Give Windows 8 the Start menu it deserves - hookerseepearrough

I'm not looking forward to Windows 8—and with in effect reason. If you don't have a touchscreen, there's non much to like about the Interface Erstwhile Known atomic number 3 Metro. The fact that this hobbled version of the old, acquainted with desktop interface lacks the beloved Start menu doesn't assist.

But have got no fright; the Start carte is here. Deuce part utilities add a Windows 7-expressive style Start carte to Windows 8. Since both allow you to boot directly into the desktop, either one can protect you from even looking at "Metro" unless you dead ingest to.

Of the cardinal, Stardock's Start8 well-nig nearly resembles the Windows 7 Kickoff menu. You have to labor pretty deeply into the program to find where it waterfall short—its configurability. Stardock currently offers Start8 equally a free beta, and has not up to now put over the final price.

The assimilative-source Classic Eggshell is free and will continue so. Patc IT falls far short of Start8 in its Windows 7 mimicry, it's far Thomas More configurable.

Each public utility has its limits, but either one can make Windows 8 a far friendlier environment for experienced users.

Start8: Stepping up from 8 to 7

Once you install Stardock's utility, Windows 8 will look comfortably familiar. You'll undergo the old Windows 7 Start menu—with the same look and functionality. You'll discover the shortcomings later.

The final version of Start8 won't come out until October. I tried and true a beta version that, patc available to the public, is not yet waiting for comprehensive use.

The Start menu looks and behaves remarkably like the very thing. Click the First orb, and you get the same two panels with the same options.

The left control panel shows the list of recently used programs, and a right-click gives you the option to pin a program permanently to the height of this list. As with Windows 7, many of the programs have their own recent-files list.

Simply the resemblance isn't complete. Right-click one of those recent files, and you'll find the appropriate alternative to pin the file on the Start card. But—leastwise with this beta—that option does aught.

Start8 protects you from "Metro's" Start screen. When you rush, the program brings you immediately to the screen background (you can buoy turn this lineament off). You can even launch the fresh "Subway" apps from Start8's Protrude menu.

Of course, when you launch one of these apps, it opens in the three-dimensional, 2-dimensional stylus of Windows 8. You can't have everything.

But if you like to configure the Originate in computer menu, Start8 bequeath let down you. Right-click the Start orb, and you'll find options to disable Windows 8's screen background hotspots and to change the Start ball's look (I like the deliver print). But you won't uncovering a Properties option. Start8 offers zero way to change the Powerfulness button natural process, Beaver State to seduce Computer or Ascertain Board display as a menu.

Another configuration shortcoming: You can't cart and deteriorate the contents of the All Programs section. If you want to, say, move wholly of your photo programs to their own hierarchical menu, you'll have to coiffure it the clumsy way: right-clicking All Programs and selecting either Overt or Out-of-doors All Users. And even this method doesn't avail you move the Underground apps.

Start8 is largely a take-information technology-as-is offering. Simply it can still make Windows 8 feel like domestic.

Classical Shell: Configure information technology to be anything…except, possibly, what you want

The archetypical time you click Classic Shell's Pop out clit (which looks like something collectively created aside Microsoft and the Shell oil company), you don't get a Bulge computer menu. Instead, the program asks you what kind of Head start menu you want: Windows Classic, XP, or Vista/Windows 7.

This is just the first tab of an highly pick-occupied duologue box. In Alkaline mode, it offers three tabs. Merely if you select All Settings, you get 13. In addition to options familiar to Windows 7 veterans (much as whether documents display as a link or a window), information technology allows you to change the look of the Start orb, and separately ascendancy the main menu and submenu scroll speeds.

You pot save your settings every bit an .xml file, and thereby electrical switch 'tween configurations.

Unfortunately, the Scene/Windows 7 menu behaves more like View than Windows 7. Although it displays recently used programs in the left Ze, there's no clear option to pin programs to the list. You rump efficaciously personal identification number a program past dragging it below the note (unlike in Windows 7, where the pinned programs are to a higher place

the line), but this oddly leaves the program in both places.

On the plus side, you lavatory insert a brochure at a lower place the telephone circuit, and drag in additional programs into what effectively becomes a subfolder. But on the negative side, Classic Racing shell lacks application-specific recently used Indian file lists—a major advantage of the Windows 7 Originate menu that's painfully missed Here.

You'll have no trouble organizing the All Programs computer menu (which Classic Shell calls Programs)—e.g., to place whol of your media players in the same submenu. As with Windows 7, you can simply drag and fell shortcuts and folders.

Classic Trounce tries to protect you from the Windows 8 Start screen but with limited achiever. Unless you choose otherwise, it brings you directly to the desktop every time you boot Windows 8. But it doesn't list Windows 8 apps, requiring you to electric switch from the Start menu to the Start test (by default, you come this aside Shift-clicking the globe) to launch one of the newer apps.

For a course of study that's supposed to bring you back to a comfortable, familiar way of working along your computer, Classic Beat out has a surprisingly long learning bender. But if you want non only a Start menu but as wel a configurable one, this program is worth checking out.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/461138/give_windows_8_the_start_menu_it_deserves.html

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