Windows 9 Tech Preview Screenshots

Autopia said:
the tiles are there because people are stupid, so you have a big tile that says MAIL, you know click here for mail... INTERNET EXPLORER, click on that for internet explorer...this is idiocracy type stuff thats allm but Microsoft calls it innovation.
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My mail tile is showing my last three unread emails. My Tweetium tile the latest three incoming tweets. It's 87 outside. The Dow was down 19.71. Oil spiked up 1.38. A college friend has his birthday tomorrow. Again, this Windows 8 hate thing just gets WAY overblown. Why static icons are some inherently superior thing for smart people but something that can deliver all kinds of information instantly is for stupid people is at best a bad argument.
 
Unknown-One said:
Tile sizes are adjustable, you know. You can shrink them all the way down to 56x56 on the Windows 8.1 start screen.

The tile sizes in this new Start menu look like they've all been scaled down even further, so the small-tile size will end up even smaller than 56x56. The labels even auto-disable when you shrink the tiles, so you your complaint about everything having over-sized labels doesn't hold water either :p
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ahhh because you can resize them in window 8.1 you assume you can resize them in 9 mmm we will see.
 
Hmm, I totally forgot about the live tile functionality. I guess there is a place for those tiles on the Start menu after all. The only one I really care for is the Foreca weather forecast, though.
 
heatlesssun said:
My mail tile is showing my last three unread emails. My Tweetium tile the latest three incoming tweets. It's 87 outside. The Dow was down 19.71. Oil spiked up 1.38. A college friend has his birthday tomorrow. Again, this Windows 8 hate thing just gets WAY overblown. Why static icons are some inherently superior thing for smart people but something that can deliver all kinds of information instantly is for stupid people is at best a bad argument.
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I never spoke about gettign information instantly, i spoke about the BIG icons all over the place that says MAIL or INTERNET EXPLORER... two different things...
 
Unknown-One said:
Why would you want to eliminate the ability to FULLY customize the right-hand pane of the start menu, though?

On Windows 7, that pane only has a fixed set of options. Now, you can pin any system locations you want to the right-hand pane.

Want Computer, Control Panel, Documents, a network share on your file server, and your Steam folder right in the Start Menu? Pin them to the right-hand side! As an added bonus, pinned desktop applications all use a uniform tile color (which is user-selectable), so it will look very clean.
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Being able to customize is great, however it doesn't have to be an eyesore to allow that functionality.


heatlesssun said:
This looks about what the rumors said. If the major problem here for desktop users is the supposed ugliness of the UI, then Microsoft has addressed the major issues it needed to for desktop users. All of the big usability issues that people have complained about for desktop users are resolved here. No full screen Start covering up the full screen, no hidden charms, a Start Menu, such that it is except for the right side with the tiles looks very much like 7's. People will bitch and moan about the flatness or lack of Aero transparency, but regardless of how those issues work out in the end, they had nothing to do with the points Windows 8 opponent made about desktop efficiency or productivity or needing to relearn the UI.

How this works with tablets and hybrids is the big question I have. That Start Menu is great for a lot of desktop users, it certainly won't be for most tablet users.
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Largely most of the complaints are resolved yes, still absolutely ugly but at least functionally speaking it isn't a train wreck any longer.

Looks like I am gonna have to go back to shell replacements like back in XP to have something that doesn't look like it was designed by a highschool art dropout.
 
Megalith said:
I think you'll be able to kill all the tiles on the Start menu, so all is well.
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This is the million dollar question. If the ugly tiles are forced on the Start Menu, Microsoft will once again demonstrate they've learned nothing.
 
Autopia said:
ahhh because you can resize them in window 8.1 you assume you can resize them in 9 mmm we will see.
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Clearly they are resizable in these screen shots, they show the small, wide and medium sizes available in 8.1. The one not missing if the large actually.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Looks like I am gonna have to go back to shell replacements like back in XP to have something that doesn't look like it was designed by a highschool art dropout.
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Or, you don't have to pin tiles! There is all this talk about choice and options yet some seem to overlook the most basic and simplest choices.
 
heatlesssun said:
Clearly they are resizable in these screen shots, they show the small, wide and medium sizes available in 8.1. The one not missing if the large actually.
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Hopefully I can recolor them as well..to something that doesn't burn the eyes. Just so long as the "All apps" button opens a List of programs and not a gd full screen of shitty icons. That is really all I care about. I'm pretty sure I can modify the rest of the garbage out.
 
heatlesssun said:
Clearly they are resizable in these screen shots, they show the small, wide and medium sizes available in 8.1. The one not missing if the large actually.
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like I said we will see! if not man it will get really funny.
 
DPI said:
This is the million dollar question. If the ugly tiles are forced on the Start Menu, Microsoft will once again demonstrate they've learned nothing.
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You never had to pin tiles in Windows 8.x so there was nothing to learn by Microsoft in that regard. The question is what else does that area do. It's possible that there may even be a tile size that looks likes old style shortcut.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Hopefully I can recolor them as well..to something that doesn't burn the eyes. Just so long as the "All apps" button opens a List of programs and not a gd full screen of shitty icons. That is really all I care about. I'm pretty sure I can modify the rest of the garbage out.
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Windows Phone allows tiles to have a transparent background, it's actually a very cool effect, I could see that coming.
 
Autopia said:
ahhh because you can resize them in window 8.1 you assume you can resize them in 9 mmm we will see.
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Assume? No, look at the screenshots. 3 out of the 4 available tile sizes in Windows 8.1 are already shown in the new Start menu...
 
Autopia said:
what are you talking about, on the 3 screen shots you see on the right side after the person clicks on start, mail, people, news in a nice big red tile none of the screen shots looks to me like they have been resized... thats the part I'm talking about, hence MAIL, INTERNET EXPLORER... kind of like that screen in idiocracy when joe goes to the Dr. and the dr tells him, uh put this in your mouth and this in your butt uh wait the other one goes in your mouth and this one goes in your butt...AFTER joe put the mouth piece up his butt.
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What are you confused about, exactly?

The complaint was that the tiles are huge... but that's user-configurable. You can shrink the tiles down to tiny squares if you prefer.

"MAIL" could be a tiny icon with no label, so could "INTERNET EXPLORER", and every other tile in the Start menu.
 
Lol @ all the cry babies. It looks perfectly fine. Windows 8 was not a bad OS at all... this gives the cry babies less to cry about and I still need to call the waaambulance. Wtf.
 
As an example, I'd probably customize my start menu by pinning a few choice shortcuts. I didn't use any of the micro-tiles here, but they will no-doubt be an option:

u0wGRoX.jpg


wabbitseason said:
Unlike the present nonsense, YOU CAN TURN IT OFF IF YOU WANT TO. How is this escaping you?
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You can't really turn off Aero Glass in Windows 7 without making it look even worse. It's still garish with Aero + transparency disabled, and it's just downright ugly if you drop back to Aero Basic.
 
Unknown-One said:
What are you confused about, exactly?

The complaint was that the tiles are huge... but that's user-configurable. You can shrink the tiles down to tiny squares if you prefer.

"MAIL" could be a tiny icon with no label, so could "INTERNET EXPLORER", and every other tile in the Start menu.
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FOR ME, and I know you will have a hard time trying to understand this, but why the hell do you need icons in the start menu? what purpose does it do? whats wrong with just having the names of the programs I'm looking for?
I find it really funny how worked up you guys are getting over the fact some simpleton like myself asking does microsoftt think people are so stupid that they need to put huge icons with names on it for people to find what they are looking for and does it matter that you can resize them, the answer is no it doesn't matter they still think the people using this crap is to stupid to find internet explorer or mail even though in windows 7 they stick an icon NEXT TO THE START BUTTON!
 
BTW I find this solution to be worse than windows 8. What is the point in having half a useless metro sliver jammed in an antiquated start menu? Oh its only purpose is to keep backwards people unable to move forward happy. But you know what it wont do anything but cause MS more trouble down the road because this solutions doesn't take advantage of live tiles or any of their advantages much at all. And it just means more people will be lost when they try to switch from a desktop to a mobile device. In the end all MS will succeed in doing is throwing in the towel and allowing google to win the mobile race. Next up google will slaughter Microsoft in the enterprise and desktop space.
 
Autopia said:
FOR ME, and I know you will have a hard time trying to understand this, but why the hell do you need icons in the start menu? what purpose does it do? whats wrong with just having the names of the programs I'm looking for?
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If that's your complaint, then no start menu EVER will please you... because every single iteration of the Start menu has icons...


Autopia said:
I find it really funny how worked up you guys are getting over the fact some simpleton like myself asking does microsoftt think people are so stupid that they need to put huge icons with names on it for people to find what they are looking for and does it matter that you can resize them
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Except they aren't forcing you to use "huge icon with names," you can change them to small icons with no names from the right-click menu.

Complaint resolved?
 
Those tiles sure look like an efficient use of screen real estate!
Count me in for the world wide launch. Sorry. The beta.
 
Autopia said:
FOR ME, and I know you will have a hard time trying to understand this, but why the hell do you need icons in the start menu?
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you guys just blow pass the question like zombies, resize resize, damn that isn't the question. to be honest with you I dont want icon in my start menu, I want words something that is lost now, reading!
 
Autopia said:
FOR ME, and I know you will have a hard time trying to understand this, but why the hell do you need icons in the start menu? what purpose does it do? whats wrong with just having the names of the programs I'm looking for?
I find it really funny how worked up you guys are getting over the fact some simpleton like myself asking does microsoftt think people are so stupid that they need to put huge icons with names on it for people to find what they are looking for and does it matter that you can resize them, the answer is no it doesn't matter they still think the people using this crap is to stupid to find internet explorer or mail even though in windows 7 they stick an icon NEXT TO THE START BUTTON!
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The only one getting worked up here is you.
 
YARDofSTUF said:
Now they just need a Windows 7 theme so its not super flat and I'm sold.
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Call me odd (well, I am) but I like the clean, cut, sharp edges of Win8 / 8.1 / 9. The crispness is a nice design. Never cared for the "Aero" -- too much fluff.
 
Climber said:
The only one getting worked up here is you.
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i blew it you got me. I knew I should have wrote that the caps were used for emphasis. FOR ME hence the emphasis, meaning: what I am looking for. next to the start button, meaning: look next to your start button in windows 7
 
rudy said:
You underestimate the luddites.
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rudy said:
BTW I find this solution to be worse than windows 8. What is the point in having half a useless metro sliver jammed in an antiquated start menu? Oh its only purpose is to keep backwards people unable to move forward happy. But you know what it wont do anything but cause MS more trouble down the road because this solutions doesn't take advantage of live tiles or any of their advantages much at all. And it just means more people will be lost when they try to switch from a desktop to a mobile device. In the end all MS will succeed in doing is throwing in the towel and allowing google to win the mobile race. Next up google will slaughter Microsoft in the enterprise and desktop space.
Click to expand...

You know, perhaps you should actually learn the definition of luddite before you continue making yourself look foolish. Also the notion that google/Apple haven't already won the mobile space and that google will somehow take over enterprise and desktops is laughable. Post more hyperbolic crap why don't you. :rolleyes:
 
There's never been an out-of-the-box Windows theme I liked. Thankfully there's always custom themes. Now MS just has to allow you to theme without replacing system files.
 
My issue with the Metro UI on the desktop/laptop is the way MS forced it on users.
MS could have set up the desktop/laptop Windows 8 with the Windows 7 UI and said:
"Hey, do you want your desktop/laptop to have the same interface as your tablet and phone? Then do this, and the default UI will be Metro."
That would have made sense.
Instead, the user had to spend an inordinate amount of time and effort to get rid of the tiles, resize the tiles or use something like Classic Shell.
 
heatlesssun said:
My mail tile is showing my last three unread emails. My Tweetium tile the latest three incoming tweets. It's 87 outside. The Dow was down 19.71. Oil spiked up 1.38. A college friend has his birthday tomorrow. Again, this Windows 8 hate thing just gets WAY overblown. Why static icons are some inherently superior thing for smart people but something that can deliver all kinds of information instantly is for stupid people is at best a bad argument.
Click to expand...

It sounds like you are describing my phone not my computer. Glancing has its place. For everything else, there's a proper OS.
 
N4CR said:
Those tiles sure look like an efficient use of screen real estate!
Count me in for the world wide launch. Sorry. The beta.
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Again, those tiles don't have to be there. The question is what else can be in the right column? These screen shots didn't show the options for configuring the Start Menu. Beyond the issue of Aero glass, all the other complaints go away if the right column can switch over to the old style of if old style shortcuts can be placed in that area.
 
heatlesssun said:
Again, those tiles don't have to be there. The question is what else can be in the right column? These screen shots didn't show the options for configuring the Start Menu. Beyond the issue of Aero glass, all the other complaints go away if the right column can switch over to the old style of if old style shortcuts can be placed in that area.
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I really took the subtle beauty of Aero for granted until Windows 8 came out.
 
BunnyKillBot said:
It sounds like you are describing my phone not my computer. Glancing has its place. For everything else, there's a proper OS.
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But don't you do things on your phone that were traditionally done on a PC like web browsing? Yet know one is going to say that web browsing on a phone is describing something that they do on their PC.

Yes, there are major differences between phones/tablets and PCs. But surely notifications that one can get on their phones should be possible on their PCs.
 
Ok, devils advocate here - I have windows 8 on my laptop (non-touch screen dirt cheap HP I picked up when Win 8 was released so I could become familiar with the OS), and windows 8 on my Dell Venue 8 Pro.

Win 8 on the touchscreen tablet is a goddamn dream. And yes, the start tiles make sense, as the resolution of what friends and family habitually refer to as my "pork paws" (why oh why did I choose the installation and repair of microelectronic circuitry as a carrier? I am grossly unsuited to it from a purely physical stand point, I should punching cattle or something) is such that the tiles make accessing the programs I want to launch a lot easier than trying to fat finger my way around the desktop.

When it comes to tablets with touchscreen, it is brilliant.

That being said, yeah, for a desktop with a keyboard/mouse, trifle unnecessary.
 
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