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Microsoft Windows

Leaked Build of Windows 9 Shows Start Menu Return 346

Billly Gates writes A leaked alpha of Windows 9 has been brewing on the internet. Today a screenshot shows what MS showed us at BUILD which includes a start menu with additional tiny tiles for things like people, calendar, pc settings, and news etc. "The new hybridized Start menu appears to be part of build 9788, which was compiled on July 4. While no one seems to have leaked the ISOs for build 9788 yet, the general consensus seems to be that the build does indeed exist somewhere at Microsoft — and that it might also feature Windows NT kernel version 6.4 (i.e. the complete version number is 6.4.9788). The screenshots show a Windows 8.1 Pro watermark, but this isn’t unusual for a very early alpha of a new build of Windows. If this really is the next version of the Windows NT kernel, then we’re most likely looking at an early build of Windows 9 (Threshold) rather than Windows 8.2."
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Leaked Build of Windows 9 Shows Start Menu Return

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 14, 2014 @04:52PM (#47451187)

    2015 will be year of the Linux Desktop!

    • 2015 will be year of the Linux Desktop!

      Guess you have not been paying attention, chromebooks are here and occupying all the top slots and rating on Amazon, making a killing in schools, and have a slew of new models out now, and not have Android compatibility...you know the OS that put iOS and windows in the ground...they even look like a mackbook air *winks*.

      GNU/Linux continues to do very nicely as well.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by rsborg ( 111459 )

        2015 will be year of the Linux Desktop!

        Guess you have not been paying attention, chromebooks are here and occupying all the top slots and rating on Amazon, making a killing in schools, and have a slew of new models out now, and not have Android compatibility...you know the OS that put iOS and windows in the ground...they even look like a mackbook air *winks*.

        GNU/Linux continues to do very nicely as well.

        So where are your solid numbers (Amazon ratings and sales ranks don't specify models sold) ? And please let me know if I can use my Chromebook offline on my airplaine. Sorry, no way a Chromebook is replacing my Macbook anytime - I see you can't even view the movies you buy on the Google Play store offline [1] (ie, in an airplane - no that GoGo streaming is not allowed for movies) - what use is that?

        [1] https://productforums.google.c... [google.com]

      • Guess you have not been paying attention, chromebooks are here and occupying all the top slots and rating on Amazon, making a killing in schools, and have a slew of new models out now, and not have Android compatibility...you know the OS that put iOS and windows in the ground

        Parent said desktop not dumb terminal.

    • by unixisc ( 2429386 ) on Monday July 14, 2014 @05:15PM (#47451351)
      I bought a new laptop last week, and wiped out Windows 8.1, replacing it w/ PC-BSD 10. It was some work, had some rough edges, but was worth it!
  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 14, 2014 @04:54PM (#47451201)

    Yeah, the start menu is part of the "kernel" now. Such design, much engineer, wow very built.

  • Fuck Tiles! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by organgtool ( 966989 ) on Monday July 14, 2014 @05:05PM (#47451293)
    And yet this menu ends up being a hermaphrodite of the useful menu from Windows 7 and the tiles of the Windows 8 home screen. Seriously, these tiles are about the worst interface I have ever used. The entire interface is inconsistent: tiles are different sizes, different background colors, some have text while others don't, some tile icons are silhouettes while others are full-color, some tiles contain pictures instead of icons, and some tiles are animated. The whole thing reminds me a more professional version of some random schmuck's GeoCities page circa 1998. Microsoft: just stop it with the tiles and provide something consistent and usable!
    • The whole thing reminds me a more professional version of some random schmuck's GeoCities page circa 1998.

      Not GeoCities, AOL [imgur.com]. Circa what, 1991?

      • by JDeane ( 1402533 )

        Yeah that about sums it up for me...

        Sticking with Windows 7 until Android is more mature on the desktop then if MS is still on it's "It needs to look like a clown drank a bunch of paint and puked..." kick then yeah switching I will go.

    • Not just that, they are huge, fixed sizes & occupy a disproportionate area on the screen. Hit the Windows key again, and you get a desktop, but just 1. Oh, and when you add new apps from the Windows store, they are invisible, unless you pan down and get it added to the Metro screen
    • They are fucking ugly. The super square shapes remind me of basic X window managers. Hell even CDE is more pleasing to look at.

      • Heh, fully agree. I can't believe Microsoft put out something that simply looks so crusty.
      • After promoting the hell out of Aero and how beautiful it was, they come out with crappy, blocky tiles. What step backwards. It's almost as if they have no respect for their customers.
    • Re:Fuck Tiles! (Score:5, Informative)

      by dissy ( 172727 ) on Monday July 14, 2014 @05:36PM (#47451545)

      It's probably worth noting that in the Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 "leaks", technical previews, and consumer previews - ALL had the ability to enable a start menu by changing a registry key from 0 to 1, and ALL had that option removed in the final builds.

      I have no reason to believe 9 will be different until after the grand master image is released to OEMs.

    • What if they are like the IOS applets in MacOSX where the emphasis is on the desktop?

      As long as things do not go all full screen closed door syndrome I do not see it as a problem

    • by jez9999 ( 618189 )

      Tiles can hold useful information that changes though. I dunno about you, but I always like to see what the current weather is every time I go to open an application.

    • by ZeroPly ( 881915 )
      The tiles are a nice idea, but are only useful if they are live. So if you go to the Start Menu, and the "Resource Monitor" tile is red, and shows 85% CPU use, sure - that's a good thing because you probably should click it. Or an email tile that shows high priority messages received. But this is too complicated a UI task for Microsoft to get correct.
      • Notifications like those are things that should show up in the system tray, not only if I happen to go to the Start Menu.

    • by jbolden ( 176878 )

      Tiles unlike icons are supposed to be

      a) live so they are presenting useful summary information
      b) variable in size, so the amount can vary

      The legacy stuff doesn't make use of the Window8 and Microsoft unfortunately itself doesn't install; by default some of the really cool applications that use Windows 8; like their Bing based applications.

  • I hate morons (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 14, 2014 @05:10PM (#47451329)

    If you look at some of the comments on that page, you get gems like the guy asking if the start button was the only reason someone didn't get Win8.

    Sure, you can hack the OS to get a free start button, but that's not the point. You do NOT reward bad behavior, or the companies will never learn.

    Chick-Fil-A won't sell you a sandwich without pickles? You're ok just pulling the pickles off? That's stupid. You complain to the manager to get the sandwich made correctly. If you never speak up, then they won't know what they're doing wrong.

    The goal of any company SHOULD be to please their customers while making a tidy profit. The problem is that today's companies seem to be all about making an obscene profit while...wait...we have customers? Oh right. Our "customers" are the people who pay us to provide the data we mine from the people who pay us to use our products that don't do what they want them to.

  • Ok the start menu is *a* problem, but really it *the* problem is strategy of Metro and Microsoft store, and turning open computing into a closed electronic device. I suspect none of this is rolled back, but the same old metro repackaged into a more palatable form like you got with the start button, and the rest store/electronics device kept for *cough* security reasons.

    Where is Android compatibility on my GNU/Desktop goddamit!!!..at least there is chromebooks and I don't have to continue with the windows ta

    • I wish I had mod points.

      I don't care about the Start menu; I don't spend much time in there, and even if I did, if I can't figure something that simple out I should stick to plumbing. The really annoying thing is that every file association now has to be redone to stop bringing up Modern (Metro) apps, and I have to be careful to install the Desktop versions of software I want.

      That is the PITA, but it's so minor that I still use Win 8.x because yes, it's better than 7 overall.
  • by epyT-R ( 613989 )

    Can you shut all those bullshit tiles off and have a simple text menu?

  • by trybywrench ( 584843 ) on Monday July 14, 2014 @05:21PM (#47451409)
    I had to get a Windows 8 laptop, Surface 2, and Windows phone for work to test an application we're working on. I use OSX and Android day-to-day so from all the stories I expected to have an awful time trying to navigate through windows to even get to the application to start my testing/dev work but I don't see what the big deal is. The interface was intuitive enough for me ...maybe i didn't try to do enough, I just looked at the screen for the app, then click/touch it. :shrug:
    • I had to get a Windows 8 laptop, Surface 2, and Windows phone for work to test an application we're working on. I use OSX and Android day-to-day so from all the stories I expected to have an awful time trying to navigate through windows to even get to the application to start my testing/dev work but I don't see what the big deal is. The interface was intuitive enough for me ...maybe i didn't try to do enough, I just looked at the screen for the app, then click/touch it. :shrug:

      The big deal is when you have a laptop or a desktop without touch or you just hate having a screen full of fingerprints. When using a mouse, the windows 8 GUI is inefficient and poor to navigate. Of course, those unhappy with the Windows 8 or 8.1 interface can easily find add-ons that fix the Start menu and re-enable boot to desktop. Personally, I installed Start8 and have been happy ever since.

      • I don't buy this complaint at all. I've been using 8.1 since it was released, and the hasn't once gotten in the way of me finding or doing stuff. In fact, there are a few things I miss from it when I have to do stuff on Win 7 (such as right-click the start icon to bring up all the admin options). And no, I don't use a touch screen or a laptop; just a plain old desktop with mouse and keyboard. So I ask, what exactly is so inefficient about right-clicking straight to device manager, or clicking start and
        • In fact, there are a few things I miss from it when I have to do stuff on Win 7 (such as right-click the start icon to bring up all the admin options). And no, I don't use a touch screen or a laptop; just a plain old desktop with mouse and keyboard.

          That button didn't even exist until after a lot of complaining. You can hardly complain about the complaining, when it gave you the very feature that you love so much.

          As an aside, it puzzles me that you called the button an icon. But then of course, one of the countless usability mistakes in Windows 8 is the failure to visually differentiate buttons from other images and text.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      Windows 8 just does dumb shit. The first box I setup had a touchscreen. The instructions say to move the mouse to the upper right corner. So I move the mouse and nothing happens. Check all the cables and everything but it all appears working. Finally figure out they want me to move the CURSOR to the upper right using my FINGER. The mouse is not even used!

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jez9999 ( 618189 )

      Actually, the worst thing fior me about Windows 8 when I had to use it wasn't even the lack of the start menu; it was the fact that every time you move the mouse cursor near the corner, Windows 8 pops up some stupid sidebar. I want to move the mouse cursor from one monitor to another and Windows 8 kept getting in the way of that every time as if I were using a tablet device that needed these gesture popups.

    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      The hyperbole tends to be pretty thick around here, I've used software interfaces that weren't just bad but simply atrocious and if Microsoft could conjure up one so bad I couldn't make it work for me and still be usable outside a mental asylum seems highly unlikely. Hitting the start button to shut down the computer doesn't even register in the top 1000 silliest shit I've had to do in order to make semi-broken, bizarre and buggy applications work. So "broken and useless" is probably more like "temporarily

    • Well, yes, if all we ever did with a Windows 8 laptop was turn it on to test our (pre-installed) application, then Windows 8 would have absolutely no problems. As such, our usages would constitute approximately 2% Windows and 98% our application.

      And if Microsoft were to base their UI design goals on those use cases, they might as well have a machine that boots directly to the app and forget the Windows UI, entirely.

      Which is to say, mods, that parent is about as informative as if I told you the desert would

  • by ChipMonk ( 711367 ) on Monday July 14, 2014 @05:23PM (#47451445) Journal
    It's always, without exception, a strategic move by the PR department, to encourage public chatter about some product. And when it isn't, it's denounced by the company in question as "stolen."

    IOW, yet another "Slashvertisement."
    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by tomhath ( 637240 )

      It's always, without exception, a strategic move by the PR department, to encourage public chatter about some product.

      Yes, that's probably who leaked it. Kinda like those prototype Apple phones that get "lost" at bars and turn up in the hands of a tech gossip writer.

    • It's always, without exception, a strategic move by the PR department, to encourage public chatter about some product.

      As someone who actually had a product (they owned and managed) leak, I can tell you that it is never "always" a strategic move.

      This might be orchestrated by the Microsoft PR team, but please don't assume that every leak is.

  • Can't be sure, but if this is real then I'm fine with the compromise of a tile metro app running in a window since rewriting all of them would take some time. Putting the tiles in the start menu where were there were only two buttons I ever touched is acceptable. I'll probably only ever use the PC Settings tile as long as the start menu works. This isn't exactly what I want, but what I want is XP updated to modern code, and they're intent on not doing that.
    • by geekoid ( 135745 )

      " I want is XP updated to modern code
      so..you want something that's easy to break, easy to infect, but written with modern code?

      You can NOT use modern code and have the PoS known as XP.

  • by Murdoch5 ( 1563847 ) on Monday July 14, 2014 @06:01PM (#47451711) Homepage
    Next release of GNU/Linux still out preforms Windows in all the areas that matter.
  • And how about Aero Glass? Do we get that back too?

    I don't want spartan overly minimalist buttons, windows and dropdowns that hinder more than they help. I want delineated areas that indicate boundaries with beveled widgets that say "click me". I also don't want white-washed backgrounds that strain the eyes when I'm trying to work productively - I want various shades so I can see that the menu, taskbar or URL bar is not part of the main page.
  • games please run on != so the one thing i use windows for i can stop

  • by swb ( 14022 ) on Monday July 14, 2014 @06:16PM (#47451831)

    The Metro-ization of Windows has failed badly. You don't even need to look at Netcraft to prove it.

    So why insist on a hybrid Start menu? Is this just simply the result of some assholes who simply refuse to admit their idea sucked greasy balls and by God they're going to fucking jam it down some throats anyway?

    I haven't used a pure Win 8 device (phone or tablet) in its native mode so I'm withholding personal judgement on it that mode. It gets reasonable reviews (or at least the phone does) from people who have used it like that, but nobody I know is super enthusiastic about it from a desktop perspective at all. Nobody.

    You would have think with Ballmer's exit SOMEBODY at Microsoft might have been willing to say "we shouldn't metro-ize the desktop. They really don't like it."

    • The issue with Metro is that the "Only full screen mode," is a deal breaker on desktops. I do not have a 30" screen to run one program at a time, thanks (barring a few exceptions). However they become perfectly usable when they are in a window. Modern Mix for Stardock does that, and apparently Windows 9 will do it natively. Ok well at that point, Metro is just another API you can use alongside Win32 and .NET and maybe there's some interest. If a Metro program works just like any other then perhaps more peop

  • On a system that isn't a tablet, I DO NOT WANT A TOUCH INTERFACE, or even a hint of it unless I get a touch sensitive monitor and explicitly turn it on (a prompt asking me if I want to would be fine, too). For desktops and laptops, Windows 7's start menu is absolute perfection.

    Don't try to improve perfection. I don't want to see any trace of the formerly-known-as-metro style interfaces anywhere on a desktop OS. Don't try to sell me a Windows tablet and think that shoving a touch interface in my face on the desktop is going to get me to buy. Android is where it's at for tablets. Trying to force that crappy UI on me will make me not even consider Windows tablets even IF you make it far superior to Android.

    All you've done is alienate customers with Windows 8, and you're still trying to shove that loathed (loathed isn't even the word for it) abortion of a UI in people's faces. I'm going to be buying a bunch of Windows 7 licenses while it's still available because Windows 9's isn't shaping to be much better than Windows 8. If I have to run 9, I'll be installing classic shell on it, like I do on Windows Server when I have to work on Windows servers (who the FUCK thought it was a good idea to put a tablet UI on a server OS anyhow?!)

    Oh, and while you're at it bring back glass. Knock it off with that Windows '80s flat look.

  • by norite ( 552330 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2014 @12:07AM (#47453917) Journal

    I still want to know why a clean install of winders 8 eats 17Gb of hard drive space...

    I mean, what the hell is in it that takes up that amount of space? It's obscene. And yet I can fit a fully working linux distro on a CD.

  • Subject says it really. Win7 shouldn't have shipped with a 32bit version, Windows 8 definitely should not have shipped with a 32bit version and for goodness sakes, Windows 9 most god damned definitely should not be shipping with a 32bit version.

    Can we finally get a single unified build here? It's time to let it go.

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