Windows 9, rumored to be announced at BUILD 2014 in April

[Cadsuane]

It's not necessary though. pinning apps and using search is a much faster way of launching applications. The problem is being used to hunting through a giant menu since windows 95.

Pretty much this. Every time someone complains around me about 8, it turns out that they open files from the start menu programs folder, or have some other stupid backwards idiosyncrasy. This is about on par with flipping your shit over someone arranging your desktop icons by name, and now you can't find the internet explorer shortcut because it's not at the tip of the flower petal on your default wallpaper anymore.

[Kohan]

I have to disagree, and I consider myself a very technical person. I use everything from Windows XP to 8.1 at work (not to mention various other OSes, including OS X and Linux), but I've been around since the DOS days. Yet, despite my being perfectly comfortable with computers, I personally find the Start menu superior, and not at all slower.

The only reason this menu would ever become "giant" is due to users not installing their applications to organized folders. While it's true that these people may simply not know how to do that, they're therefore as guilty of squandering the Start menu's potential as they would be of wasting the Windows 8 approach. Either way, the fault is with the user, not the interface. I never have gigantic menus, and find it a lot faster to click on a categorized set of folders than to work with Windows 8's interface.

I don't see an advantage to it on anything other than a smart device.

[djzombie]

I know how windows 8 works, I'm forced to use it every day at work, and I still hate it. My issue is not with hitting the windows key and typing in what im looking for, thats how i launch most apps in 7 currently. my issue is with the GIANT FUCKING TOUCHSCREEN INTERFACE that takes up not one but multiple mouse scrolls of space and disappears my desktop. Without the touchscreen interface that shit is absolutely 100% more useless than my tiny list of frequently used apps, and the ability to access any possible setting i could want to get into from the start menu.

Yes, when i do have to look at my list of apps, I prefer a small neat organized text menu to a giant clusterfuck of colorful boxes that i have to sift through to find what im looking for

[Lucki]

I use Win8.1 at work and have no problem with it. I have the task bar on all 3 monitors and the programs I use 95% of the time pinned there, so I hardly ever need to go to the metro screen. In the rare times that I do, I have the other 5% of the programs I use pinned there so I don't have to root around in the Apps page.

[djzombie]

I dont like the extra space it takes up or that it goes full screen. start menu is a tenth of the size widescreen, instead of having all the info in that tenrh of the screen, I now have to look through the entire screen, and not just one either.

or if I want to get control panel I have to either type the thing in and find it or gesture and find it. windows 7 I can windows key and a mouseclick later im where I need to be


id upgrade if they added the start menu back tobhowbit functioned bwfore and gave me the option to completely remove the metro screen, not sure if thats already possible or not

[chiyio]

or if I want to get control panel I have to either type the thing in and find it or gesture and find it. windows 7 I can windows key and a mouseclick later im where I need to be

Check out the win+x shortcut in windows 8, I think you'll love it.

[Isiolia]

^ That menu in 8.1 is even better (also can get by right clicking the start screen trigger, be it hot corner or icon).

[djzombie]

thats pretty nice but why hide a feature like that with an obscure keybind.

[Tajin]

Because there's the potential to fuck the system up. As mentioned people is dumb.

[reckbates]

It's not that they're going fast, but rather they're returning to normal. Windows 95, 98, and ME in '95, '98, and 2000 respectively, as well as NT in '96, with Windows 2000 taking over for ME (for good reason) and bridging the NT path.

Then XP in late 2001. That's a new OS every two or three years.

Vista was stuck in development for so long that people got used to XP being around forever, but Microsoft had not intended for that to happen. Indeed, it's made people more reluctant to upgrade, because now they had an OS that was stable and had the majority of the features they wanted. That's why there's a lot of articles sort of freaking out about April's end of support for XP, because there's still so many installs of it out there.

I would wager that a large number of people 'upgrade' only when they buy a new PC, rather than because they want Microsoft's shiny new release, because that's all they can get from major retailers unless they put forth extra effort. Certainly all the bargains only seem to apply to systems with the latest OS installed.

Starting with XP (decent), then Vista (awful), then Win7 (decent), then Win8 (awful)... I want to believe the best of 9, but with their lowest-common-denominator approach of wanting every device to look the same, even though smartphones are always going to be less capable than desktop PCs... I think I'll be disappointed.

[Ksandra]

I hate windows 8. And I hate the windows phone OS, which sucks balls as I love my Nokia. If I could hack it to have android I'd be all over that in a heartbeat. I am just hanging on hope that the rumors of an inc. Nokia andriod are real despite windows buying them.

[notorious bum]

Same as above. Also, I use rocketdock with the win7 toolbar on top(and rainmeter on desktop for widgets), I rarely need to click start for anything. Metro is a giant fisher-price disaster on PCs. My home PC setup is the most efficient I've ever used, I doubt Win9 will do anything more than disappoint if XB1 is any indicator.

[Uzor]

thats pretty nice but why hide a feature like that with an obscure keybind.

It's not, but that's the key shortcut to get to it. It's possible to get to the menu without it, and it's possible to get to all of those features without the menu. It's no more obscure or strange than Ctrl +c, Ctrl + v, Ctrl + alt + del, Ctrl + esc, Ctrl + +, Ctrl + - etc.... It makes perfect sense to bind the windows key to windows commands. Windows + f to search, for example. The two I use the most are windows + f and windows + x, and they're arguably the only two you need to memorize. Although you memorize them rather quickly... Here's a full list.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/hyperyash/ar...shortcuts.aspx

[Meresgi]

I doubt Win9 will do anything more than disappoint if XB1 is any indicator.

Not if the common theme of Windows stays true where, in the pattern, every other OS is a piece of shit no one wants or likes.

[Stromgarde]

My fear is this:

Win 98 > Win 98 SE > Win ME :: Win 8 > Win 8.1 > Win 9

[Waraji]

http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/th...hip-april-2015

Well here we go. The beginning of the End for W8, if launch wasn't enough.

At the BUILD developer conference in April 2014, Microsoft will discuss its vision for the future of Windows, including a year-off release codenamed "Threshold" that will most likely be called Windows 9. Here's what I know about the next major release of Windows.

As a kind of recap, we know that Microsoft will update Windows 8.1 in 2014, first with a service pack/feature pack-type update called Update 1 (or GDR1 internally). I wrote a bit about this update recently in Windows 8.1 Update 1 (Very Early) Preview but the expectation is that it will ship in April 2014 alongside Windows Phone 8.1, the development of which Microsoft will soon complete.

Also in April, of course, is BUILD 2014. That show will hit just weeks after Microsoft completes its corporate reorganization and will surprisingly be very much focused on Windows Phone and Xbox, according to my sources. But I think Windows watchers will agree that the biggest news from the show will be an announcement about Microsoft's plans for the next major Windows version, codenamed "Threshold."

I previously wrote about Threshold in Microsoft to Take Windows to the "Threshold", Further Changes Coming in Windows "Threshold" and Big Changes Are Coming to Windows. This is the release my sources previously pegged as being the one that will see the return of the Start menu and the ability to run Metro-style apps on the desktop alongside desktop applications.

But Threshold is more important than any specific updates. Windows 8 is tanking harder than Microsoft is comfortable discussing in public, and the latest release, Windows 8.1, which is a substantial and free upgrade with major improvements over the original release, is in use on less than 25 million PCs at the moment. That's a disaster, and Threshold needs to strike a better balance between meeting the needs of over a billion traditional PC users while enticing users to adopt this new Windows on new types of personal computing devices. In short, it needs to be everything that Windows 8 is not.

Here's what I've learned about Threshold.

Windows 9. To distance itself from the Windows 8 debacle, Microsoft is currently planning to drop the Windows 8 name and brand this next release as Windows 9. That could change, but that's the current thinking.

BUILD vision announcement. In case it's not obvious that the Sinofsky era is over, Microsoft will use BUILD to provide its first major "vision" announcement for Windows since, yes, Longhorn in 2003. Don't expect anything that grandiose, but the Windows team believes it needs to hit a happy middle ground between the KGB-style secrecy of the Sinofsky camp and the freewheeling "we can do it all" days that preceded that. As important, the firm understands that customers need something to be excited about.

No bits at BUILD. Microsoft will not be providing developers with an early alpha release of "Threshold" at BUILD, and for a good reason: The product won't even begin development until later that month. Right now, Microsoft is firming up which features it intends to deliver in this release.

Metro 2.0. Maturing and fixing the "Metro" design language used by Windows will be a major focus area of Threshold. It's not clear what changes are coming, but it's safe to assume that a windowed mode that works on the desktop is part of that.

Three milestones. Microsoft expects to deliver three milestone releases of "Threshold" before its final release. It's unclear what these releases will be called (Beta, Release Candidate, etc.) or which if any will be provided to the public.

April 2015 release. Microsoft is currently targeting April 2015 for the release of Windows 9 "Threshold."

In some ways, the most interesting thing about Threshold is how it recasts Windows 8 as the next Vista. It's an acknowledgment that what came before didn't work, and didn't resonate with customers. And though Microsoft will always be able to claim that Windows 9 wouldn't have been possible without the important foundational work they had done first with Windows 8—just as was the case with Windows 7 and Windows Vista—there's no way to sugarcoat this. Windows 8 has set back Microsoft, and Windows, by years, and possibly for good.

These things don't happen in isolation—the big and slow Vista arrived inauspiciously just as netbooks were taking off and Windows 8 arrived just as media tablets changed everything—and it's fair to say that the technology world of today barely resembles that of 2006, creating new challenges for Windows. Threshold will target this new world. It could very well be a make or break release.

I'll let you know when I've learned more.

[SephYuyX]

I'm ok with this as long as it's more like 7 than 8.
The mention that theyre using Metro 2.0 isnt comforting, but as long as 2.0 means both full fledged start/desktop along with Metro, then ok.

[Deadgye]

I remember being intrigued by one or two of the functions windows 8 proclaimed before it came out, stuff that sounded great for multi-screen interfaces. And then I remember laughing at the whole metro thing and stopped following any news about windows 8.

If windows 9's is basically windows 7 with metro as a windowed application, maybe I'll consider upgrading. The other perks and improvements will have to be good/important enough to convince me to reinstall my programs though. I can't think of a single thing metro offers that I'd want, after all.

[shepardG]

I have windows 8.1 on my main comp and on my surface pro2. It's shit on the main, hardly ever use the Windows panel page anymore, but on the surface, it's the bee's knees. if 9 gives me both functionalities (windows 7 and 8) it will be a success.

[neomerge]

I will be interested to see how much they improve the desktop function of this OS. Win 8s is horrible. Really hard to context switch from 7 (while at work) to 8 while at home.