After spending almost 20 years at the
bottom left corner of your desktop, Microsoft has decided to replace the start
button and start menu in Windows 8 have with a Modern/Metro UI full screen start
screen. When I have to search for basic commands (i.e., printing, searching,
even turning off the power), I can’t imagine a lot of users will be happy
with this change.
If you are not a fan of Microsoft’s
Metro Start screen, there is hope. A number of third-party applications have
popped up to provide the missing Windows 8 Start menu.
I found some interesting facts regarding
downloads of these third-party apps on neowin.net:
"Since the launch of Windows 8, Stardock
says it has seen over three
million downloads of its Start8 program that brings back the Start menu to the desktop. Another developer, Sweet Labs,
recently announced it had 1.5 million
downloads of its Pokki program that also offers a Start menu for
Windows 8. A few days ago, yet another company, Thinix, released a
new version of its own Start menu program, RetroUI. The company has
not revealed how many downloads it has generated from the program but did tell
Neowin that they were "very pleased" with the results.
People might complain about having to
get an add-on but they seem to be willing to give money to other companies for their Start menu
replacements. We think this is a missed opportunity."
In works cited:
John Callaham. “Windows 8
users still want a Start menu and a Facebook app.” http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-windows-8-users-want-a-start-menu-and-a-facebook-app.
Name of institution/organization affiliated with the site (sponsor or publisher).
Neowin.net. February 8, 2013.
Wow, that's kind of crazy! I guess sometimes developers see something as "more intuitive" or "better" but fail to recognize that we are mostly creatures of habit. Maybe they should have allowed users to choose between the traditional set up and this new one and then completely did away with the start menu in the next version. IT will be interesting to see if they stand behind the decision or allow it to come back natively.
ReplyDeleteI know, this is nuts. When we were first helping my sister-in-law set up her new laptop at Christmas, we couldn't find the power down/ start menu. We finally did a ctrl-alt-delete, which is not good for your computer.
ReplyDeleteOnce again, its something that I'm getting used to now, but I'm hoping that they will do an automatic upgrade of the Windows 8 software, because so many people are unhappy with the changes. I don't think that we should have to pay for an add-on, when its something that should have been included automatically with the program.
Oh my, I am not looking forward to getting windows 8. I think I will prolong it as long as I have to. That is just craziness. Thanks for the updates, you are helping us learn through your experience.
ReplyDelete