...complaints about Windows 8, the one that least affects me is the loss of the "Start" button.
I have only just now realized that the only things I ever accessed through the Start button were the calculator, character map, and Paint. Everything else had a desktop icon or a taskbar button.
The idea of the Metro active tile interface is neat in concept, but its usefulness on a traditional desktop machine* is hampered by two things: Lack of a touchscreen, and the fact that Google and Facebook are now de facto competitors to Microsoft and Apple (and, increasingly, each other.)
I spend most of my time in Firefox, which runs in the "desktop" environment, anyway.
*A shrinking category, it seems. A thumbnail market survey shows that the traditional desktop market now largely consists of high-end towers marketed to gamers and little "Grandma needs to do email" machines. The laptop section takes up more than half the computer department real estate at Fry's and half the laptop department is netbooks, ultrabooks, and tablets.
A thumbnail market survey shows that the traditional desktop market now largely consists of high-end towers marketed to gamers and little "Grandma needs to do email" machines.
ReplyDeleteThat's Fry's for you. I don't go there for anything business-related, because typically they don't have it. When I need them, I still order business desktops from Dell.
Stardock.com
ReplyDeleteFive dollars get you the start button and the standard Windows menus. If you need the metro interface it's available on a desktop icon.
The product you want is called Start8.
Fuzzy Curmudgeon,
ReplyDelete"That's Fry's for you."
That's any retail computer joint I've set foot in in a while.
Seriously, look around: Desktops these days are only bought by businesses, grannies, and gamers.
ASM826,
ReplyDeleteI think I just wrote a post about how I didn't really use the Start button. ;)
Just got a Windows 8 tablet at work to "play" with. I love how MS keeps moving the stuff we admins use...burying it deeper and deeper in to the GUI's...
ReplyDeleteMissed the start button at first, just because I didn't know how to get to the Control Panel. Now that I've found it...not missing the Start button so much.
I can find a CMD session by doing a search...but still haven't figured out where the icon actually is.
Start button was really kind of a dumb system to begin with. Not sure what they replaced it with is any better, though.
ReplyDeleteI long ago (when XP came out) put the shortcuts I wanted into a folder, which is always open on the taskbar - the "start" button is only used by me to shut down or restart. Following the multiple chains down the "programs" trees was next to being on bread-and-water for a year.
ReplyDeleteI use a desktop rather than a laptop, mostly because I can do things like install a new video card or hard drive much more easily.
I am still on Win7 but yeah, MS keeps moving "stuff only techies should need" to impossible places. I finally gave up on finding how to do a "system-reset" file (the option on Control Panel is to build a complete disk image [of a 2 Terabyte disk?] or use the file built at shutdown/update - of which there is only one and no easy way to increase the number as there used to be) and found a package (apparently I am not the only one to want it) to do it - cutely, the control panel "restore" finds and will use these...
Metro's purpose is to act as a full-screen Start Menu, so if you don't normally use the Start Menu in Windows 7, it's going to feel pretty superfluous. The big advantage of the design is the tablet world (where you can't afford the desktop space to make shortcuts for everything) and for power users who end up needing quick access to one of a hundred different applications, usually operating off that application's name. Windows-Key + three letters of an application's name is a lot more useful for power users than the old nested window format.
ReplyDeleteLCB, the first group of Start Menu items are only those icons you (or the program) have set as Pinned To Start Menu. If you use Start Search to list the command prompt, right-click it, and then click Pin To Start Menu, it'll then show up at the first list.
"Desktops these days are only bought by businesses, grannies, and gamers."
ReplyDeleteAnd engineering types who run SolidWorks, photography buffs with Creative Suite 6, or just plain geeks who haven't bought 28" touchscreen monitors yet...
But everyone hates on the lack of a start menu, Tam. That's why Windows 8 is the latest in a long line of horrible new versions of Windows.
ReplyDeleteCertainly nobody wants to admit that most of the stuff they use regularly, they pin to the desktop or taskbar.
Our office uses desktops for drafting because my boss, who unlike me, actually likes working on computers, can put a relatively powerful one together for about $100.
ReplyDeleteWorks fine for AutoCAD; so much so, that he gave me one to draw at home when there was lots of drawing to be done but no field work.
Other than that, the computer at Chez GVI is an ACER netbook.
gvi
Everything else had a desktop icon or a taskbar button.
ReplyDeleteYou're one of those cluttered-desktop savages, aren't you?
(Me, half the time I'm hitting Win-R to get the run prompt and typing in a name, such as an explorer path.
But the Start button is staggeringly useful for "find and run this stupid thing I rarely use", which is a problem some of us necessarily have.
[e.g. for work, turns out there are tools I use every few months...])
Sigivald,
ReplyDelete"You're one of those cluttered-desktop savages, aren't you?"
Nope. Sometimes in my laziness I've let the icons grow more than two columns across, in which case they're due for a purging...
G98,
"And engineering types who run SolidWorks, photography buffs with Creative Suite 6, or just plain geeks who haven't bought 28" touchscreen monitors yet..."
I should have said "businesses, grannies, and geeks". Your SolidWorks engineer falls under 'business', and has for my use of "gamer" when I should have said "geek", I keep forgetting that the category includes people who obsessively tweak their machines for performance, but then never actually use them to perform anything except benchmarks. ;)
I was going to suggest Start8 as well (from awesome purveyors of both productivity software as well as games, Stardock), not only for the Start button, but for its ability to boot you directly into the "desktop" environment without any need to even see Metro for as much as a split second. I installed it straightaway on the fire-sale laptop I bought my kids to share which came with Win8, and they've still never seen Metro. If Win8 has introduced some setting that can do the same thing, let us know!
ReplyDeleteI have met the geek, and he is me. I have to confess, I have a horribly bare desktop on Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit here. No icons or shortcuts whatsoever, but I do have a Dreamscape animation as my desktop wallpaper.
ReplyDeleteMy Start menu, however, is pretty darned full. I just got done doing a bunch of Adobe Lightroom imports from the Nikon (Software Tam should consider running for her DSLR) and am firing up Windows 8 64 Bit Enterprise under a VisualBox VM just for giggles. I'm allocating 8Gb and 4 Xeons out of the 16Gb and 8 CPUs available, so it doesn't stumble.
I don't mind Windows 8 on my smartphone, but I'm holding off on the workstation.
I guess I fit into the "Grandma" category. I tried Windows8 and we didn't get along. I went and got my money back. Not sure what I'm going to do when XP expires?...
ReplyDeleteAll The Best,
Frank W. James
Shit, Rick...most of the stuff I use is already running. Why close 'em?
ReplyDeleteFrank,
ReplyDelete"I guess I fit into the "Grandma" category."
I thought you used a laptop?
meh.....
ReplyDeleteI only run Windoze when forced to.
Everything else is Linux.
"Windoze" Hur hur hur. I get it. Shut up.
ReplyDelete:p
Well....I could of said Winblows, but this is a family blog after all....
ReplyDelete