Microsoft does an awesome job of revamping the Windows 8 Task Manager

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.