In today’s Wired.com:
“Here’s your first look at Windows 8.1”
Gotta say, I have learned a lot about how to streamline both my Win 8 and Win 7 experiences.
Starting the search automatically when I type from the splash screen is very, very handy.
I have Win 8 at work, and the only complaint I have is actually about Office 2013, and its inability to load Access files generated from some old software we use. I’ve had to do my exports as tabbed text files, which is a lot less handy.
Will 8.1 include Media Center?
Your Windows 8 doesn’t? Mine does.
It doesn’t by default. Too expensive to provide it for everyone. So it’s only available as an extra if you buy the right version.
Basically, 8.1 slaps a fake “Start” button onto the desktop that leads to the touch-based wasteland of gigantic screen-eating tiles.
Ballmer has turned around, dropped his drawers, and given the users a mooning with wet fart overture.
There’s no shortage of free media players out there, though, and most manufacturers are putting their own versions on machines that have dvd drives.
You missed the part where you can change the size of the tiles, then?
That’s pretty messed up.
(Anyway, I never actually use the thing. Media Player Classic all the way.)
Edit: Now the post I first replied to has been edited to say “Media Center”, not “Media Player”. I suspect there is some confusion going on.
The most promising thing is this:
They are venturing cautiously into the exotic world of resizing options. Not too fast. They still aren’t willing to let users resize the start screen. But there are signs that just maybe they will eventually come out of their shell into the modern world.
a rather strange comment from someone clinging so desperately to the past…
It must really hurt you that MS is going to allow 4 Metro applications to run at once in resizable columns.
I have no idea why though. Is it because you can’t multitask, and it pains you to imagine people with multiple windows/columns open at once? It hurts your brain to think about someone performing searches while participating in a live meeting?
It may well be the future though. Think about this: what is the biggest weakness of resizable windows? Historically, they haven’t been smart enough. When you multitask with many open files/programs/searching, it is not easy to have everything arranged and sized perfectly.
In that sense, MS is on the way to inventing Windows again. They have already arrived at the “columns” stage of development. Windows are a natural progression. But this time, the windows could exist in a way that made them easy to resize and arrange all at once.
Just rows and columns would be great even. If I could have a resized start menu that appeared as a row at the bottom of the screen, maybe 1/3 of the height of the screen, that would work. Of course, having options would allow everyone to get it how they wanted it, which for you would still be a strict “one thing on the screen at a time please” policy.
You already have the option for all of those things, it’s called the desktop. You are, for no obvious reason, complaining about something additional that doesn’t impact on your use of that option.
I don’t have a start menu on the desktop, so I don’t have all those things.
Do you agree that my idea is a natural progression from what MS is doing?
Right now, you can open 4 Metro apps and have them open in visible, resizable columns. Being able to use rows is an obvious extension.
Then, if the desktop itself is an app, logically you should be able to open things from the desktop and have them appear as a column or row. In particular, why not let the start screen itself appear as a resizable row when called from the desktop?
Yes, I made a mistake and wrote Media Player instead of Media Center and edited my post to fix it.
nm
as I’m composing this post, I’ve 6 windows open on my *nix workstation using CDE as the desktop environment.
no, it’s because- out of the six windows I have open- my attention is focused on writing this post. i.e. as I’m writing this post, the other five windows might as well not even exist.
developers are lazy sacks of shit who don’t write their software to be able to accommodate arbitrary window sizes?
This is because you are just a haughty sniff user who thinks it’s a big deal that he can add Calc to his Start menu. 
I would go for years turning down offers to update my AutoCAD revision because it would take too long to migrate all of my changes in the service of efficiency.
Sure, if it’s a simple calculation. Then I’ll copy and past the answer into what I need it for.
I have no idea. As I said before, I’m a hardcore XP user. I’ve used Vista on my daughter’s laptop and Win7 on her notebook, but not a lot.
I could do it in one, if I had it in my taskbar. But for real calculating I usually use a real calculator.
“Now, on large desktop screens, you can run up to four applications at once.” WHAT THE FUCKITY FUCK? I have four apps running and all I’m doing is griping here! When I’m working I have more like ten. What the fuck is all that RAM for? Shit-oh-dear, just on my old 512-KILObyte Tandy Color Computer running the real OS-9 I often had four apps running in different windows. And if the apps were small enough I could probably do it in 128k.
Four apps? That’s a joke, right?
Yeah, I wish someone would explain what’s the big deal with this. Doesn’t everyone already do this? I often have Photoshop, Illustrator, inDesign, Adobe Bridge, and Word open along with my email and a couple of browser windows. With 8 MB of RAM, they all do fine. I always have multiple windows open and floating (with the desktop showing in the background) on both my monitors. So…what am I missing re the noteworthiness of this?