Anyone else preferring the Windows 8 look to the Windows 8.1 one?

The start button without the menu makes zero sense. If there is no menu, and only the full screen abomination exists, then the buttonless look fits the style more.

The start button makes no sense now, because clicking on it draws nothing atop of it. It feels odd that a button switches the GUI completely on its head when you click on it. The hidden button from Windows 8.0 fits the insane paradigm more, because it's hidden in the corner just like the other Windows 8 monster, the charms bar, - you click on the hidden charms bar and you get metro. You click on the hidden start button, and you get metro, too. The now visible button is even more foreign, because it promises something (a menu in the desktop GUI, instead of invoking metro) that isn't there anymore.

I prefer the Windows 7 look and feel over metro OS, but Windows 8.1 is even worse than 8.0.  

I like the new Win 8.1 boot to desktop, otherwise it's not all that different.  I prefer Win8.x myself...

The start button without the menu makes zero sense.  

It's useful to me as an alternative to pressing Win- thinking that I will get the Start Screen on my Tablet.  Pressing Win- to get a Start Screen is a habit I am going to have to break because now there is a Start Screen on every monitor and most often the screen which has keyboard focus is a non-Touch monitor, not my Tablet.  

 

Worse is when I have a MUF app on my Tablet there won't be a Start button to use.  Swiping on my Tablet is iffy, as is using my pen to do anything, so then I am probably going to end up swinging my mouse over, thus losing a lot of the benefit that W8 had brought me in using Touch.

 
Another possibility will be being able to use Search on a non-Touch monitor but then I will have to learn how to estimate whether whatever it is that I am searching for really should be opened there or if I should cancel that one, change focus to the Tablet and then resume the search there.

 
So far, things are less coherent than they were and I can't really see myself becoming more comfortable with any of the necessary adjustments.   If my pen and my swiping started working more reliably I think that would be the best new habit to develop.   E.g. instead of pressing Win-, grab my pen and do whatever is needed to bring up the Start Screen where I want it.  Unfortunately, the new Start button does not even respond to a pen tap but at least in that case I could give it a finger tap.

 

From a desktop perspective, Windows 8.1 is much, much better than RTM Windows 8.  Is 8.1 perfect?  Heck no.  But just having the ability to boot directly to the desktop and having the Start Page share the same desktop background goes very far in terms of having a less jarring experience.  Even the Start Page tiles in 8.1 are better.

Regardless, StarDock will get my $5.00 for Start8.

Just read an interesting early review of the preview at Geoff's blog

It is early in the development cycle but the dropping of libraries and Microsoft bragging about the inability to get to most folders from the pictures app (and presumably others as well) definitely shows Win8 Metro/Modern is heading in a direction that makes it less and less useful for desktop users.

Sigh, it is really a shame. With a small amount of work Microsoft could make an environment that makes tablet and desktop users happy.

Mark

It's really a joke. Faced with the disappointing sales and adoption rate of W8, Microsoft needed to do something, like bringing the start menu back. And instead of doing the only right thing, deliver a usable start menu where desktop users (60% of W8 users launch less than 1 'W8' app per day) can find back their programs as intended by the several installation programs, Microsoft created some half baked 'solution'. Ok, users can now shut down a PC and find a couple of setting options in 1 menu. If they care to right click on the start  button, because the left click still brings up the w8 screen desktop users do no want to see.

It's rather pathetic actually. Anyhow, I don't care, Classic Shell menu from Source Forge does the job better than Microsoft could even think of. It even shows you the W8 apps in 1 submenu.

Dick

Microsoft just copied start8's start button - actually start8 button is more useful, gives users the option of the old style window 7 look or windows 8 metro page - plus other features. 

Microsoft just copied start8's start button - actually start8 button is more useful, gives users the option of the old style window 7 look or windows 8 metro page - plus other features. 

• Edited by NEMESIS- Saturday, July 13, 2013 6:01 AM update

Microsoft just copied start8's start button - actually start8 button is more useful, gives users the option of the old style window 7 look or windows 8 metro page - plus other features. 

• Edited by NEMESIS- Saturday, July 13, 2013 6:01 AM update

It is horrible and I'm PhD CompSci with a good amount of GUI design skills.

Microsoft should have continued for tablets like I will suggest here:

Dear Microsoft,

Do you know Next Launcher fro Android? (Look at it extensively)

Windows 7 is basically; "You have apps ands widgets on 1 desktop, but you have only 1 desktop."

They should just have made multiple desktops you can swipe left or right with a nice transition effect. Live wallpapers. Widgeds apps folders it is all there, why would it not be handy for touch? It is handy in Next Launcher!

You just need more room for (big widgets and bigger folder and program icons so thats where multiple desktops come in.

My suggestion for Microsoft is look at Next Launcher, multiple desktops, widgets, folders. That direction Windows should be heading. Freedom!

Windows 8 just sucks and the Metro is a big fail, stop wasting money, remove the metro and go for multiple desktops with transition effects and widgets. Go for the single click system (Underline icons when I point at them) and just hide the mouse cursor for touch. Easy peasy. 

From that point you would optimize that for touch and mouse together. Then you will have someting good for PC & tablet. Like bigger menu's. (get the size of everyting right for touh and still very right for mouse also)

Make sure Users can skin it just as in Next Launcher. (Let the user design the user interface and Icon/folder size/style)

Really Metro has no future.... Go with this concept call it Windows Liquid. (Since the user can style the desktop) 

So easy to make with OO....

This means the mouse can hold the desktop and swipe it lift or right, the desktop is touchable. Skins and sizes can be set by user for everyting. GO LOOK AT NEXT LAUNCHER FOR ANDROID!!!

To be honest, I like Next Launcher better then Windows 8.... sooooo sad.... You guys at Microsoft need a GUI design Expert, call me: UncleXNL at Hotmail dot com

I will fix you Windows 8 into Windows Liquid!! I will get the OS we all love! I will make Windows better then Android. An windows app can basically be set as widget if it is a windowed app.

Let's go multitasking like crazy!
My android GT-B5510 does, (Since I made a rom with SWAP support)

If you see the ROM I have made for my GT-B5510, you would hire me without blinking for 500.000 Dollars a year.... You just gotta see my Phone...LOL

Metro limits capabilities, as programmer you must Always look to extend capabilities.

Hire me and I'll save Microsoft, I'm an expert programmer, GUI designer, systems developer! Oh and I can develop products also. (And I work real fast, I get stuff done! Especially with Microsoft technology I know so well)

My idea we are going to make it liquid. (Make everyting customizable for the user)

Metro SUCKS!!! Bigtime!

I have the special brains (Autstic in a good way) and skills to bring Microsoft to the Next Level as lead programmer. But we got to drop Metro if you guys want to hire me.

If you continue Metro, I'm not for hire.

Absolutely right about the multiple desktop bit. This is the way to make windows the OS of choice for multiple devices - let's have a series of GUIs we can choose from depending on the environment, instead of trying to make one GUI suit all experiences.

If someone likes the Metro GUI on all interfaces, then let them do so. On the other hand,  if the desktop can be switched at will to different environment styles (Metro, classic desktop) - or even copies of the same environment for work, home, music, art etc - then we have a lovely situation.

It gets even better when you consider what it might be like for devices which don;t yet run usually windows but could do - e.g. televisions with a remote control and gesture based GUI. The whole system becomes greatly extensible.

In a well designed application where business logic is properly separated, the UI will often be something you can design indepedently - so it shouldn't be too much of an overhead for Microsoft to maintain multiple UIs, compared to the heavy duty OS kernel which is where the serious work should be (which actually seems pretty good in later versions)

And remember - we're paying for a new OS, you OWE it to us to give us all this extra stuff, instead of writing the software to suit your own needs. Linux is being offered for free and it contains all this super cusomisable UI stuff.

By the way, Aero Glass for Win 8.1 has just been released.  That plus ClassicShell makes Windows 8.1's desktop a lot easier to use.

http://glass8.berlios.de/

   

I run Windows 8.1 on an Asus laptop, and i had high hopes that it might actually work properly, except of course it doesn't. I am not though going to level total blame Microsoft for this mess, as it seems rather to be a combination of an ill conceived operating system married to a Manufacturer who can't impliment the software correctly as an OEM.

When it does work, it is gorgeous, but only when i have utterly disabled the Modern interface. I run Stardock Start8 to give me an operating system that i can use. Obviously i am a fan of Windows 7 which, to me, was the pinnacle of OS design from Redmond to date. My current laptop, (N56VB) ships with Windows 8. I had hopes of "upgrading " it to Windows 7 but Asus refuse to impliment drivers, possibly under duress from Redmond. It also ships with no "recover to out of box" recovery option, not the brightest move. The Internal recovery option built into Windows 8 doesn't work for an OEM implimentation. By that i mean you can use it, and it copies the recovery partition allowing you to theoretically remove those partitions from the HDD. Except when you use it, and recover the OS, the recovered system refuses to acknowledge that it is valid and simply will not validate. (Thanks Asus). So i purchased a full retail copy of Windows 8.1 and installed it. Perfect, drivers installed, no problem, and ran Stardock software to remove the sight of the Modern interface, 99% of which i will never use. (So why is it there?). What else could possibly go wrong with this OS? Well it doesn't shut down or restart properly. Shutdown problems are solved by turning off the hybrid power functionality, which seems to to affect its boot speed not at all. Start up problems are solved if Fast boot is disabled in the BIOS, and at this point one is left wondering what else could go wrong. It freezes, randonly, sometimes in a browser, sometimes just for the fun of it. What else,  Well Filecopy from external hard drives is hopeless. Sometimes it will work, but mainly on files over 1Gb it just stall totally, and then if you manage to shutdown and restart, miraculously the file has somehow copied. Then at random intervals one will get Kernel power failure shutdowns which appear to have no rhyme or reason for happening, particularly on a week old laptop. So i am left with a laptop that i rely on, being prone to failure, through what i consider to be a colossal failure of software implimentation married with poor understanding of its functionality by an OEM manufacturer. Maybe it will get better, but most likely not. I really have myself to blame though, as a MCSE for a decade or more  failed to observe the key criteria for upgrading Microsoft Products. Every other OS is good and i needed to have waited for Windows 9, As WIndows 7 was such an ace, and that is the reason why so much of the world refuses to migrate from XP. It was good, and it still does what it says on the tin, however insecure it may now be. If you cannot buy Windows 7, (and i couldn't) which is the logical progression, sadly you have to wait for something as good to arrive, and Windows 8 or 8.1 or 8.? is not it.

I have no issues or complaints with win 8.1, compared to 8. Adapted to the change with no difficulty. I do not see any visual differences.

• Edited by colakid Monday, June 02, 2014 2:06 AM

I have to agree with Colakid. A person who had figured out how to use Win 8 as a desktop-only system finds Win 8.1 very little different.

Win 8.1, suitably configured and augmented with good 3rd party tools to bring back functionality that Microsoft removed can actually be a dynamite desktop system. I have such systems.

Of course, discovering all the tweaks and 3rd party stuff that actually works well together is the real trick. Out of the box it's a tough system to love. But one's impression changes markedly with a good Start Menu replacement, some 3rd party tweaks to Explorer, and restoral of less-than-eye-searing theme visuals. This isn't really a fundamental change; It was necessary to tweak Windows 7 as well to bring out it's best - just not nearly so much as Win 8.1.

Thing is, while some organizations might be willing to trust certain 3rd party software, others will be more conservative and not allow such things - and you can't blame them. Some of it simply can't be vetted thoroughly.

Win 8.1 - as long as your system has good drivers - is as stable as any version prior (that is to say perfectly so). I've got workstations that get booted only once per Windows Update, and run properly all the time between under extreme use by engineers.

 

Only thing I haven't solved yet is that the NTFS implementation is incrementally slower than in previous versions. It may be because of the new self-healing capabilities, but part of me also suspects that Microsoft may have intentionally hobbled it so as to be able to easily make the next new version faster by comparison.

 

TBH why have Microsoft lost the plot on windows 8 ? win 7 was good. but their checkered history is only to prove they are always sitting around the board room, saying how can we keep up with apple . listen guys stop messing with something that works. yes we like a start button that was on win 7! no we hate apps. That is for kids. why mess about and ruin a good system .Get real we don't all like stupid changes for stupidities sake. FFS you are so annoying lol !!!   

It's really a joke. Faced with the disappointing sales and adoption rate of W8, Microsoft needed to do something, like bringing the start menu back. And instead of doing the only right thing, deliver a usable start menu where desktop users (60% of W8 users launch less than 1 'W8' app per day) can find back their programs as intended by the several installation programs, Microsoft created some half baked 'solution'. Ok, users can now shut down a PC and find a couple of setting options in 1 menu. If they care to right click on the start  button, because the left click still brings up the w8 screen desktop users do no want to see.

It's rather pathetic actually. Anyhow, I don't care, Classic Shell menu from Source Forge does the job better than Microsoft could even think of. It even shows you the W8 apps in 1 submenu.

Dick

dude you just saved my sanity, thankyou very much, classic shell menu, you are a god, START-ALL PROGRAMS-YES!!!!