JorgeA

+1 I was just thinking about him the other day. I also miss him. I believe he still visits occasionally, he just doesn't post anymore for some reason. I don't think he ever stated that he was not going to participate anymore, but ... Cheers and Regards +1 I just checked out Charlotte's MSFN profile, and it says he was last here in January. A good thing, knowing that he's still "among us." I can think of only two reasons that he's not participating: either he's burned out from the intense participation in the Windows 8 discussion, or there is some kind of issue (health/family/work) that's forced him to cut down on his activity. I sure don't think he could have been turned off somehow, AFAIK he's universally admired here. @Charlotte, are you listening? Come back!! --JorgeA

IMHO that's they key to it all: unlike the supposed masses that Microsoft fantasizes about winning over with toy apps, you (and me and most everyone here) have work to be done. And that's why we prefer the Windows Desktop just as it is, thank you very much. --JorgeA

Paul Thurrott celebrates the apparent revival of the desktop PC market in Windows Weekly #396: [emphasis added] Had they asked, we could've told Microsoft that three years ago, saving a lot of grief all around, but what do we know -- we're just a bunch of ignorant peasants out in the field and they're the expert geniuses in their ivory towers. --JorgeA

LOL! --JorgeA

We're all doomed. In addition to this new virus, there are mysterious earth rumblings in Connecticut and Florida. On top of the horrible events happening in Syria, Libya, and now even France and Denmark. Oh, and I just read that Turkish military ships are escorting a natural gas prospecting vessel inside Cyprus's "economic zone" waters off the coast of that island. Don't you sometimes get the feeling that events are building up for something big? --JorgeA

^^ You're right!! Good point. The app icons aren't that much easier to see in the Technical Preview's own redesigned Start Menu. They're all surrounded by monochrome squares of various colors, which actually makes it harder to spot them by a visual scan than if they had just the icons and not the squares. --JorgeA

Stardock to deliver a Windows 10 Start menu replacement Stardock announces Start10, a Windows 10 Start menu replacement Brad Wardell talks Start10, the follow-up to the popular Start8 Start menu app Check out the gallery in the middle link. No doubt the good folks at Classic Shell are also hard at work making sure they have their own alternative ready for Win10 GA. --JorgeA

Interesting background from Paul Thurrott on Metro's roots in Windows Phone 7: Five Years Later, a Full-On Retreat from What Made Windows Phone Special [emphasis in original] LOL on that last one... And so, in light of the ongoing failure of this concept, Microsoft forges ahead with it in Windows 10. --JorgeA

Yeah, something like that. My speculation was running in terms of full-fledged PCs with desktop and CLI for The Initiated, and then App Land for the masses -- shunting those of us who fall in-between into the latter category. If you watch those Microsoft "Future Vision" videos, that's actually pretty much what it looks like. How is that girl doing her homework, or the desk jockey manipulating the numbers, going to get access to the innards of the ubiquitous cloud OS that runs the whole thing? Noooo, that'll be off-limits to the unwashed. I don't recall seeing any indication in the videos that users will even have any settings to adjust or any way to customize their computing environment: it'll all be pre-packaged for them by the benevolent and wise Powers That Be. --JorgeA

That's a great point. Although, maybe the "vision" envisioned by Microsoft is for a few elite High Tech Priests to have real computers, while the hoi polloi are limited to toy devices that they can't tinker with; only those deemed worthy of joining the Tech Order would be allowed access to the system's mysteries inner workings. --JorgeA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_Laputa jaclaz Incidentally, I'm glad to learn that the "Chevy Nova problem" has been officially debunked. I was living in a Spanish-speaking country when the Nova came onto the market, and I don't remember anybody ever associating the car's name with a bad assessment of its capabilities -- not even as a joke! The public was intelligent enough to realize that "nova" is totally different from "no va." --JorgeA

--JorgeA

Thank you. Having acknowledged Microsoft's goal to replace the Windows Desktop, it will be helpful to consider our critique of Windows 8/8.1/10 in that context. As you read around the forum here you will see that the critique focuses primarily on certain families of issues: 1. Usability We find that the Metro/Modern apps that Microsoft is putting out (both for their own sake and as models for app developers to follow) present, as constructed and offered, a restricted work environment lacking in user controls. Moreover, typically those controls that do exist (for example, in the Metro version of Internet Explorer) are hidden for the sake of increasing the space devoted to content. While this may work to some degree if we simply want to watch a video (although even then it would be a challenge to discover the page controls and a pain in the neck to have to keep bringing them out), it makes things harder if we want to actually do something with what's on the screen (and that is far from always going to be a video). How would you print a newspaper article off Metro IE unless you already knew to hit Ctrl-P? There's nothing in the Metro IE interface to inform you of that, let alone to adjust a multitude of other settings such as for privacy and security, your homepage, saving a webpage, etc. etc. With any luck, you will understand why we tend to view Metro apps as little more than toys -- sad little crippled programs for unserious purposes. We also dislike the by-design wide spacing of text and other elements in Metro apps, relative to the more efficient density of material in regular applications where one can visually take in more (more text, more controls) at a time. To get an idea of what we mean, compare the traditional Calculator applet (recently eliminated from Windows 10 TP) to the new calculator app that they have put in its place. Compare, too, the tightly spaced Vista/7 Start Menu to the new Start Menu in the Windows 10 Technical Preview. In the Vista/7 menu, you can see 22 items at a time, while in the Win10TP menu you can only see 12 items because they are so widely spaced out. Needless additional scrolling. And even that applies only if menu space isn't taken up by those silly letter dividers informing us that this is where the "E" apps begin, etc. I'm sure that others can come up with numerous other examples of limited or space-wasting Metro apps, as well as of regular applications that have been redesigned with Metro in mind. Personally, I tried the Metro Start Screen for several months and found it both harder and more annoying to have to scroll and scan whole screensful of blocks when looking for something, than it was to view compact bunches of links under All Programs in the regular Start Menu tucked in the corner. 2. Esthetics The single-color rectangles known as Tiles remind us of nothing more than Playskool blocks. The Start Menu has now taken on this look, what with its being a single color and, in the right panel, featuring large rectangles with small lettering in them. Make them smaller, and the app names get truncated, turning the tiles into unidentifiable stacks of scarcely differentiated blocks. This strikes us as ludicrous from a practical standpoint, but esthetically as a visual horror, suitable for ages 1-3. With the planned elimination of the Desktop, this is what we will ultimately have to look at on a daily basis. To us, Vista and 7 were the high point of Windows beauty, thanks to the marriage of the new Aero Glass transparency to longstanding three-dimensional elements (buttons, scrollbars, progress bars). For many of us who spend up to ten hours a day in front of a computer screen, this makes for a more pleasing experience, making the long hours of work easier to bear. From a practical perspective, we find the Metro-inspired flatness that's spreading throughout the OS to be not only dull and boring, but also harder to use, as the visual distinction between clickable items and items meant only to be read is decreased or erased completely. The dingy gray, flat scrollbars in IE and File Explorer are harder to locate at a glance; even if you make them darker, they're still flat rectangular blobs that are harder to tell apart from the rest of the window contents. 3. Choice The concept of choice is applicable on several levels. First, there is the decreased choice of UI. In Vista and 7, if you hated Aero Glass transparency you could choose the Basic theme. If you preferred a more traditional look, you could alternatively select the Classic, Windows 98/2000-type theme. Neither of these is available in Windows 8. In Vista/7, with a little work you could also install a Longhorn theme or any number of other custom visual styles. None of this that I've tried, has worked in Win10TP: after attempting to install a Vista theme that worked fine in Windows 7, my Taskbar is still flat and monochromatic. Just as for Windows 8, there are people working on getting a modicum of Aero Glass transparency for Windows 10, but the very fact that you have to jump through additional and more difficult hoops to get the desired look, itself represents a reduction in user choice of interface. Second, there is the reduced choice in what the user can do within Metro/Modern/Universal apps, compared to what we can traditionally do in regular applications with respect to the files we are working on. (See discussion of IE above for an example.) Third, if and when the Desktop is eliminated and all apps must be obtained via the Windows Store, this will represent another type of reduction in user choice. Gone will be the user's ability to simply download a program from a website and install it. And not only will that choice disappear, but users will be required to open a Microsoft account in order to obtain third-party programs. We oppose being herded into the "walled garden" of the Microsoft Store in order to get anything beyond what comes pre-installed on our PCs. And speaking of the Microsoft account, the company is steering PC buyers into the Microsoft matrix by making it a non-evident, confusing process to set up a local account on their new computers. Not exactly a celebration of user choice. Others on this side of the discussion are welcome to add their own examples to illustrate the concepts I'm describing. Please do. * * * * * * * All that said, I do not doubt, as you have found, that there are situations where a simpler UI is suitable because of the limited scope of the particular work involved; or that there are people whose needs are such that they will be happier with such a simpler environment. (I am about to recommend to an elderly family member who wishes to explore the Web that she might be happier with a tablet than with a PC.) However, bear in mind that what we object to is Microsoft's ongoing attempts to submerge everyone into that kind of UI: witness not only the aforementioned replacement of the Calculator applet with a Metro calc app that takes over almost half the screen, but more importantly the elimination of the Vista/7 Start Menu, now to be reconstituted into a gimped Start Menu where Tiles have supplanted links in the right panel and which is generally lacking in customization options. I'm sure that others can come up with their own examples to add to these. I hope that this will help you to understand where we're coming from. --JorgeA

As mentioned elsewhere (maybe it was this thread, I don't recall), it's all about sex. Sex sells. I'm surprised Microsoft's CEO isn't being raked over the coals about the WIndows assistant being the same nude-but-digitally-body-painted character as is found in their Halo game. And let's not forget that Apple invented theirs with the name Siri. Microsoft can't let Apple do anything without trying to do it too. It's like one of the most important industries on the planet is being run by 11 year olds. -Noel Apropos of that last paragraph, you probably saw this but others here may not have: [source] --JorgeA

Whatever "a lot of [our] posts" might mean, it's clear to me that you have not read enough of them to understand that what we ask for is UI choice, which is exactly the same thing that you say you want. After reading your unsupported assertions, I asked you to back them up: And yet you did not answer this request and instead went on to repeat the same sorts of charges. You keep saying that you are basing what you say about us on your reading around this Forum. Actually, I wonder if you have read (let alone absorbed) even all the posts in this present thread. In your latest post, you state again that -- -- even though the link to Microsoft's "Future Vision" statement, indicating that this is precisely what they aim to do, has already been given twice in this thread, first in the original post and then again in reply to one of your previous posts. This is how it's explained by one of the most articulate proponents of the Metro/Modern UI over in the Windows 10 Technical Preview forums: So, talk about killing off the Windows Desktop is not merely the fretting of worrywarts, but rather a goal which is explicitly stated by Microsoft and proclaimed by supporters of that vision. If you do find the Windows Desktop to be superior for office use than proposed alternatives, then instead of attacking our critique you may want to join it. --JorgeA

Kindly link us to evidence, on this forum, of "a lot of people" who "treat Windows 8.1 as if it has no desktop at all." The concern all along has been that Microsoft intends to phase out the Windows Desktop, not that it has done so already. --JorgeA

Well, if we here were "tech haters" as you say, then we wouldn't be on this forum, now would we? We'd be offline, painting the inside of a cave somewhere. No, on the contrary we are tech lovers -- that's why we joined MSFN -- and we are outraged by the running spectacle of the tech we love being progressively gimped for the sake of what too many out there think will be the masses who will eagerly adopt it if only it were simplified. For the sake of "usability," it is being made less useful and all-too-often actually harder to use. Instead of making uninformed judgments about the folks who participate in this forum, I suggest that you familiarize yourself with us, with our deep-seated love and respect for high technology, and with the insights and information that we have put out in the three years since Windows 8 became available. And if your reference to "doomsday whacko prophets" has to do with the intended elimination of the Windows Desktop, be aware that this is not doom-and-gloom handwringing, but actually an explicit goal (scroll down to "Future Vision") which is welcomed and proclaimed by at least some Windows 8 fans (see the fourth post from the bottom at the second link). --JorgeA

Fantastic observation down in the comments section for the following post: Transparent Live tiles will soon make their way to Windows 10 for phones technical preview Personally, I've always thought that Metro Tiles were little more than an ugly sister to the traditional desktop icons, and that Live Tiles were little more than refurbished and remarketed Windows Gadgets -- but with an emphasis on crudity of appearance. Maybe someone with the proper background can expand for us on the commenter's explanation. --JorgeA

One item stood out from this otherwise routine post: No new Windows 10 Preview build for PC before the last week of February [emphasis added] Does that mean that "new features" (new to Windows 10) such as a fully functional and customizable Start Menu and an option to use Aero Glass will not be added to Windows 10? And to think that so many Microsoft apologists kept telling us to "calm down, it's only a beta" -- until it got to be too late to put in the features we demand. --JorgeA

Here's Dedoimedo's take on Cortana. Funny, biting, and brutally honest but fair, as usual. Check out Cortana's search result for "regedit" with a Firefox icon attached. --JorgeA

The following piece might work well as a fitting coda to (at least psychologically) close out this thread. Just ignore the cheerleading (wishful thinking?) for Windows 10 at the end. Windows 8 failed at nearly everything it set out to accomplish Many good points along the way. The biggest surprise about this article may be the website where it was posted -- historicaly, Rah-Rah Central for Windows 8. --JorgeA

Not sure if this belongs better here or in the Microsoft to kill off the Windows Desktop thread, but here's an interesting discussion touching on some of the points we've been talking about recently: Is "Mobile Only" The Future? [emphasis added] --JorgeA

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the new multiple desktops feature in Windows 10 is a bit of a misnomer. Played around with it a little. The trouble with it (unless I missed something) is that sure, you can set up different sets of windows in each "desktop," but all of the open windows still show up in the Taskbar. To my mind, a true "multiple desktop" means having a completely different set of both windows and open-application taskbar icons for each desktop. Otherwise, what's the point? You still have all the same programs for your various purposes showing down there, just like before you had "multiple" desktops. --JorgeA

ETW is nice. Now you can capture CPU, DISK usage and the WU activity and see how WU impacts your system. Those old log was useless as hell. Here are a couple of comments about that news: So there is hope that in the end we might end up with something that is (as you note) more useful, while being no harder to use than the current method. --JorgeA

Apropos ot this... Windows 10 may offer limited features on existing low-end devices Funny -- the whole point of the "One Windows" concept and of eventually removing version names and just calling it "Windows" was supposedly to eliminate confusion. But in an important sense this will add to the confusion since of course a low-end phone can't do everything that an i7-5770K box can do, and yet we're expected to call the OS on both of them "Windows." In practice, people will still vary the names for each type of machine, even if Microsoft refuses to do so officially. "Phone Windows," "PC Windows," what have you. There is a need and a use for this kind of naming differentiation. --JorgeA