Any thoughts on Windows "Blue" this summer?

[fuzelogic]

Do you think Microsoft will bring back the Start Button?

I've read online that it has improved the Charms Bar and Search, but can't much about other features to be included.

With the 3rd party add-on to bring back the start button with a mod to Win8, it's not too bad, but I hardly visit the Metro screen

[jasonelmore]

I sure hope so. If the start button was back, it would have had a great reception imo

[zanzabar]

i really hope that they have an option to make metro (or live tiles or whatever they are calling it) the desktop background with a normal windows 7 UI. and i want the full aero back.

[fuzelogic]

Agreed, with the power of the computers these days AND the amount of storage, why CAN'T they give end user a selection to choose whatever theme they like?

[s1nykuL]

Much of the updating included in Blue applies to Internet Explorer, Mail, Calendar, Bing and other integrated apps.
There are allegedly some improvements to the kernel to help with performance battery usage.
All this is sketchy though and without MS confirmation is just speculation.

Blue is just more lock down and tie in.

Microsoft are moving towards annual incremental OS updates and will expect the user to shell out some ?/$ for each update. Looks to me like they are taking a lead from game publishers: Provide a product for a price then charge extra for all those bits that should have been included or working in the first place.

Microsoft are envious of the way Apple's business model works. They are slowly changing their own business model with Windows to match that of Apple. Eventually all settings that allow the user to choose which online services (mail, search, cloud services, application store etc) to use will be hidden or obfuscated and eventually removed all together leaving no choice to the user but to use MS services.

If you value your freedom to do what you want with your own hardware and to connect to whatever services choose, Windows 7 should be your last MS OS and a Linux distro should be considered for your next.

This is just my opinion and may bear no resemblance to how things actually pan out. Still, after quite some years of living I have learned to value my own opinion more than the marketing hype spouted by manufacturers.

[fuzelogic]

installing packages on linux has improved immensely since even 5 years ago, BUT try adding a simple program such as flash for firefox and you can still encounter problems.

I agree with your statements on moving to linux in the future as I've been archiving ubuntu versions that I like so that I could install a preferred version in the future and understand updates may not be available, BUT I would still have the system that I would like.

For some reason, some of the linux programs still have a "old" feel to them due to the X server and it still seems to be lacking something to make me want to jump strictly to linux as of now.

Also, I dread the day where I would need to move all the files I've created up until this point over to linux and hope everything is still intact

[s1nykuL]

Yes Linux isn't really ready for the mainstream consumer market. It still takes some intelligence to use and help is often required when migrating from Windows.
Where as Windows can be used by an idiot, plus most if not all of that idiots friends use windows too, so help is readily available.

The fragmentation of Linux into a myriad of distros only helps geeks, it just confuses the average consumer. And although all these disto's are supposedly the same OS there are many differences in how system files such as the etc folder the way init.d works the way services are handled. Of course this wouldn't matter if the end user did not have to tinker in this area but unfortunately the often do.

The old feel to some programs doesn't bother me too much. I have always been one for functionality over form anyway.
I actually run Linux (ubuntu server) in a VM on Windows 7 for some of my work as well has having a Linux Mint box run 3 other CentOS VMs
My Windows 7 machine is my toy, I play games and watch/record TV on it. Windows 8 brings me nothing of use.

Any how this is getting OT, I am just grateful that I am not tied to Microsoft for anything.