet available for those wishing to approach the migration on their own terms? If so much research and thought has gone into it, why did it evolve in such an amateurish way as we've seen during the progression of pre-releases? Why does it barely function with a mouse? Anyone who knows what they're doing with computers can see they're making this stuff up as they go along.

There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who are swayed by fashion and salesmanship and those who care about function above all else. There are times all through history when one group has tried to overwhelm the other, but both groups survive. It has always been thus (reference the old story of "The Emperor's New Clothes").

What's keeping it from imploding completely? The fact that someone, somewhere realizes that they're going to have to use it themselves sooner or later to make the next new version of Windows.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBooks:

Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

Noel, good points. Sinofski's points are self serving and somewhat idiotic. Not a single reviewer has found out that the Start Screen is a superior way of interacting with Windows applications. Neither have most users who have tried the early and later versions of Win8 (including me). In fact, despite Sinofski's word diarrhea, we all know what is going on and why the Start button has disappeared. This is a naked attempt by Microsoft to (a) condition users to its portable OS and (b) provide a customer base for programmers to write WinRT applications saleable through the Windows Marketplace, another center of profit for Microsoft. Anything else is just too much verbiage.

Friday, July 13, 2012 12:37 PM

If MS can't convince people with dubious assertions about Metro's improved user experience, at least they seem to try everything on the marketing side. First, the astonishing $39.95 upgrade offer, now (allegedly) a huge leap in their licensing restrictions: http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/13/3156545/windows-8-no-full-version-upgrade-system-builder-only-rumor. "The Godfather" in mind, those "offers you can't refuse" may be the most convincing way to push the new OS.

The claims from Sinofsky's extensively quoted blog post may be right or wrong, they are far away from my daily usage. Do I use the start menu to launch programs? Those I pinned to it, yes. Those in the "most recently used" list, no (they change following some obscure algorithm about anything "recently used", not "most"). Those in the "All programs" list, only once in a time, if there are special needs. As a summary, I'm using start menu / task bar (pinned) / desktop shortcuts alternately, and that works. The only thing I hardly ever use to launch a program (except for "msconfig", "dxdiag" and the like) is the search bar which would require me to remember the exact executables I want to launch (or go through a boring list of similar entries). And that's the recommended "easy" way to work with the new start screen? No. In the end, other features of the start menu are more important to me, mainly the fast access to system components or settings (Control Panel, Computer... and the infamous shutdown/restart options). To replace that with a "Where on my screen is Carmen San Diego" experience is utter nonsense.

Understanding Windows is like understanding women.

Friday, July 13, 2012 12:55 PM

The claims from Sinofsky's extensively quoted blog post may be right or wrong, they are far away from my daily usage. Do I use the start menu to launch programs? Those I pinned to it, yes. Those in the "most recently used" list, no (they change following some obscure algorithm about anything "recently used", not "most"). Those in the "All programs" list, only once in a time, if there are special needs. As a summary, I'm using start menu / task bar (pinned) / desktop shortcuts alternately, and that works. The only thing I hardly ever use to launch a program (except for "msconfig", "dxdiag" and the like) is the search bar which would require me to remember the exact executables I want to launch (or go through a boring list of similar entries). And that's the recommended "easy" way to work with the new start screen? No. In the end, other features of the start menu are more important to me, mainly the fast access to system components or settings (Control Panel, Computer... and the infamous shutdown/restart options). To replace that with a "Where on my screen is Carmen San Diego" experience is utter nonsense.

Understanding Windows is like understanding women.

My usage is remarkably similar. Those programs that I use regularly are in the taskbar. Others, used less frequently, are pinned on my desktop. I hardly ever use the Start Button to launch programs (save the Control Panel and Devices and Printers). In fact, I find the whole system exceptionally easy to use and highly intuitive. I am certain that our experiences are shared by the overwhelming majority of Windows users.

This is why Sinofski's comments are totally unconvincing. First of all, he admits that huge sections of the enterprise do not enable telemetry and then he proceeds to tell us how users utilize the Start Button. In the process, no doubt, he dispenses with all the telemetry that does not fit his story.

Friday, July 13, 2012 1:17 PM

"fast access to system components or settings (Control Panel, Computer... and the infamous shutdown/restart options). "

Understanding Windows is like understanding women.

You can mouse down to the lower left side of the screen and right click, you'll get a context menu that lists what you're looking for (Control Panel, Computer, etc.) You could also just hit Win+x on the keyboard.

The only thing that isn't there is shutdown and restart which seems to bother a lot of people. I personally don't mind them being 3 clicks deep instead of 2 now since I rarely use either but that's just an opinion. To remove the extra click, you could always put a batch file on the desktop or hit Ctrl+Alt+Del to shutdown in 2 clicks from that screen.

Friday, July 13, 2012 1:23 PM

Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

On my Windows 7 system I started probably several hundred programs yesterday. The lion's share were those for which I have put icons on my desktop (OMG, perish the thought! I'm so old fashioned!). Why did I put them there? Because in the long term these are the programs I use the most - like Explorer, several internet browsers, Visual Studio, various editors, an audio reader, several streaming music sites, etc.

Many others, notably some system tools (diskmgmt, event viewer, etc.) I started by clicking the Start button (of ClassicShell, but the same concept applies to the W7 Start Menu) then typing in the first few letters of the tool name (e.g., "diskm") then hitting Enter.

The remaining others - those that I use only quite rarely, such as old versions of programs kept around for special cases - I started by navigating through the hierarchical menu structure of the Start menu then clicking their shortcuts. Example: Start - Programs - Applications - Graphics and Imaging - Adobe - Photoshop 6.0

Telemetry (if I allowed it) would show that I navigate the start menu structure for maybe only a tiny percentage of all application starts. Microsoft would determine that I clearly don't need that last method, because I only very rarely use it. The other methods are clearly superior because they're used more, right?

As though they are all interchangeable.

Think about their conclusion for a moment. Mine is a real system, a big system, built up over years with a rich set of apps and shortcuts that do just what I need: Powerful, useful, organized by me into a sustainable structure I can deal with easily and repeatedly. Organization - that's what it's about... Organization so that I can lead a complex life yet be able to keep my mind on task when I'm working on difficult things that take almost all my wherewithall. The hierarchy is necessary.

Removing the hierarchy reduces my ability to organize complex things and thus reduces my capabilities. Why would anyone want that?

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBooks:

Friday, July 13, 2012 2:13 PM

Think about their conclusion for a moment. Mine is a real system, a big system, built up over years with a rich set of apps and shortcuts that do just what I need: Powerful, useful, organized by me into a sustainable structure I can deal with easily and repeatedly. Organization - that's what it's about... Organization so that I can lead a complex life yet be able to keep my mind on task when I'm working on difficult things that take almost all my wherewithall. The hierarchy is necessary.

Removing the hierarchy reduces my ability to organize complex things and thus reduces my capabilities. Why would anyone want that?

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBooks:

Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

Noel, I think that we all agree that the so called "telemetry" data are simply ridiculous. In the first place, no discussion about that data should be held. Data, (telemetry or otherwise) which only party has access to, are worthless in a discussion. One would never know how one abuses or disabuses that data. For all you know, Sinofski may be using totally fake data.

There is really no doubt that most experienced users of Windows have systems that are highly streamlined and highly efficient. Only idiotic dilettantes enamored with flashy colors will change a streamlined and highly efficient system for one that defies organization. These dilettantes are usually called fanboys. We can now call them Metro fanboys.

At the end, we all know what Microsoft aims to achieve. If Metro was offered just as interface (and it is not just an interface), then Microsoft would have made it optional. It is not optional and we all know why.

The only question is: would Microsoft be successful?

My answer to the question is that it would be "partially" successful. But this partial success would be adequate to finally destroy Windows as we know it. Let's really face reality: the days of the multitasking, powerful, graphics intensive, multi-windowing desktop/laptop are at an end. These systems would continue existing but they would be outrageously expensive, would progressively run dedicated OSes, have access to a small number of productivity applications and would be reserved for enthusiasts on their way to extinction.

From now on, the masses would use their stubby fingers to pound inexpensive tablets, crank out an email or two and peruse the internet. For these people, a few colorful squares here and there are the epitome of computing.

Saturday, July 14, 2012 5:30 PM

Telemetry (if I allowed it) would show that I navigate the start menu structure for maybe only a tiny percentage of all application starts. Microsoft would determine that I clearly don't need that last method, because I only very rarely use it. The other methods are clearly superior because they're used more, right?

As though they are all interchangeable.

Think about their conclusion for a moment. Mine is a real system, a big system, built up over years with a rich set of apps and shortcuts that do just what I need: Powerful, useful, organized by me into a sustainable structure I can deal with easily and repeatedly. Organization - that's what it's about... Organization so that I can lead a complex life yet be able to keep my mind on task when I'm working on difficult things that take almost all my wherewithall. The hierarchy is necessary.

Removing the hierarchy reduces my ability to organize complex things and thus reduces my capabilities. Why would anyone want that?

You hit the nail on the head.

Unfortunately, there IS a reason why would someone want to remove hierarchy, overlapped windows, colored chrome, Aero, etc. from Windows UI. There are users that have problems to work with complex information. Clearly, they are not obliged to use them, but some of them do not like others to manifest their ability to manage complex/structured information. And one of them leave a trail of constant removing of structured features from UI during his career in Microsoft. And now he is empowered to remove this device from Windows completely and definitely prevent others to use the tools he is not able to use himself. No more he needs to be afraid of others looking at him contemptuously for he's using full screen apps only. With mandatory tablets with Windows 8 only in Microsoft headquarters, there's no way for others around him to manifest their superiority.

vjj

Edited by vjj Saturday, July 14, 2012 5:33 PM
Edited by vjj Saturday, July 14, 2012 5:34 PM
Edited by vjj Saturday, July 14, 2012 5:35 PM
Edited by vjj Saturday, July 14, 2012 5:36 PM
Edited by vjj Saturday, July 14, 2012 5:36 PM
Edited by vjj Saturday, July 14, 2012 5:40 PM
Edited by vjj Saturday, July 14, 2012 5:49 PM
Edited by vjj Saturday, July 14, 2012 5:50 PM
Edited by vjj Saturday, July 14, 2012 5:52 PM
Edited by vjj Saturday, July 14, 2012 5:56 PM

Sunday, July 15, 2012 6:26 AM

Unfortunately, there IS a reason why would someone want to remove hierarchy, overlapped windows, colored chrome, Aero, etc. from Windows UI. There are users that have problems to work with complex information. Clearly, they are not obliged to use them, but some of them do not like others to manifest their ability to manage complex/structured information. And one of them leave a trail of constant removing of structured features from UI during his career in Microsoft. And now he is empowered to remove this device from Windows completely and definitely prevent others to use the tools he is not able to use himself. No more he needs to be afraid of others looking at him contemptuously for he's using full screen apps only. With mandatory tablets with Windows 8 only in Microsoft headquarters, there's no way for others around him to manifest their superiority.

vjj

A major reason for the simplification of the UI and the removal of Aero (and also the removal of full multitasking) is to allow the system to run in limited hardware without consuming too much battery power. For portable computing, battery power is a key consideration. The fewer things are running, the better.

The only way to look at Windows 8 is that it is primarily a portable OS (around the WinRT APIs) that accommodates as a task (under emulation) applications written to address the Win32 API (the desktop). Since Win8 is mainly a portable OS that can accommodate previous Windows programs (legacy applications), its main pre-occupation is the limited hardware and battery life of the portable devices.

Monday, July 16, 2012 5:44 AM

I have tried hard to use Windows 8 in its original concept, and have now become more accustomed to the Metro "Interface"
I prefer that word "Interface". I am not, so far, regarding the metro "interface" as a desktop. I am aware that Microsoft are constantlyreferring to it as such, but, if it were so, then why, after using an app, are we returned to the more familiar legacy desktop, and not to the Metro screen?
For this reason only, I am using the latest release of "Classic", which in the familiar surroundings of the legacy desktop, could sometimes be more convenient. However, I find myself using that feature less, as time goes by, and usually just give the one click return to the Metro.
Very few users actually have a regular need for the mass of applications which were in the old menu, particularly when accompanied by the usual third party applications. I, so far, as I said previously, am regarding the metro screen as a graphical start menu. If you remove those items which are rarely used (they are still available, instantly, - "All Apps"). you have a reasonable, uncluttered, graphical start menu. You even have your start button, but now hidden, should you be returned to the desktop - swish, bottom left corner, or the Windows key.
Metro, I agree, in its present form, is not the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. But, hopefully, this is one of the areas of self customisation which MS will improve before the next release.
For reasons connected to my work mode, and multi tasking, I am not comfortable so far, using pure Metro applications which go full screen. This also, is not a problem. I have uninstalled the majority, and the "Store" items have plenty of suitable standard, non-metro alternatives.
I see a huge percentage of posters on forums, who offer up incredibly cluttered desktops, or taskbars. Perhaps I have the wrong perspective on it, but how can this possible be an advantage to the straight and direct use of the Metro screen? (Except, of course, for those with that taste, it is no longer possible to have those beautiful picture desktops as a background?)
Operationally, now benchmarks are beginning to pop up, and on my own amateur tests, there is, without argument, a marginal performance improvement. imo, I do not see that improvement as anything to be too excited about. In fairness, it does seem to be more by rearrangement of background services or, for that matter, earlier items which were constant in the background. I felt at the time that these small changes could have been adjusted with a Windows 7 SP, but, as it would have needed major kernel alterations, perhaps not. Certainly, for those who are thinking of purchasing - in particular large company buyers, I would not see that it could warrant the expense, if, at present, they are comfortable with Windows 7.

David Clarke

Monday, July 16, 2012 3:35 PM

I see a huge percentage of posters on forums, who offer up incredibly cluttered desktops, or taskbars. Perhaps I have the wrong perspective on it, but how can this possible be an advantage to the straight and direct use of the Metro screen? (Except, of course, for those with that taste, it is no longer possible to have those beautiful picture desktops as a background?)
Operationally, now benchmarks are beginning to pop up, and on my own amateur tests, there is, without argument, a marginal performance improvement. imo, I do not see that improvement as anything to be too excited about. In fairness, it does seem to be more by rearrangement of background services or, for that matter, earlier items which were constant in the background. I felt at the time that these small changes could have been adjusted with a Windows 7 SP, but, as it would have needed major kernel alterations, perhaps not. Certainly, for those who are thinking of purchasing - in particular large company buyers, I would not see that it could warrant the expense, if, at present, they are comfortable with Windows 7.

David Clarke

David, your conclusion is in agreement with the overwhelming number of detailed reviews of Win8.

Unfortunately, as I pointed out in the similar thread, the Microsoft OSes are in stasis for almost 9 years. Ever since the first Vista beta, nothing much has substantially changed. Vista represented a huge improvement in a lot of aspects. Win7 simply rearranged some elements and streamlined others, but for all intents and purposes, Win7 was, in reality, a large patch for Vista. Win8, as far as the desktop goes, does not offer any substantive improvements. The only thing new in OSes that Microsoft has produced in all these 9 years is WinRT, a portable OS that is clearly inferior to iOS and Android with none of the ecosystem of the latter two. Of course, Win8 is really WinRT that runs the "desktop" (the Win32 APIs) under advanced emulation.

Of course, in all this time, Microsoft could have made some real advances in the manner in which the OS utilizes memory, processors, cores, multicore GPUs, and it could have modernized the OS. Windows 8 still depends on the registry database. In this day and age, there is no need for shared libraries; the only one who needs the registry is Microsoft, because it cannot spend resources to eradicate it.

I can mention many areas of the OS in dire need of modernization (such as policy setting and editing, etc); all these could be made far more user friendly, unleashing real power. Instead, for 9 years, Microsoft is AWOL chasing the consumer and inventing stupid interfaces (like the ribbon) that nobody really needs or wants.

In the process, Microsoft has lost market and mind share. Windows Phone 7.x is a great example. Microsoft decided to junk its previous portable OS, Windows Mobile 6.x (although it was technically superior to the competition, offering full multitasking, encryption, and massive capabilities of customization). Instead, it offered Windows Phone 7.x, which was, to be charitable, a work in progress with very few of the WinMo capabilities. The Microsoft market share dropped from 25% to under 2%!!! For some reason, Microsoft mavens thought that repeating the Apple formula would work (remove the user from the equation, offer a new interface). It did not. The new OS was in unremarkable hardware and it hardly had an ecosystem worth bothering about.

Again, Microsoft makes the assumption that the OS or the interface matter in portable computing. I am afraid that they would not. Consumers want simplicity and they do not care how it is achieved. They also want low prices and rich ecosystems. Microsoft is challenged in all these areas. I afraid that the experiment, and the obvious manipulation of the base with Win8, would work against Microsoft and even undermine its dominance in the enterprice.

Monday, July 16, 2012 5:06 PM

I've found that the Metro interface is an obvious work-in-progress.

Truth be told, I've been working on trying to like it, but it's clear that there are a series of issues that make it unworkable and unforgiving. Maybe I just haven't spent enough time with it to learn some tricks, so I'm open to learning and trying...but I'm no amateur. I'll accept that change is good - I like change....I look at the 2012 suite of servers and get giddy at the change. I've just come up with a list of frustrations that I've been experiencing as a user:

Before I list them, let me make it clear I'm not against the Metro interface...I just think it has a long way to go just to be usable on a scale beyond 'I press that app and I use my app and I save my file and it doesn't matter where it is actually saved'.

1. The tiles have two sizes.........two......sizes........that's weak, really weak. One of the best things about Windows historically was it's flexibility as a visual interface.

2. I can't organise the Start screen. I mean REALLY organise it. The %$£ing tiles all shove themselves up against each other so I can't leave a space where I want it. Yes, I know I can create more columns, but I don't want to separate some tiles THAT much.

3. Real Estate - I have to scroll my mouse wheel to get to some of my stuff....that's a PITA. Why is so much space taken up with nothing and I can't use it?

4. Blind Spot - I freely admit it...I tend to look in certain areas of the screen more, maybe it's my eyesight, but I find it REALLY hard to find things on the Metro interface. I shouldn't have to start typing to find an application, the same way as I shouldn't have to search everywhere. I just want it in the top-right corner, or the top-left corner....I want my Recycle Bin and I want it shoved out of the way in the bottom-right corner. Why are such important things so difficult to find?

5. Temporary spot - (linked to 4) where's the temporary spot I use for a file I just need to work with for 10 minutes then delete so I don't end up keeping unwanted or often-updated-on-the-internet files?

6. Alt-tab, the staple of workers everywhere...it seems to skip over or miss stuff out.

7. My workflow is utterly disrupted by the screen completely disappearing for the Start screen to come up when I'm quickly looking for another program or Recent File. Fine, as may not be as bright as some people, but I usually work on about 3 or 4 tasks at once and the entire screen flipping around drives me up the wall, as it breaks my concentration.

8. Multiple applications for a task. I'm in the process of sorting my video collection, so I want 3-6 conversion windows in place, TheRenamer ready for drag/drop, AnyDVD sitting pretty in the corner, etc. So....when Metro versions of these become available, how will I be using them? On the Desktop I can space them out, but when they decide to Metro-ify them can I open them on the Desktop?

9. Finally - a non-Start gripe for the sake of it. The Metro applications that come with Win8 are clunky and awkward. Massive-sized-font email lists and that Video application that can't see any of my stuff but opens up to a Store (FOR F*"KS SAKE I DON'T WANT TO LOOK AT A STORE UNTIL I SAY 'Right, let's go browse for stuff'!!). I guess there'll be applications that improve on it (like Outlook Express was significantly improved-on) but lessons should have been learned from the last decade or so.

10. Applications on the side? I use a 27" 2560 x 1440 monitor that can't see ANYTHING on a window I've dragged to the side, and there's a bar that looks like it'll let me choose my sizing, but no - it just whacks it full screen.

I guess, in the end, I just want to be able to say 'Give me Windows 7 when I'm at my desktop and Windows 8 when I eventually purchase a tablet. Personally, I'm not too keen on tablets and won't be until they have swappable modules for graphics, memory, processor and hard disk (probably never happen). However, I'm going to give Windows 8 a solid non-stop go until RTM comes out...and when it does if it isn't more flexible I don't see it being an OS of choice for desktop work, and will keep it out of my company.

I also think the Installation process needs a severe overhaul - or at least an advanced mode. I want to pick where my data is, where my files are, etc from the outset. I want to say 'no thanks' to being linked to any stores from my applications. I want MORE choice and LESS fixed limitations.

Edited by Atonnis Monday, July 16, 2012 5:07 PM
Edited by Atonnis Monday, July 16, 2012 5:10 PM Added no.10
Edited by Atonnis Monday, July 16, 2012 5:11 PM fixed no 10

Monday, July 16, 2012 7:04 PM

Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

9. Finally - a non-Start gripe for the sake of it. The Metro applications that come with Win8 are clunky and awkward. Massive-sized-font email lists and that Video application that can't see any of my stuff but opens up to a Store (FOR F*"KS SAKE I DON'T WANT TO LOOK AT A STORE UNTIL I SAY 'Right, let's go browse for stuff'!!). I guess there'll be applications that improve on it (like Outlook Express was significantly improved-on) but lessons should have been learned from the last decade or so.

You are sensing a fundamental issue: You want to USE your computer, and Microsoft wants you to BUY software (for which they will take a percentage for facilitating the sale). These things are somewhat at odds, but could possibly be overlooked if the "USE your computer" part were made better/easier. It really boils down to insufficient engineering. Perhaps the greed of wanting to jump right to huge App Store profits has blinded them to what needs to be done to be truly successful.

Good post.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBooks:

Monday, July 16, 2012 10:07 PM

You are sensing a fundamental issue: You want to USE your computer, and Microsoft wants you to BUY software (for which they will take a percentage for facilitating the sale). These things are somewhat at odds, but could possibly be overlooked if the "USE your computer" part were made better/easier. It really boils down to insufficient engineering. Perhaps the greed of wanting to jump right to huge App Store profits has blinded them to what needs to be done to be truly successful.

Good post.

-Noel

Detailed how-to in my eBooks:

Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

Greed? Yes, mixed with desperation. The team that is working with Win8 has been working on this for at least 5 years. So, getting some things right may not have been too difficult unless marketing interfered with the project.

In addition, what most miss in this discussion is that "Metro" is not just an interface. It is "the interface" of the mobile OS, WinRT. What appears awkward in the desktop/laptop, would likely work well in a smallish tablet. The problem is that Microsoft decided to bolt its mobile OS (WinRT) onto the Win7 desktop for no better reason than to (a) condition users and (b) milk the installed base for all it can get by selling them really useless Metro apps. Microsoft was afraid that an honest approach, that of just selling tablets based on WinRT without inflicting it on desktop users would have been a failure. That shows you how much confidence they had on their mobile solution!!!

Why did Microsoft kill the gadgets? Because the gadgets (akin to Android's widgets) are far more useful than tiles and even more useful than some Metro apps. But they were free!!! Microsoft is eager copy the success of Apple's marketplace.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012 4:12 AM

I would be inclined to believe that MS will label SP1 as 'all the things you wanted in 8 but sadly didn't make it'.

Then SP2 will be 'and here are all the fixes for those things we changed in SP1.....sorry! *blush*

As we're both saying, in this side-discussion anyway, it's about selling stuff. Apple's masterstroke (oo-er) was that they made it LOOK so easy from the outset, even if it wasn't. Microsoft have not yet shown how their marketing is going to make people believe their stuff is better.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012 4:17 AM