Slumping sales awaken Microsoft: Windows 8 to become more “Traditional”-

Windows 8 is now over a year old and it has captured less than 10% of the PC market. Windows 7 is selling better than Windows 8/8.1 – because it’s the traditional Windows — with a start button that opens a start menu.

Microsoft’s radical departure from the traditional, caused a slump in PC sales — the lowest in five years. Microsoft doesn’t appear to listen to its customers, but it sure looks at its bottom line.

Microsoft no longer lives in an isolated world where consumers have few choices — either spend big bucks on Apple, learn to use Linux, or buy Windows computers. Windows computers are everywhere – Wal*Mart, Target, Best Buy, Staples, Office Max, K-Mart, Sears — but you’d find it much more difficult to find a computer with a version of Linux on it — and Apple computers are available for a lot of money -at only selected stores.

But tablets and smartphones are selling very well and far outpace the sales of Windows PCs. Microsoft will soon be in a position of providing new versions of Windows free to its customers or find itself losing customers. Microsoft can no longer command $109 updates or $400 office programs — the world is changing and the Android and Apple operating systems are used on more devices than Windows.

It looks like the sleeping giant of Redmond is awakening though — maybe even opening its ears and eyes to its dwindling customer base. Windows 8.2 might be a whole lot more like Windows XP and Windows 7 than Windows 8.1.

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News from Redmond: Start menu in the future of Windows 8

Microsoft (MSFT) intended Windows 8 to be a revolutionary change in its operating system, but something went awry along the way. Rather than take a stand with a radically new “modern” interface, Microsoft compromised with a hybrid OS that combined the old desktop with a new modern start screen and app ecosystem. And then the company infuriated customers by arbitrarily stripping out core conventions of the desktop like the Start menu. According to Microsoft pundit Paul Thurrott, it might be coming back.

Last week, Paul Thurrott announced that the next version of Windows 8 — sometimes referred to as “Threshold” or Windows 8.2 — will have some important updates to appease traditional Windows users. In particular, it is expected to restore the Start menu and modern apps will run in windows on the desktop.

At this point, you might be confused — Windows 8.1, already available, has restored the traditional Start menu on the desktop, hasn’t it? Not exactly. In the wake of Windows 8’s release in October 2012, users demanded that Microsoft restore the Start button. Microsoft did exactly that in Windows 8.1, but of course what users really wanted was the Start menu, not just a button to launch the new (and reviled) modern Start Screen.

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