Windows 8 - "Reset 2, the Quickening"

Has Microsoft finally seen the light? This article by Thurrott almost sounds like it: Further Changes Coming in Windows "Threshold". Source is the usually quite well-informed Mary Jo Foley, so who knows, this may come true.

 

I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but not holding my breath...

 

Start menu returns in its traditional capacity for Windows 8.2, but MS will follow Apple's "old" model and charge $20-30 for the privilege.

 

Does this mean "Aero glass" is coming back too?

 

<iframe width='480' height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/_J6-3l3hCm0?start=2" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

LoL, they talk about it as if it were some type of miracle they are performing being able to bring it back. What a miracle they will be performing. We asked them from the start not to remove it! It is only the failure of 8.1 to excite the market that has them finally looking to give in.

I'll though reserve on this for a bit as look how fast they reeled back from the "being called the New Coke fiasco"

 

Windows Explorer restarts between 1-4 times a day, and i have had this is on completely different Win8 notebooks, no BSOD`S so far though, Win7 seemed stabler than Win8.

John.

 

It is, the miracle of consumers will bending a large corporation to their will. Many have spoken with their wallets and now may reap the benefits. On that note I still will wait and see.

M$ had a beta of windows 8 where they were going to test it out and took feed back from the testers at the time. This information was promptly ignored and M$ went with a "bet the farm" idea of what the OS will be. Then there was Windows blue and the promise of we are listening. While an improved Windows 8, 8.1 just proves to be a further investment into the "bet the farm" idea. Agreed it was an attempt to be a "good enough" for desktop users. it just has not cut the mustard. Now we are at the ok we will develop a start menu. Well this easily could be an entire different start menu that could be better or worse than that in Windows 7. Still now Aero glass promises and IMHO the desktop metro apps sounds like an attempt to forego making gadgets available again but we shall see.

Sorry but I just do not trust M$. They have proven themselves over and over. I can see not too many out there willing to call them out either. Bucking them the last time just got them to essentially recant statements and possibly even stopped them from giving us a fully fixed version with 8.1. Well walk on those egg shells and just fix the thing already.............

 

It is quite something to hear that requested input was promptly ignored. They actually took time away from people for the process.

 

A Fox News article has Thurrott saying, "A new team at Microsoft that’s responsible for overall OS development has clearly spent the past few months evaluating and then dropping most of the ‘my way or the highway’ silliness that doomed the original Windows 8 release." And also, "The ultimate failure of Windows 8 wasn’t that Microsoft embraced mobile technologies, it was that it did so without taking into account how poor this experience would be for the 1.5 billion people who use Windows on traditional PCs.”

This seems like a pretty strong indication to me.

Microsoft begins planning Windows 8.2 | Fox News

 

can't tell if trolling... :thumbsup:

and i think misterhobbs was simply pointing out that there's a strong indication these unofficial reports regarding threshold are true, as a counterpoint to your comment that nothing's actually been officially announced yet. i think we can all agree there's nothing miraculous about any part of this discussion.

 

And as I mentioned, I do not trust M$ as we have no idea the look or functionality of this new mini-start menu....................

 

Funny how even Mary Jo is trotting out that old canard of people disliking the Win8 UI because they "can't figure out how to navigate it":

That's complete nonsense, of course. In my experience, it is in fact "power users" aka professional users, first and foremost, that dislike the Win8 UI, and the reason is cold, hard functionality. The Start Screen is simply a poor replacement of the old Start Menu, that has only a fraction of the latter's functionality, is awkward to use with mouse & keyboard, and simply gets in the way of productivity. That's all.

Sure, that would be just another disaster waiting to happen: Let's drop the hierarchical organization to make this a near-useless shadow of the former start menu. I agree this would be entirely consistent with recent trends at Microsoft...

 

I'll laugh so hard if they try to charge for it. That would create two separate branches of update support for Windows 8.x

 

Is MS turning into EA/Dice now?

 

Not sure myself if you're trolling here. Certainly you must be aware of the blog that Sinofsky had been running during the Win8 preview months. You know, the one where he, directly, received a firestorm of criticism regarding all things Metro in general, and the Start Screen in particular. To which he promptly reacted by removing the Start Menu code, as well as Aero Glass code, which both had been present in the Win8 previews. Well, I guess if you're cynical you could say that this was Sinofsky's way of taking the feedback into account in some form, but somehow I have a feeling that this was not your point...

 

Maybe MS should hire the designers of Enlightenment desktop for Linux, left click anywhere on desktop and voila: right click is configured to allow a list of any apps of your choice. Or easily place a start button in any of 12 locations. :thumbsup:

 

Well, this was the way almost all of the early Window Managers for X-Windows worked on Unix machines. Not a bad idea, however. Also, it's not like the Start Menu as it existed in Windows 7 was not subject to improvement. Just google some of the Start Menu replacements out there. Some of these do have interesting functionality. None of them is as pathetic as the Win8 Start Screen, however...

 

Add Aero and done.

 

I would still want to see and feel this new start menu. I won't even look at until final release too, never know what they will end up handing you. As an aside note too, they are giving this as a stop gap for "non experienced users". This worries me as it mean they again are eventually looking to pull the start menu.

Not again that I am against this, IMHO the doc is way better. The problem again will be what will it be replaced by, another UI that the end users in all hate! M$ has again proven they will do what they want and we have to like it...................

 

I hope not. "Metro-inspired" is where the problem starts:

 

I still don't understand why they're digging their heels in to off even a hidden option to enable "classic windows 7 style Start Menu". Seems arrogance and stubbornness are taking precedence. It's like telling a bad joke and keep telling it hoping people will eventually find it funny. It's not.

 

Nice work. I would like this user interface more than Windows 8.1 on my F23 (desktop-replacement laptop with a non-touchscreen), but less than 8.1 on my Duo 11 (convertible tablet).

 

Love that Dr. Seuss quote, lol.

BTW, who is that actor in your avatar? I've asked several people to look at my screen and no one can seem to guess.

 

All it took was to get Balmer packing for the road, my way or the highway is taking the highway.

 

I don't think this is any well-known actor. Original source is here, I think, but the picture is used all over the internet, avatars, mostly...

 

The smaller picture resembles someone familiar, but the larger one doesn't. Anyway, it conveys strong body language - even contagious :thumbsup:

Green Eggs and Ham; Windows Blue and Spam; I think they might do better, to put it back in the can. Ham over Spam cause there's just something wrong when it's coming from tin.