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Microsoft Prepares To Launch New Version Of Windows

By Ian Bush

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Windows 8 has won fewer fans than Microsoft hoped, when it designed the operating system to push people away from using a mouse with their PCs. Now, with its next version expected out in a year or so, the company is rethinking things.

They're skipping 'Windows 9.'

"Because we're not building an incremental product," says Microsoft's Terry Myerson, "that new Windows is Windows 10."

Myerson doesn't admit it, but the PC world largely wasn't ready for touch -- that pesky problem of having to buy a new screen, for one.

Now, the company that disappeared the go-to way to open programs and files fixes its mistake.

"When I click the Start icon there," says Microsoft's Joe Belfiore, "of course I get the Start menu."

But Microsoft's Joe Belfiore says Windows 10 doesn't completely do away with some touch-friendly features that mouse-clickers might like too.

"We have live tiles," he says.

They're boxes that display Facebook status updates, incoming email, weather, and photos. In Windows 8, they live in a separate world from the desktop, where many programs run. In Windows 10, they're added to the traditional Start menu -- with Microsoft hoping those still running the world's most popular operating system will want to upgrade:

"We want all these Windows 7 users to have the sentiment that yesterday they were driving a first-generation Prius," Belfiore says, "when they got Windows 10, they didn't have to learn to drive something new, but it was as if we got them a Tesla."

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