In response to reading the article “Windows 8.1 Available Now” on Mashable.com
To be honest, the wasn’t an article I intended to post about. I began reading it because of an excerpt under the main title on the homepage that said “marks the return of the start button.” At first I was thrilled that the new Windows update was bringing back the good old fashioned start button, but as I read on my dreams were thoroughly crushed.
As the article developed, it became clear that the start button was not the same. As the article stated, “the new button is just a quick doorway back to the Start screen (and doesn’t have its own pop-up menu, as in previous versions of Windows).” This isn’t the same start menu we all know and love, this is an imitation. It just opens up the stupid new start screen that is the icon of Windows 8 and all its failures.
Maybe I just cannot accept change. Maybe I need to let go of the past and welcome Windows’s new look. Maybe I am slowly becoming the next generation of old men who cannot accept modern technology. But the Windows start screen is so inconvenient, and I cannot bring myself to like it. In what way is a whole new screen an upgrade to a pop-up menu? The menu made an easy to navigate list of everything you could ever need to find. The start screen, however, lists a select few items on a side-scrolling page, and wastes excessive space on clickable boxes you could hit with your fist. It is obvious that Windows 8 was focused on the concept of touch screen use, but it didn’t have to be made to hinder regular, mouse using people. Also, searching on the new start menu is not intuitive at all. The pop-up menu was nice because the search bar appeared right in front of you (for Windows Vista and 7), since it was most likely what you planned to use anyway. The Windows 8 start screen is cluttered with distracting boxes and unnecessary visuals, and gives the user no inclination that a search is even possible. By instinct, the user has to know to just start typing. Then a search menu similar to the one Windows users are familiar with will appear.
The update for Windows 8 is not a fix, it is a tease. In my opinion, Windows should go back to the previous interface for all non-touch screen devices, or at least make such an option available for people who would like to upgrade but don’t have the money to buy a brand new touch screen computer.
KatzMcGee 
I think you articulated the prevailing criticism of Windows 8: “Also, searching on the new start menu is not intuitive at all.” There’s no excuse for companies to offer us technologies that don’t build on already-established patterns and routines that make sense to us. Apple beats Microsoft regularly because design is a fundamental part of its vision; design seems to have always been secondary to Microsoft. We are not stupid or resistant to change when we encounter the difficult new look of Windows 8; what we already know is being ignored by a design that doesn’t have user interface principles in mind.