Four new Betas released today

[JorgeA]

Someone discover how disable stupid metro?? On PC is very ugly.

No... not yet, anyway.

Speculation is running both ways on whether Microsoft will (or will not) eventually provide a built-in way to disable Metro, at least for business versions of Windows 8.

On the other hand, there seems to be little doubt, even among fans of Metro, that sooner or later some sort of hack or workaround will be developed to at least bring back a real Start Menu and its functionality.

--JorgeA

[Aloha]

with the cversion.ini-trick the upgrade should work.

Can you post it, MagicAndre? What is it?

Someone discover how disable stupid metro?? On PC is very ugly.

You don't like it, you can always go to the old view of the desktop. I don't like the Metro Start either. I rarely turn to it, just working with the desktop all the time!

[bphlpt]

Someone discover how disable stupid metro?? On PC is very ugly.

http://www.onebitzero.com/enable-or-disable-metro-ui-in-windows-8-using-desktop-context-menu-how-to/

Cheers and Regards

[condor]

bphlpt

That trick work only in developer preview

Edited March 6, 2012 by condor

[MagicAndre1981]

with the cversion.ini-trick the upgrade should work.

Can you post it, MagicAndre? What is it?

this is the same like in IWndows 7. Open it and change the version number MinClient from 8220 to 8102, create a new ISO and run setup

[JorgeA]

This could be exciting: an application to (maybe) bring back the function of the Start Menu, if not the look.

It seems to restore the Start orb and to add a Shutdown option. And -- last but not least -- it doesn't take over your entire screen, so you can still see open windows while selecting a new program.

Something like this (especially if given the Windows 7 start menu look, like ViStart) could be the lifesaver for Windows 8. I'll be trying it as soon as I finish other explorations of the CP (in case Start8 messes everything up).

--JorgeA

Edited March 6, 2012 by JorgeA

[MagicAndre1981]

the program displays a Metro-Style App

I don't like it

[CoffeeFiend]

Unfortunately no decent start menu yet, yeah.

Meanwhile, yet another good read: That Windows 8 experience? Confusing. Confusing as hell

[Joseph_sw]

what a mismatch.

M$ should've ditch this metro-for-desktop alltogether, but it would ruin their new-metro-trainnings partners program, I mean M$ have done this for their extra-large-tabbed-toolbars ribbons before...

[CoffeeFiend]

M$ should've ditch this metro-for-desktop alltogether

I agree wholeheartedly, but that would make Win8 more of a service pack than a new OS i.e. just a couple minor new features that most won't use, and I don't seemingly have any use for most of them.

Hyper-V seems like a desperate push for their virtualization tech that nearly nobody seems to be adopting, reset is mostly sending the wrong message (our OS needs reinstalls so often that we built that in!) while not being really helpful, Internet Explorer version++ which I won't touch with a 10 foot pole, and that's about it for the main changes. Unless you want to talk about the Windows on ARM whose main feature seems to be incompatibility, which is paired with the kludgy interface of Win8 that nobody likes and MS' poor online services (sounds like a winner, no?)

The one and only thing I like from it is the task manager. And I'm not paying $100+ for that, especially when the rest of the OS is ruined. Instead of making us pay $100 for a handful of extra features (remote desktop host, MUI and very little more) in Ultimate over Home Premium, just charge us the extra $100 for the non-Metro interface or something.

[JorgeA]

reset is mostly sending the wrong message (our OS needs reinstalls so often that we built that in!) while not being really helpful

The biggest drawbacks of the existing OS recovery options are (1) you lose your installed programs, and (2) the process of reinstalling the OS and programs, which -- depending on the kind of user involved -- can prove to be a process which is overwhelming, tedious, intimidating, and/or frightening. The ideal method would be to enable a reset/refresh/reinstall/whatchamacallit that allows the user both to keep their data and all settings, and to choose which of their applications to keep intact, with the proviso that the more programs you keep installed, the less good that the "refresh" will do.

Don't know if this is technically feasible, but it would be my ideal. It might be called "Windows In-Place Easy Transfer."

Another possible (and not necessarily too complicated) idea would be to automatically pop up an option, right before or right after the installation of a program, to image the HDD as it is at that moment, with sufficiently detailed instructions for the less technically inclined. (Restore points often don't successfully "take" when applied IMX.)

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

the program displays a Metro-Style App

I don't like it

Yeah, it's not the optimal solution. As it turns out, apparently what it does is to create a miniature version of the Start Screen, without actually working much better.

But I'm glad to know that various people are busy trying to fix what's broken in Windows 8. With any luck, one or more of them will get it right.

--JorgeA

[CoffeeFiend]

The biggest drawbacks of the existing OS recovery options are (1) you lose your installed programs, and (2) the process of reinstalling the OS and programs

Yes. It'll save you about 10 minutes compared to installing from a flash drive or such. But then, all the updates, all the optional updates, all the drivers for everything, all your software, all the patches and updates for all your software, etc. Printer preferences, pinning apps, browser extensions, codecs, licenses and activations, etc. That's a whole day gone by.Then you start setting all your preferences and general settings in all apps and so on.

Now, if you're a power user or programmer, this is *so* much worse (being both is even worse). Several IDEs and compilers (Visual Studio, SQL Server, service packs for both, Windows SDK, sample DBs for SQL Server, AVR Studio 5 -- oops gotta reinstall VS2010 SP1 again now, Eclipse, CodeWarrior, Imagecraft, Keil, eabi toolchain + CMSIS, etc). Now configure VS and others to your needs. Reinstall Resharper/VisualAssistX/CodeRush or whatever you use, SVN/Hg/Git/whatever tools (cmd line/shell GUIs/multiple IDE integration) and their "ignore" files and various settings, various VS extensions via NuGet, VMWare Workstation and several virtual machine images for testing (also, the vSphere 5 client), several JTAG/BDM-related tools and drivers for embedded folks, IDA Pro, etc. There goes yet another day.

God forbid you also use other kinds of software! Now my color profiles and prefs, my custom photoshop workspaces (and tons of other settings/presets), bridge settings, my custom pre-flight settings in acrobat, font sets in suitcase fusion, brush settings in Painter, outlook signatures, your company's templates for various CAD apps, and countless other things in numerous other apps (e.g. telling wireshark not to go crazy because of TCP checksums, extra folders in CCleaner, internal codec settings in MPC-HC, Intuos tablet settings, fixing errors in WMP's library, etc). That's assuming that nothing goes wrong on anything, not that it's uncommon for a Windows security update to fail or something along those lines. Some people would even add some games to this list.

I think you now understand why I never want to reinstall unless absolutely necessary. I just don't have that kind of time to waste. Installing Windows itself isn't the issue, it's everything else you have to do after that is. It's so much work that I used to make images of it with TrueImage but by the time I end up needing to restore them almost everything included is out of date so that is typically no help (I'd just have to uninstall everything and reinstall the new versions)

But yeah. I can now save myself a whole 10 minutes in this 3 day long ordeal! I feel so relieved.

[Aloha]

this is the same like in IWndows 7. Open it and change the version number MinClient from 8220 to 8102, create a new ISO and run setup

Thank you.

Umm... I'm afraid of using the Search on the Start Screen (well, I won't call it Metro Start any more!) It's OK if there are some results after I hit Search. But if it doesn't find anything, I can't return to the desktop screen at all. Then the only way to get rid of Start Screen is to sign out and then sign in again!

[JorgeA]

Umm... I'm afraid of using the Search on the Start Screen (well, I won't call it Metro Start any more!) It's OK if there are some results after I hit Search. But if it doesn't find anything, I can't return to the desktop screen at all. Then the only way to get rid of Start Screen is to sign out and then sign in again!

Aloha,

In that case (when Search doesn't find anything), what happens if you hit the Windows key, or if you hover the mouse to the lower-left corner of the screen?

--JorgeA

Edited March 7, 2012 by JorgeA