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Windows Microsoft Operating Systems

What To Expect With Windows 9 545

Posted by Soulskill from the solid-color-rectangles dept.
snydeq writes: Two weeks before the its official unveiling, this article provides a roundup of what to expect and the open questions around Windows 9, given Build 9834 leaks and confirmations springing up all over the Web. The desktop's Start Menu, Metro apps running in resizable windows on the desktop, virtual desktops, Notification Center, and Storage Sense, are among the presumed features in store for Windows 9. Chief among the open questions are the fates of Internet Explorer, Cortana, and the Metro Start Screen. Changes to Windows 9 will provide an inkling of where Nadella will lead Microsoft in the years ahead. What's your litmus test on Windows 9?
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What To Expect With Windows 9 More

What To Expect With Windows 9

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  • Clippy 2.0 (Score:5, Funny)

    by BenSchuarmer ( 922752 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @06:23PM (#47922511)
    Deal with it.

  • Alternative Title (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @06:23PM (#47922513)

    Unballmering Windows

  • Aero Or Go Home (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @06:27PM (#47922537)

    Seriously, give me transparency, name it whatever you want, just give it to me. I don't want your flat color bs.

    • Re:Aero Or Go Home (Score:5, Funny)

      by thieh ( 3654731 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @06:45PM (#47922659)
      That's right, we already got "High Contrast" as the flat color theme.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by armanox ( 826486 )

      My thoughts exactly!

    • Re:Aero Or Go Home (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @08:01PM (#47923141)

      Seriously, give me transparency, name it whatever you want, just give it to me. I don't want your flat color bs.

      This. Fire the UX department and just give me Win7's UI. (Ditto for you, Firefox, GNOME, and Flickr.) All the UX department does is make the marketing department happy and drive customers to competing services.

    • Re:Aero Or Go Home (Score:5, Insightful)

      by epyT-R ( 613989 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @08:58PM (#47923471)

      I'd be happy if they brought back windows 2k GUI with its fast and lean gdi+ acceleration. It's a GUI that doesn't clutter up my desktop with huge window decorations and widgets, nor give me grief and/or performance problems with windowed gpu accelerated applications. Windows 8's is the worst of both worlds: it clutters up the desktop, and, unlike windows 7, the display manager can't be turned off without invasive, system breaking hacks. Even with windows 7 the explorer is broken compared to 2k/xp, but at least I can get 95% of what I want with a few shellstyle.dll hacks and some registry tweaks.

  • Haters gonna hate (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @06:32PM (#47922567)
    Haters gonna hate, but I think it looks awesome. Love my two touch screen ultrabooks; they are truly awesome. Hate the Surface RT (sucks balls), and love my two Windows 8.1 desktops (home and work). A better working start menu is most definitely welcome for lots of people I know. It sucks that I have to post anonymously here because there are so many fan girl haterz.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by CohibaVancouver ( 864662 )
      You know what I love even more than than Win 8.1 on my Surface Pro 1? The side glances of envy from MacBook Air fanboys as they watch me use the touchscreen.

      Downvote away haters, my karma can take it.

      • Re:Haters gonna hate (Score:4, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @07:22PM (#47922881)

        That is not envy.... That confusion as to why that dork over there is trying to use a tablet as if it was a real computer.

      • Touchscreens don't belong on real computers. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @07:36PM (#47922975)

        You put your grubby mits on my nice clean monitor and you're pulling back a bloody stump.
        Are you fucking people blind? Smears and fingerprints drive me nuts!

        • Re:Touchscreens don't belong on real computers. (Score:5, Informative)

          by penix1 ( 722987 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @07:49PM (#47923069) Homepage

          I hear ya! I have an HP Envy M7 laptop that has a touchscreen and I never use the touchscreen for that reason. To make it worse, the screen (which is a very good LED HD display) has a high gloss panel that shows the prints extremely well. Why in the world HP chose to put a glossy screen as a touchscreen is beyond me. Touchscreens should have a matte finish to try and hide the print marks as much as possible.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @06:33PM (#47922569)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:If it's not like Vista or 8.0 (Vista II)... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by RyuuzakiTetsuya ( 195424 ) <taiki@co x . net> on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @06:38PM (#47922607)

      Looking at OSX 10.10, why not have both?

      Although at this point, I'm shocked Microsoft just doesn't open up the APIs to let people completely reskin windows. I might come back to Windows if I can run LiteStep again...

      • Wow, I never knew anybody that down on ANY version of OSX, but you say that OSX 10.10 is a combination of Vista and Windows 8? That is pretty bad.
  • Speed and stability. All the drama about new features, missing features, start menus and other preferences are all just nonsense. Just make it fast and stable.

  • The real test? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @06:35PM (#47922587) Homepage

    How my users react to it. I demoed 8 to my users, and got a resounding "HELL NO", due entirely to the start screen. They weren't buying it, and I don't blame them.

    Given the leaks so far, I expect my users will be onboard with the new version ( possibly with some grumbling about the "look" ). But I won't really know until I get it in front of them for some feedback.

    • Given that 8 was the "Just because it's called 'Windows' doesn't mean it needs a functional windowing system!" release, It's pretty hard to argue with them.

      Maybe some of that works on touchscreen laptops; but 'metro' is a tragicomedy on any monitor configuration worth using.

    • Re:The real test? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) * on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @08:23PM (#47923287) Homepage Journal

      Most people are fine with it once you install Classic Start Menu. There is some good stuff in 8, and it's not like Vista where performance went to hell and a lot of stuff just broke. Having different DPI settings on each monitor is nice, for example. All they really need to do with 9 is fix the start menu.

      Having said that the multiple desktops feature looks nice. Something that should have been done years a go, but better late than never.

    • This is about your sig. Ever notice people remember Gatorade by the color and not the flavor?

  • Basically sounds like the OSX keychain, but using your name/credentials/etc to login to public wifi spots automatically - I wonder what kind of coverage they'll have?

    Other than that, though - seems like they're de-mobilifying the desktop OS part. Such a waste of money, attention and marketshare - all because Steve wanted to be more like the other Steve.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by guruevi ( 827432 )

      Given Windows 8 just clear-texts your login over WiFi/Ethernet (WPA2 Enterprise or 802.1x systems that do not behave like an Active Directory), I think Windows 9 may simply publish all your logins on an open port 80.

  • Make the server version look like a server. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by attemptedgoalie ( 634133 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @06:43PM (#47922639)

    Windows 9 will be interesting, and will break all kinds of things like every other upgrade does.

    But Server 2012 is unusable. R2 improved it, but they clearly hate their customers.

    1. Why does a Server install have boxes called "this PC" to click on. Just bring back "My Briefcase" and get it over with you lazy pieces of crap.
    2. Why does it have a snazzy new front end that then puts back up screens we had in Windows 3.1?
    3. I will cut the bitch that decided to use URLs for error messages, but not have them as active links so you could follow them.

    I wasted hours of my life trying to make .Net3.5 install on 2012 because a vendor swore they wouldn't support R2, but had to have 3.5. I finally just did R2 and told them it was that or no .Net. If Microsoft didn't want me to install .Net 3.5, they shouldn't have made it the top feature in the list to install. Hide it. Make it separate. Something. But top in the list, incapable of installing saying it can't find media no matter what you do with copying files locally, powershell/DISM/whatever? Bite me you no-testing-code-shipping pieces of crap!

    But I'm not bitter.

    • Yeahhhhh.... we're staying on Server 2008 until Server 2012 or some future version behaves in a reasonable fashion.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dkman ( 863999 )
      3a. The inability to highlight and copy from an error pop-up is one of the most retarded things I run into. This was a problem in 95, it really needs someone to take an hour and fix it already. (This is made worse by URLs posted, but even if they weren't clickable being able to copy/paste it into a browser would take a lot of the pain away.)

      • Ctrl-C in any alert type box copies the content to the clipboard. Well, it copies much more than that, which is weird, but it does copy the important bits. Can't find an example right now, but the format is hideous. You've got to paste it in a text editor first, but it's better than nothing.

        My personal most hated feature of windows is that god awful "Choose a Folder" dialog that gives you a shitty, small tree list that you can't resize to stumble through your file system with. It's one of the absolute worst dialogs in computing history, and we've been stuck using it since at least Windows 95. The worst part is that it's possible to use the regular Open dialog for directories, but lazy ass devs use the simplest (for them) method of calling that fucking mess of shit.

    • .Net 3.5 installs fine through add features on Win2012/Win8, but there is a big gotcha. If your company uses WSUS, which most large ones do, it breaks it. So at that point you do need to break out DISM, or point Windows to the install CD/image as a source.

  • Ah well (Score:2, Troll)

    by skipkent ( 1510 )

    Over all I'm enjoying windows 8/8.1... The start screen isn't my cup of tea, but then again I use it the same way i use the start bar in Win7, hit the windows key and type a few letters then enter to select the app I want. Only difference is I can see the weather and maybe a news headline at the same time. One thing I love about it though is the new theme, it's like Win 3.1 done right, its simple, elegant and out of your way. So with pretty much instant start up time, great battery life, clean lines, a

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by armanox ( 826486 )

      Oh yes, let's bring back twenty year old themes! That's moving forward!

      Other points:
      * Start up times is not useful when most users don't shut down save for Windows Updates
      * I type stuff at the search bar that I need to see what's on the screen to type out completely. I need it to just be a small area (like Spotlight on OS X)
      * Hyper-V doesn't handle what I need it to do. So primitive compared to it's competitors.
      * I liked Areo glass effects. For the same reason I use Compiz on Linux - I want my desktop t

      • Re:Ah well (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Oligonicella ( 659917 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @07:55PM (#47923111)
        Changing a theme for the sake of changing a theme isn't moving forward, it's just remodeling the kitchen. I happen to like my older theme because it's become invisible to me now. That's what I want in an OS UI. Why change for the sake of? It's like comparing car styles. Meh.

    • What I find strange is my MATLAB simulation run about 15% faster in Windows 8.1 vs Windows 7 on the same machine. Now Windows 8.1 runs at almost the exact same speed as MATLAB does under Linux. I don't know about all the other stuff MS did to windows but they did manager to make it faster and unlike Linux I get longer battery life under windows and it still hibernates correctly.

      On linux after I installed the intel thermald and p-state stuff according to the directions I found from intel the linux side did g

  • "What to expect" - really? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BringsApples ( 3418089 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @06:57PM (#47922713)
    Anyone that does freelance IT work knows that this means $$$. Hell I'm still counting the money from WinXP's death. Yehaa!

  • Virtual Desktops (Workspaces) (Score:4, Interesting)

    by corychristison ( 951993 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @06:58PM (#47922733)

    I've used workspaces extensively since discovering Linux in the early 2000's. I find it rather interesting Microsoft is /finally/ introducing native, proper, workspaces.

    Any time I try to explain it to someone who has never used them, they always ask me "Why would I use/want that?" and then they always jump on the multi-monitor mantra and say "Why not just get X number of screens?"

    I personally have 8 workspaces configured. I use them all. I have my pager configured in 2 rows of 4 grid. My window manager is configured to 'skip' to the corresponding workspace by dragging the mouse pointer to the edge of the screen (with a configurable amount of resistance), so its as close to physical screens as it can get without the cost of buying 8 screens, video cards, plus power costs.

    I've argued this in the past on Slashdot here, but I honestly don't see the appeal of physical screens. Maybe Windows people will finally 'get it' when Win9 comes out.

    • Re:Virtual Desktops (Workspaces) (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @07:14PM (#47922835) Journal
      You don't choose between workspaces and physical screens, you just have multiple physical screens so that each workspace can be even larger and more pleasant to use...

      You do eventually run into diminishing returns; but being able to display more than one monitor worth of stuff simultaneously definitely has its uses, and is something that being able to switch between workspaces, be the transition ever so elegant, cannot replace.
      • I understand what you're saying (I think) but I've always wondered (and this is from a hardware-guy's perspective) wouldn't you rather have one big monitor [flickr.com], than two small monitors [wired.com]? I know there may be a significant price difference, but the whole concept of bigger=better seems to be a nomenclature that itself keeps expanding when it comes to screen size. If you can learn to enjoy the multiple desktop feature that corychristison is talking about, couldn't that be as good?
        • Aside from price, which makes accepting multiple monitors rather compelling(you can get physically big ones for relatively small amounts of money, because of TVs; but if you want resolution the cost goes up fast and things really start to misbehave if you go high enough that DP MST or the like is required to drive the thing), it mostly comes down to how good your windowing system is at tiling and how well applications that expect 'full screen' can handle playing with others.

          A good window manager makes ca

        • Re:Virtual Desktops (Workspaces) (Score:4, Interesting)

          by NormalVisual ( 565491 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @08:16PM (#47923239)
          I understand what you're saying (I think) but I've always wondered (and this is from a hardware-guy's perspective) wouldn't you rather have one big monitor [flickr.com], than two small monitors [wired.com]?

          I actually prefer multiple displays along with virtual desktops, as the bezel doesn't bother me, and it's easier for me to have a dev environment on one screen with documentation/tools on the other sans taskbar, with the virtual desktops being used for stuff like IMs, email, etc.. Maximizing something on the second display fills that display, but leaves the primary untouched. Additionally, there are some folks that prefer to use multiple displays in different orientations, although I'm not one of those. Finally, it's cheaper. :-) Having said that, it's not something I'm dogmatic about. People should use whatever works best for them.

    • Re:Virtual Desktops (Workspaces) (Score:5, Informative)

      by Barlo_Mung_42 ( 411228 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @07:17PM (#47922849) Homepage

      Interesting fact but this isn't new to Windows either. Win2k and maybe even earlier had native multidesktop support. They just didn't ship a default front end for it but they've had a free tool available for years that let you set it up.

    • Any time I try to explain it to someone who has never used them, they always ask me "Why would I use/want that?" and then they always jump on the multi-monitor mantra and say "Why not just get X number of screens?"

      You make it sound like multi-monitor and multi workspace are options of which only one can be chosen. Using two monitors and eight workspaces here!

    • I've argued this in the past on Slashdot here, but I honestly don't see the appeal of physical screens.

      Just like I don't 'see' the appeal of a non-physical screen. Get it?

      ,,, I'll just show myself out.

  • my list is not long (Score:3)

    by roc97007 ( 608802 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @07:02PM (#47922759) Journal

    Must have: Useable start menu, (a button to dump us into the "start screen" was just plain insulting) a useable desktop, and the ability to not run any metro (or whatever it's called) apps whatsoever.

    Important but not a deal killer: Put all the control panel functions back in the control panel. You can keep the charms bar for tablet compatibility, but I'd want some way to turn it off on a desktop. In fact, I would like a way to turn off all hot corners, hot sides, and swiping gestures while on a KVM machine. Registry changes to do this would be fine, as I would intend to do it once and never revert back.

  • Nothing Useful (Score:5, Interesting)

    by darkain ( 749283 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @07:11PM (#47922819) Homepage

    I evaluate new software primarily based on two areas.

    1) What do I gain with the new software? Currently running Windows 7, what do I get that helps make my life more productive with Windows 9? Thusfar, I see nothing. From Windows 8 to 9, yeah, I can see the improvement, but so far it is simply "improved" to the point of reverting back to what 7 already has.

    2) What do I lose with the new software? From the current leaks, Windows 9 is just as ugly as Windows 8 desktop mode. The Win8/9 UI looks like Windows 3.1. They've switched back to centering title bar text from the previous decade+ of left-align title bar text. They've taken the UI from the clean and modern Aero Glass and turned it into flat colors just like Windows 3.1. The OS as a whole is simply less visually appealing.

    So, the question still remains: WHY SWITCH!?

  • Winning the lottery (Score:4, Interesting)

    by msobkow ( 48369 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @07:15PM (#47922841) Homepage Journal

    My Windows 7 laptop does everything I need for Windowsy stuff, so I won't be replacing or upgrading it unless I win the lottery.

    Sadly, my 10+ year old 3.8GHz Pentium-pre-Core2 box is finally dying, so I'm in the midst of shifting my development and personal stuff over to the laptop. I've used Windows for years as a developer so it's not *too* painful, but I'm going to miss Linux. Linux just *works* without getting in my way; I can't say the same for Windows, even on trivial issues as to which widgets get auto-focused when you open them up (who is the brilliant idiot who came up with the idea that the file browser should focus on that damned library panel instead of the list of files?)

  • Ugh Metro. (Score:3)

    by enter to exit ( 1049190 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @07:20PM (#47922869)
    Metro Apps aren't particularly good or useful. They haven't seen mass usage by the Market or Developers, why keep it around on the desktop? It's a design clearly meant for touch interfaces. The design insist on hiding things in a submenu of a hidden side-menu - all that's visibly left is padding.

    There might have been a reason for it a couple of years ago, when the world thought all laptops were going to have a touch screen but that's clearly not going to happen. The use cases are thin - and they're just plain uncomfortable to use. What the world really needed was better trackpads.

    MS should remove Metro from the desktop and license WP8.1 for tablets.
  • Windows needs to have windows. With "windows" being rectangular application client areas on the screen, ideally resizable with UI elements common across the system for closing, moving, and resizing.

    Hierarchical start menu.
  • I've JUST started using 8.1 for a project at work, and I'm constantly blown away at how much of a compromise the Metro Interface is. The defaults make it hard to find the things I'm used to, like the control panel, while the new interfaces are lacking in the features I need. Getting to basic features now takes more time than in WIn7. There are no advantages to the interface, and big detractions.

    Just as companies held onto WinXP for a LONG time, I think they will do the same with Win7- there's just

    • Re:Ugh (Score:4, Informative)

      by BarbaraHudson ( 3785311 ) <barbara.jane.hud ... minus physicist> on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @08:56PM (#47923457) Journal

      If you're stuck with 8.1, here's a quick fix. Open a file browser, and click the Control Panel icon on the ribbon bar.

      In Control Panel, click Taskbar and Navigation.

      In the dialog, click on the second tab, the one labeled Navigation. Here you can permanently make the desktop, and not the stupid start full-screen Metro UI menu, your default. Just click on "When I sign in or close all apps on a screen, go to the desktop instead of Start." You can also disable the charms, etc.

  • Cortana??? (Score:5, Funny)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @08:32PM (#47923329) Journal

    Holy crap. First I've heard of Cortana. Googled it. [google.com]. Is that for real??? It looks like Seven of Nine got fucked by Bob and this is the offspring. I can already see the protests from middle America. "Electronic boobies from Satan are sending us to Hell". How could anybody think that's a good idea?

  • A few things... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Entropius ( 188861 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @08:47PM (#47923417)

    What's your litmus test on Windows 9?

    I want an OS that:

    1) Doesn't attempt to hide the workings of my computer from me -- in particular, don't hide the way that paths and directories really work. (As a bonus: remove the spaces from system directories, dammit, because I get real tired of escaping them when I access my NTFS partition from a real OS.)

    2) When something goes wrong tell me what the fuck it was. "The internet connection has limited connectivity" doesn't tell me a damn thing. "DHCP timeout" tells me something. Include both messages, by all means, for the benefit of Grandma -- but Grandma likely can't fix her internet connection on her own anyway.

    3) Don't be patronizing. Copying .mp3's to a phone shouldn't give a "Your phone might not be able to play this file, copy anyway?" message, and there are a thousand things like that in Windows.

    4) Get rid of file locking, or at least allow an override. I can decide whether a file is sufficiently "in use" that I shouldn't delete it.

    5) Don't attempt to push other MS products (cloud services, "stores", and the like) on me, and don't keep spewing Windows Media Player etc. icons around after I delete them once.

     

  • A non-UNIX OS in a UNIX world? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GreatDrok ( 684119 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @08:50PM (#47923435) Journal

    I find it funny that MS is now the only major OS vendor that isn't running on a UNIX base. Seems like an uphill struggle as the world passes them by. They should do an Apple and virtualise the old Windows code in a classic environment and switch to a UNIX base. Or just stop trying to make operating systems altogether and focus on software.

    • I've long stated that the worst thing the US DoJ ever did to Microsoft - was failing to force them to break apart into separate companies.

      Operating systems should have gone one way (at which point, I suspect that modern versions of Windows would be posix-based, probably on BSD). The application stack should have gone another way (MSOffice running on just about everything, instead of being limited in order to sell Microsoft Phones). The hardware stuff into a 3rd company.

      Instead of being separate compan

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by terjeber ( 856226 )

      I find it funny that MS is now the only major OS vendor that isn't running on a UNIX base. Seems like an uphill struggle as the world passes them by.

      This is one of those religious things I find quite funny. For the record, I have used Linux since 0.97 and Slackware. I grew up on SunOS and thought that Sun moving the System V with Solaris was a tragedy. I even once ran a home-written BBS (you wouldn't know) on a dual-floppy x86 machine running Minix. I know Unix. Standard Unix Operating system architecture is an archaic, abhorrent monstrosity that we should have left behind computer-eons ago. The Linux OS architecture is bad at its core level, and it isn

  • Respect established UI principles (Score:4, Informative)

    by neilo_1701D ( 2765337 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @08:51PM (#47923441)

    The problem with Window 8.x (and Office 2013 / VS 2012 etc) is how they are breaking established UI conventions for no good reason and with very little payoff.

    The Windows 8 Start screen, for example, takes the focus in a big way. The Start screen in Server 2012 is even worse; if I right-click to run a program as administrator, the context menu appears at the bottom of the screen. Talk about breaking context!

    With Office, not only do we have the screen-stealing ribbon (not completely bad, but still...), all the tab titles are uppercase. The Microsoft style guide says this is a no-no; yet the Office team do it. The VS2012 menus are the same.

    I'll agree that Win 8.x has probably the best Windows kernel ever. The UI is a turn off.

    I'm hoping that Windows 9 brings back some vestige of Windows 7 UI whilst keeping the best bits of Win 8. Heck; if that's impossibly I'll gladly settle for a Window 98 UI. At least it was consistent, and didn't obscure the screen with useless tat.

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