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Windows pain in Microsoft shake-up

The world's most familiar computer system is getting a radical makeover that is likely to baffle many after it goes on sale on Friday

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Windows pain in Microsoft shake-up

Over the years, Keith McCarthy has become used to a certain way of doing things on his personal computers, which, like most others, have long run on Microsoft's Windows software.

But last week, when he got his hands on a laptop running the newest version of Windows for the first time, McCarthy was flummoxed. Many of the familiar signposts from PCs of yore are gone in the new software, Windows 8, like the Start button for getting to programs and the drop-down menus that list their functions. It took McCarthy several minutes just to figure out how to compose an email message in Windows 8, which has a stripped-down look and on-screen buttons that at times resemble the runic assembly instructions for Ikea furniture.

"It made me feel like the biggest amateur computer user ever," said McCarthy, 59, a copywriter in New York.

Windows, which has more than 1 billion users around the world, is getting a radical makeover, a rare move for a product with such vast reach. The new design is likely to cause some head-scratching for those who buy the latest machines when Windows 8 goes on sale on Friday.

To Microsoft and early fans of Windows 8, the software is a bold reinvention of the operating system for an era of touch-screen devices like the iPad, which are reshaping computing. Microsoft needs the software to succeed so it can restore some of its fading relevance after years of watching the likes of Apple and Google outflank it in the mobile market.

To its detractors, though, Windows 8 is a renovation gone wrong, one that will needlessly force people to relearn how they use a device every bit as common as a microwave oven.

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