Windows 9 leak shows return of start menu. But is it enough?

Anonymous Coward

in microsoft on 2014-07-19 21:52 (#3R7)

Windows 8 has been called the single biggest failure of a Windows release ever, and it's no secret that Redmond is scrambling to come up with something that will stem the flood of negative press and coax people off of Windows 7. A leaked screenshot of the Windows 9 start menu shows a conglomerate of the Windows 7 start menu and the Windows 8 Start Screen. Other improvements include a more cohesive approach to the "Modern interface" to allow users to ignore it.

But is this enough to woo people off of Windows 7 and get them to move to Windows 9?

15 comments

No ! (Score: 2, Insightful)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-07-19 22:20 (#2K2)

Betteridge.

Re: No ! (Score: 1)

by skarjak@pipedot.org on 2014-07-20 00:38 (#2K4)

Betteridge's law makes life so simple.

In this case, I'm not sure why anyone should be excited about an update that makes it easier to ignore new features. They still have a very schizophrenic interface. And that start menu is a mess.

I'll stick to linux where I can decide what window manager or desktop environment I'll use.

Re: No ! (Score: 1)

by hyper@pipedot.org on 2014-07-20 00:44 (#2K6)

Not a bad idea, perhaps it is time for Windows to become more like unix with users able to customise all parts of the OS to suit their needs. That way it would be flexible enough to endure another two decades as the dominant OS. As it is Google may well yet eat Microsoft's lunch.

Re: No ! (Score: 2, Interesting)

by skarjak@pipedot.org on 2014-07-20 02:31 (#2K7)

There are already companies like Stardock capitalizing on this by offering paid software to change the look and behaviour of your desktop. There's clearly demand.

Re: No ! (Score: 1, Funny)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-07-20 15:29 (#2KA)

While it is by no means my intention to woo anyone AWAY from linux, it is worth pointing out that you've always had options for replacing the standard windows GUI at least back to the late 90s if not earlier. Two I had experience with years back were Litestep (and holy hell was this thing a resource hog) and BB4Win, which was actually quite pleasant to use, and was pretty strictly based on the Blackbox wm for *nix.

That Microsoft has sought to sweep these under the rug rather than nurture the further development of alternative WM's however has a lot to do with all the grumbling. When Unity came out as the default wm for Ubuntu, the move wasn't to another OS, as it was for many dealing with Windows 8, but rather simply to one of the many wm alternatives available. Modularity is absolutely a strength that Microsoft would do best to recognize before it's too late.

Re: No ! (Score: 1, Insightful)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-07-20 15:41 (#2KC)

And that start menu is a mess.

To be fair, this is a dev build that wasn't intended for public release. The version that is released will likely be very different.

Re: No ! (Score: 3, Informative)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-07-20 00:42 (#2K5)

Thanks, I'd never heard of it. For anyone else LMGTFY:

Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist, although the general concept is much older. The observation has also been called "Davis' law" or just the "journalistic principle". In the field of particle physics, the concept has been referred to as Hinchliffe's Rule.

Windows 7 is Good Enough (Score: 3, Insightful)

by wildwombat@pipedot.org on 2014-07-19 22:53 (#2K3)

Windows 7 is good enough. The problems it does have are largely fixable. People don't buy new computers just to get a new OS at this point in time and they don't feel the need to upgrade their current computer to the latest and greatest, either. The OS upgrade treadmill is running out of steam for Microsoft. They also already charge a pretty hefty fee for Windows 7 and make a lot of money doing so. Instead of trying to make a new OS every two years and fragmenting their user base they should focus on refining what they already have as they'll still make a boatload of money off it and they won't drive users away with change they don't want.

Cheers,
-WW

Re: Windows 7 is Good Enough (Score: 2, Insightful)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-07-20 10:16 (#2K8)

I kind of agree. WinXP was also "good enough" for a long time. Win7 fixed a couple remaining quirks and added some usable new tricks that are good and appreciated (I use Win-Shift-Right and Win-Shift-Left to move windows around multiple monitors every day at work). Win8 seems to bring nothing useful to the user experience, and at the expense of a whole lotta hardship, pain, suffering, relearning, and misery.

WIn9 needs to be the next product in the upgrade path for corporations. That means it needs to be every bit as useful as Win7 was, but better, and none of the hardship of Win8. Not clear a simple fucking start button is going to be enough. My corporation is not planning to move to Win8 any time soon, I can tell you that.

Re: Windows 7 is Good Enough (Score: 1, Interesting)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-07-20 14:24 (#2K9)

The real question is whether organizations will finally ever learn to get off the MS teat by then. It's a tough proposition because of custom and legacy applications that just won't die.

But MS has shown no indication they can or. will make Windows any better. Every change since Win95/2K has been achingly small and hard-won. Just refinements. At some point you simply can't refine any more. You're done. The software is finished.

So what you would need is, sorry, a new paradigm to sell people on. MS had one, called Metro, that has been soundly rejected by every thinking human. And now they're out of ideas and firing people. WINE has as good a chance of supplanting Win7 as does Win9.

Re: Windows 7 is Good Enough (Score: 1, Insightful)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-07-20 15:35 (#2KB)

WinXP was good enough...if you were content never to migrate to x86-64. XP 64 bit edition was a mess, and I can't imagine anyone now saying "4 gigs of ram oughtta be enough for anyone".

Otherwise though, yes, I see your point (at least if we're accepting that "enough" refers to "for use as a desktop workstation").

Re: Windows 7 is Good Enough (Score: 2, Funny)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-07-21 01:13 (#2KG)

Okay: 4 GB of RAM is enough for anyone, especially the way that Metro and iOS and Android practically force everyone to be a single tasker, and especially with the obnoxiousness of browser centric "cloud" computing and web services.

There's nearly nothing that won't run adequately in 4 GB of RAM in 2014.

Re: Windows 7 is Good Enough (Score: 3, Insightful)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-07-21 09:01 (#2KH)

Seriously. I got my start doing computer aided drafting in about 1988. And we were using absolutely primiitive PC hardware by today's standards: I didn't like computers at the time so didn't pay any attention to specs, but I know those PCs or XTs or whatever were using Hercules cards and maybe CGA graphics [?] to run graphics on one monitor and the text interface on a second. And we were designing bridges etc. Fast forward a couple of years to where I'm doing 3D renders of amorphously-shaped structures (solid waste landfills, if you must). Was using AutoCAD 12 or 13 on a 386 and 486 (big difference between those two machines, I remember well). Perfectly usable, perfectly functional: I could easily imagine using the same kit today to do serious engineering work.

Tell me why my modern laptop with 2GB of RAM isn't really adequate to run even the operating system alone? Holy crap - it's nothing more than hardware interface, file manager and desktop metaphor, memory and peripheral control, and the sending of bits to a screen. What the hell happened?

Articles, not questions (Score: 3, Interesting)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-07-21 14:13 (#2KQ)

Editors, please don't fall into the trap of adding questions to articles. The questions always show a bias, this "But is this enough to woo people off of Windows 7 and get them to move to Windows 9?" is definitely a bias. Comments would have gone there anyway. If they didn't go there then the question would have been irrelevant.

Please keep the articles objective and leave the bias to the comments.

Re: Articles, not questions (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-07-22 02:22 (#2M5)

How the hell is it subjective? What are you going on about? Businesses HAVE summarily rejected Win8 and it IS a big question as to whether Win9 will win them back.

No bias at all. You're being an ass. Phil is that you again?

And this is coming from me who answered No! in the very first post. The question was easy and a little lazy, but not even in the neighborhood of biased. You're just being a dick.