<story><title>Microsoft Will Soon Bring Back The Start Menu In Windows 8.1</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/02/microsoft-will-soon-bring-back-the-start-menu-in-windows-8-1/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>daigoba66</author><text>&amp;gt; my productivity actually increased with metro&lt;p&gt;How so? What productivity enhancements exist in Win8 that do not in Win7?&lt;p&gt;This is a genuine question. I upgraded to and use Win8 daily for about 14 months now because I like running the latest stable software (from any vendor). But, with the exception of no longer being able to search without going full screen, it&amp;#x27;s exactly the same.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Edit&lt;/i&gt;
There is one fairly big enhancement I completely forgot about: the &amp;quot;power users menu&amp;quot; accessible via right-click in the bottom left corner or by pressing Windows-X. Of course this has nothing to do with &amp;quot;metro&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>bushido</author><text>8.1 has the option to boot to desktop, they could enable that by default.&lt;p&gt;Personally I don&amp;#x27;t see Metro as a UI failure, my productivity actually increased with metro. I rarely need to use the mouse, which is great.&lt;p&gt;Also, hitting the windows key to switch screens is not a big deal, my grand parents complain about it a little, but the pains of having to explain finding stuff in the start menu to them and other older relatives has stopped happening.&lt;p&gt;Additionally with the docking capability of the task bar aka &amp;quot;pin program to task bar&amp;quot; had made the start menu quite redundant since win 7.</text></item><item><author>soup10</author><text>Except they&amp;#x27;ve added all that metro crap to the already cluttered start menu.  Their UI team is still a long way from acknowledging the failure of integrating metro with the desktop; and windows 8 will continue to be a mess until they do.</text></item><item><author>Crito</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s always nice to see UI&amp;#x2F;UX people respond to user input and admit when they are wrong, rather than berate their users for not understanding the product.  This sort of humbleness seems to be becoming increasingly rare.&lt;p&gt;In the past Microsoft has done well for themselves by listening to their business users and prioritizing their concerns about backwards compatibility.  I hope this revert represents a natural continuation of that policy.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>keerthiko</author><text>For one, there&amp;#x27;s two efficient axes of navigation along the Metro start menu, you can go left-right or up-down with your keyboard, which is SO much more amazing than the &amp;quot;hold down down key for 6 seconds. Awp go back up five. Now hit right four times. Enter&amp;quot; to launch an app that is actually &amp;quot;pinned&amp;quot; to your start menu. I can orient my Metro tiles how I want, and I know I can get to it within 5-6 arrow-key presses max. This is very nice and for the first time in 6 years I&amp;#x27;ve actually used the Windows key to open the start menu for something other than shutting down (have been for the last 18 months of using Windows 8.x).&lt;p&gt;Going full screen really doesn&amp;#x27;t bother me one bit. I&amp;#x27;m launching a new app, I&amp;#x27;m losing context anyway. I find this similar to Apple&amp;#x27;s launchpad or whatever that OSX thing is that I never use because Spotlight and Terminal is all I need from that OS.&lt;p&gt;Vaguely related to improving productivity, Win8 has significantly better multi-monitor support out of the box, with all the flexibility I&amp;#x27;d want, and with it better window management, than either of OSX or Win7.&lt;p&gt;Just my $.02</text></comment>
<story><title>Microsoft Will Soon Bring Back The Start Menu In Windows 8.1</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/02/microsoft-will-soon-bring-back-the-start-menu-in-windows-8-1/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>daigoba66</author><text>&amp;gt; my productivity actually increased with metro&lt;p&gt;How so? What productivity enhancements exist in Win8 that do not in Win7?&lt;p&gt;This is a genuine question. I upgraded to and use Win8 daily for about 14 months now because I like running the latest stable software (from any vendor). But, with the exception of no longer being able to search without going full screen, it&amp;#x27;s exactly the same.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Edit&lt;/i&gt;
There is one fairly big enhancement I completely forgot about: the &amp;quot;power users menu&amp;quot; accessible via right-click in the bottom left corner or by pressing Windows-X. Of course this has nothing to do with &amp;quot;metro&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>bushido</author><text>8.1 has the option to boot to desktop, they could enable that by default.&lt;p&gt;Personally I don&amp;#x27;t see Metro as a UI failure, my productivity actually increased with metro. I rarely need to use the mouse, which is great.&lt;p&gt;Also, hitting the windows key to switch screens is not a big deal, my grand parents complain about it a little, but the pains of having to explain finding stuff in the start menu to them and other older relatives has stopped happening.&lt;p&gt;Additionally with the docking capability of the task bar aka &amp;quot;pin program to task bar&amp;quot; had made the start menu quite redundant since win 7.</text></item><item><author>soup10</author><text>Except they&amp;#x27;ve added all that metro crap to the already cluttered start menu.  Their UI team is still a long way from acknowledging the failure of integrating metro with the desktop; and windows 8 will continue to be a mess until they do.</text></item><item><author>Crito</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s always nice to see UI&amp;#x2F;UX people respond to user input and admit when they are wrong, rather than berate their users for not understanding the product.  This sort of humbleness seems to be becoming increasingly rare.&lt;p&gt;In the past Microsoft has done well for themselves by listening to their business users and prioritizing their concerns about backwards compatibility.  I hope this revert represents a natural continuation of that policy.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bushido</author><text>Shaving seconds really. But it adds up.&lt;p&gt;1. Dock&amp;#x2F;Pin primary apps to task bar (same as win 7)&lt;p&gt;2. Organized(Grouped)&amp;#x2F;stripped down metro for less-frequently used apps. Removed tiles for any apps that I do not use -&amp;gt; Reduces the number of apps I need to pin to the task bar -&amp;gt; Hit Win Key to quickly switch to Metro and select app&lt;p&gt;3. The first win 8.1 update (released 5-6 months ago) reduced the search to 25% of the screen. Hit &amp;quot;Win + S&amp;quot; for search under classic mode. Personally I just hit the Win Key and start typing, enters metro momentarily.&lt;p&gt;4. First win 8.1 release added a start button to the task bar. Hated it for 2 secs(for reducing my task-bar space). Right clicked start button and realized I could remove a couple of additional tiles&amp;#x2F;task bar pins. Keyboard shortcut is &amp;quot;Win + X&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;4.1. Tip: Right clicking the start menu has a Quicker shutdown menu option. Tip 2: Additional shortcuts for the menu are only displayed if you use the keyboard shortcut to open the menu.</text></comment>