What is there "to navigate through"? In Win7, press start and type. At least the whole screen doesn't puke on you when you do it. I don't think I've clicked that 'All Programs' button in years.
But more realistically, all the apps I want to run are always already running. There's nothing for me to "Start". If not for installing security updates, my system uptime would be several years.
What I actually want is major improvements to Alt-Tab. The most frustrating thing is how it frequently screws up the z-order when I'm switching back and forth between multiple apps. It seems to forget where I came from, and a single Alt-Tab sends me to the wrong place. The window 'latching' and Win-<arrow> shortcuts they adding in Win7 does help a bit with this, but doesn't obviate the need for much better Alt-Tab.
I think the second major flaw is, just because I happen to have 10 different excel sheets, 10 PPTs, 10 notepads "open", does not mean each one needs its own blank square in the Alt-Tab view. They figured out how to stack properly in the taskbar, but it didn't translate to the Alt-Tab view?
The concepts of "open" and "running" seem quite outdated to me. Assume everything is "open", everything is "running", and I don't need to "Start" anything. But I do need good tools to context switch and organize multiple windows across multiple screens. A full screen of identical looking icons is NOT the best solution, IMO.
I don't think metro itself is very good, and, like I said, I don't use it.
I use Win+Q for searching (much like I use CMD+space on mac) and never even open the metro interface. I agree with you that the start menu and the idea of running/open are outdated.
But more realistically, all the apps I want to run are always already running. There's nothing for me to "Start". If not for installing security updates, my system uptime would be several years.
What I actually want is major improvements to Alt-Tab. The most frustrating thing is how it frequently screws up the z-order when I'm switching back and forth between multiple apps. It seems to forget where I came from, and a single Alt-Tab sends me to the wrong place. The window 'latching' and Win-<arrow> shortcuts they adding in Win7 does help a bit with this, but doesn't obviate the need for much better Alt-Tab.
I think the second major flaw is, just because I happen to have 10 different excel sheets, 10 PPTs, 10 notepads "open", does not mean each one needs its own blank square in the Alt-Tab view. They figured out how to stack properly in the taskbar, but it didn't translate to the Alt-Tab view?
The concepts of "open" and "running" seem quite outdated to me. Assume everything is "open", everything is "running", and I don't need to "Start" anything. But I do need good tools to context switch and organize multiple windows across multiple screens. A full screen of identical looking icons is NOT the best solution, IMO.