(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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>But there are good reasons that they don't enable this out of the box.
To me the Start screen is just the start menu full-screen.<p>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.<p>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?
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).<p>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.<p>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.<p>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<p>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
> that might just have saved Windows 8<p>...for traditional mouse and keyboard users, that is. This solution would make touchscreen usability much worse, IMO.<p>(Disclaimer: I work at MS. I don't work on Windows. My opinions are my own.)
Does the average person find touchscreen on a laptop or desktop to be of any value?<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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!<p>In the end, I love Win8 but I never use the menu.<p>(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: <a href="http://distilleryimage6.s3.amazonaws.com/b97e94147e0311e29a8f22000a9f195b_7.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://distilleryimage6.s3.amazonaws.com/b97e94147e0311e29a8...</a><p>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.
the only reason i am able to use windows 8 is:<p>Classic Shell <a href="http://www.classicshell.net/" rel="nofollow">http://www.classicshell.net/</a> and<p>7+ Taskbar Tweaker <a href="http://rammichael.com/7-taskbar-tweaker" rel="nofollow">http://rammichael.com/7-taskbar-tweaker</a><p>also TeraCopy and FilesearchEX