Windows 8 (plan B) Return of the Desktop & StartBar

feldon30 said:
MMO developers are VERY good at engagement and exercise-reward loops. Your characters get built up over years with history, accomplishments, player housing / guild halls where you have all your "stuff". An MMO is like a second house, and nobody wants to walk away from an investment.

Most MMO games have gone Free-to-Play so that everything's a la carte. You can login and play X amount for free, but certain things need unlocks. WoW is one of the last holdouts, sticking to $15/month.
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I thought they lowered the monthly fee?
 
I also noticed that Microsoft now allows license owners to transfer Office 2013 to another computer (after 90 days); before it was tied to one computer. Heck, its the reason I caved in and purchased Office 2013.

Mark3121 said:
http://www.pokki.com/windows-8-start-menu

I use Pokki, it's looks great and allows you to boot straight to desktop and gives you back a nice start menu.

I never ever see metro :)
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I shale try this... kindof sick of the metro stuff, and I miss fluidly using the desktop.
 
Dodgeboard said:
As a Windows 8 user, I found this interesting.

http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-win...-the-start-button-boot-to-desktop-7000014075/

Personally, I use a Windows start-bar 3rd-party add-on to accomplish this. But I would welcome an official option....as Metro SUCKS!
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Interesting in a sad, pathetic way.
Microsoft truly is a directionless mess with no vision.

To underline their misguided ways ... they now have a Start button ... not on the screen ... ON THE MOUSE !

/FAIL

windows.key.on.mouse.webp
 
Oh man... if only Apple wasn't overpriced :unsure:

Anyhow, thanks Stardock for creating a pretty good start button/screen (called Start8) that has several options including the ability to disable W8's interface.
 
Digital Doctor said:
Interesting in a sad, pathetic way.
Microsoft truly is a directionless mess with no vision.

To underline their misguided ways ... they now have a Start button ... not on the screen ... ON THE MOUSE !

/FAIL

View attachment 46710
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Rofl. This has got to be a joke.. right?

Shelley said:
Greed. Stupidity and as you say lack vision. What next? caps lock button on the mouse?
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Thing is, I don't think this is caused by greed. If it was just being greedy, they'd release more or less the same product and leave it at that.. removing half the functionality and replace it with something else entirely requires a lot of work, and convincing customers that they are better off with it even more. Somewhere along the lines someone at Microsoft must honestly have thought this was a good idea, which is a scary thought.
 
Sador said:
Microsoft must honestly have thought this was a good idea, which is a scary thought.
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Indeed.
This is idiocy >>> greed.

When people get annoyed from the Start menu interrupting their work when they accidentally touch the start mouse button .... the Microsoft Mouse Service Pack 1 will allow the button to be disabled.
 
Windows 8 is all about the touch screen. Tablets, even desktop touch screens. One idea for Microsoft could be to move the Start button from the mouse and have a little icon on screen that people could just touch to see their programs.

Mockups:

microsoft.mouse.start.button.replacement.mockups.webp


Potential locations for a non-hardware based Start button:
- probably best in the bottom left corner.

Do you likey ?
 
Digital Doctor said:
Windows 8 is all about the touch screen. Tablets, even desktop touch screens. One idea for Microsoft could be to move the Start button from the mouse and have a little icon on screen that people could just touch to see their programs.

Mockups:

View attachment 46785

Potential locations for a non-hardware based Start button:
- probably best in the bottom left corner.

Do you likey ?
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The bottom-left hot corner on Win8 isn't all that different. Both conform to Fitt's Law, in that you point your mouse to the lower left corner and click.
 
Windows 8 is simply a great OS to me. I never have issues with it :p
I do find it odd people whine about the lack of the Start bar to get to desktop when there has always been a Windows Key on all laptops :p

I use Windows 8 on my old laptop, i use Windows RT on my Surface RT and Windows 8 on my new yoga laptop.
All i want from them is to bring some features from Windows 8 to Windows Phone 8.

LOL having used mac, which i think are pretty but just boring, and Linux(Vomit...i'd rather use Windows XP)....Windows 8 for me is the best os.
 
Quillz said:
You've always been able to go directly to the Start screen by pressing the Windows key on your keyboard (functionality that hasn't changed since Windows 95) or by clicking in the lower left corner.Them adding a physical taskbar button (which is still just a rumor and not confirmed) won't change any actual system behavior.
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Exactly. I bought Start8 from Stardock which 1) adds a start button and 2) boots me right to the desktop if I want to. (And that can be adjusted manually in the registry.) Aside from Metro (which I do use BTW for some apps), it's a more stable version of Windows 7 with many enhancements. Under the hood, Windows 8 officially is "Windows NT 6.2" (Vista was 6.0). So it's not an all-new OS--it just has a different GUI tacked onto it.

If someone can't afford the $4.95 (or less) for Start8, well...I don't know what to say. Day to day, though, my applications all work on my desktop as they have for years. My workflow has not changed. Except for my start button (which I customized), anyone would be hard pressed to tell whether I'm running Win7 or Win8. My apps run as good or better. Explorer is much improved. There are tons of new keyboard shortcuts, including some that Windows abandoned years ago.

No complaints here. At the end of the day, my work gets done.
 
Rudy said:
Exactly. I bought Start8 from Stardock which 1) adds a start button and 2) boots me right to the desktop if I want to. (And that can be adjusted manually in the registry.) Aside from Metro (which I do use BTW for some apps), it's a more stable version of Windows 7 with many enhancements. Under the hood, Windows 8 officially is "Windows NT 6.2" (Vista was 6.0). So it's not an all-new OS--it just has a different GUI tacked onto it.

If someone can't afford the $4.95 (or less) for Start8, well...I don't know what to say. Day to day, though, my applications all work on my desktop as they have for years. My workflow has not changed. Except for my start button (which I customized), anyone would be hard pressed to tell whether I'm running Win7 or Win8. My apps run as good or better. Explorer is much improved. There are tons of new keyboard shortcuts, including some that Windows abandoned years ago.

No complaints here. At the end of the day, my work gets done.
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This is how I feel. I'm not saying I jumped right into Windows 8 without having to change a few things. But... I didn't complain, decide I hated it and called it the worst thing ever in the history of the world. I told myself, I'm going to spend a good hour to two learning what's new, and once I got it set up the way I liked it, it's great. I much prefer the Start screen... Bigger, live, gives me up-to-date news and weather, things you could never have gotten from the static Start menu.

That's why I'm really liking what I'm seeing in Win8.1 right now. Larger tiles, giving you even more detailed weather or news, smaller tiles for more mundane apps like web browsers, the ability to boot to Desktop (which means Start8 will be dead soon) and more customization. Just like Vista was an important milestone for Windows, but had a lot of issues that were fixed with Win7, I feel we're going to see the same thing with 8 -> 8.1. And, of course, it being a free update is even better.
 
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