More Than 3 Out of 4 Enthusiasts Reject Windows 8

Lady Fitzgerald said:

I also use the start button to get to my data folders, My Computer, etc. I could put shortcuts on the task bar but there just isn't room.

I have my partitions (and a few folders) pinned in the Windows Explorer Jump List (on the Taskbar).

Lady Fitzgerald said:

I tried to use jump lists like that and found them to be more of a pain than a help. Not everyone will find any one solution to be ideal.

I only use Jump Lists with Windows Explorer and Control Panel.
They don't seem to be of much use (to me) for other programs.

If FreeCommander supported Jump Lists, I wouldn't use Windows Explorer at all.
As it is, I probably could do all of my file management in FreeCommander (even without Jump Lists).

Lady Fitzgerald said:

That is one of the advantages of Win 7 over Win 8 and 8.1: one has more choices.

Agreed. :)

jimbo45 said:

Dallas 7 said:

jimbo45 said:

I really wonder also how many current W7 users actually use the start button or even the menu........

Cheers
jimbo

I use the start button/start menu all the time.

Hi there

Some will use it just because it's there but if you have a large number of entries > 100 for example using a menu gets quite convoluted too.

When I'm on W7 I have to say I really don't use the menu a lot and I actually quite like the SEARCH on W8 which will be improved on W8.1.

As for Menu complexity -- just look even on Windows 98 with a small number of options a menu system can start to get unwieldy. Imagine if you had say 100 main rows and 15 columns on a typical laptop screen -- I'd say also a menu was barely useable.

Screen shot W98 menu enc (Running as a VM BTW).

Cheers
jimbo

There's one thing I can say from having close to if not 100 shortcuts about addon tool bars soaking up otherwise on the desktop items. You can perform some organization of your own or live with clutter.



So the next thing is cutting out a good number of items from the desktop itself while the All Program menu continues to expand and the continual branching out when going to start one thing or look for another? Naaaa.... a bit too awkward when you have numerous small as well as a good number of large programs with all those extras if you have the Start set for "menu" where each program's exe, doc, etc. are sound in a folder rather then being links.

Now the advantage of tool bars to soak all those shortcuts up is obvious from one look at the next image here.



But! Still having that All Programs menu allows you to right click to copy and paste a new shortcut on the desktop to drag into an addon tool bar's folder off of the desktop as well as pin to the main task until that gets filled up fast without trying to expand to rows of icons.

The 3rd party tool bars can be interesting at times as well especially when working with multiple displays. But as you can also see even those can get cluttered fast and are actually used best when set for the secondary display for access to a select list of things while the primary is occupied with some full screen program media or other.

Night Hawk said:

Now the advantage of tool bars to soak all those shortcuts up is obvious from one look at the next image here.

That's why I categorise my Start Menu (see animation in post #1194).

I only have ~60 programs installed though.

I did that one back in 2010 when getting into the dual display setup and wanting to illustrate how to somewhat organize a mountain of things! The addon tool bars are each a separate catagory by themselves. The Recycle Bin is an icon on the task bar as well since you won't see that on the desktop at all.

The tool bar to the far left is the Quick Bar for browsers(had 8 or 9 at one time!) and a few other things like the XP Mode, VBox, VM Player, NotePad, etc you don't want to have to dig for all the time but are right there as you would have at one time seen the Quick Launch on the task bar.

The addons can grow too by the way! They can easily extend below the bottom of the screen where you then have to scroll up or down. Those won't see pop out side menus as you would see from the Start>Alll Programs or 3rd party app like Classic Shell.

With the Start screen in 8 you can type in something while most would be inclined to scroll to the right. 8.1 will be the small effort there by MS to put a few familiar things back in while still not being the same as you would see in 7 simply due to the entire gui design being intent for one thing only namely tablet!

What makes it a real shame for 8 is most will lose out on any actual core improvements as well as Hyper X support not available for 7 to keep a normal desktop platform going while the entire Metro "Modern" concept is wrapped around the mobile world as far as touch + swipe small lcd displays. That typically only can work out best for a portable if not hand held over trying it out on a 20" or larger lcd used for a desktop to begin with.

Now just think for a moment how sore that arm would be after 7 or 8hrs. of office work "Reaching Out" to touch the monitor constantly over simply running an older version on a non touch + swipe based OS? I think too many would get frustrated only too fast! It still has a place for connecting a projection screen to a laptop for a sales meeting or some other presentation where the effort is short term and on the go. But for your main desktop? NADA!

And speaking of base ball bats some who got too frustrated might be temped to use one but not at a living thing. That touch + swipe might have a problem however. Some would think to themselves "I simply would love to take a swing at this 8 thingy and ....." GGrrrrr... The rest of us will simply say "Hey where's that other OS you were talking about?"!

Does MS really care? ha... ha... ha... They have their agenda and are simply trying to "pacify" things a bit with 8.1 after all the negative publicity 8 has been getting. That's their interest for the most part.