I don't give a rat's ass if designers want to play with new concepts, but when they take away the tried-and-true fallback (or bastardize it,) that's going too far. I'm already perfectly happy with the old interface, thanks, I don't need some art student-turned-UI designer at Microsoft telling me what I should be interested in.
Wow, taking things a little serious I think. MS are not trying to tell you anything, there's nothing wrong with the "tried and true" but things have to change otherwise we would stay in the same place.
Advancements wouldn't be made if the human race stuck with the same thing. As for the tried and true that's still there, the old desktop remains for older applications and for people to still use.
The start menu is even there in an improved manner, just hover the mouse over where the start menu use to be and hello a newer version of one appears :-)
I think people need to remain open minded and give things a try. Change should not be feared or put down, wait for it to be released for awhile.
A year or two from now I predict most people will have a different view. I was around for the Windows 3.11 to 95 change and that was very much the same thing, same arguments as well but just look where the 95 start menu got us, XP/Vista (shudder horrible OS just slightly better than ME) and 7.
I love 7, but it needs to evolve like most things do. I use to hate the new ribbon menu in Office 2007/2010 but since using it for awhile going back to Office 2003 etc and the interface feels outdated and slow.
I look back at Redhat Linux, first edition I tried was 4.0 had to mount drives manually, no real wireless drivers that worked straight out of the box, sound card drivers that never really worked properly. Would boot straight to the shell and then it was a struggle getting xwindows working with your graphics card once it loaded it was a struggle with a buggy windows manager and I compare that with the new interface of Ubuntu completely different but would I go back to Redhat 4.0 don't think so. Ubuntu is starting to feel more uniform and the UI just works.
Anyway give MS a chance let the tech mature. No need for hostile attacks, after all we're all adults here. Take a deep breath, slow down and enjoy life, tech, family, friends etc :-)
