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Infoworld reports that with Microsoft scheduled to provide a technical preview of its new Windows 9 operating system at an event on September 30, screenshots and videos of the Windows Technical Preview have been leaking that show the addition of a new Start menu, a virtual desktops feature, and a Notification Center. Here's a recap of what's been revealed so far:
The desktop's Start Menu returns, with Windows 7-like cascading menus on the left and Metro tiles on the right. Menus and tiles can be dragged, dropped, pinned, unpinned, resized, and sliced and diced. We haven't seen any fully functional "interactive" tiles as yet — Metro apps that respond to interaction with their tiles without popping up on the screen — but I expect that will be coming soon.
Metro apps running in resizable windows on the desktop. There appears to be some debate about whether the Charms bar will get the axe in the process, but all of the Charms you're likely to want will be in the right-click menu in the upper-left corner of the title bar.
Virtual desktops, which will undoubtedly get some sort of whiz-bang marketing name, because "virtual" is supposedly too spooky for consumers. Windows has had virtual desktops since Windows XP, but you had to install a third-party app (or something like Sysinternals Desktop, from Microsoft) to get them to work.
A Notification Center, which displays and lets you get at both bubble and toast notifications. It's long overdue.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Saturday September 20 2014, @08:40PM
it doesn't cost them anything now, but definitely will cost more in the future. how much did the european government pay microsoft recently to continue getting XP support because they refused to upgrade for more than a decade? not to mention the cost from exploits, security holes, and bugs. i'm not saying every company should always immediately upgrade to the newest version, but if more businesses at least tried to stay somewhat current, they'd be less likely to get stuck with ancient hardware and ancient, buggy software because the critical software they need is only available on one version, created by a company that vanished years ago because there was no longer a market for their product, like we see today with so many business being unable to upgrade from XP even if they wanted to.
i seem to remember "innovate or die" being something that businesses strove to live by. that means staying stagnant (like not upgrading software / hardware until there's literally no other option) is bad for business. today's "short term profits over all else" is sending many companies on a one-way path to their death.