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You Can't Bypass the UI Formerly Known As Metro On Windows 8
colinneagle writes with this excerpt from Network World: "The final build of Windows 8 has already leaked to torrent sites, which is giving the propellerheads a chance to dig through the code. One revelation will probably not sit well with enterprise customers: you can't bypass the don't-call-it-Metro UI. Normally, you have to boot Windows 8 and when the tiled desktop UI (formerly known as Metro) came up, you had to click on one of the boxes to launch Explorer. Prior builds of Windows 8 allowed the user to create a shortcut so you bypass Metro and go straight to the Explorer desktop. Rafael Rivera, co-author of the forthcoming Windows 8 Secrets, confirmed to Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet that Microsoft does indeed block the boot bypass routine from prior builds. He also believes that Microsoft has blocked the ability for administrators to use Group Policy to allow users to bypass the tiled startup screen. There had been hope that Microsoft would at least relent and let corporate users have a bypass, if only for compatibility's sake."
I hope it won't be that bad. If the Interface Formerly Known As Metro is as bad as the Ribbon, I'll struggle for a while to adapt, and then probably go back to the previous version or install Classic Shell. I don't mind experimentation with something new. Maybe it really is better. But I don't understand why Microsoft doesn't provide a "classic" mode for people who are willing to try, but eventually decide they like the previous arrangement better. How many of you stuck with the default theme for Windows XP? Anyone? Can you imagine if there was no way to change it?
And to not allow it or make it easy for enterprise users. That's just cruel. Is Microsoft *trying* to increase training costs for companies?
Or they can just ... not install Windows 8, and stick with Windows 7, which'll be even faster on the new, more powerful hardware.
There's always another way, you know.
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
I use windows 7 and there are a lot of things you can't do on windows 7 that you could do in windows XP or Vista. For example, you could manually organize folders in windows in those operating systems. I mean, literally pick up folders and move them from one side of a window to the other. This is something I've gotten used to doing since windows 3.1. So I was deeply annoyed when window 7 disallowed it. Finally I found some registry hacks that would re-enable the feature.
Beyond that, there are full shell replacements for windows. I expect that using shell replacements might become more and more the thing to do on windows systems. On top of everything else, some of the shell replacements are much more configurable then windows shell meaning that if you want to hide features from users you can literally remove them from the GUI entirely.
A combination of those two factor should make more then a few companies look at shell replacements.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Corporations also have IT departments, who will demand Microsoft support provide them a bypass, OR it will be a condition that has to be met, before they will purchase Windows 8.
Mark my words.... Microsoft will provide Enterprises a bypass of some kind, if not at release, then via a patch, special tool, registry hack, or script that can be deployed for domain-joined computers via group policy.
Well, almost. I've got Classic Shell installed on the leaked version of Win8 Enterprise N. What happens is that it'll load Metro for a fraction of a second and then CS takes me back to the old "desktop" environment complete with start menu.
So it's not a complete bypass but it's close enough for my purposes.
If, like me, you prefer the Win7 start menu's look to the default Win98/2000 look Classic Shell provides, there's a skin to make that possible.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Kinda suspicious since they are also banning open source applications from their moble app store.
Apple isn't much better these days. It almost feels like Microsoft and Apple have some secret agreement to simultaneously lock down their desktop OSs and turn them into content-consumption-only devices, that only run signed code that's been filtered, censored, and taxed by the App Store gatekeepers
I does all just seem like madness. On the upside, it's also an opportunity. I hope that the alternative operating systems and office suites get themselves into a position to profit from this (I'm looking at you Linux) then all I need is services such as Bloomberg to offer a Linux alternative, and the future would start to look a lot better!
Blatant Advert: Android Apps!
as Windows XP still holds half of the market.
I think you confuse "market" with "install base". The two are not the same - it's not like everyone with an XP machine will get a new XP machine when they upgrade, for example.
And even if looking at install base, it's likely not true. This chart shows W7 surging ahead of XP in October last year, and while granted, not all computers browse the net, or in a way that triggers statcounter, there's little doubt that W7 has overtaken XP. If nothing else because companies can't buy machines with XP anymore, so as they switch out their old machines in a typical 3-5 year cycle, the new ones will be W7.
But I doubt they will be W8, which seems to be a productivity killer, not meant for busy workers who multitask.
Where I work, the migration to W7 is almost complete - most of the remaining XP installations that can't easily be upgraded have been virtualized, like other legacy x86 operating systems.
Windows 8, I doubt will happen at all, except perhaps for marketing.
hate (cr)apple... I don't like the poor quality of their vastly overpriced hardware. I don't like that they try to lock customers into their walled garden where the only place to get software or upgrade hardware (without actually replacing a device) is from them. I don't like that they can't compete with Samsung, HTC, etc...except by trying to litigate their competiters out of the market using vague and frankly invalid patents. Patents that should never have been granted in the first place.
Any one of the things mentioned above would make me not want to buy their products, and recomment to anyone else not to buy them either. But I don't hate them. They are not worth that level of emotion, and I try very hard not to let emotion influence my buying decisions.
The above improvements over Win7 are admirable and appear to be highly useful, but that blindingly stupid Metro (or WHATever they're calling it this week) kinda negates the improvements over Win7. ALL MS would have to do to fix this fiasco is allow you to install with "Classic Win7" or "Metro".. your choice.. Obviously if you're putting it on a laptop thats a convertable tablet, you'd opt for Metro, but for a desktop, I gotta know WHAT the hell they're smoking in Redmond...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
But if you're starting from Windows XP/Office 2003, which is being retired on April 8, 2014, then Windows 8/Office 2012/Windows Server 2012 might be the platform you are targeting as replacement instead of Win7/Office 2010. Why? Because if you're the guy who stuck on XP for a decade, then you're probably going to want to go as far forward as you can.
Um, no. Most businesses are going to be conservative and go with Win 7. Drivers, software, etc. should all work with Win 7. While there are some under the hood improvements, most IT deparments aren't going to be crazy enough to install a consumer OS on these users. They have enough support calls as it is. They don't need a million more of users trying to find their start button. Or where is their Control Panel, etc.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The problem is as a PC builder and seller I can tell you the 3 to 5 year cycle? Doesn't exist anymore. A typical 5 year old PC for my customers is a first gen Core Duo of Phenom X3. Now tell me, what office job can't be done perfectly well on a Core Duo of Phenom X3? None that i can think of. Many of my customers chose to put Win 7 on while keeping the units simply because nothing they were doing was stressing the PCs so wasting hundreds more than the cost of a Win 7 license to replace the system was deemed pointless. This is why I've gotten more and more into HTPCs, more room for growth there.
But you are right about Win 8, the few of my customers that still had any single cores on site got rid of them for Win 7 precisely so they wouldn't have to deal with Win 8. I should probably give MSFT credit for that, been cranking out the triples and quads lately for those that don't want Win 8, its just too much of a boat anchor to productivity for most SMBs and my home users as well, nobody wants the thing.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
1.-pointless, corps already have their own AV and sure as hell ain't gonna depend on fricking defender to save 'em, 2.-pointless as everyone is going to SSDs or hybrid drives where boot isn't worth worrying about, besides Win 7 has hybrid sleep which is what everyone has been using which is faster than any boot, 3.-pointless as a good AV with sandboxing is gonna do more than UEFI anyway. honestly since the switch away from XP with its retarded "Everybody is an admin!" bullshit the malware has gone WAAAAY down, and with Win 7 the only "malware" I've been seeing is morons that purposely install spyware trying to get some freebie. this isn't a worry in corp because you don't give the workers install rights.
I have plenty of customers that were exactly as you described, i let them play with both, they chose....Windows 7. The LAST thing you want on a corp network is some tweeting twitting FB shitting "social media" OS with a ton of crap constantly updating and distracting the workers and that is Win 8 in a nutshell. Its a fricking cell phone OS and while you might not give a shit if your worker is checking their FB on the bus coming in on their smartphone when they park their asses in the chair you damned well want them working, while Win 8 jumps around like a kid on too much sugar going "Look at me! Play with me! I iz a cell phone LOL!". Its just not worth it.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Can someone honestly remind me why so many people hated Win2k? To this day, I still remember it as one of the best versions of Windows, ever. I could upgrade or install MAJOR drivers & system-level components, then go days or weeks without having to reboot.
Maybe it's because NT4 already weeded out most of my software and hardware that Win2k would have objected to, so it ended up being a net improvement in every meaningful way, but it honestly wasn't until I got my first dual-CPU motherboard that I really felt any need to 'upgrade' to XP... then had a MAJOR love-hate relationship with it. Hugely-improved SMP support? Major plus. Endless reboots? Yuck. I reinstalled without SP1, and vehemently resisted SP1 for more than a year until Microsoft slipped another patch past me that basically bundled everything about SP1 I was trying to avoid, and instantly took away my ability to do reboot-free updates once and for all. RIP. Sigh.
Sadly, even Linux now seems to try and force reboots by default now for some updates. Oh, you can usually open a shell and force it to do a hot update, or ignore the warnings and it'll work anyway, but more and more, it feels like even Linux has abandoned the ideal of "never force a reboot". and instead embraced Microsoft's philosophy of, "If something's wrong, reboot and it'll probably fix it."