Windows 8.1 May Restore Boot-To-Desktop, Start Button

New submitter geekoid writes "According to media reports about leaked Windows 8.1 code, the next incarnation of Microsoft's flagship operating system will have an option to boot directly to the desktop. People have discovered 'references to a "CanSuppressStartScreen" option in early builds of the Windows 8.1 registry.' There is also speculation that Microsoft will be re-implementing the Start button, though the claims come from nebulous 'sources,' rather than the leaked code. In light of recent reporting about the general distaste and design flaws of Windows 8's user interface, will Microsoft's updates be dynamic enough to stop the current Windows exodus?"

Comments

Microsoft really shot themselves in the foot here

[Faizdog]

In the last 6 months I've bought 2 computers, a desktop and a laptop. And both times I went well out of my way to avoid Win8.

Now I consider myself at least slightly more computer savvy than the average individual, and when I went to Best Buy to play around with Windows 8 (since I'd heard it was different) the 20 minute trial I gave it was VERY FRUSTRATING. I managed to figure things out a bit, and I had no doubt with some time and internet searching I could figure the rest out, but I had no desire to!!

I didn't want to spend time figuring it out! It just pissed me off. I needed a desktop very urgently, and was planning on buying a new computer and buying a copy of Win7 online and just wiping off Win8.

(Side Note: Basic economic supply and demand, Pro Edition of Win8 cost ~$60, Home Edition of Win7 online cost ~$150. Hmmmmmm)

I got lucky because the guy working at Best Buy said they had a desktop at 25% off only because it had Win7. Looked at the tech specs, was good, just what I wanted and left happy, getting a discount to get what I wanted.

A few months later I needed a laptop (was travelling a lot). I deliberately went to the Lenovo and Dell business line sections to search since the machines for business users still have Win7 (ended up getting a ThinkPad).

Now, I paid the MS Win tax regardless both times. I wanted a Windows machine. But Win 8 so frustrated me that I went out of my way to avoid it, when it would've been simpler to just buy a machine with it. I was ready to spend more online to buy Win7 and overwrite the default installation.

I can't be the only one that's done this recently.

Re:Windows is not disappearing anytime soon

[ZeroPly]

This is not strictly true. The reason for keeping it around is that people like me get to leave at 5pm and do things besides messing with computers.

When we get a new PC in, it takes all of 20 minutes for us to load on a custom image with our network specific settings. Maybe another 15 minutes for Office, Adobe Pro, antivirus, and all the utilities that are installed by default. Applications like Photoshop or AutoCAD might take 10 minutes each. All this is fully automated, an 8th grader would be able to do it once we showed them how the management tools work. And it's over a 1G Ethernet link, so it's fast.

Contrast that to when we get a new iPad in. No PXE booting, no easy configuration through the network. No management tools that are worth a tin shit. I have to physically enter all that information in. Can't even swap in a replicated hard drive since it can't be taken apart. Loading from a USB stick? Hahah... No we have to go through the "cloud" for everything.

This isn't inertia. This is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I do this for a living and have to stay late when things change. Chasing the new shiny from Apple isn't as important to me as getting home in time to get a motorcycle ride in. When the CIO asks me about Windows 8, I just say "let's wait for a start button".

Re:Windows is not disappearing anytime soon

[theurge14]

In a way you made my point. There was a time when a PC was the "new shiny". There was a long period of time during PC history when there was no PXE booting and WDS, no AD, no GP, no easy configuration through the network or management tools. But yet it caught on and eventually became what it is now. I look at the large cycle of history of the PC and I see how it replaced the "restrictive" old client-server paradigm in favor of all that local power and freedom on your desktop, only to be retrofitted over the years to go right back where it began with the restricted and confined client-server paradigm. And now we're seeing it start over again with the whole BYOD movement.

Re:Too little too late

[hairyfeet]

I'll just jump in here because the entire thread is now talking about God damned cars, if that was your intent congrats as it worked.

As for Windows NINE, or Blue, calling it "8.1" when we haven't seen how much they did to the guts would be like calling Vista "XP.1" when they had radically changed everything (for the better I might add, even though Vista sucked getting rid of "run as admin" by default had to be done and the idiot that did that with XP, most likely so win9X games could run easier, should have been fired) would be stupid so lets hold off judging whether its a point 1 or another radical shift until we see the thing.

But if they don't bring back the start menu and traditional desktop? I predict MSFT will be EOL before Win 7 is EOL in 2020 and I honestly never thought I'd be able to say that. I mean look at the facts, we have Alienware selling an Ubuntu based gaming rig, you have Chromebooks on the main pages of Tiger and many other web sellers...this is unprecedented folks, it really is. Not even 5 years ago trying to sell a PC without Windows was the kiss of death. Sure dell had a few but they were on the back page and you had warnings like you were walking into the adult section of a video store, now all these companies are openly advertising non windows systems? We haven't seen that since IBM killed OS/2 more than 20 years ago.

But despite what the morons at places like Motley Fool say the PC is NOT dying, its NOT going away, heck PC gaming alone made more than 20 billion dollars last year and PCs still sell hundreds of millions of systems yearly. The entire premises is because PCs don't sell like they used to then its "ZOMFG they are dying, everybody is just buying iPads ZOMFG!" when in reality its just PCs are now INSANELY overpowered for what people have to do. I built a new PC every year from 94-07...why? Because I really didn't have much of a choice, with single core speeds jumping so fast you really couldn't upgrade and a 2 year old PC would be struggling to run the latest software. in one 5 year period I went from a 400MHz to a 2200MHz, that is 5 times the speed in 5 years, it was just nuts. Now that the MHz war is over they switched to cores and quickly ended up with systems much MUCH faster than anybody but a rare few percent can actually max out. Now my nearly 4 year old PC has 6 cores, 8GB of RAM, and 3TB worth of space...why would I build a new one when nothing is maxing out what I got?

So somebody at MSFT had BETTER grow a damned brain, X86 is still a billion dollar business and is here to stay, it will simply move from the insane "OMG I have to throw my 2 year old PC away because its too slow!" to a more sane 5-7 year cycle but that is still hundreds of millions of units every year. if MSFT wants to be Apple that is fine, I don't think it will happen but whatever, but you don't shit all over your existing markets because you want to get into a new market. Look we ALL know what the start screen and TIFKAM was, it was somebody at MSFT that had heard of the EEE strategy but didn't know how to actually do it trying to use the desktop to EEE their way into mobile and of course it flopped, anybody with a drop of common sense saw that it was sticking handlebars on a pickup, tablets and desktops just don't work anything alike and trying to shoehorn a mobile OS onto the desktop was just as dumb as the itty bitty start screen they used on WinCE. But with so many selling OSes other than Windows MSFT better wake the fuck up because we know what that is, that is the OEMs looking at exit strategies. If MSFT doesn't make a desktop people want somebody is gonna take that market and with their shitty numbers they can't afford to just abandon the X86 market.