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What To Expect With Windows 9

snydeq writes: Two weeks before the its official unveiling, this article provides a roundup of what to expect and the open questions around Windows 9, given Build 9834 leaks and confirmations springing up all over the Web. The desktop's Start Menu, Metro apps running in resizable windows on the desktop, virtual desktops, Notification Center, and Storage Sense, are among the presumed features in store for Windows 9. Chief among the open questions are the fates of Internet Explorer, Cortana, and the Metro Start Screen. Changes to Windows 9 will provide an inkling of where Nadella will lead Microsoft in the years ahead. What's your litmus test on Windows 9?

19 of 545 comments (clear)

  1. Aero Or Go Home by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seriously, give me transparency, name it whatever you want, just give it to me. I don't want your flat color bs.

    1. Re:Aero Or Go Home by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Seriously, give me transparency, name it whatever you want, just give it to me. I don't want your flat color bs.

      This. Fire the UX department and just give me Win7's UI. (Ditto for you, Firefox, GNOME, and Flickr.) All the UX department does is make the marketing department happy and drive customers to competing services.

    2. Re:Aero Or Go Home by epyT-R · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'd be happy if they brought back windows 2k GUI with its fast and lean gdi+ acceleration. It's a GUI that doesn't clutter up my desktop with huge window decorations and widgets, nor give me grief and/or performance problems with windowed gpu accelerated applications. Windows 8's is the worst of both worlds: it clutters up the desktop, and, unlike windows 7, the display manager can't be turned off without invasive, system breaking hacks. Even with windows 7 the explorer is broken compared to 2k/xp, but at least I can get 95% of what I want with a few shellstyle.dll hacks and some registry tweaks.

    3. Re: Aero Or Go Home by epyT-R · · Score: 2, Insightful

      'just sayin...' is a crutch for people who want to put something out there without vouching for it. In this case, the reason's obvious: today's finder is right up there in shittiness with metro. Like microsoft, apple doesn't want you browsing files, they want you 'searching' for everything.. Yuck.

  2. Re:I know! by thieh · · Score: 1, Insightful

    More restrictions, more driver problems, more money needed to buy, more powerful hardware required, more "shove down your throat" on pre-built machines. Strangely enough, that also means more people make games/apps/stuff on it.

  3. What To Expect With Windows 9 by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One word answer: "Disappointment"

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  4. Re:Virtual Desktops (Workspaces) by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You don't choose between workspaces and physical screens, you just have multiple physical screens so that each workspace can be even larger and more pleasant to use...

    You do eventually run into diminishing returns; but being able to display more than one monitor worth of stuff simultaneously definitely has its uses, and is something that being able to switch between workspaces, be the transition ever so elegant, cannot replace.

  5. Re:Make the server version look like a server. by dkman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    3a. The inability to highlight and copy from an error pop-up is one of the most retarded things I run into. This was a problem in 95, it really needs someone to take an hour and fix it already. (This is made worse by URLs posted, but even if they weren't clickable being able to copy/paste it into a browser would take a lot of the pain away.)

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  6. Re:I know! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Likely because he is a Linux user. Linux doesn't have much in the way of malware so you can be a complete idiot and install whatever you want and run whatever you like as root and still not get infected. However when the same idiot uses Windows then due to the popularity of the platform they end up installing and running malware.

    The intelligent approach is to be careful about what you install and run making sure it is from trusted sources no matter what operating system and not just rely on the fact that you aren't a large target.

    The biggest problem in terms of security is the user allowing malware to run and Linux is no better than Windows in that regard, we are often told how Linux users are "smarter" however if that were the case they wouldn't have so much difficulty with Windows.

  7. Touchscreens don't belong on real computers. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You put your grubby mits on my nice clean monitor and you're pulling back a bloody stump.
    Are you fucking people blind? Smears and fingerprints drive me nuts!

  8. Just now they're getting virtual desktops? by LaughingRadish · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Well, Unix systems had virtual desktops for around 20 years now. I wonder what other old tech they've put into it and crowing about inventing it.

  9. Re:Stick with Win7 by Luckyo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Microsoft tried it already with 8. REALLY really tried it with 8, removing 7 from everywhere it only could.

    It was a disaster. PC sales crashed. As we discovered, forcing 8 on people did result in marginal increase of sales of 8, and a massive reduction of sales in PCs.

    Finally someone important at microsoft realised that in winning the battle of 8's adoption over 7, they were losing the war of keeping PCs being the primary customer computing platform, and 7 was quickly pushed back into OEM chain. I think that this particular lesson was painful enough for microsoft not to even think of trying it again for at least a few years.

  10. Re:Ah well by Oligonicella · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Changing a theme for the sake of changing a theme isn't moving forward, it's just remodeling the kitchen. I happen to like my older theme because it's become invisible to me now. That's what I want in an OS UI. Why change for the sake of? It's like comparing car styles. Meh.

  11. Re:If it's not like Vista or 8.0 (Vista II)... by penix1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    the biggest problem is microsoft's insistence upon having a microsoft account, and use of trickery to ensure they are created, to login to the local pc, or to use the 'store' to download 'free' apps, or to use office 2013.. that's a total pain in the ass that no one should tolerate.

    Yet Google does the same with Android. Amazon does the same thing with its platform too. So this isn't unique to Microsoft.

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  12. Re:The Year of Windows on the Desktop by AudioEfex · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You do realize desktop Linux distros have been unbelievably easy to install (or even run from a Live CD) for the last decade or so don't you? Nobody has been "forced" into using Windows just because it happened to ship as the default for a very long time.

    That's like telling someone that "a space shuttle is really easy to use, someone on the ground actually presses the "launch" button for you!"

    Sure, automated initial installs have been all wrapped up in little wizard-like packages. That's not the point, it's the ongoing installation and management of packages and versions and such that you have to keep up on.

    I get Linux, I do. I have used it on spare PC's before. But I just don't have time to use it on my main machines, because while I'd love that much time to tinker around and do all kinds of clever things with it to hone it to be the ultimate OS for me - I just don't have that kind of time to spend on it consistently. You have to "keep up" with Linux as a hobby way too much for folks that just need to get tasks done on a PC when they sit at it (especially with tablets in the picture, as for a lot of us we spend a lot less time tied to larger machines since we do a lot of consumption that way now).

    It's one of those things that I'm glad it's there, I wish I had time - and maybe someday, but since I don't install crap on my PC and I don't go to sketchy websites (well aside from this one LOL), and I take a modicum of security precautions, I do OK with Windows. I never have to ask if I can run something on my machine, why I buy a product that can connect to a PC via USB or network (camera, Blu-ray, etc.) I never have to wonder if the driver software will work for me or if I'll have to spend hours hoping to get it working with whatever I can scrounge up, I never have to search out solutions around how to do what I want, etc.

    In the end, yeah, Windows, yuck, but deal-able, and it's really disingenuous to pretend that because they have dumb downed the initial install package to Windows levels, that the actual ongoing user experience of Linux is nearly that plug and play for most folks, so to speak.

  13. Re:I know! by Pino+Grigio · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Really? Fewer driver problems on Linux? Seriously? I mean WHAT?

  14. Re:The real test? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Most people are fine with it once you install Classic Start Menu. There is some good stuff in 8, and it's not like Vista where performance went to hell and a lot of stuff just broke. Having different DPI settings on each monitor is nice, for example. All they really need to do with 9 is fix the start menu.

    Having said that the multiple desktops feature looks nice. Something that should have been done years a go, but better late than never.

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  15. Re:I know! by brantondaveperson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I presume you installed a 10+ year old Linux version so that it would be a fair comparison with XP?

  16. Re:Haters gonna hate by exomondo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Oh get over yourself, nobody is "shilling". The reality is that nobody cares about an OS, it exists purely to run applications so even if you have the technically best and technically most advanced operating system ever created it is utterly useless unless it can run the programs that people need to run to accomplish the tasks that they need the computer for. Windows - and in large part OS X - accomplish this on the desktop for the vast majority of people, Linux accomplishes this largely on servers and smartphones. Windows fails at this on smartphones and Linux fails at it on desktops.

    Nobody is saying Windows is a superior operating system to OS X or Linux from a technical perspective - in fact I don't think you'll find an overall winner in any category - but from the perspective of being a desktop operating system, by and large it is. Just as Android and iOS are on smartphones and Linux is on servers.