Windoze 8

Yesterday someone asked me whether I could fix his PC with Windows Vista. This struck me as odd because who gets a Vista PC these days (and how??), and because Vista cannot be fixed. So I asked a few questions and my suspicions were confirmed: he meant fix his PC running Windows 8.

Here's the kicker. He said "The system's so awful i thought it had to be Vista."

There you have it: So bad it makes Vista look good :P

Microsoft has a chronic hisotry of choosing the wrong names for its products or services, with the M/M/W debacle and the Sky Drive mess just the most recent. I thought I'd lend a hand and suggest names for futures Windows developments.

For starters they should change the anme of Windows 8 and 8.1 to Windows Kool Aid (yes, this is a gruesome, tasteless joke). Next they should release a new OS which restores the start menu and full desktop functionality. This could be called Windows I'm So Sorry Please Forgive ME. Of course this version will also suffer some image problems, as the infamous M/M/W would still be attached. So they'll need a service pack/upgrade which would still have M/M/W but confined to a safe, separate area. This oen would be called Windows Wall Of Separation.

But that one would have to be dropped when China sues. So it would be renamed Windows NOT 8, which would flop as people would think it's some kind of Windows 8. Therefore MS would valiantly try to come up with something completely new and original, but give up and come up with Windows 2015.

IN the meantime the perfectly obvious and usbale Windows Drive would be rejected in favor of MS Box, which would get shut down ina lawsuit, followed by MS iAndroid Drive (don't even bring it up!), followed by "The Cloud Portion Which Microsoft Inhabits, You Know What I Mean: NOT Sky Drive."

Or they could avoid all this and just name their new, restored system Windows XP][ ;)

Progress!

Paul Thurrot of the Supersite for Windows is now advocating, albeit quietly, for a start menu in the next Windows release.

This is significant beacsue Thurrot was an early adopter of Windows 8, has written a book about it, and he's one of the early supporters and apologists of the system as well.

His concern is not in having a start menu because he wants it, but rather that users are avoiding Win8(.1) because they get easily lost in the M/M/W interface, and can't use the desktop as a result. Which supports my point that making desktop users go into M/M/W, or learn keyboard shortcuts for search, or making them pin "apps" to the taskbar, in fact means crippling the desktop.

Another thing about "pinning" "apps," I don't think it's as common as MS would have us think. Admittedly since I unpinned everything in order to eb able to use the taskbar, I didn't pay much attention to this so-called feature. Now I do. And what I've noticed is just about everyone has the icons that come "pinned" standard, and then add nothing else. Nor do most people remove anything, either.

Of course, these are just a few examples around the office. But when I asked some people about it, they had no idea they could either pin more programs or un-pin the ones already stuck to the taskbar. I found this odd, as the option is right there in the "jump" list when one clicks with the right mouse button. Of course, many people don't even know mice have more than one button...

More progress!

Paul Thurrot is reporting via Mary Jo Foley that the start menu may return in the next Windows release: http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/further-changes-coming-windows-threshold#comment-484311

I wouldn't call it Win8.2, nor Win9. They need rebranding. Windows Classic, now, is not bad, but it would bring up abd associations with Classic Coke and New Coke. So I'd revive an old MS success and call it Windows Experience (NOT Windows Experience 2).

Anyway, assuming MS doesn't mess it up (like, for example, by permanently pinning an M/M/W launcher app in the taskbar), then I will be happy to upgrade. And if Sinofsky and Ballmer crawl a mile through broken glass as penance, all will be forgiven as well (joking!!)

Much as I will welcome the return of the start button to Windows, what's really needed is to restore the full-featured desktop.

For once MS might be coignisant of this need. See, in addition to the start menu there's talk of running Metro (shh!) "apps" in desktop mode, in floating windows. That would be the M/M/W "apps." This can be done easily today by paying $5 to Stardock for Modern Mix. Whether this will be of any use to desktop users remains to be seen, but I suppose poeple using both a dekstop PC and a Surface tablet may find it useful. In any case, it's a nod in the direction of the desktop, and a step back in eliminating the desktop entirely.

But here's what needs to be done:

1) Do away with the lock screen
2) Do away with M/M/W "apps" as defaults for running common file types (mp3, jpeg, video files, etc)
3) Do away with easy and instant transport to the M/M/W interface
4) Do away with a) the need to sign in with an MS account (I expect this will happen well after hell freezes over, but I'm putting it out there), and b) mandatory password log-in every start of session.
5) Restore the full AeroGlass theme with all the options, most specifically including matching the taskbar to the rest of the desktop.
6) Remove the "charms" bar from the desktop
7) Do away with Bing everywhere search

Now, for all these items what I want is the option. I don't care if someone loves the lockscreen, the MS account, the password log in, the mismathced taskbar, the M/M/W interface, the "charms" bar, want an MS algorythm to suck all their data, etc. But give everyone the choice of what to use and where to use it. As Windows 8(.1) stand snow, you can do all fo the above, except the Aero Glass and matching the taskbar, but it takes add-on software and too much time and effort to do so.

All that is wrong with Win8(.1) is as nothing as the fact that MS saw fit to make changes hard when they were possible at all.

I'm very ambivalent about the impending return of the start menu (though I prohesized it!) I keep feeling Microsoft will manage to horribly screw it up.

Here's some advice, then:

In Windows XP, and Vista and 7, there was an option for a "classic" Windows look. That is, you could make the desktop look like WIndows 95/98. Take a page from that and offer a "classic" Windows Start Menu, regardless of any other considerations.

Now if MS wants to go on wild experiments, put links to the start screen and whatever other nasty surprises their minds can think of, all would be fine. If I don't like the new look and/or functionality, I can fall back on the old reliable.

The dates for the new Windows release, barring a Win8.1 Update 1, are for sometime in 2015. I expect a crescendo of further rumors soon, with a barrage of leaks and rumors in the last quarter of 2014, eventually followed by a preview around that same time.

This go round I plan to pay close attention. If I'd done so with Win8, including a download of the Win8 preview, I'd have spared myself a lot of uncertainty. Better yet, I'd have obtained a Win7 PC when there weree plenty to choose from. Granted I wound up with perhaps a better system as regards processor and RAM than I might have otherwise, but that was luck. I can't depend on luck for next time.

The Windows 8.1 preview is set to expire in Jan 15th. I have that long to erase the partition... Oh, wait!

I expect two things to hapen which will further drive down the popularity, such as it is, of Win8.1:

1) Businesses faced with Armagedon, the Apocalypse and Ragnarok due to the imminent demise of WinXP will largely switch to Windows 7

2) Desktop diehards who haven't upgraded to Start8 will hold out for Windows 8.2/9/Or Whatever MS Calls It in 2015. Naturally this is what I'll be doing.

A small fraction of people will switch to Linux. To all Linux enthusiasts, I'm sorry but your chersihed system won't ever be hugely popular on the desktop. In order to get a massive desktop hit you need to 1) make it very user friendly and 2) charge for it.

A rather larger small fraction will switch to Mac.

Looking back on the whole Windows 8(.1) debacle, it is plain to see that removing the Start Menu ranks up there with the great failures of industry such as the Ford Edsel or New Coke. Particularly New Coke, I should say, as the result has been close, if muted. But then the two products aren't completely comaprable. you could not, ni the 80s, buy a $5 product that would make New Coke taste almost like Classic Coke, for example. Nor can you stockpile Windows 7 to last you severla years (well, you can, but there's no need to).

But as with New Coke, Microsoft alienated a lot of its customer base. To be sure some people prefer Win8, as some poeple rpefered New Coke. But Win8 is in trouble as far as sales go, it is facing more competition than any of its predecessors ever did, and it is lagging far behind expectations.

If and when MS does restore the start menu, it won't be the same as it was before. Just as when Coca Cola restored Classic Coke, it changed the sweetener. It remains to be seen whether the new start menu will be usable enough, and whether MS will make more interface changes and user-friendly settings.

Despite all that needs to be fixed on Win8 and all that's wrong with it, the missing start menu and the strong-arm push into the M/M/W interface were what killed it. Had they elft the start menu intact, ahd files been set to run default on desktop, or without default (to be determined as each file type is run), then all of us desktop diehards would have 1) acquired Win8 without hesitation and most important 2) would have looked at the "Metro" interface and apps with curiosity and without hostility.

The moral of the story is the same as the one for New Coke: 1) do not force changes on people and 2) always give the customers choices.

Not much in the way of news, but an item making the rounds is that almost all the people responsible for Win8(.1) are iether out of MS for good (for the time being) or were shuffled deeper into the company and way from the Windows group. This "reorganization" does include the CEO, otherwise I'd have something harsh to say (I'm still miffed about how one person got fired at our comapny for botched sampels, but not the two people who apporved said samples).

This comes a year too late and a few billion dollars short.

Of course, the internet tech press keeps harping on tablets and smart-phones. The only way I can see anyone, myself included, doing any serious work on a tablet is by attaching it to a monitos, adding a keyboard, adding a mouse, and putting either Windows7 or Linux on it. But since they're tredny and "cool," people will ruin their eyesight and productivity and just follow the trend.

Still, while a lot of people at work now carry a tablet or two (seriously) and do use it for work, they mostly use it as an adjuncto to the PC. They keep their calendars there, read email on the go there, and even view a file or two on the go there as well. I can understand that, and it would be helpful, too. But tablets won't replace PCs for a few years at elast. And then only when they are as capable as PCs, and can be asily hooked up to a monitor, mouse and keyboard (say with a docking station), and get more onboard storage.

BTW, when I typed that last sentence above, I got a flashback to the time when I first had 100 megabytes on a PC's hard drive. It seemed incredibly extravagant then. Today 32 gigabytes seems like too little.