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Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

All the simplifications that they mentioned seem reasonable to me.

Wouldn't Power Users be regular users of things like keyboard shortcuts, AutoHotKey scripts, etc...?

For example, 99% of my time is spent in seven or eight applications and use the Win-# key to jump between them. Win-1 is file explorer, Win-2 is web browser, Win-3 is email, etc...

For lesser used things I hit the Win key and start typing the name of the thing I want and then hit enter as soon as it's highlighted. The organization or size of the Start menu is not important.

The only feature I use that I would lose is small task bar icons, but that isn't exactly a showstopper for me.

If the list is what Windows' most loyal users are complaining about, Microsoft must be doing a good job. If anything, I think these changes will affect more casual users who spend a lot of time inside the start menu.

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The loss of the small task bar icons will be annoying to me. I always fight to minimize UI real estate in my workspace, typically selecting the most compact / small offering that is still workable. I strongly prefer my task bar to remain visible but take up minimal space. I've become "used" to this problem though as UIs have all gone more and more finger friendly (read: big) over time. Definitely a good thing for the right use case, but please don't take away my option to get your application to be as non-instrusive as possible.

Damn! Those are exactly the features that have allowed me to ignore the clusterfuck that the start menu has become at least since Windows 7.

Classic Shell - can't recommend it highly enough if you prefer the Windows 7 era experience.

And worse, the apparent inability to move the taskbar to the right hand side of the screen. This takes up less of the valuable vertical space, but shortens the taskbar so small icons are even more important.

> these changes will affect more casual users

Given the long list of stuff they are changing, there’s a high probability that everyone will come out with at least one annoyance. For me it is the impossibility of showing all the icons in the notification area: it’s a small thing, but I can’t stand having them collapsed.

>Win-1 is file explorer, Win-2 is web browser, Win-3 is email, etc...

Is this something you set up natively in windows? Or are you using AHK?

That's just default Windows functionality, the numbers correspond to the order of items on the task bar.

The numbers 1, 2, 3 refers to the task bar position.

If you order the programs that way on your task bar, then you can access them with these shortcuts.

Lol, I've been using Windows for a long time and had no idea these shortcuts exist - I will probably use them all the time going forwards.

I'm glad it works for you and how you use Windows.

I guess my point is that most users spend very little time actively using Windows. When my computer is on, close to 100% of my time is spent in the browser or Visual Studio or email or some other program that requires Windows. I spend very little time in Settings, the Start menu, the device manager, etc.. I would guess File Explorer is my most used part of Windows.

I'm glad it works for you and how you use Windows.

So how do you use Windows? Isn't it essentially a foundation for the applications you want to run? Is the percentage of time you spend doing OS level things significant?

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