A $4.99 utility that might just have saved Windows 8 | Hacker News Reader

A $4.99 utility that might just have saved Windows 8

theregister.co.uk

39 pointsFlemlord34 comments

(Disclaimer: I work at MS. I do work on windows.) I currently have modern mix running on my windows 8 desktop. By and large, I've found that the vast majority of the time I'm on a desktop computer, I'm in the desktop mode of win8. Rarely do I find that the metro apps are useful outside of the mobile/tablet/laptop space. Despite all this, I thought "cool this product looks neat" and purchased a license to Modern Mix. Overall I haven't really found it tremendously useful. Whereas before I'd pin my calendar to the side of my screen (one of the very few metro apps I used on my desktop), I now just have it sitting in a window. The mix of win8 window borders with the metro styled apps just makes them look awkward, and I really don't feel like I've been given more functionality despite the increased flexibility. The one nice feature is you can run multiple metro apps in fullscreen - which is great if you have a large multimonitor setup and if you have a bunch of metro based apps in your workflow. But by and large it's that last requirement that really doesn't make this product worth it for me - I simply don't have a large amount of metro apps I want to use. Are they nice on a tablet? Sure. But if I'm on a desktop I have apps that accomplish the same thing in a more optimized format.

"(Disclaimer: I work at MS. I do work on windows.)"

A minor nitpick: I thought that you call this "disclosure" in English, not "disclaimer"? (I'm not a native speaker, which is why I may be easily wrong, but something is nudging me to ask when I see things that seem wrong to me.)

Disclosure refers to the act of saying he's from MS. Disclaimer means that you should read what he says knowing that he might have a bias, because he's from MS.

As they both result in the same thing (you need to read what he says understanding he may be biased), you'll see them both used. I usually use Disclaimer, but there's no real reason for that.

They both work in this context.

A disclaimer is a piece of text a person or company writes to avoid responsibility. In the GPL, there's text saying that the program is distributed without any warranty - that's a disclaimer. If someone sues you because the program broke, you can point to the disclaimer to show you never claimed that it would work.

Disclosure is just revealing information.

That parenthesized remark was disclosure (because the author revealed his affiliation with Microsoft) but it was also a disclaimer - because of that text, no one can claim that the author was astroturfing.

The problem is that this utility defeats the battery life savings which is the main point of the metro "one app at a time" model by breaking the suspend/restore functionality by enabling you to run many concurrent applications.

It's very likely that this utility also breaks some of the sandboxing of metro applications, introducing security vulnerabilities that don't exist in vanilla Windows 8.

That said, this utility looks cool, and I hope Microsoft encourages, rather than discourages, stuff like this going forward. Let the power users customize the environment however they like.

But there are good reasons that they don't enable this out of the box.

Uh yeah ... Windows 8 has taken us all the way back to the Windows 3.1 days where everyone had a different cool app/utility just to make their machine barely usable. The last thing MS would/should/could want is dependence on third party apps for basic functionality.

The twenty, thirty, however many years have shown just how important and how defining the default settings are. "It's easy to change!" doesn't solve the problems with X default settings for just about anything.

It's like that Saturday Live sketch - "Warning: this is a bag of glass" still makes the, uh, "Bag Of Glass" toy a little problematic. And it's got me thinking about the 80's (or was that the 70's, those ole' memories...)

Honestly, that would explain a lot. I think whenever you let technical limitations drive the experience you end up with a bad experience.

This appears to radically alter the security of the W8 app sandbox...apparently intercepting the process and changing the security permissions....dangerous

Anyone feel like running some tests and verifying this?

The vast majority of the time (both at home and at work), I'm not running on battery power - and when I am, it's rarely for more than an hour or two. And I doubt that I'm too unusual in that.

Given that, it seems odd to design the entire UI experience around power management.

To me the Start screen is just the start menu full-screen.

I rarely see it except on boot up, then I goto my desktop and everything is right there as I left it on windows 7.

I could understand my folks being confused by it but the number of techies who have been grinding their teeth really has me puzzled. Am I alone on this?

No you're not. I had the "argh stupid new interface!" assumptions based purely on hearing other opinions, and I hadn't been bothered to really keep up with the details myself. Needed a new laptop the other day and while complaining to my MD about the hassle of downgrading to Win7 he pointed out that he's on 8 and is fine with it, and I respect his tech opinions, so just jumped in.

I really don't get metro apps (is that what they're called?), maybe if I was on a tablet, but I'm not. Skype in particular was a pain in the ass, until I realised that I could just ignore the metro version and download a classic installer. Other than that, I actually prefer the start screen to the classic start menu, and... not much else has changed.

No, I feel the same way. I've been using Win8 since release day, and I've had essentially no problems adjusting. My daily workflow is identical, and I haven't found myself fighting with the Start screen. I don't use the Metro apps constantly, but I use them often enough to keep 2-3 of them (weather, calendar, mail) pinned on the main part of my Start screen alongside the other apps I use frequently, but not often enough to justify a taskbar pin.

In particular, I find it odd that people claim that Win8 is "dumbed down" or "power-user unfriendly". I've found the opposite to be true. The new Explorer UI has things like built-in "Powershell Here", and there's keyboard shortcuts for everything. The Win+X menu is something I constantly reach for whenever I'm on a Win7 box.

Overall, I'm really pretty happy with it. It's not a massive improvement like some previous Windows releases were, but the comparisons to Vista or WinME are nonsense. It's a solid OS, and it really disappoints me that so many are eager to dismiss it for such silly reasons.

I felt similarly when I got Windows 8, it reminded me of Ubuntu's Unity new universal search UI (except faster) which I liked for its simplicity.

But I installed Start8 just to try it out, and I do like it better. Its got the fast search of Windows 8, and I find it less distracting than the screen covering start menu.

i mostly agree, I'm more of a linux guy, but right now i work in a dotnet shop, so i run several windows vm's to develop in. i really like windows 8(not enough to be running it as a default windows, but enough to say i like it more than previous windows version).

needless to say one of the first things i did was install start8, and then replace it with a free alternative once the trial ran out. sadly, none of the trials are on par with start8.

battery life savings only because of metro? I'm not sure about that. windows 8 added a whole bunch of acpi modes in conjunction with intel(i think ?). linux is struggling to catch up with that.

it's starting to seem like the best way to run linux on a modern machine is to run windows8 locked down and linux as a fullscreen vm

but saying sinofsky was responsible for replacing the start menu and start8 will "save" windows 8 seems a little far fetched. with microsofts hands all over the government, i don't see microsoft and windows 8 going away anytime soon. and with a whole bunch of hybrids coming up i can only see it getting more and more prominent

Why not just buy Start8? Surely you've already spent more than $4.99 of your time trying to work around buying it?

because the programs i need in windows are visual studio, a vpn client, linqpad and some other thing. they fit into win+1-4.

everything else I run with launchy, with a whole bunch of small utility apps that make my short windows stays more pleasant.

I don't need the start menu, I can very well live without it. I just happen to like experimenting with things

> that might just have saved Windows 8

...for traditional mouse and keyboard users, that is. This solution would make touchscreen usability much worse, IMO.

(Disclaimer: I work at MS. I don't work on Windows. My opinions are my own.)

> for traditional mouse and keyboard users

ie, 99.9% of Windows users.

But that's only because they didn't have a choice till very recently. The future will tell if it remains that way.

As one indicator, I frequently catch my 2 yr old getting frustrated when pointing at my macbook screen (as opposed to the iPad).

As soon as Microsoft buys me a 30" touchscreen to replace my primary monitor and a 27" one to replace my secondary one, I will cheerfully "upgrade" (sic) to Windows 8.

Does the average person find touchscreen on a laptop or desktop to be of any value?

Last week I walked into the Microsoft store looking to purchase a new laptop. I couldn't get over the Windows 8 interface and instead went to the Apple store across the hallway and purchased by first Mac laptop.

I recently got a laptop with a decent multi-touch touchpad and was pleasantly surprised at how well the swipe and scroll gestures work with Windows 8. I get around quicker than using a real mouse and keyboard and it's fairly intuitive.

On my dual-monitor desktop though it's terrible and I end up cursing it out seemingly daily.

I don’t consider myself an average user but I do own an Acer Aspire with a touch screen and I love it. My wife and my granddaughter are both pretty average users and they both prefer the touch screen. I will never buy a laptop without touch screen capabilities until something better comes out.

I like my Thinkpad Carbon X1 Touch. It's kind of like a Macbook Air with a 14-inch touch screen. When sitting down I tend to stay with the keyboard and trackpad. However, when on conference calls I find myself walking around with the notebook cradled in one arm and using the touch screen with the other hand. It's a very nice combination.

On the other hand I spend basically NO time in the start menu and have installed Classic Start, so it's really like an enhanced Windows 8 to me.

So basically, it turns windows 8 "apps" into normal programs for desktop users... and this works better on the desktop. Who'd-a-thunk.

My thoughts exactly. So we've come full circle on user interfaces as well?

The biggest problem is that Microsoft has introduce TWO new things at the same time. Imagine if Microsoft had released windows with this new menu but it didn't have any of the 'Modern' apps or marketplace functionality. All of a sudden it just seems like a stretched out version of the original start menu. With only this in mind it doesn't seem that shocking anymore. The icons would behave exactly as you would expect. It's just bigger and has a lot more features. A great experience all around.

The REAL problem comes with the 'App Store' / Live Tile baggage added on to the new menu. The biggest complaint I see on Facebook and hear from others always involves a the 'modern' app version of Skype, Messenger, Picture Viewer, etc. People using their desktop just don't want those full screen apps. It only gets in their way and they are always a terrible experience on the desktop. Also, as far as I've seen no one cares for Live Tiles on a desktop. For some reason it makes a lot of sense on a tablet, but non on a desktop.

The reason so many people want their old menu back is because they know that menu kept them in 'Desktop' mode and would open the normal Windows applications. Once you've opened the NEW menu it gets tricky. I see an icon for Skype, but is this going to launch the Skype I've used for years? NOPE, surprise you're now in full screen skype app mode. Argh, take me back!

In the end, I love Win8 but I never use the menu.

(Disclaimer: I don't work at Microsoft, but I wish I did!)

I have read that it was a conscious decision for Windows 8 not to have modes, e.g. touch versus desktop. But, I think that was a bad decision. After almost a year of using it (since the developer preview), it still does not feel natural. I think Metro works well for touch and the desktop works well for traditional input. But, the mixture still feels forced. I think this app is a step in the right direction, but it really needs to be baked into the OS.

I was at Costco and spotted this on all the demo machines for windows: http://distilleryimage6.s3.amazonaws.com/b97e94147e0311e29a8...

Someone had installed "classic start menu" on all the machines. These machines are offline, so I'm assuming it was an employee tired of explaining the Windows 8 Metro UI. It says something about the UI switch in Windows 8.

Isn't that misleading information/advertising unless the boxes actually come with those modifications?

and the TVs show cable and DVD content that don't come with the TV.

and the cereal boxes show pieces of fruit in the bowl.

it's a serving suggestion.

If I recall correctly, Stardock has been around for ages at least since Windows 98. I never liked their desktop enhancement utility.

the only reason i am able to use windows 8 is:

Classic Shell http://www.classicshell.net/ and

7+ Taskbar Tweaker http://rammichael.com/7-taskbar-tweaker

also TeraCopy and FilesearchEX

Saved? Metro apps are still completely useless on a desktop PC.

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