Windows 8.1 Start Screen vs. Windows 10 Start Menu

BunnyJ said:

Some like change and others like to use a consistent tool/product. And I don't see anything wrong with that but we here about this all the time and it does get a bit old, IMO.. but YMMV as usual.

Change is also called progress. Imagine if Microsoft had never moved beyond Windows 1.0 because they were afraid of changing anything. Or moving beyond Windows 95. Imagine if they were afraid to go to 64 bit.

Change has to happen or products die.

groze said:

What Microsoft needs to do is included apps in list as well as the group. There should be a registry hack for that.

So easy to do; just move shortcuts to the parent folder and hide the rest, takes 5 minutes.

Yeah right - alphabetical "in a way". But I think that is not good enough. It should be alphabetical all the way. Maybe Shawn can find a way to hack that. He is soooo good at that.

Edwin - how exactly did you do that ??

Thanks Edwin. I will play with it later.

I should mention:
If there are certain immersive 'Modern' Apps you want to hide, you'll need to create a folder for them and then hide the folder itself as the individual apps can't be hidden on their own. Take caution though as this method disables some of the apps abilities and you won't be able to invoke an instance of them while they reside in the hidden folder, unlike a native application shortcut which will run hidden or not.
DO NOT hide the 'Store', 'PC Settings', 'Search' and 'Desktop' shortcuts, it will mess some things up!

As for Store Apps, the ones you don't want you'll simply have to uninstall them.

Thanks for the additional info. I don't use these store apps anyhow. So they can go.

One thing I DO appreciate about the Start Screen over the Start Menu is the ability to Ctrl/Select numerous items to uninstall at once.
(but I prefer the Start Menu..., (I like both!!!))

HippsieGypsie said:

davehc said:

Microsoft might no agree with that?

As they say, one of several quotes:

"The Start screen replaces the Start menu in Windows 8.1 and Windows RT 8.1. "

"With Windows 8.1, you can start from the desktop you’ve always known or the modern Start screen with apps as Live Tiles."

Where did you find that first one? The second one supports a "Start", not a substitute. The desktop could be a "Start" or "boot-up-to screen".

Where is the Start menu? - Windows Help

But the argument goes on ad infinitum. It comes down, in the end, to a matter of choice. When I got my first glimpse of the Modern Apps screen, and saw the quoted comment, I immediately started to work with it on the basis it was the new start menu. Now, god bless, I find it far more useful than the text menu. I keep my (what I call) desktop totally empty for work in progress, my start menu remains available under one key. I have a large touch screen and several older laptops, but still prefer the mouse click method for speed.