Why the Windows 10 Start screen is slowly growing on me

waltc · 03 May 2016

Trust_No1 said:

I am not a fan of 10, and like others I like my Windows 8, I still prefer the old Windows 7 menu over 10 by a gazillion times. So, no brainer for me. 10 offers nothing that would make me switch.

Edit: (I actually read this wrong...sorry...thought you said you were still using Win7.)

Under the hood, Win10 is far better than Win7 (Win7 is actually getting fairly long in the tooth, imo...;)) When Win7 was new it was by far the best OS Microsoft had ever done, but Win7 hasn't been "new" in many years. (Compared to Win10 it runs like it is mired in molasses, imo.)

I cannot tolerate the the Win8/10 Metro UI and fear it will never, ever grow on me. But that's the thing most often ignored by people--in both Windows 8 and Windows 10 you can boot straight to the desktop and forgo the Metro UI completely and the ooooo-gly full-screen start menu and those hideous square tiles that take up so much room unnecessarily. Main difference between Win10 and Win8 in that regard is that while Win8 forces you to install a start menu if you want one (like the Windows 7-style Classic Shell start menu that is free and highly regarded), Windows 10 actually comes standard with its own start menu, again (like Win7.) It takes but a few mouse clicks to remove the tiles from the Win10 start menu (and they never come back) and the system boots into a desktop by default if that's what you want. Best of all, no advanced-knowledge tweaking required--it's all built-in the Win10 UI, standard...;)

The Metro UI is so ugly because it is designed for a touchscreen--big square tiles that are mostly blank when displayed, etc. But in Win10, Microsoft suddenly remembered its ~1.5 billion Windows users worldwide who needed and wanted and preferred a UI made to interface with mouse and keyboard. (How the company forgot where its bread was buttered with Win8 is beyond me.)

Anyway, the start menu is no reason to skip over Win10 because Win10 has one. Found this old screenshot to illustrate:

Why the Windows 10 Start screen is slowly growing on me-truesm.jpg

TechnoMage · 03 May 2016

For 36 years now, I've been modifying Microsoft's OS's to meet my likes and needs.
In DOS, I wrote an Ansi Color menu, to allow quick access to all the programs on the PC. And in those days there weren't as many as there are today, so a simple menu with a DOS Prompt did the trick.

Then along came Windows, and things changed, and in some ways, NOT for the better.
I found I needed to Tweak Windows for optimum performance and efficiency. To just run a rather simple program, you now had to support the entire Windows environment as well, so demands for more RAM and bigger hard drives became apparent.

Windows XP was a huge departure from Windows 98, and many people railed against it. Me too, for a while.
But, by XP Service Pack III, XP had become the darling of the computer world. It turned out to be the longest lived OS ever.

Vista was supposed to be better than XP, but it screwed with things better left un-screwed with. Many folks absolutely hated it. Me too!
Win-7 solved many of the problems and dislikes in Vista, and the Start Menu was enough like XP that most people accepted it. Me too! But it was larger and put even more demands on the hardware.

Jumping over 8 and 8.1 right to Windows 10, I still have to go through a lengthy Setup procedure, pretty much as I've done with every version of Windows for the past 21 years.
I have to first minimize UAC, install Grant Admin Full Control, show hidden files and disable hibernation.

Then there are the same performance tweaks I've used for the past 6 OS's.
(under the hood, Windows 10 is more like Windows XP than many so called Experts want to admit. The structure of the System Registry, is almost identical. And, many of the performance tweaks that worked for XP still work Great for Windows 10)

And just like with XP, "Services.msc" displays many services that the average person would never need or use in a lifetime, so those need to be shut down. The "Black Viper", on his website, lists all the services for each Windows version, and which ones can be either disabled all together, or at least put into 'Manual' mode. Doing this lightens the load on RAM and the CPU and helps to increase performance.

By the time I get done with my total Setup of Windows 10, the casual observer would not realize that I'm not still running either XP or Windows 7. But 10 can run faster, after some tweaking and tuning.

I'm sorry this post ran so long, but, it's a topic near and dear to my heart and can't be dealt with in a single paragraph.

Wishing y'all a great day!
TechnoMage

Samsung User · 03 May 2016

Trust_No1 said:

I am not a fan of 10, and like others I like my Windows 8, I still prefer the old Windows 7 menu over 10 by a gazillion times. So, no brainer for me. 10 offers nothing that would make me switch.

In time then you will be left behind then have to pay to upgrade
Windows 7,8,8.1, not a patch on windows 10 it has everything you want and still being added too

davidhk · 03 May 2016

Brink said:

Read more: Why the Windows 10 Start screen is slowly growing on me | ZDNet

Sorry, not to me. I just put up with it.

As to who should have what OS is totally irrelevant and purely subjective.
Who cares ?
If one wants Win 7, then Windows 7 it is.
There are about 250 million active XP users as of April 2015. They don't give a red cent how heavenly wonderful Windows 10 is. Microsoft has stopped XP support ( both security updates and technical support ) since April 8th, 2014, and they are still using their XPs.