back to article Microsoft: All RIGHT, you can have your Start button back

Big changes to "key" parts of Windows 8 are coming after Microsoft admitted it “could and should have done more” on its big answer to Apple’s iOS for tablets. “Key aspects” of Windows 8 will be changed, head of marketing and finance for Microsoft’s Windows group Tami Reller has told the Financial Times (log-in needed). Reller …

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          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: I had to Google to find out how to restart a Windows 2012 server from an RDC connection

            They didn't put a touch screen interface on a server, they put the standard interface for the OS on the server. Then they told you not to use the GUI, not to even install it, unless you absolutely have to.

            The sooner people stop getting hung up about the fact that the UI can be used by a touch screen as well as a keyboard/mouse the better. All recent GUIs have had some ability to be used as a touch interface, it's just that this is a little less rubbish at it than the other ones at it.

            Oh, "IT Bunker" never heard that one before, I presume you mean "Computer Suite" or "Datacentre"?

            1. Danny 14

              Re: I had to Google to find out how to restart a Windows 2012 server from an RDC connection

              to be fair, in NT4 it was shutdown /R so I can see how the ultra new command confused you.

              Oh and to the smart alec a few posts up, good luck with ALT-shortcuts on 2012 core.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        It's a server - you actually shouldn't really be using 2012 via the GUI anyway, but if you are, you should certainly know basic commands like this.

        You shouldn't be able to accidentally shut down a server via a remote desktop session, this is to protect you from yourself.

      2. BRAINPLAN
        Stop

        Why, did the users no longer know how to shut down?

        There are at least three ways to do it... can't be that hard.

        Try redirecting your keyboard commands to your remote sessions for a start.

        "What concerns me is that IT staff and developers hate it and avoid it. That could be storing up problems for the future if the people writing for the platform and the people supporting it rarely use it and dislike it."

        What is that comment based on?

        I can understand the frustration with Windows 8, but there is nothing wrong with server 2012 compared with 2008 R2 / 2003. It has been generally well received in the IT community and I can say definitely at our workplace.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        It's easy

        Just use the same keyboard shortcuts that've been around since Windows 95 - click the task bar, then use Alt-F4. It brings up a menu of restart/shutdown/sign out/switch user etc.

        This works in an RDP session and when you are at the PC/Server

        If you work in IT, and can't figure this out, are you in the right job?

      4. Vince

        Sorry, you are admining a Server 2012 box and you had trouble shutting it down? Wow, that troubles me a lot.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Have you tried office 2013? They're hidden by default. IE has gone to the other extreme where there are nearly no menu options taking up screen real estate.

  1. Mr. Nobby
    Thumb Down

    Once again...

    Microsoft are forced to shoehorn old features into new versions because some people are so frightened of change.

    Windows 8 doesn't need a start button. Boot to desktop will shave a microsecond off my wait though.

    1. gerryg
      Windows

      Re: Once again...

      <= not

      "Frightened of change"? Perhaps customers would like to buy what they like?

      While I have no idea why anyone uses anything other than open source software, it is difficult to believe they are so uncritical that they'll just suck anything up in the name of change.

      1. Dave 15

        Re: Once again...

        Open source is all very well IF it (a) works, (b) does what you want.

        In my experience (a) is at best that it works significantly less well than Microsoft - and the 'support' from Microsoft has got worse over the years but is still not as bad as the support you get from the 'community' (who by and large seem to believe you are stupid for asking, and even more stupid for not knowing without asking). (b) In many cases the open source stuff doesn't do what I want - sometimes yes, but really not that often.

        Now, some of this comes from a particularly poor experience when installing linux and having it tell me that the graphics monitor that had done graphics for the last 10 years wasn't capable, and the ensuing battle to try and get it all to work - a battle that I lost and gave up on after several months of wasted time and effort, but the fact is that it NEEDS to just work out of the box before the mainstream will be bothered.

        Struggling at work is what I am paid to do, when I get home I want my computer to work as the tool it is, rather like the spanners in my toolbox just work.

        1. AndrueC Silver badge
          Coat

          Re: Once again...

          Open source is all very well IF it (a) works, (b) does what you want.

          (c) continues to be developed.

          It's okay for geeks and people that like to get their hands dirty but not so much for unsupported end users. Off the shelf proprietary stuff might not have all the bells and whistles and might be bloated but at least most of the time it works and you can usually find help for it very easily. It's the difference between a Ferrari and a Ford. The former is technically superior, has better performance and is more 'fun' to use but no-one would choose it as a family car.

          Of course that analogy stumbles a bit on price but given the support costs of OS the gap may not be as large as some might like to think. Choose Open Source by all means but do so with your eyes open. It isn't always a panacea.

          We need a 'Careful now' icon. In the meantime that's me getting a placard out of my coat :)

          1. NinjasFTW

            Re: Once again...

            I think a lot of people have a world view of opensource that is a decade old.

            I'm my last 2 jobs I have architectured platforms that were open source that were worlds ahead of equivalent proprietary solution and that's not including RHEL that we use for all our servers.

            I will add the disclaimer that I had a significant budget and was happy to pay for support contracts to go with the open source software.

            Support for open source product X was about 3/4 the support cost of the proprietary software onto of the huge initial purchase price (don't even get me started on licencing confusion for load balancing VM clusters containing cpus with different thread counts and GHz)

            If you simply go to sourceforge and download any random project and expect community support equivalent to what you get throwing lots of £££ around then you will probably be disappointed. However if you do your due diligence and select well established projects backed by companies that offer paid support you will generally come out on top.

            1. AndrueC Silver badge
              Boffin

              Re: Once again...

              However if you do your due diligence and select well established projects backed by companies that offer paid support you will generally come out on top.

              I'd agree with that but if you're going to rely on a third party company to provide the software and the support it's not much different to proprietary software.

              1. NinjasFTW

                Re: Once again...

                only if you discount

                A) the price

                b) the lack of vendor lock in

                c) the ability to download/compile/deploy the app ourselves from its source(we usually do that)

                d) the ability to move support in house if we want to go to the effort.

                e)no forced upgrade cycle (tired of raising a support ticket with IBM only to be told the bug is fixed in the next version and wont be ported back to the version we are using)

                f)the ability and general availability of tools to allow you migrate your data to a different platform (related to point b i guess)

                f) the ability to add features to the main codebase ourselves (granted, sometimes this does conflict with support agreements)

                Its not always the right way to go. Its something you have to evaluate on its merits but drawing parallels from paid support on a freely available opensource product and closed source purchase/support is pretty tenuous

                1. El Andy
                  WTF?

                  Re: Once again...

                  @NinjasFTW "no forced upgrade cycle (tired of raising a support ticket with IBM only to be told the bug is fixed in the next version and wont be ported back to the version we are using)"

                  Seriously? If you think that never happens with FOSS software, then I can only assume you've never actually used any of it at all, because "you need the latest build" is pretty much the modus operandi of every FOSS project going.

            2. RyokuMas
              Facepalm

              Re: Once again...

              @NinjasFTW:

              "I think a lot of people have a world view of opensource that is a decade old."

              That's because - from what I see here at least - we seldom get anybody on here posting any decent explanation of why open source is so great - normally it's a few cursory lines to justify a massive "let's slag off Microsoft" rant.

              1. AndrueC Silver badge
                Stop

                Re: Once again...

                we seldom get anybody on here posting any decent explanation of why open source is so great.

                Indeed. Perhaps some of those downvoting my last comment would care to stick their heads above the parapet and explain what the difference is between buying an Open Source solution from a third company and paying them for support and proprietary software.

                Note: I was addressing a specific comment here. Of course being open means there are alternative support avenues but I replied to someone talking about handing all that off to a third party. If we can leave out the snide comments for a moment - what is the difference between me paying for support from Microsoft and me paying for support from Joe Soap? From my POV it's the same thing. I'm trusting someone else to sort out my problems. Either Joe can sort it out for me (in which case he's just a smaller version of MS) or else he palms the problems off onto the community.

            3. Wardy01
              FAIL

              Re: Once again...

              You are just as wrong as Eadon, unless you'd like to show me where the source code is for your corporate code that you have this "considerable budget" for?

              The component parts might be open source initially but the solution (which is Microsoft sells) is very much closed source.

              You still pay for support for each of the parts / the developed bit by a third party, and the third party developed bits are still not open source because the internet does not have them listed on a public repo like github.

              This is the same solution as buying several off the shelf Microsoft products and plugging them in to each other.

              The only difference is that instead of your product supplier and your support company being the same the chances are they are various companies.

              People really need to get a grip on what "open source" really means ... SHOW ME THE SOURCE CODE FOR YOUR SOLUTION THEN IT'S OPEN SOURCE!

              1. NinjasFTW
                Flame

                Re: Once again...

                Wow, way to reinforce my point of the view of OpenSource is a decade old!

                to be honest I have no idea what your talking about.

                I never said we created the corporate code, we use pre-existing projects as well as quite a few Apache products (many of them supported by RedHat directly)

                How about having a browse of https://github.com/apache. All the code for various projects is there to download and use at your leisure.

                We also use some open source identity management products that you can download the full source code directly from http://forgerock.org/openam.html. Its not on a public github server though so i'm not sure it stands up to your definition of OpenSource == Github !!!!

                We are currently looking to migrate some of our Oracle database to PostgreSQL (I can't be bothered to pull the source links, you do it if you want to froth at the mouth some more)

                Are you saying that if the source code for a project is not in github then its not opensource or that if there is a single proprietary component that talks to other open source components over standard communication channels then its not open source?

                Yes you pay for support for each part, again wtf are you talking about?

                I can agree that it means we have multiple support vendors for a solution as you put it. Its not currently caused us any problems but I could see that it may not be appealing to everyone.

                1. NinjasFTW

                  Re: Once again...

                  For the sake of clarity I should point out that the above post is in reply to Wardy1

          2. mmeier

            Re: Once again...

            Open source is basically useless unless it is actively developed by a steady core of programmers that stay with it for long times. Anyone who has worked on a living software project, even a commercial one where coding guidelines, commenting and documentation can be enforced knows that reading code is more complicated than writing it (Joel on Software had an article about it). And within a company there is a decend chance the author is still there or did a decend transfer job. With OSS he might. Or he just picked up and left.

            Used to program in a "pool" software developed by a group of companies with the same special needs and not a concurrency situation back in the 80s/90s. We had strict guidelines, used a very long term stable (15+ years) system in almost identical configurations and still we arranged regular trips and meetings to "talk about details". Now do the same over mail/chat with people who speak a different native language, are not held to well-defined and enforced standards in programming and testing(1) and more diverse systems...

            There is a reason the high quality OSS is

            Company backed

            Typically dual licenced and typically not using the full GPL (Apache is more common)

            Often part of a "value added" commercial package

            The backing company pays the core dev team and enforces standards. If the company pulls out - the software dies.

            (1) Our software needed government certification before we could use it in production - human lives depended on (and where saved by) it

        2. swampdog

          Re: Once again...

          @Dave 15

          "but the fact is that it NEEDS to just work out of the box before the mainstream will be bothered."

          Tada! Windows type answer coming up. All you need to do is upgrade your hardware. If only you'd had a modern linux with a dvi card and a dvi monitor it'd have booted up in max resolution.

          Not very useful though is it?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Once again...

        @Gerryg - I believe it was Henry Ford who said something along the lines of "If I make what my customers want, I'll be making faster horses."

        This seems to have very strong parallels with that situation.

    2. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

      Re: Once again...

      Yes, how dare we criticise MSFT for forcing an interface designed to work only for colour-blind people on everyone?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Once again...

      You mean "Microsoft forced to shoehorn features that customers want". Whether it is 'old' or not is irrelevant, whether people want it or not is surely be more important. And as for, it being because they are 'frightened of change' - yeah, that must be the reason.

      Now - about that f**king ribbon (that I am apparently 'frightened' of) ...can we at least have a option to disable it please.

      1. lightknight
        FAIL

        Re: Once again...

        Indeed. MS appears to be having a midlife crisis -> no longer considered the darling of the Tech Sector or Wall St., MS is trying to 'reinvent' itself or 'innovate' to capture some of the attention it craves. It's like a teenage girl that is now 28, has fewer suitors, and is falling apart because she defines herself by how many men are waiting upon her. Hence the urge to do something new for the sake of doing something; MS feels an urge to change, but is unrealistic as to what needs to change, if anything. Who does MS listen to? Why, it's the same group of people ("the beautiful people") who would have been popular in high school; all looks, no substance, and of course the Tech Sector, aka the people who need to accomplish something for a living, would have such a vocal reaction.

    4. Bill the Sys Admin
      Thumb Up

      Re: Once again...

      I get along fine without it, but if it comes back ill use it ha!

      1. Pristine Audio
        Happy

        Re: Once again...

        I get along fine without it, but if it comes back ill use it ha!

        That's what I thought. Then I installed one of those third-party start-button mods only to find I never actually use it. I've got into the habit of launching and controlling things the W8 way and, frankly, prefer it. Didn't think I'd say that at the time...

    5. Infi 1
      Thumb Down

      Re: Once again...

      Agreed. I've been using Windows 8 quite happily since public beta, and I see no need to bring the start button back.

      Even my (long retired) parents have managed to get on with it with little to no problem.

      Some people unfortunately are just too stuck in their ways

    6. Vanir
      Facepalm

      Re: Once again...

      ' people are so frightened of change.'

      I'm scared poo-less when change cost me time and money, especially when there ain't no measurable ROI: companies are no different.

    7. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Once again...

      "Shoehorn"... now that's a catchy code name :)

    8. Anonymous Coward
      Windows

      @Nobby

      Microsoft are forced to shoehorn old features into new versions because some people are so frightened of change.

      Hardly. There is a huge difference between a change which actually enhances the whole workflow and a change which got implemented because of the change. That is the nature of this problem here.

      Microsoft opted to change the desktop in such ways that it would be fully optimized for touch screens, apparently not (willing to?) realizing that when it comes to a non-touchable environment the change is actually a huge setback when it comes to functionality. That is the main issue.

      Metro is a very solid environment which is in my opinion well designed when looking at mobile computing. But the problem is that it doesn't provide the same functionality as the start menu in Windows 7 provides. Think about jump lists (to quickly start a recently used file) or the "run as administrator" options. Those have become extremely awkward in Windows 8.

      I know many people didn't use the start menu to its full potential but only to blindly click stuff to, well, start it. These are often the same kinds of people who would easily fill their entire desktop with icons so that they could quickly start a program.

      But the problem is that there are also plenty of people who do know how to use the start menu to its full potential. And judging from the very weak acceptance of Windows 8 it's my believe that those form the majority.

      Don't treat a desktop as a mobile environment and don't treat a mobile environment as a desktop. That's the main problem at hand here. First Microsoft went one way (a start menu on the iPaq PDA for example) which was often extremely awkward, now they're merely going the other way around.

  2. Captain Underpants
    Meh

    Not being funny, but as with every other blog out there, I haven't seen any actual statement from MS that Blue is going to bring back the Start button.

    Is it a case of a click-baiting headline, or have I missed something from the article itself?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Microsoft had sold 100 million licenses of Windows 8

    I LOL at that statement.. most of these licences have probably be brought with the intention of Downgrading to Windows 7,

    So be honest now.. How many machines are actually running Windows 8?

    1. mrfill
      Happy

      Re: Microsoft had sold 100 million licenses of Windows 8

      Just checked the May stats for a couple of my sites.

      On one, out of 1595 windows hits, 848 from Win7, 573 from XP, 112 from Vista, 43 from Win 2003 and 8 from WIndows (unknown version)

      On the other, out of 8051 windows hits, 7840 from Win7, 190 from XP and 21 from Vista

      To answer the question... not many!!!

    2. fung0
      FAIL

      Re: Microsoft had sold 100 million licenses of Windows 8

      Not even the most desperate Windows 8 booster can claim that Win8 has been any kind of stimulus to the market. Windows 8 isn't helping to sell PCs, and it certainly isn't helping to sell Windows tablets, or Windows Phones.

      Microsoft could survive this kind of 'wet firecracker' release back when it really did have the world by the throat. But today, it's under the gun. PC sales are sliding, and companies like Apple are picking up the slack. At this point, 'good enough' just isn't good enough.

      Microsoft really needed to 'hit one out of the park' with Win8. Instead, it has failed to motivate droves of PC upgraders, failed to carve out a significant niche in mobile devices.... while at the same time alienating corporate customers and droves of die-hard fans. Just how much more epic could the fail have been?

      1. mmeier

        Re: Microsoft had sold 100 million licenses of Windows 8

        We'll see again in January 2014. The big companies basically missed the 2012 holliday season and PC sales are down across the board. They will hit the 2013 one perfectly. And with hardware/software combinations that makes iOS/Android tablet toys look like a Model-T next to a current gen Mondeo or Mercedes

  4. Rafael L
    Mushroom

    Windows 8 Start Screen haters

    TAKE THAT

    http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/10/11/reflecting-on-your-comments-on-the-start-screen.aspx

  5. Khaptain Silver badge

    Forced hand

    Their hand has been forced by poor sales rather than listening to the client. Regardless of the reason though the most important point is the fact that metro will disappear (or be made to disappear without 3rd party plugins).

  6. Gavin McMenemy

    "... close the knowledge gap."

    That's a phrase which causes me to invoke the "one channel up" hand TV control gesture. It's such a fine piece of management-speak that we should salute it appropriately.

  7. Magister
    Happy

    Widows 8?

    >>Reller conceded that Windows users have been struggling with the Widows 8 Metro touch UI,<<

    Widowmaker?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Happy

      Re: Widows 8?

      I thought it was a reference to the crime drama, "She's out - in - out - in - out". Poor old Dolly Rawlings.

  8. mike acker

    looking deeper

    looking deeper, if the smart-phone user interface is un-acceptable then it's possible the PC ain't dead after all

    we face a nasty backlog of badly written software that only runs on a specific version of an o/s which is making it difficult to dump XP . and Win8 ain't gonna help none .

    in a very real sense an o/s IS a "hardware abstraction layer" . the o/s honors the system calls that an app needs in order to "do its thing"

    i think Linux has made usable progress on this issue in Torvalds First Rule of kernel coding: don't break the system calls.

    hopefully much of the obsoleted software can be ported to Linux.

  9. Vanir
    Devil

    'head of marketing AND finance '

    They're so screwed.

  10. sabroni Silver badge

    I don't get it.

    When I get into work I boot windows 8, the stupid metro thing pops up, I hit escape and I'm in the desktop. From there it's pretty much 7, all the things I use every day are docked to the bar at the bottom of the screen just like 7. From a user perspective Metro is shit, but it's not exactly getting in the way. I don't really see what all the moaning's about...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I don't get it.

      IT guys can't deal with change.

      They'll tell you that they can deal with change, but "this change is just for the sake of change" or some such weasel words.

      Here is a classic example: At my last place of work the UNIX team used to tell anyone who'd listen that Linux was the best thing since sliced bread. I got to listen a lot, because I worked in storage, so directly dealt with them. The company announced that henceforth they would not strategically deploy any proprietary UNIX, everything would be virtualised Linux on VMware. The UNIX team then started slagging off Linux because "it can't do x, y, z" "it's not scalable like proper UNIX", literally everything that you could imagine, some utterly piss-poor arguments, rather than deal with the fact that Linux is perfectly placed to take over from Big Iron UNIX.

      I've seen this time and time again, the people who do it stay in their place bitching away, those who don't become more senior and start making decisions rather than reacting to them.

      1. Lee D Silver badge

        Re: I don't get it.

        Nobody minds change. If you don't, you can't work in IT.

        The fact is that you have to justify that change. Probably the Linux comments were right. But the argument there really is "it's too expensive to support all this UNIX stuff when we can get similar performance from Linux". Of course people find reasons to keep their jobs, that's not the focus. The focus is why they think that a bigger, more serious, pay-for system is better - either they don't have reasons, or the reasons will become clear when someone tries to chase up why they can't fix a problem / hire an engineer / find someone to support the system, etc.

        I deployed Windows 8 at my workplace because we needed to move off XP. Fact is, only Windows 7 was a real contender for all those years but in terms of what we got back - it didn't really justify it. The licensing scheme we were on was an ancient educational one and didn't count towards anything any more (so there was no "free" upgrade to whatever we wanted). Hence we stayed on XP until 7 was stable and proven. We eventually deployed on 8, because of various reasons out of my hands but also because it basically *is* 7 with knobs on, and we had ways to turn those knobs off (if we didn't, we've have deployed 7 this year).

        Fact is, I now have less working. Sure, it's old stuff that nobody cares about, but the time spent on the upgrade did little more than break software and get us into the 21st Century. We didn't gain anything we didn't really have before (hell, we were using GhostCast and the equivalent WDS setup we're forced to use now is actually MUCH slower and less intuitive and - hell - someone please tell me why I have to load up every 32-bit image into a 32-bit copy of the WDS tools on a 32-bit computer to create a catalog when the only servers are 64-bit Windows Server 2012 - they literally CAN'T build the catalog for 32-bit computers, even if they are the WDS server themselves! Just move everything to 64-bit? Then that's a whole-site hardware upgrade for little reason. And the recommended version of Office to deploy? 32-bit. It's all an ill-thought-out mess.)

        But, hell, I have touchscreens for little kiddiewinks with snotty fingers. And I have a menu they can't navigate and apps they can click on the front screen and not get out of without memorising magic incantations that only work 80% of the time.

        Change is frowned upon in IT. But it's also the fastest moving industry out there. Not many other industries where what you were doing 10 or even 5 years ago is COMPLETELY USELESS KNOWLEDGE now. We frown upon unnecessary and counter-productive change. And this article is hinting at the admission from MS that we were actually right about that - after billions of man-hours of wasted time - just because they couldn't put in a "classic" option or whatever.

      2. Gerhard Mack

        Re: I don't get it.

        IT people don't mind change for the right reasons, it's the end user that absolutely hates it. Just look at the noise Facebook gets every time it revamps it's interface.

        Now consider how upset users get with each minor change and you wonder why on earth Microsoft thought changing everything was a good idea. Users like familiar and tend to want retraining on each little change. They want those little step by step "click here now click there" guides they depend on to be accurate.

        With Windows 8 I'm hearing more noise from the people I know who least understand computers than I do from the IT pros. IT people just change settings and install addons until they have what they want.

  11. RyokuMas
    Holmes

    Whatever...

    I've been using Win8 for the last couple of months... maybe it's because of how I configure, but I can't see what all the fuss is about, apart from aesthetics.

    Okay, boot-to-desktop: granted, I'd like to see that. Although it's only a Win+D away when I start my machine.

    But everything else? Meh. Pretty much everything I use has a shortcut on my desktop and is just a double-click away. I don't need a start screen or a start button, really.

    If I wanted to, I could quite easily switch those shortcuts to all be available from my start screen - but a) I'm too lazy and b) I don't like the auto ordering. Similarly, anything new I install automatically dumps an icon onto the start screen which can be transferred to where I want it on my desktop in moments.

    Nope, the only reasons I use Win8 at all is because I can develop WP8 and Android versions of my games in parallel. The metro apps stuff hanging off the back is just bloat from where I sit.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Whatever...

      I find that my Win8 machine boots to desktop, having flashed up the start screen for about a second, I suspect it's something that I load at startup which does this, but it suits me fine. Maybe it's a domain member thing?

      Incidentally, I also find that "escape" gets you to the desktop.

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