Microsoft Removes Start Button from Windows 8

[ivyanev]

Hovering buttons/areas don't work with me.I like my OS fast and responsive and waiting for hidden area is sooooooooo frustrating.Other times when not intending to work with it just pops up and i accidentally click something. I understand the idea but sometimes it isn't just worth the nerves.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

No start button, way to give me an anxiety attack. I hope they will give me an "Any" key in compensation.

 

[DjEaZy]

... the one good thing, that they had... how will i explain it to my grandma...

 

[Pherule]

I wouldn't mind losing the start button so long as there is an area 1 pixel x 1 pixel at the bottom-left of the screen that you can click to bring up the start menu. I actually find it kind of funny how many kids here are crying that their start menu is "gone". It's not gone guys, it will be there... somewhere.

Also to those saying Windows 8 will be another ME or Vista, don't count on it. I've been following the development of Win8 since about when it first got leaked, and it seems to be getting better and better. There are so many things missing in previous versions of Windows that MS are finally adding, I'm sure it'll be great. (pausing file transfers, faster reboots, etc.) Of course Metro might be an issue, but if it can be disabled in the final version, no big deal.

Mind you, Windows 7 may have the Win2000 interface optional, but it's missing the XP interface. I would like Windows 8 to include both.

 

[viridiancrystal]

[citation][nom]schizofrog[/nom]Oh look, more idiots complaining about Metro's interface and the use of tiles. Don't like it? Turn it off. Simples.Every single advancement and improvement, including those that you do like have come from changes that at the time, a lot of people complained about. They are trying to make things more simple by designing a UI that will cross all platforms while giving the users the OPTION to continue using an older UI.In a couple of years time you won't have to learn a new UI for an OS no matter what device it is on. It will be the same for Smartphones, Tablets, Laptops and PCs. So you will be able to pick up a brand new device and know from the off the majority of where things are and how it all connects and works.Complaints about MS moving backwards are from those that want the PC to stop developing and to stay as a single entity sat under a desk. That product model is rapidly becoming out of date.[/citation]
Or MS could stop being a bunch of lazies and make two separate OS's. Which makes WAY to much sense. Using a keyboard and mouse is just like a touchscreen, right?

 

[CaedenV]

[citation][nom]rawful[/nom]Each version of Windows since XP has pushed me further and further away from Windows. Vista was garbage, I dislike 7 and don't understand the praise it gets from everyone.[/citation]
It's OK, 90% of the world dosn't understand why you would want to stick with a 10 year old OS that does not maintain itself and needs to be reformated every year to keep things fresh and fast, and that does not support new technology, and does not take advantage of the speed and options with new mobos and processors, or plays nice on new networks, and looks like crap, and boots slow, and will soon no longer be supported by the manufacturer, and is a security nightmare, and cannot run IE9, and cannot run Dx11... I could go on, but I need to get back to my job... where we use win7 on old machines and they run faster than they did when we had XP

 

[andy_newton]

Apple Adds Start Button to Mac OS X Lion--It's called "Mission Control"

 

[TEAMSWITCHER]

Microsoft has finally lost it. I guess when another company goes from computers to music players, then to media players, then to smart phones, and now tablets, amassing hundreds of millions of loyal customers along the way, and after a whole decade you still have nothing (ABSOLUTELY NOTHING) that can stop them, this is what can happen.

The lowly "Start" button isn't their biggest problem....it's their CEO.

 

[clonazepam]

If you look at it from the perspective "Ok, how am I going to help a person troubleshoot their computer over the phone" its a bad idea.

If you look at it from the perspective "Ok, how am I going to get help troubleshooting my computer over the phone from someone in India" its a bad idea.

If I look at it from my perspective, being an advanced user, with access to all the resources available, it doesn't matter at all b/c someone will put it back, its already a popular issue and the OS isn't released yet, so I'm sure there is plenty of folks who can't wait to get their hands on it and build all kinds of tools/tweaks/ui tools to make it what Microsoft can't.

 

[belardo]

This is STUPID!

Its still a START button, just a different name and its hidden.

The THING about the start button is that you an lead a friend / novice / client to the Start button that they can SEE and go from there.

Now its hover your mouse in a hidden area to access your "Start" menu?!

 

[irh_1974]

[citation][nom]jlats26[/nom]Well they have 100 billion cash in the bank so they must be doing something right from a business standpoint.[/citation]
They would have 10 trillion in the bank if they appealed to the much more lucrative business sector, instead of pinning all their so-called business deals in graphic design and CGI companies, which occupy - and this is a rough guess - about 0.00000001% of all businesses that could use PCs?

 

[lysinger]

[citation][nom]RipperjackAU[/nom]I think you missed a couple. What about Windows NT and Windows 2000 Professional?From what I recall Windows NT was OK'ish as a workstation OS, but Windows 2000 Professional was great! Even ran DoS games without too much fuss.[/citation]

NT4 was awesome compared to win95 and win98. No need to reload the OS every 3-6 months or deal with random lockups when you opened too many apps at the same time. And it could address more than 64mb of memory. NTs biggest weakness was TCP/IP network performance. TCP/IP was slow as molasses and the implementation wasn't true to standards because they were trying to influence (force) the industry to do things more their way. Windows 2000 fixed none of the IP performance issues (faster processors helped though) but it required fewer reboots when you installed hardware or ran updates.

This whole MS OS release schedule kind of reminds me of Start Trek films, stick with the even numbered films and skip the others.

 

[TEAMSWITCHER]

[citation][nom]irh_1974[/nom]They would have 10 trillion in the bank if they appealed to the much more lucrative business sector[/citation]

I'm gonna throw the BS flag. Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, etc. all appeal to the business sector and none of them have 100 billion cash on hand.

 

[captaincharisma]

It's OK, 90% of the world dosn't understand why you would want to stick with a 10 year old OS that does not maintain itself and needs to be reformated every year to keep things fresh and fast, and that does not support new technology, and does not take advantage of the speed and options with new mobos and processors, or plays nice on new networks, and looks like crap, and boots slow, and will soon no longer be supported by the manufacturer, and is a security nightmare, and cannot run IE9, and cannot run Dx11... I could go on, but I need to get back to my job... where we use win7 on old machines and they run faster than they did when we had XP

lol so true

 

[back_by_demand]

[citation][nom]TEAMSWITCHER[/nom]I'm gonna throw the BS flag. Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, etc. all appeal to the business sector and none of them have 100 billion cash on hand.[/citation]
Agreed, each, but Apple is a one-shot deal, their hardware and software and their (not so popular) servers - Dell don't make operating systems and Microsoft don't make desktop PCs and they all have overheads. The fact they all have their own specialisations mean that a business can select the best or cheapest bits of each in a competative market. Apple simply can't compete in this market and business knows it - if it ever produced a line of cheap business dektops it would undermine the Macpro.

 

[richman1211]

On my desktop with a 30in screen and double decker toolbar it's not a big deal for me personally. 90% of my most used app launches come from pinned icons on the toolbar or the desktop already. I also use Win Key - Search more than trying to navigate my unkempt nested Start menu tree. Using the dev preview much of that was the same. I do admit the jump back over to the new tiled Start Screen was a little disorienting for the times I did want to use the old Start Menu.

Also, it probably would not be out of the question for MS to leave a registry hack to put it back, and I've seen alot other Win 8 concepts that will probably hit the App Market. My concept is below, but with or without it, and given all the other enhancements to Win 8 like the and more unified dev platform and user epxerience across devices, I don't see it's absence as something I can't get used to.

richman1211.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d4do25q

 

[captaincharisma]

On my desktop with a 30in screen and double decker toolbar it's not a big deal for me personally. 90% of my most used app launches come from pinned icons on the toolbar or the desktop already. I also use Win Key - Search more than trying to navigate my unkempt nested Start menu tree. Using the dev preview much of that was the same. I do admit the jump back over to the new tiled Start Screen was a little disorienting for the times I did want to use the old Start Menu.

Also, it probably would not be out of the question for MS to leave a registry hack to put it back, and I've seen alot other Win 8 concepts that will probably hit the App Market. My concept is below, but with or without it, and given all the other enhancements to Win 8 like the and more unified dev platform and user epxerience across devices, I don't see it's absence as something I can't get used to.

richman1211.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d4do25q

but see normal computer users don't do that. i bet you have firefox with 1000 tabs open all the time too

 

[clonazepam]

Anyone thats never tried it, should check out rocket dock. I had it hidden on the bottom, with the normal taskbar hidden on the top. I drop all my Game shortcuts to it, then delete every trace of games from the Start Menu and desktop shortcuts... hehe... I don't need to hide them all anymore, but its still handy to have them all out of the way and keep a nice look going (especially with fancy new ROG theme).

XP was a great move by Microsoft, but I think the biggest best thing was introducing NTFS file system to "everyone" (everyone being those in the know) and remembering how impressive it was to go from Win98SE to Win2K Pro. What a leap that was right? Most of us gamers still kept a Win98 partition around somewhere for those few critical games that couldn't make the leap. I miss my Aureal 3D card and the struggle to keep it alive and viable with drivers over that time period. To me, Win XP was just Win2K Pro with a face lift, some polish, making it ready for the masses. I'd have to vote Win2K Pro the best leap forward.

So far the only thing I can tell from Win8 is that it will work. The first 15 minutes may feel tedious but I'll find the most efficient method to get around in it and it'll probably be ok.

[citation][nom]belardo[/nom]The THING about the start button is that you an lead a friend / novice / client to the Start button that they can SEE and go from there.[/citation]

Personally, when walking people through the OS over the phone... I figured everyone knew about the Start button. Mouse navigation lends itself to mis-clicks, and if they didn't click on the folder's or file's icon, they ran the risk of enabling the 'rename' option, and then explaining from there got tedious. I found the best method to help someone is to teach them the necessary keyboard shortcuts for pulling up things like the 'run' window. If they typo, generally just won't work and its obvious. Also, using browse from there eliminates all but the executable files, which helps a lot since you may or may not need to adjust the folder options to show extensions. So that's the approach I generally took. Of course, if you had hardware to deal with, and needed to hunt down the oem*.inf and oem*.pnf files, then you have to decide to go with 'search' method, or just dive into Explorer and find them one at a time, open them to verify its the correct one, and delete.

So obviously, one of the best things about Windows is there is usually a lot of different ways to accomplish the same goal, so you can tailor your approach to helping someone based on their level of skill and knowledge, or lack of it, if you want to teach them something new along the way. Hopefully, Win8 maintains that feeling.

 

[richman1211]

but see normal computer users don't do that. i bet you have firefox with 1000 tabs open all the time too

Was speaking for myself but I do I hear ya cap'n! The Building MS blog is chock full of anxiety and I guess it depends on how you define "normal user". No lie, up until a few months ago, and after 5 years with a Win PC a neighbor of mine had no idea the Start Menu even exisited. And now it'll be invisible in Win 8 - lol. Anyway...

And no Lol, I use IE but yeah I can easily hit a dozen open tabs or windows and another dozen app windows. That was my other complaint the dev preview - the task switching or lack thereof. Like not seeing Metro apps on the desktop toolbar (or on the desktop for that matter), or even just switching between only native Metro apps on the Start Screen.

At this point I'm just reserving judgement. Over the years and many iterations of Windows I usually find it better to live with it a little while and see if the changes are great, meaningless to me, minor annoyances or actual deal breakers where I start looking for add-ons.

 

[dotaloc]

seems like they expect kb+mouse users to use more and more search (instead of scouring through tons of tiles/desktop icons). makes sense, really...although people will fight it.

in metro...just type to search. no click necessary. i want to try it on a production machine before i really decide.

 

[andy_newton]

I've been meaning to switch to linux, thanks M$

I switched to Mac because I couldn't stand XP. When Vista came out, I was glad I did. Then Lion came out when it's about time to buy a new Mac.

Then I realized Lion among Mac OS X is like Vista among Windows. Played with the idea of switching to Linux. I discovered that Linux is too difficult. If 2012 Mac does not boot snow Leopard, it's 99% possibility my next computer is a windows machine.

 

[Guest]

This isn't Windows anymore...

 

[captaincharisma]

well i messed around with this build and the metro UI is not for me. Metro makes me feel like i am trying to run a touch based mobile OS on a PC. the start button is also gone and replaced with Metro UI in windows server 8 as well which was really shocking.

so AMD fanbois are you still going to switch to windows 8 now to get your BD chips running decent? lol

 

[rizonesoft]

I really cannot believe Microsoft removed the Start Menu from Windows 8. This is why Rizonesoft started a petition that will be delivered to Microsoft when we have enough signatures. Please support the petition if you want the Start Menu Back. Even if you do not want to sign the petition, please share the link. You do not have to share the link to the blog, you can share the link straight to the petition page; I’m not looking for free advertising, just want to accomplish this almost impossible task. Go to http://www.rizonesoft.com for more information.

I apologize if this seems like spam, I’m just trying to stop moping around, because the Start Menu is missing and want to start doing something about it. I promise not to post again; being a blogger myself, I know how irritating spam can be.