Bearing in mind the existing search box ALREADY searches the web, as well as your files/applications, it sounds like this new search box will have no real benefit to the user, as it's only offering a cut down form of what the desktop search offers.

I can see the benefit for Microsoft, because it means Bing is placed in front of the users, but what is the benefit for the user?

ask not what your operating system can do for you. ask what you can do for your operating system. ;p

Especially considering that most people have these things called "applications" open which hide the desktop behind other windows. Who is going to minimise things to get to a search box when they can just hit the Start button? Or better yet use the search box in their likely-already-open web browser?

Maybe instead of adding ugly, intrusive and questionable "features" like this, they might want to dedicate some time to adding back features they've removed and which people are actually requesting? Like 90% of the missing taskbar functionality perhaps?

... that you'll always Win with bars.

> This being the Dev Channel, there is also every chance the test feature will never see the light of day.

Hopefully.

You can almost see the cogs in the developers' minds turning. Now let's think, what part of the screen is most likely to be covered by an app?

And in order to maximise user-annoyance, that's where to place a new interactive text input box.

Dilbert is supposed to be satire, not an example to follow

'and, as ever, the company is keen for feedback on its ideas.'

Really ? They might be keen to hear (ie have people engage) but actually listening would surely be a first.

I actually liked the Active Desktop which came with IE4.......

BUT, my machine was quite powerful and wasn't on a network.....

Active desktop and that side bar widget thing that came on vista were the first things I got rid of after a clean install of Windows.

Not that I stuck with Windows very long, i ditched it and went back to XP until 7 came along a few years later.

Microsoft : playing with every single concept it can think of apart from making its OS streamlined, out of the way, functional and fast.

Well, that's the problem, isn't it? If it was all of those things you'd never notice it, and if you don't notice it, how can it sell you things?

MS have worked out that Windows isn't going to make them any money. Not in that nice steady-stream drip-drip-drip that big companies like these days. The idea of just paying a hundred dollars or so for something and then you - horror of horrors - don't pay for it ever again must keep their financials people awake at night in terror.

They're just desperate to find some way to make Windows "Relevant"(tm) - you know - get it all up in people's faces so it can extract some more money from them.

This is yet another attempt to get people to use Bing. I'm honestly surprised they've not been sued for the same old nonsense it keeps doing, with the existing start menu search box - leveraging its dominance in desktop computing to force people onto its other services.

This box? If you can't swap out the search source? Would pretty much guarantee that competitors lodge complaints.

Maybe they need to start poisoning search results like Google now does

A lot more people use Bing than you might realize, as Bing powered DuckDuckGo.

And DDG's, and therefore undoubtedly Bing's, relevance simply SUCKS. I use DDG almost exclusively and am constantly irritated and put-out by miserable search results. But the alternative is using Slurp Inc, and I am simply not.

I thought DDG was a meta-engine and used several sources ?

I agree with you about result quality, though. I use DDG because it's the default in Brave, but if I don't get a good result I soon try google instead.

Probably link it to Edge search preferences to get around competition complaints, not like they hide the option anymore, like they use to do.

....the less I want to have anything to do with it.

I assume you don't get a choice of what account to use with the search.