Microsoft

How to bring back the Start menu and button to Windows 8

 

If you’ve just installed Windows 8, or bought a Windows 8 PC, you may have noticed something rather irksome: The Start button and menu have disappeared! After spending almost 20 years at the bottom left corner of your desktop, Microsoft has decided that the Start menu is dead and that the mouse-and-keyboard-hating Metro Start screen is the future.
Despite Microsoft’s best efforts to ensure that the Start button and menu remain banished from Windows 8, a bunch of third-party replacements have emerged. Really, it just goes to show how devoted the Desktop Windows userbase is: Microsoft completely stripped out the underlying Start menu code to quash potential Luddite revolutionaries, and yet months after the release of Windows 8 there are dozens of Start menu and Start button replacements — some of which are far superior to Microsoft’s own Windows 7 STart menu.
Let’s take a look at the best, cheapest, and most authentic apps for bringing back the Windows Start menu and button.

StartIsBack

If you want a Start menu replacement that looks exactly like Windows 7, StartIsBack is for you. You get the same Start menu orb icon, the same search box, the same jump lists, and — for better or worse — even the same Aero transparency! As you can see in the screenshot above, StartIsBack even detects if your system needs to restart to apply some patches; it really is just like the Windows 7 Start menu.
Where StartIsBack diverges from the Windows 7 Start menu, though, is configurability: StartIsBack is fully customizable, and includes a handful of useful Windows 8-specific features, too. You can configure which hot corners are enabled, make your PC jump straight to the Desktop when it first boots up, and configure a key combo to show the Windows 8 Start screen (Win+Ctrl by default). If Start menu and taskbar transparency aren’t your thing, StartIsBack lets you disable it — and you can change the Start button orb icon, too.
Download StartIsBack ($3, free 30-day trial)

Pokki

Where StartIsBack tries to replicate the Windows of yesteryear, Pokki (free) is very much its own beast — and as much as I love the Windows 7 Start menu, I have to admit that Pokki is probably even better. It utilizes a neat “pinning” system that isn’t unlike the home screen of your smartphone or tablet (though I would argue that the Windows taskbar/superbar still does a better job). You can also add widgets to Pokki, such as Gmail or Facebook, which display your latest email or status updates.
By default, Pokki will configure your Windows 8 system to boot straight to the Desktop — and there is an option that will just completely disable the hot corners, if you so desire. (Remember, Win+C pops open the Charms menu, if you need.)
Download Pokki (free)

StartMenu8

If you want the Windows 7 Start menu look-and-feel, but you’re not prepared to fork out a few dollars for StartIsBack or Start8, StartMenu8 is a solid alternative. While the interface won’t win any prizes — it feels a lot like the early Linux apps that ruthlessly ripped off Windows — you get a fair amount of configurability, and a handful of Windows 8-specific toggles that are very useful.
By default, StartMenu8 will skip the Windows 8 Start screen and go straight to the Desktop, and disable Windows 8′s hot corners. There’s also the option to disable the sidebar, if you really don’t ever want to see Windows 8 ever again. The StartMenu8 button icon can be altered, and you can add and remove which links appear up the right side of the Start menu. Overall, StartMenu8 looks and feels a bit clunky — and, incidentally, watch out for some delicious bundleware during the installation process.

 

 

 

 

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Not just Windows Blue: The rest of Microsoft is shifting to yearly releases, too

If a source close to Microsoft is to be believed, Windows Blue is a lot more than just annual updates to Windows 8 — it’s a massive shift towards regular updates for almost every Microsoft product, including Windows Phone, Windows Server, and online services such as Hotmail and SkyDrive.
Historically, Microsoft’s major products have usually been on a 3ish-year release cycle. This is a fairly standard timeframe in the software development world, especially when it comes to operating systems and productivity suites that need to be rigorously tested before being deployed on hundreds of millions of computers. Fast forward to today, though, and three years is quite literally a technological lifetime. So much can happen in three years that it’s virtually impossible for Microsoft to release a contemporary OS. In the time that it took Microsoft to fix Vista and release Windows 7, Facebook went from a few thousand users to 300 million users, and Apple released the first — and two more iterations — of the iPhone. Windows 8 began development before the initial release of the iPad — before the tablet market even existed — and wasn’t launched until after the iPad 3, by which point Apple had already won.
In short, it’s no surprise that Microsoft is moving Windows 8, Windows Phone, Windows Server, and its online services to an annual release cycle. Every single one of Microsoft’s competitors in the consumer space — Android, iOS, OS X — is on an annual-or-faster release schedule. The only way that Microsoft can hope to compete in the smartphone and tablet markets is if it can outmaneuver the competition, and that’s virtually impossible without a rapid release schedule. It’s a little unclear what the Blue update to Windows Server will entail, and likewise, web services like SkyDrive and Hotmail are already updated fairly often.

The new Windows logo is blue — coincidence?!?!

Blue, then, represents a huge internal shift for Microsoft, but it’s also a big change for OEMs and the entire PC industry as well. As far as we know, Microsoft is still on schedule to release Windows Blue in mid-2013 (for free or cheap), and it will probably be available through the Windows Store — bad news for OEMs hoping to sell new hardware on the back of a new OS. ZDNet’s source says that the Windows Phone, Server, and online service updates will arrive around the same time, but except for a couple of Metro-related rumors, no one knows what these updates will entail. Presumably they will be small tweaks, though, much like iOS or OS X’s yearly updates. New features might be added, but don’t expect any major interface changes — Microsoft is clearly set on a unified Metro experience across desktop, tablet, phone, and probably the game console too.Moving forward, ZDNet says that Windows 9 is still on the roadmap — though we have no idea when it’ll land — and it isn’t clear if it’s a major update, or something that will be rolled out as part of Windows Blue. Curiously, there hasn’t been a single leak, rumor, or mention of Windows Phone 9 on the internet. Perhaps that’s a good sign that Microsoft’s Blue smartphone efforts are in full swing: If there’s a product that needs to be updated regularly to have any chance of success, it’s Windows Phone. Personally, the bit I’m most excited about is the integration between all of Microsoft’s products and services: Rapid updates should mean that Microsoft can add a new feature to your Xbox 720, and quickly follow up with system-level updates that integrate that feature into Windows 8 and WP8.