Slashdot Mirror

I've been using Classic Shell http://classicshell.net/ since Windows 8. I'll keep using it until MS makes it incompatible somehow, unless MS manages to actually design their Start menu in a decent way.

Pity Classic Shell's been abandoned since 2017 but if there's one thing Windows is good for, it's running legacy software...

As someone who actually organizes and extensively uses keyboard shortcuts with the Start Menu, this writeup hits home : http://www.classicshell.net/wh...

All they have to do is build http://classicshell.net/ into windows and stop being dicks and trying to force some phone gui in a desktop. Then again from my perspective who gives a rats what M$ does, until they do windows with full privacy, zero monitoring of anything, stop trying to force their applications and end the forced installation of software and of all fucking things advertising, well, basically they can go fuck themselves.

I wish Microsoft had supported and accommodated Classic Shell rather than break it with every new Windows 10 release.

Kill notifications, Kill non-essential updates, and Kill Cortana again, if necessary.
http://www.classicshell.net/
find the registry keys for edge and cortana. Delete them. Add the disable search key
~.old out the services that suck as well
About 15 minutes of work makes windows 10 functional.

Err, no, WinXP was the best OS Microsoft ever made.
Win 7 has countless annoying usability issues - some of which are fixed by Classic Shell and 7+ Taskbar Tweaker, including usability issues with the start menu.

One of the most glaring problems is the lack of horizontal scrollbar in Windows Explorer in the folders pane. And when expanding a folder with double-click (rather than clicking "+", in the folders pane or on a pop-up folder selection box), for no reason, it spasmodically scrolls up and you can't see what just expanded!

That sounds so much better than clicking on the task bar to select a running application

One of those 1cm-wide blocks that expands into a menu of things? Oh, right, every desktop stopped having task bar buttons and moved to just showing an icon that may or may not expand a menu.

on the shortcuts to start a new instance of something I use regularly

I actually have Chrome, Xchat-gnome, and the terminal on the left side in the Activities view; the dock isn't on my screen normally, because it's a waste of space. Thing is, it's faster for me to just tap the Windows key, type, and hit enter than to reach over, grab the mouse, move to a dock pinned to the left of the screen (Unity), and click an icon. If I'm just logging in and want to start 6 applications across 4 desktops, I have to go into the Activities view anyway, and can click-click-click the shortcut icons if I want to bother.

or quickly finding it in the start menu if it's not something I

I didn't even know I had a DVD burner. I typed "DVD" and it showed me Thoggin.

I wasn't asking you if you used Windows 8 there, I was pointing out that Windows 8 is no longer current, having been supplanted with a version of Windows, Windows 10, that uses a classic desktop,

Windows 10 is less like the "classic" desktop than Windows 7. People here with Windows 10 are re-configuring it to try and look more like older Windows, and people with 7 have been downloading Classic Shell. Yes, people are running away from the Windows 7 and Windows 10 interfaces.

so making comments about Classic Desktop declining in popularity as evidence that non-desktop environments rule the roost is, well, not smart

I was pointing out they're a loud minority. They're a small sample who are malcontent and so noisy, while most people who are fat and happy don't care to bother arguing with idiots to explain that what they're getting without putting in any effort is great as far as they can tell. People who want to bitch are noisy.

When you have a million happy users and thirty who are pissed off, you have a forum flooded with whining and wargablers. It looks like the whole world is having a nuclear meltdown.

you've found half a dozen keyboard shortcuts that work great in GNOME 3 and make it almost usable

I've found "Windows Key", "Typing" (as in text, like "Firefox" or "Web browser"), and "Ctrl+Alt+arrow" (the same key combination that switches desktops in Gnome 2 back in 2001). I'm sure you'd be bewildered if I told you about this secret, magical spell called "Alt+Tab" too--another keyboard shortcut that nobody knows about, except us smart people who dig through the source code.

I run Windows 10 on my notebook. First of all, I do not like it very much, but I can second that statement. At least if you have a Windows 10 Pro, turn off all the information sharing through the group manager, turn off Cortana and probably most importantly use Classic Shell there's practically now advertising.

Although I've seen popups that urge people to use Edge over Chrome of Firefox on Windows 10 machines of other people.

turn off some of the crap with this..
https://www.oo-software.com/en...

maybe even disable updates completely and use this...
http://download.wsusoffline.ne...
to download updates and an update installer separately.

and of course... disable all the "live tiles" or delete/unisntall their respective apps, and use this for a start menu...
http://classicshell.net/

if you need a pop/imap mail client, consider mozilla thunderbird or even seamonkey instead of the piece-of-shit mail "app" in win10. note that the popular mail client in "live essentials" is end-of-life and no longer updated/fixed.
https://mozilla.org/thunderbir...
http://seamonkey-project.org/

My issue is with the flavor of the month, particularly on mobile apps and websites. I don't know why there is a drive to re-design the UI every 6 months.

I agree on Ribbon. After getting used to it at my previous job (which really didn't take that long), it felt like a step back when I started at a company that still used Office XP, and it was funny in 2012 to hear the same complaints from 2007 when we moved to Office 2010, though the complaints went away within a few months. While I understand the desire to customize, most of the time Office 2003 ends up looking like this as toolbars get randomly dragged around and random addons get installed. I also can't stand Office 2003's random auto-collapsing menubar as it usually hides the items I'm looking for (though on my computer I always disabled that functionality). With Ribbon in the overwhelming cases buttons don't move so you can sit at a different user's computer and everything is where it should be. They also well implemented hotkeys (ALT+ hotkeys are virtually unchanged from Office 2003).

Microsoft's implementation of Ribbon looks like it's well researched based on most commonly used items before implementation. Outlook wasn't "ribbonized" in 2007, they waited till 2010. Windows explorer wasn't "Ribbonized" until Windows 8. Ribbon automatically compacts itself as the horizontal resolution is decreased. With previous versions of office, toolbars would randomly reorganize themselves and take more vertical resolution. Contrary to popular belief, ribbon takes the same amount of vertical resolution as the default toolbar configuration + menu bar in Office 2003, not more. Ribbon also can collapse (through the "^" on the far right, by double clicking the tab titles, or pressing Ctrl+F1), and will take even less vertical space than 2003, which is dandy when trying to collaborate on a high density spreadsheet on a 1024x768 projector.

I have seen terrible third party implementations of Ribbon, but I think Microsoft has done their homework. They have also learned from their mistakes. When they released 2007, they offered the "Quick Access Toolbar" as a compromise to complete customization. In Office 2010 they moved from the Office "Orb" (trying to mirror the Start button) that people thought was a decoration , to the "File" tab. They also added more customization ability. After Office 2013 with the ALL CAPITAL TABS, and the jarring full screen FILE menu this is questionable.

That said overall Office Ribbon has been fairly consistent since 2007. So if you haven't adjusted after 9 years, I should probably get off your lawn.

Windows 8 I agree the start menu was a disaster. Very jarring for a desktop user to go to the full screen start screen. All start menu folder structure was also lost. Classic shell made short work of that, though it shouldn't require a third party app. Settings are also a disaster. Half are desktop based control panels, have are slide in Metro style menus. Very inconsistent. To their credit the Win+X menu is a nice nod to power users.

Windows 10 replaced the jarring full screen start screen with a mini start screen that still lost the folder structure, has the search feature that was there since Vista (though faster in third party apps like Launchy), and tries to push annoying live content. Windows 10 also still has jarring desktop vs Metro configuration menus, plus the fact that you give up all control of your computer.

No, you're just a moron. Classic Shell forum post about the hack and a screenshot which is exactly what I saw. Jesus, you're a bunch of pathetic paranoid fucks.

Website gets hacked, a few suckers (like me) have to fix their mbr (and partition as it breaks that too for some), and life goes on.

No, you're just a moron. Classic Shell forum post about the hack and a screenshot which is exactly what I saw. Jesus, you're a bunch of pathetic paranoid fucks.

Website gets hacked, a few suckers (like me) have to fix their mbr (and partition as it breaks that too for some), and life goes on.

First check if you installed the clean version:

http://www.classicshell.net/fo...

Otherwise, don't reboot yet, do a backup now, then follow the instructions from the link in the story above.

What the story doesn't mention is that MS helpfully deletes Classic Start Menu (well, moves it to Windows.old) when the Anniversary Update is installed, which is the only reason people were downloading a fresh copy of the Classic Shell installer rather than using the built-in update function (which wasn't affected by the malware).

This is a discussion of the temporarily infected Classic Shell installation file: W10 anniversary update, installed CS4.3, had to repair OS.

Clean: ClassicShellSetup_4_3_0.exe
MD5: e10881b65c27c6e09e5a33cd8bcd99c6
SHA1: a6b06d07fe3b1a7204b1b62c67fbf3c602385364
File size: 7220496 bytes

Infected: ClassicShellSetup_4_3_0.exe
MD5: c67dff7c65792e6ea24aa748f34b9232
SHA1: 438b6fa7d5a2c7ca49837f403bcbb73c14d46a3e
File size: 7148732 bytes

I don't want Cortana, I don't want internet searches from the desktop and I DO NOT WANT telemetry or my WiFi passwords shared etc. etc. etc. I'm not a node in Microsofts network I'm a private business.

If I can't turn this shit off and uninstall the crap I don't want then it's not getting installed.

You can. Shared WiFi passwords has been removed with the Anniversary update. The other stuff you want can be fixed with Winaero Tweaker, including shutting down Cortana (as opposed to simply hiding it). and Classic Shell makes live tiles go away. You can even restore the Windows 7 calculator from here if you hate the Metro version. These things do a pretty good job of reducing 10 down to the non-intrusive OS, shell and app platform that 7 was.

Why do that when you can install Classic Shell instead? It restores the start menu exactly as it appeared in Windows 7 and earlier, with full customizations. Plus it's FOSS.

I took the plunge and upgraded my last and more important PC this weekend, 'cause I don't want to be on the hook to pay $199 for a new Pro license when something forces me off 7.

I swear I'm not a shill; I bitch regularly about Microsoft because my job forces me to bear with it. But I was pleasantly surprised how well the in-place upgrade went. Nothing broke, even my old copy of Office 2003 (from my cold, dead hands...) The only thing the upgrade removed without asking were a couple of 3d-party diagnostic utilities like speccy, which doesn't bother me in the slightest. Even Steam fired back up without a hitch.

Now, about that ugliness. You don't have Aero transparency or rounded edges, but with Classic Shell and WinAero Tweeker, you can do a lot to make 10 more livable. A right-click on the taskbar can make Cortana go away, and ClassicShell separates Windows programs from Metro Apps in separate sub-menus, so you never have to look at them if you don't want to. Also, you do NOT have to use a Microsoft/Outlook cloud account. With this kind of setup, it's pretty much the same Windows as before.

Finally, I haven't tried this yet, but there's Spybot Anti-Beacon to address the "phone-home" issues that might be nagging you.

So, here's an idea to grab Windows 10 while its still free with the least risk. Shop for an SSD upgrade, like a 1TB Samsung Evo because damn it's gotten cheap. Clone your precious Windows 7/8/8.1 drive to the new SSD, remove it, set it aside. Then, perform an in-place upgrade as described here on the clone. Try it out. Something go wrong? Hate it? Swap back your old drive; clone again, do what you like. Your old build is safe and sound.

But here's the thing: according to the article, you have effectively retrieved/reserved your free Windows 10 license to use... whenever. If you want to try again in a few months, you can take a blank SSD and download/build Windows 10 from scratch, Microsoft will recognize your PC signature (assuming you haven't changed you mobo) and license you (just skip the part where it asks for a key). In the mean time, however, your old Windows will still work for as long as you want to keep it.

There. Assuming Microsoft doesn't wimp out and extend the deadline, you've just pocketed a $150-200 license for free to use any time you want.

I can't disagree with #1, honestly, but you can turn all of that off (and, indeed, it's the first thing I do during setup). The only thing you can't turn off is crash reports, and the developer in me fully understands why. I don't necessarily agree with forced crash reporting, but the fact is that people were even less likely to submit crash reports voluntarily than they were to install updates regularly, which kind of makes it difficult to track down and fix certain bugs. It's something I can deal with; if others can't, I'm also in a position to understand that. That said, my suggestion would be to just keep any illicit activities to your Mac and carry on... ;-)

Regarding #2, I skipped 8 and 8.1 precisely because of the lack of a proper start menu and the fact that the proper desktop was a secondary option, so I fully understand the concern. In Win 10, you can have the tile interface and, on a tablet, it's actually quite a nice interface. But Microsoft actually did the right thing here and brought back the proper desktop and start menu as the default. They did try to stick tiles in the start menus, as well, but you can turn them off. If you really want the Win 7 start menu (as I did), there's Classic Shell, which lets you do that and more. My start button is currently a middle finger thanks to Classic Shell; you could also, for example, drop an Apple logo down there if you were so inclined.

"Candy Crush and Twitter already re-install themselves every time I update the OS."

Two questions about solving problems caused by Microsoft's apparent attempts to take complete control:

1) The average Windows user is not able to prevent Microsoft from having more and more control. But corporate customers don't want to spend the time to learn a new user interface. They like what is now known as Classic Shell.

Microsoft is, and has always been, sloppy with updates, often introducting new vulnerabilities. Also, the control that Microsoft calls "Telemetry" and the updates with hidden purposes are not acceptable to many people and corporations. So, it seems that Windows should not be installed on computers that have internet connections.

Would it be possible to give corporate users 2 computers? Windows 10 to run corporate software, with no internet connection, and Linux for checking email and using a browser? How would the 2 separate networks communicate in a secure way? Unfortunately, no one has provided a Classic Shell interface for Linux, and many programs used in corporations won't run under Linux.

The managers of Microsoft (like Monkey Boy, for example) have such limited social ability that they are not able to avoid being self-destructive. They don't see that taking control of everyone's computer will eventually have a very bad result.

Also, there have been reports that secret agencies of the U.S. government buy vulnerabilities. Are Microsoft and Adobe deliberately including vulnerabilities and selling them?

Apparently Microsoft is trying to imitate Facebook and Google because of the sharp drop in sales of PC computers. But Windows 10 is the Bing or Zune of operating systems.

2) Autopatcher has not begun supporting Windows 10. We need independent control over Windows operating system updates. How can we achieve that?

Windows 10 is a bug improvement.

That's how I read it. I should finally go to bed. Or maybe not...

No, you're quite right, but only a bug improvment over Win8.x...
I had the misfortune to have to look at someone's Win10 laptop a couple of days ago, eventually, out of frustration with the damn thing switching to its sub-tellytubby touchy-feely interface at the drop of a hat, had to install classic shell for my own convenience. So, fixed the main 'why is the laptop so slow' problem (two AV scanners having a bit of a 'contention' issue, yet machine infested with a trojan and fck.tons of adware/spyware), give the machine back to it's keepers. A couple of days later (they only use the laptop offline for keeping a sports club's non-financial 'accounts') I get a phone call from them thanking me for fixing the start menu problem as well.. (Their other laptop is a Win7 system).

Owning a Win10 device is like owning a cat who is playing the 'second home game',you might think you're the 'primary' owner, you get to feed it, talk to it, play with it, etc., but its wee heart and soul truly belongs to Microsoft...
My opinion, anyway.

Classic Shell. Personally I have no idea why anyone wouldn't use Classic Shell (or any of the many similar solutions).

Exactly!!

It's not because Linux is better or it has anything to offer, it's because Microsoft is killing Windows without even realising it.
And that's precisely the reason I've also been looking at OSX and Linux as viable alternatives since the Windows 10 spyware.

I grudgingly "upgraded" to Windows 8.1, and kept it since Classic Shell fixed many of the UI problems.
But even Classic Shell has its limits.

But Linux is such a political mine-field, and every developer doing their own thing rather than uniting under one brand and one distro.
Thus the reason I lean towards OSX, even it's its hefty price-tag (in the form of hardware).

But even OSX and iOS has been infected by the "flat-ui" virus.

http://www.classicshell.net/

It's free. I installed it when I got tired of the Win10 start menu lag (if you press the start key and begin typing, the Win10 start menu will delay opening just long enough to miss one or two keystrokes).

That's because it's making a connection to the internet.

Download it and get rid of that ridiculous start menu that comes default with Windows 10

http://www.classicshell.net/

It's free. I installed it when I got tired of the Win10 start menu lag (if you press the start key and begin typing, the Win10 start menu will delay opening just long enough to miss one or two keystrokes).

Classic Shell just works and it still works on Windows 10 even as a release candidate.

You know, you can just put Classic Shell on, and it looks and behaves almost identically to Win7. The only significant change I see in 8.1 once you get out of Metro is the task manager is a bit better.

I know that making one change is a significant hardship to most people. It's probably not as hard as explaining why they can't run Windows programs. Or at least trying to explain why particular programs don't work under Wine.

The Windows key only really became a bad idea in Windows 8

actually with http://www.classicshell.net/ its pretty good as CS has remapped the Win8 originals action (open the fullscreen menu) to shift+win relegating it to the background (where it should be) and the single winkey press is back to opening the jump menu ala win95-7

not that i should have to do any of this bullshit by installing third party tweaks to "fix" Win8 in the first place :/

With Classic Shell you can add the start button back to Windows 8.1. I highly recommend it.

With some tweaking, you can turn a Windows 8.1 desktop into something which pretty much looks like the classic Windows desktop, and ignore the mobile eye candy and app-crap entirely.

After which, Windows 8.1 becomes a fairly decent platform.

I think what Microsoft fails to realize is the things they think are cool and innovative are useful for some people, but utterly fail for people who need a traditional desktop.

I don't use a single feature on my desktop Windows 8.1 machine which Microsoft had configured as the GUI by default -- but once I got rid of their "innovative" crap, the OS itself is pretty nice.

Classic Shell uses DLL injection to get a lot of its functionality to work. This is pretty much the definition of undocumented functionality. You're essentially dynamically inserting code into another process to re-routing function calls to your own code. It allows you to do a lot of really cool things (measuring FPS in any game and displaying it in an overlay, like Fraps), but it's also used by malware writers to do sneaky things (such as hiding itself from the file system or processes viewer).

Undocumented APIs are used by a lot of programmers. It's not all that hard, and many of them are "documented" outside of official channels, like this one: NtCreateThreadEx(), which is used to perform said dll-injection.

I have no doubt that the classic shell programmers did a fine job in getting these things to work, but again, it's impossible to know for sure what the side effects may be. In all honesty, classic shell is probably well-vetted enough that there are probably no major issues with it, but I tend to err on the safe side.

I just bought my first Windows PC since Win95. The first thing I did was download a browser. The second thing i did was install Classic Shell on my 8.1.

That said, I never understood the 'start' button that is used on Linux as well. Why only one button? Luckily under XFCE I am able to have several 'start' buttons. Each one has a few programs that I often start grouped by how I like it. So no whole tree that I need to go past.

Now, waiting for Microsoft to get rid of those fugly Metro tiles attached to the desktop Start menu. This is a DESKTOP environment, not a phone or tablet.
How about practicing what you preach regarding Continuum?

And while you're at it, why not make the Start menu more functional and sensible? At least implement something from Stardock's Start8, Classic Shell or Vistart.

Classic Shell may be of help to you. It's free. Used with Windows 7 and 8.

It is interesting that people sometimes offer free solutions for the huge mistakes Microsoft managers make.

Aahh, learn to link properly... Let me FTFY...

Then I would suggest you use this https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...,

Then I would suggest you use Classic Theme Restorer addon.

(thanks to classic shell http://www.classicshell.net/)

(thanks to classic shell)

Aahh, learn to link properly... Let me FTFY...

Then I would suggest you use this https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...,

Then I would suggest you use Classic Theme Restorer addon.

(thanks to classic shell http://www.classicshell.net/)

(thanks to classic shell)

Then I would suggest you use this https://addons.mozilla.org/en-..., I do and I can assure my up to date version of FireFox looks nothing what so ever like Chrome, bit of a mix of vista (thanks to classic shell http://www.classicshell.net/) and of course regular old FireFox thanks to the afore mentioned addon . Keep in mind it is Mozzila FireFox and it is very configurable, hell, given the desire and the skill or money and you can rebrand it after yourself and do all sorts of GUI minded things to it.

If you're not already familiar with it, I highly recommend "Classic Shell". http://www.classicshell.net/

That will let you choose a few different traditional start menu types, allow Win7 style searching from the menu, add some features into the Windows Explorer, and disable the active corners and metro screen.

Once that's done, I personally like the OS as much or better than Win7.

Disclaimer:

My win7 box is a company laptop with 8gig ram, an 2.4ghz I5 processor, Dell something or other but stuck with MS Office, McAffee and some other crap I can't uninstall per company policy.

My Win8 laptop has 4gig ram, 2.5ghz, i3 processor Toshiba Satellite and configured the way *I* want it.

So, in my situation, working off two different machines, different software, different settings: Win8 seems faster and more responsive "to me". I'm sure some of this is a function of background tasks, etc, YMMV.

And I can't do it without Classic Shell. Classic Shell, making Windows 8 Bearable.

Booted to Ubuntu, it wants to install new Firefox. Okay. Here are the first impressions: TL;DR: It's terrible. The designer hipsters are now ruining Firefox, too.

1. Why are the tabs again above the URL bar? I have configured them time after time below. But this time, the option to put them back below is gone even from about:config! WTF?

2. Where has the "add-on bar" gone? Wasn't it enough that the status bar was replaced with the buggy text that shows on mouse hover?

3. Google "firefox 29 tabs below url bar", people are recommending this add-on. Thought: has Firefox really gone the way of Windows 8 where you need to install 3rd party extension (Classic Shell) to band-aid the catastrophic damage the hipster designers have done to the original product?

4. Reboot the browser after installing the extension. Spend 20+ minutes making everything as close as possible to what is what before.

5. Finally, continue working. About 2 hours in, suddenly my back/forward buttons stop working. Assume the extension is interfering with core somehow. Fortunately, rebooting the browser helps. Some time later, this happens again, need to again reboot Firefox.

6. Seriously consider switching to Google Chrome. The few reasons to use Firefox are evaporating fast.

Overall experience: 30min spent fiddling with Firefox settings. There is currently no easy way to make it like it was before. If you are running Firefox 28, I would suggest waiting a few weeks before upgrading until there is an easy and tried way to un-fuck the UI.

I hear that you have not yet tried Metro.

Tried it, didn't like it, got rid of it. Windows 8 has worked fine for me since.

2) Allow users to load different "skins" like you can on Linux or Android. Metro interface for tablets/phones, Win 7 for desktops. Don't like the one you have? Restart, choose new skin, done. 3) Open source the GUI and allow others to create their own GUI's and sell them in the MS App store. Or give them away. Whatever..just give people choices.

These last two have been possible since at least Windows XP. Windows allows you to replace the shell with whatever you want. This is the whole idea behind Classic Shell: http://classicshell.net/

Couple choices:

1. you're lying
2. you have a fucked up configuration on your windows hw
3. you're selectively omitting details (see 1.)

Otherwise, there would be no way your browser in windows would having trouble with "1/10 the tabs of linux on same hardware" and you would see "constant delays in performing tasks" (what does that even mean?). Or, maybe your looking at some stupid metric like ram used and concluding arbitrarily that chrome can't open more tabs (a good OS would be allocating available ram, rather than leaving it unused).

I am also confused at your statement that search is "pointless for a programmer". What does it have to do with being a programmer? If anything, most of the programmers I know are disorganized packrats and use search extensively.

I think the windows 8 gui is pretty bad for desktops, but the mistakes aren't these glaring amateurish mistakes that you are announcing. And, the old GUI is just a download away

Honestly if Metro doesn't go away, I will... lol

Away to Linux or Android...

That will be a while though as they will have to pry Windows 7 from my cold dead hands.

It's pretty sad, I do love me some Windows and I have been using it for a long long time since the 3.11 days, I even liked Windows ME. But I just can't love Windows 8 and it's abomination of a UI. I can't count how many times I have installed Classic Shell in Windows 8 machines because the owners couldn't stand Metro.

http://www.classicshell.net/

I am sure it is fantastic on a tablet though? I have an Android tablet so yeah.... I am already in the process of ditching Windows :( If my PC didn't function as my home server and general PC work, I would probably be trying to figure out some way to go Android PC right now.

Yeah, I could have written this. I've heard arguments that "oh, you W8 haters just don't like change". True, people are generally resistant to change, but I don't think I necessarily reject all change out of hand. I liked the Vista-style Aero visual improvements (never cared for XP's look), although the OS performed poorly and had lots of small problems. I did like the improvements to the task bar in Windows 7 as well. I thought the Ribbon interface in Office was a necessary and fairly bold step in UI innovation. Power users tended to dislike it because it was such a radical change, which is understandable, but I think the products are more accessible and much easier to learn now.

But Windows 8 feels so utterly broken to me. I don't even hate the idea of metro apps - I think they could have been pretty cool if they had been more seamless integrated with the more classic desktop (leaving the full screen mode for the devices where it makes sense). There was no need to foist a full screen app launcher on the desktop user, especially since it has such a hard time figuring out what even the relevant "apps" to launch are (pulling in uninstall icons, documentation links, dozens of small and rarely used utilities, etc), and the usefulness of an actual hierarchy to keep things organized and tidy was completely smashed in favor of a paradigm designed to favor the simplistic requirements of tablets and smartphones.

So, no, I'm not resistant to change. I'm just resistant to change for the worse. And yeah, I'm going to be sticking with Windows 7 for while unless MS figures out a way to make some pretty significant improvements for the desktop user.

"Windows 9 will be a refined balanced UI. Tile applets on a Windows 7 desktop if you plug in the keyboard and mouse (mouse-first UI) if rumors are true. MS nees an answer to iOS and Android with battery life, smooth graphics acceleration, and applets. It is NOT GOING AWAY."

Honestly if Metro doesn't go away, I will... lol

Away to Linux or Android...

That will be a while though as they will have to pry Windows 7 from my cold dead hands.

It's pretty sad, I do love me some Windows and I have been using it for a long long time since the 3.11 days, I even liked Windows ME. But I just can't love Windows 8 and it's abomination of a UI. I can't count how many times I have installed Classic Shell in Windows 8 machines because the owners couldn't stand Metro.

http://www.classicshell.net/

I am sure it is fantastic on a tablet though? I have an Android tablet so yeah.... I am already in the process of ditching Windows :( If my PC didn't function as my home server and general PC work, I would probably be trying to figure out some way to go Android PC right now.

I'm sorry that you've spent so much money and time trying to make it usable, but just for reference, http://www.classicshell.net/ is free and will make Windows 8 function more or less like 7 or XP.

Addendum to the above post:

This is the correct link. I am a failure and linked .com when the correct URL is .net. My bad.

All windows versions have always been a pain to use in one way or another. Win8 with ClassicShell installed works fine for me, though I'm not a 'power user'.

Not in a corporate environment you sure as hell don't!

Classic Shell supports group policy now.

Unless it's native, you don't modify core OS behavior in a corporate environment that's not officially supported.

Officially supported by whom? I was under the impression that Classic Shell was supported by the Classic Shell team, and it used public APIs supported by Microsoft.

Win 8 is totally fine once you... install[ed] enough add-ons to hide it.

You mean, like, 1 add on?

A little over-dramatic, yes?

I fear you're right but hope you're wrong. My laptop is about 5 years old and I've used it heavily (I wrote Nobots on it, see my sig if you're curious) and have been shopping for a replacement. But all the new ones are either Chrome, W8, or Apple. Apple would be acceptable if they weren't so expensive, but I don't trust Google any more and W8 is an unusable clusterfuck.

And the guy at the store said installing Linux on one (he had Chrome and Windows) would void the warrantee. Screw that, if it has a factory hardware defect that isn't readily apparent I'm screwed.

So I really hope you're wrong and Microsoft pulls its head out of its ass. I do NOT want a phone' interface on my computer and I don't want a computer interface on my phone.

It kind of bums me out a little.

Actually, Windows 8 isn't too skanky if you use the right protection.

I've been using a Win8 laptop with Classic Shell for a little over a year now, with surprisingly few complaints. The only time I see that POS Metro interface is (maybe) a brief flash while booting up, then it switches to desktop and I never leave that interface (with a full Start menu). Had to re-assign all my default startup programs, but I basically do that anyways with every new machine (who actually uses MS Photo Viewer, even the desktop version? ick!) Some areas are very nice in comparison: I find that Task Manager is much more intuitive, and the new file copy dialog is nice...

I'm not saying that you should run out and buy a Win8 laptop right now, but if your workhorse dies on you, you need a replacement ASAP, and all you can get is a Win8 one, well, there are ways to make it behave less bitchy...