Windows Infinity

[Alan]

That has been fixed in the release preview and so I assume the final version as well. I was annoyed by that in the developer and/or consumer previews as well.

 

[This is The End]

That is not what OnlyTellsTruths means by the start button or the start menu.

So there isn't a way to get to the old Start Menu?

 

[Alan]

So there isn't a way to get to the old Start Menu?

There's a third party add-on called Start8. It might cost money when it's out of beta.
http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/

 

[Solitaire]

winders sucks. how dare you.

Only the developer edition.

P.S. Windows 9 comes with "Cortana."

 

[FFed]

So there isn't a way to get to the old Start Menu?

Classicshell is free and I use it for windows 7 as I prefer the windows 98 style start menu over the win 7 one.

http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

 

[Wowbagger]

I disagree it was intuitive. I've dealt with a lot of people using W7 who basically can't do anything if it's not an icon on the desktop.

Compared to Windows 3.1, it was more intuitive.

When Desktop icon hoarding becomes a problem, people sometimes have a way of rediscovering the Start Menu.

When Windows XP started placing the most commonly used programs on the inital menu, people began using it more often than the Desktop.

In Win8, the Start "Menu" is still there, in some sense, but taking the button away for it does no one any favors.

I'm not one of those most. I often can't find things I want with the damn Ribbon.

Sometimes I can't, either. But, if you pause and think 'Which section would it make most sense to stick it?', you will usually come up with the right answer.

The ribbon was a radical change, but at least more options are more accessible from it, than in the past. So, it offers some genuine improvement, even if it is not perfect for everyone.

It was NOT simply a change for the sake of change. And, it was not a change done simply for style or branding reasons.

Although many of the changes in Win8 make sense in the context of tablet machines, a lot of it was also done for the sake of branding and cleaning up the style, without regard to usability.

I'm not sure what you're talking about there? Top level menus in apps? I just checked all I'm running right now (chrome, evernote, adobe reader, notepadd++, Navcat,Calc, word 2013, ppt 2013, Tor, Vidalia, Skype, Itunes ... and not a single one has ALL CAPS top level menus.

The new versions of Microsoft applications will have ALL CAPS menu or ribbon bars, by default: Office applications, Visual Studio, etc. But, there are thankfully ways to change that.

I rarely use the metro apps. They're clearly there primarily for touch screens, not desktop operations, and I don't yet have a touch screen. Those I have tried were clearly still in developmental stage so I expected them to have some issues, and they did.

More generically, Metro apps. are designed for portable devices, where power consumption is more of an issue.

For example: Metro apps. are supposed to be "stateless", meaning that it should not matter to the user if an application is actually running or not. The OS can arbitrarily shut it down, to save power, but since its "state" was constantly saved to disk every time it changed (as opposed to only temporary memory), it could act like it was never closed, once it is selected to start up again.

I think it's a neat architecture under the hood. (It shares a lot with Android, conceptually.) But, its ultimate implementation leaves a lot to be desired, so far.