# Windows 8 Start Menu



## Steerpike (Sep 16, 2012)

For those who miss the classic start menu in the legacy desktop on Windows 8, this free app works great:

Welcome to Classic Shell


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## JCFarnham (Sep 17, 2012)

The stuff microsoft have removed from the shell... that stuff I could get used to eventually. Though I'm glad there's an app for stripping it back to the classic system.

But for a music technologist like my self the media changes piss me off. The following is ripped from wiki.



> Windows Media Center will no longer be included by default in any version of Windows 8, but will be available as an add-on.
> Windows Media Player will no longer provide DVD playback functionality, although DVDs will still be playable in Windows Media Center if it is purchased separately.



It's doesn't get any crapper than that. If I want to do what I thought was standard, par for the course stuff, I now have to buy it, or use a programme (sorry _app_) that doesn't quite measure up in my expectations. Now a lot of you will probably say the media player was useless, but to that I say all I need is something simple that plays what I tell it to play. I couldn't care less for interactive functions, or something that scrobbles what I'm doing to some mythical cloud somewhere else for no good reason ...

If and when I can no longer have a windows 7 pc, I'm switching to an different OS, bugger the added hassle of struggling with compatibility issues.


Sorry for the rant, but thank you for bringing that start menu fix to my attention. That could make things a lot easier in transitioning. Mind you, I don't doubt that I'm just blowing steam here and will probably love 8 all the same. Any thing that makes things easier to cope with is fine by me.

But... damn.


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## Chime85 (Sep 17, 2012)

Wait....there's a Windows 8!!! When the hell did this happen?! Have I been in my cave for far too long? lol


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## Aidan of the tavern (Sep 17, 2012)

Windows 8?!?  I've only just got Windows 7!


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## JCFarnham (Sep 17, 2012)

Chime85 said:


> Wait....there's a Windows 8!!! When the hell did this happen?! Have I been in my cave for far too long? lol



I know right. That got me too! So I read up on it ...


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## Steerpike (Sep 17, 2012)

JCFarnham:

I hear you re: Windows Media Player. I think we'll see trends moving this way (in fact we already are). Mobile device in particular often don't include optical drives, and Microsoft probably figured why pay for the licensing fee on every installation of Windows 8 when a lot of them will be tablet-style devices that don't even have DVD drives.

It doesn't impact me too much, because I always install my third party apps of choice and don't use Windows Media Player, but it will probably catch a lot of people buying PCs off guard. I'm guessing the PC-makers like HP who like to sell "media center" style laptops will pay the fee and bundle it with their PCs, so that the end user gets it upon purchase.


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## Steerpike (Sep 17, 2012)

Aidan of the tavern said:


> Windows 8?!?  I've only just got Windows 7!



Yes. I've been using the Release Preview for a while now. It boots up a heck of a lot faster than Windows 7. I stay in the legacy desktop most of the time, and with the Classic Shell app I linked it functions more or less like Win 7 for me, with the option to use "Metro" style apps if I want to.


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## Mindfire (Sep 17, 2012)

Steerpike said:


> Yes. I've been using the Release Preview for a while now. It boots up a heck of a lot faster than Windows 7. I stay in the legacy desktop most of the time, and with the Classic Shell app I linked it functions more or less like Win 7 for me, with the option to use "Metro" style apps if I want to.



So Windows 8 _doesn't_ completely trash the desktop? Because there's no way I want a tablet style interface on my laptop.


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## Steerpike (Sep 17, 2012)

Mindfire said:


> So Windows 8 _doesn't_ completely trash the desktop? Because there's no way I want a tablet style interface on my laptop.



No, while it does boot into the "Metro" style interface that is geared toward tablets, one click puts you in the legacy desktop which looks just like Windows 7 except there is no start menu (which this app remedies).


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## Mindfire (Sep 17, 2012)

Why'd they jettison the start menu?


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## Steerpike (Sep 17, 2012)

Mindfire said:


> Why'd they jettison the start menu?



Only reason I can think of it that they want everyone to access applications, the control panel, and the like from the new Metro-style tablet interface. That interface is now called "Start," I think, and if you mouse into the corner of the desktop you can click into it. But it adds a step if you only want to be in the legacy desktop so I like this app. Microsoft haven't removed functionality so much as moved it around to fit the new design, and from the standpoint of the legacy desktop it simply adds a few steps to do the same thing you'd normally do from the traditional start menu.


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## writeshiek33 (Sep 17, 2012)

yeah windows 8 is based on the mobile /tablet operating sytem they developed honestly i think microsoft is loosing it but they need to make thier money somehow for that reason i understand mwedia player thing but damn it still pisses me off


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## Steerpike (Sep 17, 2012)

I doubt they're going to make a lot of money on Windows Media Player for Windows 8. I think they're just trying to avoid paying license fees on each installation when many of them won't be using the DVD playback codecs to begin with.


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## Sheilawisz (Sep 17, 2012)

Some time ago, my friend from Madrid showed me Windows 8 via a remote connection to his PC... He was able to download it for free because he is a university student, and just wanted to show me how awful it was.

To me this new Windows looks like something for Phones, not for computers!! It's really strange...

Anyway, I am very happy with Mac and I will never go back to Windows =)


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## Steerpike (Sep 17, 2012)

I really hate macs.   

Windows 8 isn't bad,  but people very overly agitated about change.


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## Penpilot (Sep 17, 2012)

Steerpike said:


> I doubt they're going to make a lot of money on Windows Media Player for Windows 8. I think they're just trying to avoid paying license fees on each installation when many of them won't be using the DVD playback codecs to begin with.



FYI to anyone who cares, I use VLC media player. It's free, light weight, and can play pretty much everything. I think it's a legitimate alternative.  VideoLAN - Official page for VLC media player, the Open Source video framework!


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## Mindfire (Sep 17, 2012)

Penpilot said:


> FYI to anyone who cares, I use VLC media player. It's free, light weight, and can play pretty much everything. I think it's a legitimate alternative.  VideoLAN - Official page for VLC media player, the Open Source video framework!



True but its ugly. Useful, but it needs a more modern look.


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## Mindfire (Sep 17, 2012)

Steerpike said:


> I really hate macs.  .



*+1*



10Char


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## JCFarnham (Sep 17, 2012)

Something about the mac system ticks me off. I sometimes do a lot of work in audio manipulation programmes Audition, Logic and the like. Specifically in Audition a right click is a very easy way to edit clips at a macro level. In mac of course you have to find a way to turn right clicks on before you can do this. It shouldn't bug me as much as it does, but in university I was faced with a native mac user who insisted on turning right click off on my usual iMac. Every. Single. Night.

My friends and I have also lost many hours of work for as far as I can tell, no good reason.

That being said mac os' run smoothly enough. I just don't like the packaging fetish companies have at the moment. They need to realise that sometimes it's better if you _can_ get into the innards of the machine (soft _and_ hard.) Any way... 'nough of that.

Microsoft is moving in that direction in an attempt to keep up/being innovative. Apparently we consumers need everything to seamlessly interact, and be fully "interactive" with flashly mouse/finger movements, swooshing, gestures and graphically intensive looks.

I don't know. 

Sometimes it's nice when your software doesn't sync all over the place to thousands of different locations, or mine you for information which it uses to "enhance your experience".

yeeeah...


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## Mindfire (Sep 17, 2012)

JCFarnham said:


> I don't know.
> 
> Sometimes it's nice when your software doesn't sync all over the place to thousands of different locations, or mine you for information which it uses to "enhance your experience".
> 
> yeeeah...



Actually, I like what google's doing in the sync/cloud department. Google Drive might save me a ton of hassle if decide to start use it as my native writing tool instead of MS Word, simply because I can access my files from anywhere and there's no threat of losing the data. I've had flash drives fail on me before, causing me to lose entire manuscripts, which is why I'm now OCD about backing up my work to Google Drive anyway.


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## JCFarnham (Sep 17, 2012)

Mindfire said:


> Actually, I like what google's doing in the sync/cloud department. Google Drive might save me a ton of hassle if decide to start use it as my native writing tool instead of MS Word, simply because I can access my files from anywhere and there's no threat of losing the data. I've had flash drives fail on me before, causing me to lose entire manuscripts, which is why I'm now OCD about backing up my work to Google Drive anyway.



The Cloud is a fantastic concept, I'll admit.

 I was more raging again the kind of software that updates things based on other stuff in order to do that, or this, or whatever else. I like my software to stay insular unless I tell it otherwise. I'm private like that. 

Syncing was probably the wrong word to use.


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## Mindfire (Sep 17, 2012)

JCFarnham said:


> The Cloud is a fantastic concept, I'll admit.
> 
> I was more raging again the kind of software that updates things based on other stuff in order to do that, or this, or whatever else. I like my software to stay insular unless I tell it otherwise. I'm private like that.
> 
> Syncing was probably the wrong word to use.



Ohhh. Now I get what you mean. The new ideology of linking absolutely everything together in one large conglomerate online account. Yeah, sometimes that's helpful, other times it's not. It's really not. Every other time I log on to youtube I get a message encouraging me to display my full name on my account instead of my username. Why would I want to do that? Why would _anyone_ want to do that? If that's the kind of thing you're raging against, I feel you 100%.


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## JCFarnham (Sep 18, 2012)

Mindfire said:


> Ohhh. Now I get what you mean. The new ideology of linking absolutely everything together in one large conglomerate online account. Yeah, sometimes that's helpful, other times it's not. It's really not. Every other time I log on to youtube I get a message encouraging me to display my full name on my account instead of my username. Why would I want to do that? Why would _anyone_ want to do that? If that's the kind of thing you're raging against, I feel you 100%.



That's the thing entirely. 

No doubt because I have recently made a new gmail account I'll be linked into google plus. While I'm sure it's a great tool if you get used to it, I just wanted the email account and that's what I'll use it for. 

Apple products are like this for me. They monopolise their customers. You _have_ to get such and such is you have this, or the worse. Oh it's broken? Well, we made it so it can't be opened up and fixed, so you'll have to buy a new one... It's a bit of an annoyance shall we say haha

That's enough derailing 

So if Microsoft is trying to move in on this market then all the world is mad. At least you can still hand a pc to someone and get it fixed or altered.


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Sep 18, 2012)

Being able to get at your data from any device, anywhere, is a great goal, and we're partway there. Eventually it'll settle down into standard protocols and formats, and it'll just be the way everyone does everything all the time. Ideally you'll be able to choose which services you use for which particular tasks, so that you don't have to have everything reliant on a single company.

That said, Google does a pretty good job with its services.


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## yachtcaptcolby (Sep 19, 2012)

The cloud is no different from any other technology: it's great when it works, and people hate it when it doesn't. In general, I prefer applications and services that do one specific thing and do it well to products that try to do everything but do it in a half-assed manner. I'm looking at you, pretty-much-every-Microsoft-product-in-existence. Except the Xbox. I love the Xbox.

In regard to YouTube and the whole displaying-your-real-name thing, I believe it's aimed at reducing online bullying. People are more likely to be jerks when they've got a screen name to hide behind. There's a lot of talk about that sort of thing in various corners of the Internet.


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