Makes Win8 tolerable, faster than 7 or default 8!

Bringing home this find from Brink's Start Menu restore thread over at Eight Forums:

Mustang said:

If you want an exact replica of W7 Orb/Start Menu, with ALL the functions, click: Ex7ForW8.

It requres slightly more work, as you need the W7 Installation disk to load it; but it only takes a matter of seconds to extract Explorer 7 files.

Once loaded it has a toggle switch between Explorer8/Metro and Explorer7/Orb Start Menu.

In effect you're running either Explorer 7 or 8. When using Ex7 Metro is totally gone, on boot and after boot; but only a click away if you need to access it from the active GUI.

I'm using it on Enterprise 8, and after all available updates still runs seamless. And W8 on SSD SATA3 with I5 CPU absolutely flies.

Have tried all of the rest and this is an exact replica of Win7 Start, even had all my defaults loaded after installing in 10 seconds using my 7 files off adjoining partition.

But it is much faster than either 7 or 8 normally is, due to the 8 Metro features not being loaded into RAM.

IMO with this Start menu Win8 would be nearly perfect. Now I want my gadgets back!

Found them! Same gadgets as 7, just gotta rightclick to hide the sidebar.

8GadgetPack - Gadgets for Windows 8

Yes, before I had used Start7 3rd party Start screen, a registry fix to skip the Wall of Buttons and quit there because it wasn't stable. Now it's fully stable and faster than WIn7 or Win8.

SIW2 posted on EightForums that this is the Win7 explorer grafted onto 8 with a toggle switch to choose, which is why I guess it tapped into my Win7 files which it found in about 5 seconds and then finished in about 5 more seconds. What's amazing is that it brought over my start menu settings exactly as I had them from Win7 partition. I am impressed.

So now I will move over here to the Win8 partition since I can be as productive as on 7 without the button wall slamming down on my work.

I also prefer the Aero glass so will try to find a 3rd party app for that so I can finish cobbling together a productive desktop experience that's as good as the OS they are replacing.

There are plenty of tips over at EightForums. This one had popped into a thread I haunted awhile back Start Menu - Restore in Windows 8

I guess I just don't get out enough, and really had no intention of using Eight until now.