Windows 10: The Mouse And Keyboard Are King Again

Windows 8 has not done well. Microsoft wanted desperately to thrust everyone into a brave new world full of touch devices and create a single experience across all of the companies many platforms. Things didn’t go as planned, and for over a year now the company has been stumbling in an attempt to actually realize this vision. As has been expected for some time now, Microsoft is taking a step back while it moves the version number forward. Windows 10 is on the way, and it looks like we’re back to loving the mouse and keyboard.

Microsoft has all but ditched the Modern UI that we all know and tolerate, and stuffed those live tiles into the Start Menu for the most part. If you have something with a touch screen, the full screen experience is available but it looks a little different. You have access to file storage on top of Live Tile access in this view, but not a ton else has changed.

The biggest news here is for experiences that still include a mouse and keyboard, which is basically most of them. The UI is no longer focused on touch in these situations, which means no more dragging windows to the bottom of the screen to close them. There’s still split-app support in situations where you want apps to snap half screen, but otherwise it’s back to a primary Desktop experience.

There are dozens of other changes ready for the technical preview, which is available starting now. This will be the best way to get to know the OS while Microsoft prepares for the launch of Windows 10 in the consumer space. Microsoft is expected to make Windows 10 available next year to consumers, and like before it will be an attempt to unify all of Microsoft’s experiences under a single banner.

That means we’ll see Windows 10 Mobile as well next year, with an experience that will hopefully do a better job actually merging these experiences. We’ll be diving in alongside the rest of you to check this out and see how much of what Microsoft is promising holds up, but so far it looks like Microsoft is taking the right steps towards fixing some of the damage caused by Windows 8.