Replacing Windows 8's Missing Start Menu 396
jfruh writes "The Start Button, which has offered Windows users quick access to important programs, folders, and configuration options since 1995 and has looked more or less the same for all that time, has been re-engineered beyond recognition for Windows 8, replaced by a Start Screen of colorful Metro tiles that greets the user upon startup. One big problem: once you enter Desktop mode to access non-Metro apps, you lose easy access to all the stuff you expect from the Start Button. This has given rise to something of a cottage industry for Start Button replacements, with multiple replacement utilities available even before Windows 8 officially arrives."
how about (Score:5, Insightful)
replacing the missing Windows 8 with Windows 7 instead and just like, carry on with life?
As a tech guy get used to it (Score:5, Insightful)
You might hate it, but you're gonna look really stupid if you don't know how to use Windows 8.
My Stadegy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop Bitching and complaining about every change in technology and get use to the the Damn thing.
I remember all the bitching and moaning about the Start Button when it was created. And now is is some God Sent UI that you can't live without.
If you get get Windows 8. you will figure it out shortly and you are back to normal.
Re:Why use Win 8 anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:how about (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Windows 7 is still very new and works wonderfully. I was happy with Windows 95 until 2001 when I finally got XP. Windows XP worked well until I replaced it with Windows 7 in 2010. There is nothing Windows 8 offers that make me want it. I'll pass.
Re:As a tech guy get used to it (Score:5, Insightful)
No more than stupid than when people skipped Vista. In other words, no.
You might hate it, but you're gonna look really stupid if you don't know how to use Windows 8.
Re:Why not Microsoft ? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you keep it, people will keep on using it. Windows 8 Goal is to get Laptop and PC manufacturers develop more tablets and touch enabled devices. If you kept the start bar, PC makers will keep on making normal PC's and slowly die away with other OS's like Android and iOS taking over.
Re:My Stadegy. (Score:3, Insightful)
For some reason, techies always seem to be the ones bitching the loudest about changes in technology - a field that exists only because of change. The funny thing is, it's just an endless cycle. They'll bitch about change N+1, but when it's time for change N+2, they'll bitch about how N+1 is the greatest thing since sliced bread and taking N+1 away is horrible. Then when N+3 comes, suddenly N+2 is fantastic, and N+3 is sheer idiocy. And so it goes.
Come back in 20 years, and it'll be the same.
Re:Why not Microsoft ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:My Stadegy. (Score:5, Insightful)
This time, it might not work. I'll stick with my windows 7 for now, and probably some flavor of Linux down the road (unless required to use Windows 8 for work).
Re:Why not Microsoft ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Trying to force a tablet UI on a general purpose machine like a laptop or desktop is just as bad as trying to use a desktop OS on a tablet. Microsoft are pretty much ensuring that no matter what you try to use Windows 8 on, you get the worst of both worlds..
The Big Desktop Issue? Swapping Between Screens (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:My Stadegy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the Start button wasn't that great in the first place. It was essentially a select set of shortcuts.
A much better solution exists in Mac OS X, and should be emulated.
Pin to the Dock the following folders: Home directory, Applications.
Set them as list, sort by name.
Access to ALL files/folders/applications with one click.
No navigating into the hard drive if the installer didn't put a shortcut in the "All Programs" folder.
Re:how about (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows editions are like vintage wine or Star Trek movies: they are alternating good or crap.
Win 98 with all updates was great, Win ME sucked big time, Win XP is legendary, Win Vista is a mess, Win 7 is superb.
Sooo, I'll be sticking with 7 until Windows 9 :-)
Re:As a tech guy get used to it (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, as a tech guy, I rarely have to use the desktop installs I roll out except for internal testing. That's the user's job.
And although we can all USE the new interfaces, they are diabolical to some of us to use every day for every program you run. Most users barely run a program or two each session. I have twenty open now and I'm winding down for the end of the day (I work in schools).
I've lost count of how many times I've had to say to someone "I don't know, I never use that program, I'll find out". I might install it, support it, maintain it, debug it, deploy it, patch it and get it running on machines it's never supposed to. But I probably don't USE that program in my daily life very much at all (e.g. the finance programs, school reporting programs, etc.). That's for the users, for whom I can answer any problem if absolutely necessary (even if it means struggling against UI's and even personal user options that I hate) and can source external training for if need be.
But the fact is that in my daily life, the new UI costs me time compared to the 20+ critical systems set up to use a much more basic and consistent UI than that Metro junk that DOESN'T try to tell me how I should work.
God, I can't even use some people's desktop layouts or wallpapers they are so horrendous. It doesn't mean I don't support them and/or that I must use them myself on the servers and my own machines.
I have yet to ever "learn" to use an OS before it's been out for a year or so. Hell, I've deployed and supported Windows 7 machines for years - and still my first personal machine with it on was this September. What *I* use has absolutely no correlation to what my *users* use, which has absolutely no correlation to what I support (which is much vaster in scope and more in-depth than any of them will ever touch - in comparison, a tricky way to start programs is the least of my problems, but one that's easily solvable when it does crop up by deploying Classic Shell, for instance).
The new Windows 8 install we have planned for next summer? Guess what's loaded on it, and we haven't even seen the full OS out in circulation yet.
My view. (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of you will hate this, so fair warning.
I love Windows 8. Let me tell you why. The start menu is supposed to be an efficient program launcher. Ok, so to launch programs with the start menu, you have to click the start button, click "all programs", click your app folder, then click the application to start it. That's 4 clicks. To start a program in Windows 8, I click the start screen area, then click the application, that's two clicks. That's a quantifiable efficiency gain. People have argued against this by referring to pinning apps to the task bar and desk top and the start menu pinned item lists.
First, Windows 8 has the task bar and desk top, so it doesn't make sense to argue with those, if they're so good, use them in Windows 8 instead of the start screen. Two, I like the desktop and task bar clear of every thing, I never liked pinning items to the task bar because it makes it less efficient to determine what's running, I like to glance at the task bar and know everything there is running, where as in the past I have at times, in a rush, mistakenly thought something pinned was running and something running was pinned, which caused problems. The Desktop is a workspace that ideally should be clear of short cuts, as a user will do things like unzip folders there, and create many temp work files there, that need to be moved or deleted, which short cuts will get in the way of, and accidently removed. The start menu's pinned item list can only contain a few items (5 or so), so while they can be launched in two clicks you are severely limited in numbers vs. the start screen which can launch 40-60 apps in two clicks. What I like to do is unpin everything except my main apps/games, and a few metro apps I use, then group them and name the groups (minus button in the lower right.) A small action that makes things much better than the default.
Visual recognition of large distinct icons is a much nicer way to launch programs, rather than reading folder names where often a folder name is not related to the name of the app you are trying to launch, if you have many apps it can be difficult to remember which app is in which folder causing quite a bit of digging.
With the start screen, in addition to saving clicks versus the start menu, and being easier to find the program, you can have live tiles that give you a lot of useful information. I have an email counter, several news sites, calendar, upcoming events, and other things one click away. So why not stick with gadgets and other widgets and system tray notifications you are probably asking at this point? Well, several. Security, stability, and Power. Metro apps are run in a strict sandbox, they install and uninstall in isolated, clean fashion, so no installation or uninstallation of a metro app can corrupt the system, user data, or other metro apps, and they have strict requirements such that they can not use any CPU when not being used by the user, and very minimum system resource usage for notifications. .5% cpu at all times, randomly accessed the disk, and increased DPC Latency, and it was a relatively well behaved email tray notifier as I tried a few others. A small amount, but it adds up for many such items. And programs like that that you (or the average user) gets from the web, have free reign over your user account, even if you don't run as admin (and you almost always have to give them admin at least once to install), they can still steal any user account data and credentials from your browser. Metro apps, being tightly sandboxed, can't read or touch any other data in the user account. I find this to be pretty important, and imagine a huge boon to productivity if users get a lot of their system/productivity utilities from metro apps instead of downloading random programs on the web, where the security risk is much higher.
Contrast this with some desktop apps I was running before to accomplish these tasks, my email program was using about
Windows 8 has a lot of performance increases in it, like for real time audio
I remember when Win95 came out (Score:4, Insightful)
Lot's of people kept using Program Manager anyway because they didn't like it. I wonder how many people still do now?
Re:how about (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't recall correctly
Windows 3.1 was not so bad but buggy
Windows 95 was semi-good. got better with osr2
Windows 98 was a big step backward. It got better only with SE
Windows ME was uter crap. Actually I skipped this version because I used Win2k at the time.
Windows 2000 was great. Probably the best Windows OS of all time.
Windows XP sucked at first. It was basicaly a slower version of Windows 200 with a Teletubbies interface. It only got better with the various service packs.
Windows Vista was as shitty as ME.
Windows 7 is actualy Vista, but working.
All in all, in the last 20 years, Microsoft released a total of only two good os: Win2k and Win7. A far cry from alternating between good and crap.
Re:how about (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:how about (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't understand why so many people consider Windows 2000 "the best OS of all time." Windows 2000 was so wildly insecure that it was responsible for the several of the worst virus/worm outbreaks of all time.
Re:how about (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, Windows 8 under the bonnet is pretty damn good. Boot times, responsiveness, file copying, the task manager are significantly better on windows 8 than 7.
It's just such a crying shame they saddled it with that godawful metro interface riddled throughout. I've been running it now on at least one pc since the original developer preview, but I've now got the RTM only on my gaming rig - metro is just so embedded (I see you haven't got a default app for that filetype - let's go look for a metro one on the windows app store! Ugh.) I still find it stupidly annoying, even after months and months. I *can* use it now, but I really don't want to.
Even if you wedge in a start menu replacement, there's still fragments of metro left over, and it's just irritating, and more so the longer you use it. Such a shame; the rest of windows 8 is a real performance improvement over 7, and they finally fixed bulk file copying to actually *work*. There's no way I could roll it out to the end-users on the work network though. I'd get lynched.