Microsoft does an awesome job of revamping the Windows 8 Task Manager
Summary: Out with the old Windows Task Manager, in with the new!
I give Microsoft a lot of grief about stuff, partly because the company is responsive, partly because I know the company can do better, and partly because I know I'll be spending a lot of time using whatever new package of bits that the company puts forth.
But sometimes Microsoft gets something dead on accurate, and when that happens it deserves a shout out. One example of how Microsoft has used the telemetry is gets from users to improve something dramatically is the new Task Manager in Windows 8.
Take a look at this:
This is brilliant. Utterly brilliant. It's brilliant because this one window gives users easy, one-click access to the most commonly used action in Task Manager - ending a task. Microsoft has the telemetry to back this up:
Note: OK, let's get all the jokes about this being the most used feature out of the way before we go on!
Over on the Building Windows 8 blog, Microsoft has detailed some other neat Task Manager changes that you might have missed. Three that I've been finding to be really useful in my Windows 8 dealings have been:
Grouping of top-level under the parent process
Search the web for details of processes
Friendly names
As someone who has been using Windows 8 quite a lot, I can tell you that these are very nice changes indeed.
One more thing ...
A request. Can we please get better solutions from Problem Reports and Solutions? Here is a fine example from today of the sort of stupidity it pours out:
Was that information helpful? No Microsoft, no it wasn't.
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For service hosts with one service i hope they promote that name to the level
improvement
separating the task-ending from an activity monitor has been in mac os x forever. it just shows that microsoft is driven by engineers who don't really care about usability or use cases. doing the obvious in windows 8? really? what an improvement!
RE: Microsoft does an awesome job of revamping the Windows 8 Task Manager
I really appreciate your efforts. Thanks for sharing such a great post.
<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/joe-t-allen/41/22a/127">Joe T. Allen</a>
New Taskman
RE: Microsoft does an awesome job of revamping the Windows 8 Task Manager
RE: Microsoft does an awesome job of revamping the Windows 8 Task Manager
By the way, it's getting farcial now... next to the HTML5+javascript, cd mounting, mounting virtual hd images, app store, etc., etc. this makes feature #43,756 they seem to be lifting straight from Linux (in this case, KDE). KDE already has a prominent "End Process" button in its task manager. I guess they didn't need telemetry data either. :-) What they have that Windows 8 apparently doesn't, however, is a search box so you can find/jump to the process you're looking for without scrolling through every process on the system first, and a dropdown filter to filter by system, user, own processes, all processes, tree view, etc.
There's not going to be the ability to set process priority or affinity in Windows 8 via right click? I'd think those would be the #2 and #3 things users would want to do.
What if you selected the wrong process?
Shouldnâ??t the darn OS work by itself?
Why waste time on that system level crap when you should be busy programming, improve a photo or write a letter?
I???d be more exited over a Windows with, say, a more consistent user interface or why not a Windows not so darn fragile to malware attacks???
Too many mysterious processes going on
We still haven't gotten a clear answer from Microsoft yet!
RE: Microsoft does an awesome job of revamping the Windows 8 Task Manager
Did you even get to look at the image in the article? One of them is exactly what you are asking. Take your time at least to look at the pictures before yapping.
RE: Microsoft does an awesome job of revamping the Windows 8 Task Manager
I wanna know exactly what service it is. Not what System32 .dll it points to.
RE: Microsoft does an awesome job of revamping the Windows 8 Task Manager
It's a crucial part of Windows every one has to see from time to time and it's simply far to complicated for the average user.
RE: Microsoft does an awesome job of revamping the Windows 8 Task Manager
But it could also be that user don't use the process view because it doesn't provide the information they need, or has some other deficiency.
You can't always gauge user intent and desires from their actions.
RE: Microsoft does an awesome job of revamping the Windows 8 Task Manager
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RE: Microsoft does an awesome job of revamping the Windows 8 Task Manager
RE: Microsoft does an awesome job of revamping the Windows 8 Task Manager
RE: Microsoft does an awesome job of revamping the Windows 8 Task Manager
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Improved yes, awesome, dunno
-M
PS: No fanboys please, I use both platforms on my desk every day, equally.
Service Host Friendly Names - Thank You!
RE: Microsoft does an awesome job of revamping the Windows 8 Task Manager