Cloud Nine Squad {C-iX}

The start menu is BACK!




I'll still never understand why Microsoft skipped Windows 9 though.

I could be wrong, but my first impression of the unexpected number is that, from a marketing standpoint, they skipped the number "9" because they wanted to leave the impression that Windows 10 is not going to follow too closely in the footsteps of Windows 8. I'm glad to see them ditching that stupid start screen, but I still think that if they really want to keep the "live tiles" idea afloat, they need to do exactly what they're going to be doing in Windows 10 except ditch the live tiles in the start menu and place them on the actual desktop in place of the desktop icons.

Outside of my personal opinion on the tiles, the changes I see are exactly what I remember suggestion to BM and Pausie. My suggestions were:

1) The start screen needed to be ditched entirely and the live tiles should be placed on the desktop. This wasn't implemented like I had hoped since they put the tiles in the start menu instead of replacing the desktop icons, by they definitely took it a step forward by placing the live tiles in a more reasonable place.

2) The "metro/app mode" needed to be ditched entirely. They appear to have successfully done this by making the Windows "apps" in their own resizable windows. I give a huge +1 to this implementation.

Very excited for this release. It looks like the technical preview is out, so I'll be trying that tonight.

Is the Start Menu completely replacing the Start Screen? Good move if so. They need to move all the PC Settings menus from the Metro UI to regular desktop windows again.

The only negative I see is that they're integrating internet searches in the Start Menu's search. The search function in Windows 8/8.1 is painfully slow because of this. Hopefully local results show up quicker.

I've played with the Tech Preview for a bit now.

The return of the Start Menu was nicely done. The Start Screen is now optional and not shown by default. I like having the ability to resize my Start Menu. It's unfortunate that the 'All Programs' list is cluttered with Metro apps by default, so we'll have to deal with cleaning those out if that doesn't change by the final release. I don't use Metro apps, but I'll likely have live tiles in my Start Menu for weather and news.

I'm still learning the 'Task View' aka virtual desktops. It's a neat idea, but it's been tough for me to learn and is especially confusing with multiple monitors.

Other than that, not much has changed.