Sorry, bringing back the Start menu won't help Windows 8

There are plenty of legitimate concerns about the Windows 8 interface. But if you think the removal of the Start menu is the root cause of those problems, you're mistaken. See for yourself.

Sorry, but bringing back the Start menu won't help Windows 8 | ZDNet

For what it's worth I mainly agree with him...

I wouldn't bring back the Start Menu, but I'd definitely bring back the concept of a single Taskbar that was always visible across the whole OS.

 

[HippsieGypsie]

Interesting that all of your examples are not only tablets and phones but also Apple.

LOL! I find it interesting that you find it interesting. What the heck is this suppose to mean? > "all of your examples"? It was one. One that that came to me "off the top my head" while writing the post. Want more? How often do MS, Apple, and Android OSs get newly released or updated let alone other software? My Droid X2 updated 3 times within the first year I had it. Now the hardware is too old to support new editions. How about browsers? That's a good one. Seems like a new one comes out every month, just like Baskin-Robbins' flavors. I won't get into perpherals. Just to name a few more.

Computers have stopped evolving as fast.

They have?! ARC1020 just posted the below here: http://www.eightforums.com/windows-...ides-4k-display-support-tons-new-feature.html

Enrique Fernández Speed Paint with CintiQ 24 HD Touch - YouTube
Johnny Depp - Digital Painting with Cintiq 21 UX Wacom - YouTube
Wacom Cintiq 24HD Touch demo of CATIA Natural Sketch at the Dassault Systèmes 3DExperience Forum - YouTube

Absolutely amazing technology!

If you mean desktop PCs how about HDDs? Why is Intel and other CPU manufactures always working on the next one? Just to name a few.

My desktop machine upstairs is still extremely fast and able to run anything I throw at it although it is over 3 years old (a record for me!). Sure, I bumped it up to 16 GB of ram but it has the same hard drives and video card that I put on it 3 years ago when I built it. I imagine my laptop with also last for my needs for quite a few years as well but it did start out as a beefy machine too (i7,two hard drives and 16 GB of ram). My work machine will also last me years before I would ever get the OK to upgrade it (i7,20 GB ram...)

Sooner or later you will.....

My phone would be more like your example. I'm on my third upgrade in 15 months and was thinking about the new Galaxy S4 but I think my wife will have a phone intervention for me before I can do that!

Funny on the wife thing, but how can it be better? It's basically the same example as mine.

It also points out a glaring issue that I have with Windows 8. People who defend it the strongest compare it to more of a phone than a laptop/desktop OS. It's not.

Sorry to read you have an "issue" with 8. I'm beginning to see that you like to twist words around. ["defend it the strongest"]? Excuse me, but I don't need to defend anything that I don't create. Products speak for themselves. I just so happen to like 8 and enjoy using it along with a lot of other members here. Where did I ever compare it or call it a "phone OS"? If anything, it's the ones that dislike it call it that or at least compare it to one.

And Microsoft has mixed up the two far too much. Does windows 2012 server really need the Modern UI just like a phone or an XBOX? Does my desktop really need an airplane mode? When you make a one size fits all OS, you end up alienate everyone and making a product that doesn't fit well in anything.

Is it you think IT Pros, Geeks, Techies, and the like are the only ones in the world that use computers? We are but just a minority. How about the "general population" that uses them? I think it to be too bad you dislike the idea of familiarity across devices at least for them. I find it rather ingenious concept and will find it useful myself. One better over what MS competition is doing. Once this concept is understood by everyone, it's going to be very successful. Mark my words.

Stop using iPhone/iPad examples.

I suggest not to twist words for the means of your own ends and I suggest not to tell people what to do. It's not becoming of anyone.

 

[turbofish]

I'm not twisting words and this isn't the first time that you have defended windows 8 beyond logic. Yes, there are some great new features with windows 8 but they shouldn't treat my desktop/servers with the same OS as a phone. It just doesn't work well on a desktop/server but some are too blind to see that.
Or too inexperienced.

 

[HippsieGypsie]

LOL! Who's logic? Yours? Your personal "IT logic" is not the only way to think in this world. Obviously MS and other members here think different also. I've also read some IT pros' posts correcting their contemporaries bashing the new system. If anything is illogical, it's the fact of joining on a support forum to bash the system it's named after. 8 has been created to be what it is. No more. No less.

If they aren't good products, why do you have Windows 8 and Server 2012 listed in your specs? Why don't you stick with something that you do like or works for you or at least alter it so that it does.

Last, but not least > You have all the "experience" in the world, right? Your post #32 here: http://www.eightforums.com/windows-...users-rarely-touch-metro-apps.html#post236492

What really is the point of a metro app? I get more content and a much better overall experience if I just open up the web page. ?Plus, when I open up a browser, I don't have to go to the task manager to kill the metro apps off.

Yeah, I have a major problem with having to use the task manager to kill off an app. Sure, I can move them out of site but they are still running in the background. Even my Note 2 has a easy way of just holding one button down to close everything that I have had open and it does a much better job of handling apps than Microsoft/metro.

Metro games on my laptop? The metro Mail compared to Outlook 2013? It's all totally pointless

You really resorted to Task Manager to close an app? Really? Alt/F4 has worked for many years if you haven't learned the Modern UI of swiping down to close. One can also return to the Start Screen or desktop, slide the open apps/programs bar at the left, and right click it for the option to close as shown in the screenshot below.


View attachment 22384


I'm not going to bother commenting on "What really is the point of a metro app?" because it's just some more of you negative opinion. Others here and I find the apps very useful.

I suggest you learn the system then come back to comment. Here's where you can start: How-to - Microsoft Windows

 

[Wenda]

I remember the first time I loaded up the Win 8 DP. Opened an app off the Start Screen, and couldn't get out.

So, as someone who learned PCs way back when they still had DOS on them, I simply hit 'Alt + F4' without even thinking about it. It was sheer reflex/instinct.

But it worked.

Then I went to the desktop. Couldn't find anything, and couldn't get out.

Yep! 'Alt + F4' to the rescue again.

Old habits may die hard, but sometimes that's a good thing.


Wenda.

 

[skallal]

They're not bringing back the start menu just the start button...

 

[turbofish]

I didn't say that windows 8/2012 are bad, they do have some great new stuff in them. Hyper-V in windows 8, ReFS in 2012 and 8.1 are some some of the best things they have made in years. Modern UI is one of their worst ideas. In case you think that everything new from Microsoft is good, how about taking a look at Bob and the embarrassing mess that was.

 

[HippsieGypsie]

Yes, the new "under-the-hood" elements you mentioned are great. They've been adding those kind of things to OSs through the years.

If A = B and B = C then A = C. If you dislike the new Modern/Metro touch-centric UI with the Start Screen/All Apps as it's primary launch platform to where the Desktop plays second fiddle and call it "one of their worst ideas", then you bash Windows 8 as a whole. For that, for the most part, is Windows 8 and the whole concept of it.

I never stated that everything from MS is a good idea, but this one is and for many reasons:

#1. First and foremost > Mobile Touch Market. The desktop PC market has flatlined in case you haven't noticed. MS and others saw this coming long before 8 was released. Although there will always be a need for them, especially in business, the market has declined, therefore profit decline. Throw in a horrific world economy as a matter of timing as well. They need to get a foothold in the mobile market. A market that others are generating huge profits at. If MS is guilty of anything it's that they came late to the game. Then the media uses 8 as a scapegoat for the declining desktop PC sales. Geez....

#2 reason > Familiararity, syncing, and sharing across devices. We that are technically advanced have no problem learning, but why should the "commoner" (or even us for that matter) have to learn how to use different OSs on different devices from different manufacterers? Let's say learn a MS OS on a desktop PC, Android OS on a smart phone, iOS on an iPad, and OS X on a Mac laptop? Most of us wouldn't have a problem learning how to navigate these devices, but the "general public user" would. Then to get them to all sync? Who has time for this even if it's possible? What a nightmare. Who's trying to accomplish this > MS. No one else that I know of. Is this such a bad idea?

#3. Diversifying with the Store and Store apps. Most here have probably used Google or Apple apps some time or another. Has it now become a mortal sin to use "someone else's" apps? What's the problem? Don't like them? Fine. Unpin the Store app from the Start Screen and unpin/uninstall all the MS Store apps that are on it. Pin all your Win32 programs' .exe tiles and/or folders galore that you desire. Use your desktop all you want. Besides the Modern/Metro Start Screen/All Apps and it's Charms Bar you never have to see a Modern/Metro Store app again. You can even shut down, sleep, restart, log off, and switch users on your desktop by pushing Alt/F4 on a blank desktop. No need for the system Charms Bar to get to the power button.

#4. I won't get into the "Cloud thing". Use a local account and all is fine.

I could go on, but I'm sure you get my gist. No, 8 is not perfect, but I think it to be a darn good attempt at a needed change.

LOL! I have to ask > Is this 1995 example all you could come up with? It probably wouldn't have been so bad if it didn't supplant the Program Manager.

View attachment 22401

 

[goodintentions]

I have 5.75TB, and am thinking of getting another 2TB.


Wenda.

I'm just curious. What in the world do you people have on your hard drives? My old PC, the one that I lost in a burglary, someone told me I should put in a bigger hard drive. I thought it was a good idea, too. Put in a 2TB one. Never filled it up with anything. It was almost empty when I lost it.

 

[turbofish]

Should Alt-F4 or killing it off in the task manager really be the way to close a metro app? We have hundreds of users at my company that would freak out when you mention Alt anything. I haven't had to close applications like that since DOS. Are you saying we have to use the same methods from DOS and that is a move forward?
You also mention "touch-centric UI". My laptop/desktop/servers are not touch centric. My servers and desktops will never be touch centric and yet we are still having to deal with this OS layer that was developed for the phone/tablet.
And yes, I have purchased many apps through iTunes back when I had an iPhone or Google Market for my current phones/tablet but those apps are developed for a touch centric device, just like all of the apps in the Microsoft Store and don't fit on devices that aren't touch centric.

Yes, I do think that Microsoft needed to get deeper into the mobile market but not at the expense of their current customers who use laptops/desktops and servers. Have you tried to use a 2012 server with metro via a RDP session? Heck, it has been years since I have physically even touched a server and yet working on servers is my job.

It is a serious issue that you dusted off as "negative opinion" but really, how are they an improvement over desktop applications?

And I imagine that I've been using Windows 8 longer than you have, starting from the first day that they released it to their MSDN customers so I'll skip your How to link. Let me know when you have a network of computers running in Hyper-V in your windows 8 box. I use windows 8 like most people do - by skipping the metro stuff.

Are you really so nieve that you think that people who are put in charge of servers need to have a reference to their moble device to figure out how to move around? Too much effort to keep up with Apple but then again, Apple let their servers die off. That is a HUGE cash cow for Microsoft and an insult to everyone having to spend $100K on the software for a server. But then again, why should I listen to someone who doesn't even work in the field...

 

[XweAponX]

give me a four tb hard drive and i will fill it up within a week guaranteed.

-agreed!

 

[Wenda]

I have 5.75TB, and am thinking of getting another 2TB.


Wenda.

I'm just curious. What in the world do you people have on your hard drives? My old PC, the one that I lost in a burglary, someone told me I should put in a bigger hard drive. I thought it was a good idea, too. Put in a 2TB one. Never filled it up with anything. It was almost empty when I lost it.

Well personally, I collect Operating Systems, and also have many hours of video & recorded TV shows. Most software is also backed-up there. I won't store anything in the cloud under any circumstances, so I can never have too much physical storage.There is over 15 years'-worth of stuff backed up as well. I also have the installation files and patches for all my software because if we do get forced into the cloud and subscription-based software, I'll be disconnecting and going 'net-less'. The cloud holds no interest whatsoever for me, and I refuse to pay for software more than once, or buy software which requires an internet connection in order to buy or use.


Wenda.

 

[Coke Robot]

I have 5.75TB, and am thinking of getting another 2TB.


Wenda.

I'm just curious. What in the world do you people have on your hard drives? My old PC, the one that I lost in a burglary, someone told me I should put in a bigger hard drive. I thought it was a good idea, too. Put in a 2TB one. Never filled it up with anything. It was almost empty when I lost it.

Video content for me. When my old hard drive died last December, I lost over 300 gigs of video along with about 100 or so gigs of music which I'm slowing rebuilding back. I had four, five drives with varying capacities full of videos that I copied over to my new terabyte drive, I only have just about 300 gigs left and I have yet to recover my other ones.

Ripping DVDs is what I do. I used to copy them over as .isos but I'm getting fed up with the over the top amount of promos and crap I can't forward through quickly enough so I just take the video and leave the rest. The whole 24 series for example, will take up about 300 gigs.

Which is why with my new desktop PC I shall be building this summer will have capacity for either four or five 3 drive hot swap bays that will be used for Storage Spaces in Windows 8.1 with ReFS.

There's that, as well as backing up other peoples' user data when I do clean installs of Windows onto their PCs.

Games. I haven't been doing a ton of PC gaming in the past couple years unfortunately, and I'm concerned that if I start Steaming, I will never stop. My gamer friend has gone through a whole terabyte drive (I think it might be 2, I don't remember what drive we put into his rig when I built it) JUST from Steam downloading and installing.

If I could, I would download a copy of the world!

 

[goodintentions]

If I could, I would download a copy of the world!

FYI, you are currently living in the matrix. I am a sentient program posing as a forum member. Your real body will feed me for years to come.

Anyway, a backup copy of the matrix is made once a month. I'll see if I can get you a copy.

 

[McRuff]

Video content for me. When my old hard drive died last December, I lost over 300 gigs of video along with about 100 or so gigs of music which I'm slowing rebuilding back. I had four, five drives with varying capacities full of videos that I copied over to my new terabyte drive, I only have just about 300 gigs left and I have yet to recover my other ones.

That is the reason I have a lot of spare Hard Disk capacity. I have my media files backed up onto three computers. No way do I want to lose my music videos downloaded over several years or spend weeks re-ripping and tagging my Music collection.

I may have gone a bit overboard though. My current motherboard has 14 SATA ports, though not all are in use yet

 

[lehnerus2000]

Backups and Video

I have 5.75TB, and am thinking of getting another 2TB.

I'm just curious. What in the world do you people have on your hard drives? My old PC, the one that I lost in a burglary, someone told me I should put in a bigger hard drive. I thought it was a good idea, too. Put in a 2TB one. Never filled it up with anything. It was almost empty when I lost it.

The short answer is backups and videos.
I also keep all of the documents, music , videos and installers I've downloaded, on my Downloads partition as backups.

I have 4.5TB of storage in internal HDDs (3 drives) and 5.5TB of storage in external HDDs (5 drives).

​

I got a new 2TB external HDD in January and transferred ~1.5TB off of my PC, so I actually have some spare space at the moment.

There are also a couple of ext4 partitions (Linux Mint) on my system, which don't show up in Windows Explorer.

 

[Wenda]

Here's the current drive configuration on this laptop.

The top row are internal drives, 2 x 750GB each partitioned in two equally sized partitions.

Row 2 are external pocket-drives, each 640GB again partitioned into two equal partitions.

Third row is an external 2TB with multimedia files (backup drive).

Plus Blu-ray drive and a 1GB thumb-drive. :shock:

There's another 500GB external not currently connected, it also contains backups.


Wenda.

 

[Tatletz]

Or...

Just literally pin EVERYTHING from the start menu into the File Explorer jumplist and pin Control Panel to the Taskbar. The need for the start menu is irrelevant minus the search bar and All Programs to find a program you rarely use.

I know this, because that's what I did with my setup and EVERY install of Windows 7 I did. Pinned EVERYTHING useful and relevant to the Taskbar, cleaned up the All Programs list, start menu becomes a vestigial piece of UI.

I do exactly the same and did it with Windows 7 too :thumb:

 

[CountMike]

I just go by Murphy's law of warehousing , "if there's an empty space, it will be filled"

 

[turbofish]

I just go by Murphy's law of warehousing , "if there's an empty space, it will be filled"

Oh yeah. At home, I tend to fill up hard drives with databases, music, virtualization, and movies. At work, nothing but databases. Does everyone really need their own personal copy of our warehouse?!

 

[lehnerus2000]

Here's the current drive configuration on this laptop.

The top row are internal drives, 2 x 750GB each partitioned in two equally sized partitions.

Row 2 are external pocket-drives, each 640GB again partitioned into two equal partitions.

Third row is an external 2TB with multimedia files (backup drive).

Plus Blu-ray drive and a 1GB thumb-drive. :shock:

There's another 500GB external not currently connected, it also contains backups.


Wenda.

That seems to be quite a "chunky" laptop you have there.