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Windows 10 New Start Button redesign
- Thread starter Comixbooks
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Windows 95,98,ME,2000,XP, Vista were good start menus. At Windows 7 you had to click extra clicks to open up more menus because everything was collapsed. After 7 it went downhill. I liked the Windows XP start menu the most. The old menu was more structured and required less clicks to load a program. Just better mostly.
DrLobotomy
Supreme [H]ardness
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I only use the Start menu once to find my link then drag it to desktop cuz I like desktop shortcuts. Been this way since win 3.1.
Yes my desktop looks insane to most peeps. Yet I know where each one is and what I use it for.
Yes my desktop looks insane to most peeps. Yet I know where each one is and what I use it for.
Not a matter of it being an insult or compliment, it's just a matter of us not being the same person. Heatless was way WAY more knowledgeable about MS products than I am. Once you get beyond Windows and to some extent Office I've got nothing, unless you count the XBone that I bought last BF to play RDR2 in 4k.This man is definitely not Heatless. I have no idea how anyone could be so insulting!
I dual boot Linux and Win 10, but when I'm running Win 10, the vast majority of the applications I use are what you call 3rd party crap. I use Firefox, Thunderbird, Everything search, numerous Nirsoft utilities, VLC, Libre Office, Sumatra, Media Player Classic, SageTV, g++, jEdit, CodeBlocks, Code Composer Studio, Affinity Photo (sometimes Photoshop) and of course games (Steam and GOG). About the only things I use regularly that are included with the OS are Windows Explorer and Robocopy.
I do wish there was a Robocopy for Linux. I use rsync, but I like Robocopy better.
DeathFromBelow
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And all the people running unregistered copies of Windows 10 (or just not using it) are doing what, exactly? They aren't paying Microsoft a couple hundred dollars a year like Technet users did, that's for sure.
If Microsoft offered something like Windows 7 as a subscription product maybe Microsoft would be able to afford a QA team again. Users would be happy, enterprise customers would be happy... Microsoft wanted to play Google and make a bunch of money off of an app store and data mining. It's not working and users hate it, so why not do something else?
Hi Heatless. Nice attitude.
We were told the same things about Windows 8. Turns out the start screen was a really stupid idea, maybe Microsoft should pay attention to what users are saying instead of trying to tell them what to think with internet sock-puppetry.
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Huh? MS never expected massive revenue from 10 upgrades and the point was that your not paying MS for stuff is a meaningless statement, since everything you got for free is still supported. Regardless, 7 is dead in a few months, just like XP died and 2000 before that. You're saying the same crap I've heard over and over again for 10 years and people with better memories than mine have said they remember this crap when XP was released. I only remember allegations that MS was going to spy on you if you upgraded to SP1 (or was it SP2?).
And FYI, XP didn't surpass 2000 until 2005 (and 2000 was almost exlusively used by Businesses...thus the reason why the top MS OS is always dependent on when business adopts the OS.
But believe what you want. I've said since 2015 or 16 that this OS wouldn't overtake 7 until this year (late this year as I recall).
GoldenTiger
Fully [H]
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Yep. The whining about XP was legendary.
I'm not too sure knowledgeable is the term I'd use.
Besotted with Microsoft/In love with Microsoft might be a little closer to the truth, but not really knowledgeable as such..
Respect, I know you're not the same person.
You like Robocopy better? Really?
We all have our preferences and I'll admit I haven't used Robocopy since the DOS days, but from what I remember rsync is better than Robocopy in every way.
Well its not hardcore command line stuff you guys use, but for those of us peons, theres synctoy ( windows).
Well the one thing we had in common was we both said this year would be the year it'd overtake 7, because businesses are notorious for avoiding a new OS if they can and always waiting several years after the release. And IME, it's not just the OS. My last company avoided upgrades like the plague, going so far as to pay Oracle a fuck ton of money to support a software version (because they didn't trust Oracle to provide a seemless upgrade). Same with version of Linux. We did it when we absolutely had to. Billing Software? Yeah that was put off too.I'm not too sure knowledgeable is the term I'd use.
Besotted with Microsoft/In love with Microsoft might be a little closer to the truth, but not really knowledgeable as such..
Respect, I know you're not the same person.
As an individual, I don't really worry about it. The only exception was Windows 8 and that's because I had no need for an upgrade...but a year or so b4 10 came out, I did it, because I wanted 5.1 surround on my PC when watching Netflix, and 8.1 did it, while 7 did not. Other than that, I didn't really see much difference between them, unless the calculator full screen. if so, that would have been annoying.
At this stage they all look the same to me, Vista through 10, along with most of Gnome and KDE, and OSX... They are just an amalgamated blend of stuff I have stopped caring I wouldn't say any of them are much different than the other at this stage.
HAL_404
[H]ard|Gawd
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Windows 10 New Start Button redesign ...
reminds me of the movie "Up" where Dug the dog is talking to his new Master and suddenly turns and says, "Squirrel ! "
meanwhile Microsoft now forces me to sign in with an account when re-installing Win 10, uses a blur screen upon start up (really sucks; they should fire whoever came up with that one) and therefore the last thing I'm focusing on is the Start Button
reminds me of the movie "Up" where Dug the dog is talking to his new Master and suddenly turns and says, "Squirrel ! "
meanwhile Microsoft now forces me to sign in with an account when re-installing Win 10, uses a blur screen upon start up (really sucks; they should fire whoever came up with that one) and therefore the last thing I'm focusing on is the Start Button
atreidesgoldenpath
Gawd
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This has promise.
I don't use the Start Menu list of Programs all that much. Mostly I click Start or hit Win Key then type to launch anything.
I don't use the Start Menu list of Programs all that much. Mostly I click Start or hit Win Key then type to launch anything.
So this method doesn't work anymore? I haven't reinstalled in years, but I definitely never had to enter a MS account.
I reinstalled relatively recently and if memory serves, I didn't need to enter a MS account. Though it's possible they've changed it since I last did that.
I just did an install for my son's new system and was able to skip the MS account login. I re-installed since I finally got some new hardware and didn't need the MS account while using my Win7 Ultimate retail key. For my system I had previously done the upgrade and then reverted later back to Win7. Only went Win10 on my system due to the better scheduler for Ryzen.
Does anyone use the start menu? I have not since Windows Vista. I press the Windows key and type in whatever, select the icon and press enter.
I never understood all the complaining about the redesign in Windows 8. Sure it was a big change but did it matter? The search feature worked the same as it had in the previous two versions.
I never understood all the complaining about the redesign in Windows 8. Sure it was a big change but did it matter? The search feature worked the same as it had in the previous two versions.
drescherjm
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I do when the search does not work. One reason is I have many items with the same or similar name. These are usually executables that are supporting tools to the main executable and are in a folder in the start menu. This happens to me a lot as a c++ programmer.
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DeathFromBelow
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I don't use Windows very often anymore, but yes. At work we usually have a new set of software tools every few months for whatever project we're working on. Each project gets it's own folder on the Start menu. Start search is handy if you know the name of what you're looking for, but when you have to go looking for something the 8/10 menus fall flat. I have the same problem in Ubuntu, when I can't remember the name of something you have to go hunting for it in a massive list of software. I miss my ultra-simple Classic Shell start menu:
^ This really is the optimal solution; Start Search for quick access and a simple, organizable menu when you need it. Looks a lot better than the current Windows 10 implementation, too.
The key frustration with all of this is that Microsoft decided to use the Start Menu as an ad for their app store, breaking a lot of the simplicity and functionality that made the older start menus so good. This was particularly bad in Windows 8 where it was a full screen mess that broke your workflow. Windows 10's changes seem like a half-assed attempt to correct that. Why not just bring back the decent Windows 7 start menu and give users what they want?
They should bring back the full Aero Glass theme while they're at it, copying Apple's awful 'flat' look isn't doing anything for PC sales.
I can't say I never use it, but it's rare. I can say I didn't always (ever?) use Vista with search...or at least I didn't with Control Panel. I don't know how it worked, but once I learned I could use Control Panel with search, I was in heaven. I was able to find tools even when I had no idea where they were. And starting with 10 I started searching for those tools form the start menu.
The flaw is that search doesn't include folder names in the start menu. Furthermore, they don't allow you to pin the folder to the start menu (though you can probably drag a shortcut to the taskbar, but that solution ranks a distant 3rd). Sounds like Ubuntu doesn't do that either. It really doesn't make sense, since you can search for folders within explorer, and I assume you can search for a folder in Ubuntu's file manager too. #shrug
I think they got rid of Aero because it uses more processing power (GPU?). I'm use to the flat design, but I generally liked Aero better. Of course I'm on a desktop 99.9% of the time, so I don't care about battery life. I also like that they work well on high dpi screens, while the old versions just became ridiculously small.
DeathFromBelow
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Yeah, I think it was aimed at making 8 less intensive for mobile hardware, but I also definitely get a sense that they were trying to copy Apple's 'flat' iOS design paradigm and get users to buy apps. It ultimately... fell flat. Users were just really annoyed by the stupid Start Screen.
There were so many missed opportunities in 8. I remember you had to 'swipe up' to login; if I were designing the thing (and it had to be a hybrid OS) I would have used a similar gesture to switch from desktop to tablet mode. You'd have a regular 7-ish desktop with Aero glass and start menu. Then, by 'swiping' the taskbar up to the top of the display you could switch to 'tablet mode' with the clock/taskbar/settings buttons up top and a typical home screen grid you see on Android/iOS devices filling the rest of the display. A simpler theme without the glass transparency effects could be provided for lower-end hardware, but I wouldn't have made it the default. If you're going to radically change the product it needs to be familiar and fun, not an annoyance.
Did IOS go flat first? I thought iOS went flat after 8 came out. As for switching, I don't think they want to support 2 different guis, and I assume even more complexity in their APIs, though that's just a guess, since i"ve never done real world MS programming. And while I like the look of Aero more, it's really just cosmetic. I think changing wasn't just the transparency, because, as I recall, there was a way to turn that off in 7. I don't have an MS tablet, but I vaguely recall reading that 10 looks more like 8 when on a tablet...maybe someone else here can confirm if that's true.
This is why god invented Search Everything by Voidtools. Instantaneous search results as you type.
That MS hasn't bought them out and integrated the code into windows search seems like a missed opportunity for a slam dunk to propagandize how much faster Windows 10 is than 7, "cuz look how fast it searches". Similar to the way many people bought into the hype that Windows 8 and 10 were inherently faster than 7 because "look how fast it boots up compared to 7!" (thanks to kernel hibernation/resume trickery).
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d3athf1sh
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F**K YEAH. all the time i got what i want pinned so i can use mouse to get to it. i don't want to have to type everything i do on my pc. i use mouse quite a bit. i'm sure a mouse click or two is got to be faster than typing everything you want out especially since you're prob gonna have to use the mouse anyway when the program starts? who knows?
and yes it matters who wants that big ass unintuitive block of shit popping up every time i hit the start button?!! wtf was wrong w/ win7 start? why not make THAT the last version of windows???? why 10? MS gonna be the next IBM...