First Looks At Windows 8.1, Complete With 'Start' Button

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First Looks At Windows 8.1, Complete With 'Start' Button

Posted by timothy on Thursday May 30, 2013 @02:09AM from the briar-patch-deliveries-incorporated dept.

Ars Technica has taken a look at Microsoft's newly released preview of Windows 8.1. As widely rumored, the point release features a clamored-for concession to Windows users who rankled at the loss of Windows' Start button in the taskbar. In addition to various tweaks to 8's search capabilities and icon presentation, says the article, "Some of Windows 8's obvious limitations are being lifted. In 8.1, Metro apps can be run on multiple monitors simultaneously. On any single monitor, more than two applications can be run simultaneously. Instead of Windows 8's fixed split, where one application gets 320 pixels and the other application gets the rest, the division between apps will be variable. It'll also be possible to have multiple windows from a single app so that, for example, two browser windows can be opened side-by-side." Similar reports on these changes at Wired, Engadget, and SlashCloud.

23 of 800 comments (clear)

Not good enough by JDG1980 · 2013-05-30 02:11 · Score: 5, Insightful

What most of us wanted back was the Start menu, not just the Start button. Microsoft still doesn't get it: We don't want to see or interact with Metro, at all. Ever. It has no place on the desktop.
1. Re:Not good enough by mrsquid0 · 2013-05-30 02:12 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  What I really want on Windows is a Stop button.
  
  --
  Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
2. Re:Not good enough by Striikerr · 2013-05-30 02:22 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Agreed. My company refuses to switch to Window 8. I suspect that Windows 7 will be the new Windows XP for years to come (if you need to run Windows in your environment, it will be Windows 7). The issue with Microsoft is that they went about this wrong. They forced significant changes upon users where changes were not really warranted. This is particularly a big issue in companies where users are accustomed to working on the same style of desktop etc. These are people that complain when an icon is moved on their desktop or get confused with minor changes to applications so a full UI overhaul in the corporate space was truly a bad idea and one which will cost Microsoft dearly in the years ahead. Giving options to use their new interface components is a better approach (one which Apple has taken with their desktop OS via the Launchpad which brings up pages of icons representing applications to launch, identical to their IOS devices). I understand that Microsoft sees the writing on the wall and that mobile devices and operating systems is the future source of revenue, but dumping these changes so suddenly upon the masses was a bad decision.
  I've never been a fan of seeing the significant UI changes made each time a new version of Windows is released. I have worked on Windows servers for years and really hated the changes introduced with Server 2008. I still need to figure out where certain functions are when I have to work on a Windows server (I spend much more time on Linux servers now). I've heard similar complaints from friends who work in IT as well.
3. Re:Not good enough by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-30 02:36 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  BTW, is power off button still somewhere in Metro sidebar and its settings (well, since they didn't provide real start menu...)? How can that be considered ergonomic?
4. Re:Not good enough by _xeno_ · 2013-05-30 02:38 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  What I really want on Windows is a Stop button.
  Given how well hidden the "power" menu and logout button are in Windows 8, that might actually not be a bad idea...
  (To restart your computer, open the Charms Bar, go to Settings, and then hit the Power menu to reveal the Restart and Shutdown options. To log out, something you used to do from the same menu you shutdown and rebooted from, instead you open the Start menu, and click on your user name to open a menu you'd never guess existed.)
  
  --
  You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
5. Re:Not good enough by ultrasawblade · 2013-05-30 02:42 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  I'm testing Windows 8 for a company that is likely going to be wise enough to skip it. But I keep using it just to maintain familiarity with it.
  Anyway, to sleep or shutdown, I've found it's easiest to just hit ctrl-alt-del and use the power button from there. It's what I've been telling people to do as well.
  Of course, my old Windows key + R, "shutdown -r -t 0" habit is well entrenched and used a lot too, from rebooting machines over RDP.
6. Re:Not good enough by cyberchondriac · 2013-05-30 03:05 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Of course not...have you not heard the cries of, "But it takes too long!" or "I'm working on a project and I don't want to lose my place" when you suggest that they reboot to resolve a common hiccup?
  It doesn't matter because you just broke the Internet; you spelled "lose" correctly.
  
  --
  
  Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
7. Re:Not good enough by omnichad · 2013-05-30 03:35 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Try Win+I. That brings up a power option on the right.
8. Re:Not good enough by citizenr · 2013-05-30 04:47 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Oh, you are doing it wrong. You should use new powerful Search function instead, just search for shutdown.exe !
  
  --
  Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
How to save your company by Sparticus789 · 2013-05-30 02:14 · Score: 5, Insightful

Give users the option to use your terrible Metro interface or have a standard Start menu. What's so hard about that?

--
sudo make me a sandwich
1. Re:How to save your company by Thud457 · 2013-05-30 02:17 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Doesn't everybody all use touchscreens? That's all we're using?
  Remember these are the same super-geniuses that think you need a desktop interface and a mouse/monitor/keyboard to run a server. Now you'll need a touchscreen too.
  
  --
  the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
2. Re:How to save your company by bkmoore · 2013-05-30 02:36 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Remember these are the same super-geniuses that think you need a desktop interface and a mouse/monitor/keyboard to run a server. Now you'll need a touchscreen too.
  That's called design by marketing.
3. Re:How to save your company by anthony_greer · 2013-05-30 02:43 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  You are incorrect, Please look at Server Core, Power Shell and other tech in Server that lets you run it GUIless and more UNIX like...Your insuts are based on Windows 2000/2003 products, times changed.
side-by-side by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-30 02:16 · Score: 5, Funny

Wow, windows side-by-side! Adjustable, even! Soon they'll come up with dragable frames around each app. Plus, they added a Start menu. I can't contain my joy at this innovation.
If you don't like metro... by Toreo+asesino · 2013-05-30 02:21 · Score: 5, Informative

...don't use any Metro apps. You're not forced to, apart from some initial app-pinning perhaps. Apart from that you can happily live in Windows 8, enjoy the extra speed and UI enhancements and never see metro again. Happy days!

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throw new NoSignatureException();
1. Re:If you don't like metro... by MBGMorden · 2013-05-30 02:27 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Except that this new "Start" menu takes you into the Metro start screen.
  Staying out of Metro would be a lot easier if Microsoft gave us back the ACTUAL start menu.
  
  --
  "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
2. Re:If you don't like metro... by DoctorBit · 2013-05-30 03:01 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Because if users aren't forced to use Metro, then developers won't have to develop Metro apps, and then Microsoft won't have many apps available for download to their unpopular Windows Phone. Microsoft is trying to use its desktop OS monopoly to muscle into the relatively new phone market.
3. Re:If you don't like metro... by GReaToaK_2000 · 2013-05-30 03:14 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Here's the thing.
  Metro UI sucks just as much as the window system Ubuntu and many other linux distributions have 'glommed' onto. It's all Mac like and I personally don't like it.
  I preferred the windows 7 design. Oh and the whole "it's (win8) smaller and faster" is crap! I finally got windows 7 installed on my hp 2000 notebook and that was tough because hp didn't want me to do it, but they finally "allowed my downgrade". Now my notebook is fast and awesome!
  I like my windowed layout. I have my applications laid out a certain way when coding and I hate the way Metro UI fights you at every step of the way to do this. They want to force you to have one app visible at a time. They started this on Linux with Gnome3, which is why it sucks so much. I can't stand the layout there either.
  The only way I even remotely get what I want (in the linux realm) is to use CentOS. Not even fedora is good anymore.
  I don't know who came up with it or why but it sucks.
4. Re:If you don't like metro... by Stormwatch · 2013-05-30 04:34 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Why is it so hard for them to NOT FORCE US into their Metro crap ?
  I think Microsoft really bet the farm on the Surface. With tablets outselling PCs, they think it's the future. This crap is part of the gamble.
  See, they had been advocating the "tablet PC" since the XP days, with no success. Suddenly the iPad was huge, and they think: "We were right all along, people want tablets. We just have to push for ours harder." Well, fine. But their idea is that putting the same interface everywhere will get people to go for whatever system with which they are familiar. Gee, then why was no one interested when they did those awful tablets with XP?
  The system itself was the problem, twice: as they just put a full desktop OS on a portable, not a slim one like Palm or Newton, the hardware had to be a full notebook PC with some touch junk tacked on. So it was expensive, heavy, and ran hot. Now, the Surface remains expensive, but it is light and runs cool enough, right? But the other problem was the fact that XP's interface was not adequate for tablets. So this time they are smart enough create this new interface, purportedly good for tablets. Meaning it is no longer adequate for the desktop. And they put it there anyway. Same mistake, only backwards.
  And how did that familiarity thing work? Well, they changed everything, so nobody was familiar with Windows 8 anyway!
  Apple knew better: different devices need different interfaces.
  
  --
  Circumcision is child abuse.
5. Re:If you don't like metro... by ConceptJunkie · 2013-05-30 05:05 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  The problem with Windows these days is that everything they change about has an immediately obvious reason as to why the change will benefit Microsoft (or at least they hope it will) and often has little or no benefit to the customer. Metro? It serves no purpose other than to try to create a market of apps from which MS can skim 30% off the top like Apple. Metro also allows MS to do less work because it can be used across different platforms, despite only being (ostensibly) appropriate for a small fraction of them. Microsoft has always tried to work towards the goal of one gargantuan monolithic OS that runs on all hardware, despite the fact that that has never been a good design strategy and probably never will be. Apple never fell into this trap and Linux succeeds by being a rock-solid incredibly flexible _kernel_ but not foisting a massive and bloated application layer on everything from a phone to a supercomputer. I can appreciate that Microsoft wants to maintain their revenue while having to do as little work as possible, but that seems to be the only thing criterion driving any of their designs any more. The business of propping up the monopoly they created in the 80s and early 90s is running out of steam. Some day, they might realize it.
  
  --
  You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Re:Really? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-30 02:32 · Score: 5, Informative

Those are only for Metro apps. I've been using Win8 at home for a while, and frankly it feels just like 7 now. My main use for the start menu on 7 was to open it and start typing the name of the app that I wanted. The Start screen in 8 functions the same way, only I hit the Windows key on my keyboard instead, which is faster anyway. Methinks the start screen is just a highly visible rallying point for people to whine about Windows.
Re:Really? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-30 02:34 · Score: 5, Funny

How can they even call that "Windows"?
At least take out the plural. "Microsoft Window 8"
Re:More than good enough by WaffleMonster · 2013-05-30 04:26 · Score: 5, Insightful

And this is why Windows will never catch up. And why eventually it will fade away as our generation grows old and leaves the workforce.
How can Microsoft innovate if what "most of us" want is the same old thing? It feels a bit like the educators who were fighting computers in the classroom in the 1980s and insisted that students only learn on manual typewriters.
Its not about what your used to it is about what behavior is sane and what is insane. It is about making determinations based on MERIT.
I suspect you'll find covering the entire workspace just to launch an application or find a document just as nonsensical in the stoneage as it is in the spaceage. I don't much care what that interface *looks* like but it has to be sane and not obleterate all onscreen context in the process.
Simply making the classic change adverse argument is an exercise in making non-falsifiable statements. If the next version of windows is an abacus and I replayed your "change adverse" statement would it be any different? What it convey and more or less information? Without merit without discussing actual tradeoffs what information is being conveyed?

assure you that Microsoft spend millions of dollars on various iterations and on studies for usability testing. But that so many people rejected it even though if it can be scientifically proven to be better (through a repeatable study, that's how science works),
The real issue seems to me to be for years there are a lot of people who own computers only to check email and facebook and now they have more options that are a better fit for what they actually do...good for them...but these people while a huge group are not the entire constellation of those using computers. There are people who still need a sane UI environment to get shit done complete with programs encased in movable frames...goddamn I feel like such a dinosaur saying that.
I also disagree that this is about "science"... it was more about leveraging windows to help windows phone to improve market share in other areas. There is no technical reason they couldn't provide knobs to make everyone happy. They chose not to for political reasons as evidenced by shit they took away during early betas of W8.
Metro is about locking down the computing environment (You can't install a metro app yourself...you can only install a metro app from the MS mothership...oh I'm sorry that is such a dated term...I mean the future of all computing..."the cloud"...
Fads come and go ... this isn't an improvement or a reflection of "the future" or a better way... it is a POS forced upon the world for political reasons to make MS more money. A boiling frog on the road to the promised land of vendor locked down computation...our future...where a few control basically everything...like apple does with the iphone and google with everything else...
MS is finally realizing they left way too much value on the table in previous versions of windows and is now hard at work fixing that.