Windows 10 is here and the good news is they gave us back the Start Menu. The bad news is they stuck us with the lame Windows 8 Metro style App Tiles. Now I have managed to put together a pretty decent collection of useful apps, and resized them all to the smallest size, but I really miss the Windows 7 right hand column with the list of useful short-cuts. I used them all the time, and I really miss them. I also miss the search programs and files box at the bottom of the start menu. Yeah, Cortana is cool, but I still really believe that Windows 7 was the pinnacle of operating system development.
For those of us that use the computer as a work tool and not a toy, some of the changes are just hard to justify. I don’t want my computer to be like my phone any more than I want my car to be like my vacuum cleaner. Or my hammer like my screw driver.
Good news is that Classic Shell, whose wonderful Start Menu replacement program made Windows 8 useful for the tens of millions of Windows 8 users who installed it, has release a windows 10 Start Menu application that will return the familiar and more useful Windows 7 style Start Menu to Windows 10. I am running this on a file sharing computer in our organization, and I really like it. So far I am sticking with my commitment to pure Windows 10 on my principal work laptop. Classic Shell is free, as before.
Another option is available from Stardock, called Start10. Start10 is $5.00, but has some features that you may like, such as the ability to mix the classic right column with some app tiles.
More information:
AUG