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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."
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
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.
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..)
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.