JorgeA

There's a list of Start Menu/Button replacements in another sticky. It's too much to ask to try every one of them , but if you (or anybody else reading this) get the chance, I'd love it if you could report over there on the ones that you find are (or are not) working in Windows Blue. Thank you very much! (¡Muy agradecido!) --JorgeA

Reports are coming in that the "legacy" code supporting Start Menu replacements has been taken out of Windows Blue: A couple of posters in the StartIsBack thread says that some replacements work and others don't. Anybody care to try out all the items on our list in the leaked Windows Blue? Thanks to @CharlotteTheHarlot for bringing this to attention in the "Deeper Impressions" thread. --JorgeA

So true Charlotte, I love it!! I found these graphics on the Web: A Google search of "boycott Windows 8" yields 3.12 million results. There's even a couple of Facebook pages dedicated to this idea, but I have Facebook in my Hosts file for privacy reasons. --JorgeA

do read the whole comment, it raises very good points, maybe it's "us", not "them". We will neededly all migrate eventually to Linux (or any other "working" OS) and let "them" fight senseless Surface vs.iPad wars. I read "John Galt's" comment. Like the commenter right below him, I wonder how he comes up with his percentages. But, to the meat of his comments: To accomplish what he wants, there is no need for all these convolutions or to invent new and even more complicated hardware. There is a simple solution, already in existence: it's called the Start Menu. It lists your most used applications. As a bonus, it also gives you quick access to your most recently opened items. And for simplicity in switching between applications, no one (least of all the Metro folks) has yet devised anything easier than the Taskbar. In Metro you have to first bring up the open apps with a swipe from the left, then you click or press on the one that you want. With the Taskbar you make the switch in a single action (a mouse click) -- I never even bother with Alt+Tab. Oh, and with the Taskbar you can see immediately what programs are currently running: you don't need to first swipe from the left to see what's open. It boggles the mind to see people still arguing that the Metro interface is somehow better or easier or faster to use. --JorgeA

Ruh Roh Only the post-WinXP Nu-Microsoft could have accomplished such a feat. They have made Windows 8 Metro Blew positively pirate proof! It sucks so bad that a billion+ potential customer market would rather go Linux than buying or stealing their Playskool Toy Edition. Yup. And despite all the OS piracy that's said to take place over there, this is bound to be a major depressant on Windows 8 sales going forward, making it harder to claim that Win8 is a hit. OTOH, given what we've seen with Skype and of course the Great Firewall of China, I wonder what kinds of spyware Canonical might have agreed to bake into the Chinese version of their OS in order to land this deal. And will those "features" make it into the regular Ubuntu distro? We may get a chance to test the effectiveness of the "open source" concept. --JorgeA

Just delicious! Maybe this is in some way symbolic of what Bill's company is doing to its customers... --JorgeA

Given the Start Screen's color scheme that you see in all the ads, I'd been thinking along the lines of Windows Purple. But your choice works better thanks to the pun. --JorgeA

Well, there's something to think about. It sure feels that way... --JorgeA

Thanks for letting us know! WinBeta has a whole series of articles on the leaked build (9 when I wrote this), including a video: Looks like the Desktop is still alive in that version. Check out the hideous purple+green combo at about 2:25. They must have hired 3-year-olds to select their color scheme. --JorgeA

It IS amazing. You'd think that Microsoft's competitors had infiltrated the company's executive ranks for the purpose of destroying it by alienating as many customers as possible. Putting this together with other articles we've seen recently, it looks like the ultimate "vision" is for people to end up with dumb terminals that can't do anything by themselves such that they need to be connected to the 'Net -- which then facilitates keeping an eye on them with the built-in cameras and phoning home with the information. If I had the skills, time, and patience, I'd write a novel based on this theme. But then, maybe Microsoft will destroy itself completely before this ultimate Big Brother vision comes to pass. --JorgeA

Hmm, and how did that work out for Sony? Which reminds me of a laptop I saw at a Sony store in a mall a couple of years ago. Before I give the price, let me say that it made me curious to see what the heck there was in it to justify the asking price. It had an SSD with (I think) 240GB, a secondary HDD (1TB IIRC) for storage, 8GB of RAM, and some flavor of an i7 processor. 17" screen. Good graphics card, but I can't remember anything about it. The machine did look visually attractive. But the price tag said $6295!!! You can emulate Apple's overpricing model to some degree, but not THAT much. --JorgeA

My numbers in each category are smaller, but the proportions are comparable. Imagine paging through a Start Screen containing 100-200 installed programs and their associated sub-programs and uninstallers , plus default-installed Metro apps. That's one reason that the dated, cheesy, old-hat Start Menu is superior: you can hide most of the clutter beneath nested folders (or flyout menus, if you prefer the 98/XP style menu) and speed up your visual scan. And there's no need to manually rearrange everything if you don't want: it's automatically alphabetized for you. --JorgeA

An interesting take on the Surface's positioning in the market and marketing problems, from a couple of months ago. So far, that analysis seems to be borne out by subsequent sales performance. --JorgeA

PCWorld is running a poll on Windows 8. Here are the results so far: As they say... vote early and often! --JorgeA

Echoes of what we said a couple of days ago: Microsoft's cash-for-apps pitch to devs smells like desperation --JorgeA

Yeah, I do think! I wonder if they're aware of what they're doing there. Or maybe it's a kind of deliberate (but still ominous) joke. Just wait till these Kinect cameras get networked and become accessible to a variety of three-letter agencies. Doesn't even matter if Microsoft actually intends for people to be spied on, they will have made it all possible, and easy. The most secure data is the data that doesn't get collected in the first place... --JorgeA

That was hilarious! A slight variation on this (and totally OT): I remember when the Ford Torino came out. With apologies to @jaclaz because it's a real place in Italy, we made fun of the name by splitting off the "T" and adding an "e" to it... --JorgeA

The last line there: A somewhat improved-upon Google translation: As usual, Microsoft has not invented anything, once again it's copied from somebody else... --JorgeA

Word is getting out: --JorgeA

This Microsoft betrayal of the people, their customers, is pretty similar to the "arrangement" that Google has with the Chinese government. Extremely distasteful in both cases, but I gotta say that Microsoft's is particularly unsettling. Just read up on what information gets supplied to the regime and then tell me that you would ever use Skype for anything. This is very disturbing. And that sort of thing isn't just happening "over there" -- as we've pointed out before, MSFT is helping NYC to create an integrated network of video surveillance cameras. --JorgeA

It could be (I hope so). Machine translation is literal and unreliable, and then there is the bit about azure, which as we know is a kind of blue. Plus, I haven't seen anything to confirm or deny this report elsewhere in the (English-language) press. Maybe a Russian speaker could go to the original website and give us a human take on what it says. --JorgeA OK, now I can confirm after consultation with a Russian speaker, that the article does refer to Windows Blue and not Azure. The Google translation, while awkward and poorly written, gets the message right. After reading the article, the Russian consultant's reaction was -- "So, if there is no Desktop, what is computer for?!" --JorgeA P.S. We still need confirmation of this report about Windows Blue from other sources.

That's a great point! I guess that they could try paying people to use Win8, like they're now offering to pay developers -- but like you said, the lemon would still taste just as bitter. The only hope (which I don't yet see any hints of happening) is that they'll improve the taste of the lemon by bringing back the Start Menu/Button and booting to the Desktop by default. Although there are SO MANY problems with the new UI (no Aero Glass, crude squared-off window corners, flat buttons, hard-to-see scrollbars, etc. etc.) that these measures alone may not be enough. --JorgeA

It tells you how bad the situation is when they have to pay developers to entice them into putting time and effort on Metro apps. It's looking increasingly likely (though, of course, not yet a certainty) that: Nothing can save Windows 8 now --JorgeA

A website that @jaclaz linked to a couple of days ago led me to this item: The reason we don't have Metro Office yet --JorgeA

the future of (public school) architecture and design is doomed (you see, you start by making windows flat, and see where it brings you), the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) promptly emitting their concerns Amazing -- so it's not just computing, this flatness thing is an emerging esthetic. Now I understand why 3D TVs haven't caught on in the market: they run counter to the current trend! Just wait till this fashion hits automobiles. We'll have boxy cars (no rounded edges!) and, naturally, flat tires. --JorgeA