Re:Microsoft Will Soon Bring Back The Start Menu In Windows 8.1
by yuhong on Wednesday April 02, 2014 @03:51PM
(#7518458)
Yeah, and it's really fcking annoying to try to do that on a remote desktop to a Win2012 server with the same horrible UI. On a desktop you can just drag your cursor to the bottom right.. in an RDP window, it isn't so easy.
And the Server 2012 R2 upgrade was not free unlike Win8.1. While at it, don't forget the lack of IE11 too.
Re:Microsoft Will Soon Bring Back The Start Menu In Windows 8.1
by steve-howard on Wednesday April 02, 2014 @05:42PM
(#7519274)
Over RDP, I'd just use the Windows+C shortcut. Haven't been a huge fan of "Modern UI," but you can learn to work with it.
Disclaimer: MSFT employee, opinions my own.
Re:Microsoft Will Soon Bring Back The Start Menu In Windows 8.1
by spacelizard on Wednesday April 02, 2014 @08:45PM
(#7520105)
That doesn't work if you're RDPing from another Win8 machine, the local OS swallows the keybind. What you actually need to press is Alt + Home or Alt + Delete (good luck figuring that out without doing a web search).
I'm actually really confused why this is, it seems to be such an important use case. I would not be surprised if they didn't even test WS2012.
Re:Microsoft Will Soon Bring Back The Start Menu In Windows 8.1
by wila on Wednesday April 02, 2014 @11:59PM
(#7520858)
You can customize your RDP settings on how it behaves with key binding. You can set it local or remote.
Before opening the connection, click "Show options" -> Local Resources tab -> Apply Windows key combinations.
Beyond that, Metro is horrible when you have more than one large monitor. The UI simple doesn't scale well in that environment. It looks like 8.1 update 1 will finally be much closer to how it should have been.
It reminds me of Vista, where half the control panel UI was updated, and half wasn't, and it was just a bad mix of old/new. I don't mind a new UI. For that matter, I'm really digging Ubuntu's Unity interface, ymmv on that.
I think that Windows 7 had a really nice UI, and that metro should have been an option on top of that from the beginning. Trying to make a unifying UX for interfaces from your phone to tablet to dual-monitor desktops just doesn't work that well. You really need two options, and making the UI work for those metro apps in the desktop context makes more sense.