I honestly don’t get the complaints about the start screen in Windows 8. The most common one seems to be “it takes you out of what you’re working on.” Are most people in W7 working on an Excel spreadsheet or whatever, and then navigating the start menu’s nested interface while still focusing entirely on the spreadsheet? If not, and you’re focusing on the start menu while you’re using it, why is it a bad thing that the start menu now takes up the entire screen and has bigger buttons? It still goes back to the exact same desktop once you’ve selected your program.
Here is the answer to your prayers.
Seriously, this freeware utility is the cat’s pajamas, the cream in my coffee, a ray of sunshine, and all in all makes Windows 8 work the way it should.
Yes, you do. It’s right there on your keyboard between the CTRL & the ALT buttons. You may not have a fancy schmancy calculator button, but you have a Windows key.
It does. The old start button opened the Start menu, the new start button opens the start menu.
Yes. The Start Menu looks different. Your cheese has been moved. Inability to deal with that is a personal problem.
The new icons are cleaner and easier on the eyes than looking at ittybitty font in drill down menus.
As has been mentioned, all you have to do is type “calc”. The app will present itself. Right click on the icon and you choose to pin it to your start menu or to the taskbar. You can do both even. Just like, you know, how you could right click on icons in the old start menu and pin it to your task bar or the big start menu.
It’s a nice app. It includes Standard, Scientific, Statistical and Programmer modes, date calculation and unit conversions.
You don’t actually need to do that. And at the risk of blowing your mind, allow me to mention the following hotkeys:
WIN= Start Menu
Win +D = Desktop
WIN+E = Explorer
WIN+F = Advance Search
WIN + C = Charm bar
WIN+W= Search the settings menu
Move you mouse to the bottom left corner and right click for the “pro menu” with helpful choices like the Event View, the CMD, the Control Panel, Task Manager etc.
If you to change your color scheme or background pics, hit the WIN+W hotkey and type “Startup” and choose Advanced Startup Options.
Microsoft shill detected
Just like windows 7.
Is there an option for those of us who don’t need a bunch of pretty boxes?
For the record, I also wasn’t impressed by Bob or Clippy or that dog that scratches himself during file searches. I don’t want or need a cute interface on my computer.
As for your helpful instructions, I know how to call up a calculator. And Microsoft knows how also - they’ve demonstrated that on past products. So the question is why Microsoft is selling a product that doesn’t work as well as the product it replaced.
13 year old account. 2400 posts. Probably a shill, yeah.
Hey, man, he’s probably in Deep Cover!
Windows XP: Start>Programs>Accessories>Calculator
Windows 8: Start(button)>C>A>L>Click
I guess a mix of three keystrokes and one mouse click is marginally less efficient than four mouse clicks, but if you need things closer to hand than that, you pin them to the start screen, the taskbar or create a desktop shortcut.
If Windows 8 is a failure, it’s because people are so ingrained in the habit of clicking through a hierarchical mess of folders and subfolders for everything, and can’t deal with change.
Actually…
Windows XP: wait three minutes for the machine to boot, then click Start>Programs>Accessories>Calculator…
I just pinned the calculator to the start screen.
Which is not to say that I’m a fan of Windows 8. With some fiddling, configuring and coercion, I can make it act like a sensible OS (that is, like Windows 7), and not so much like a freakish result of a crazy night of drunken passion between Windows and a the worst mobile phone OS ever, but right out of the box the thing is a complete brainfuck.
Go find me the Microsoft equivalent of John Gruber or (shudder) Daniel Eran Dilger. Or, for that matter, the Microsoft equivalent of a David Pogue or Walt “I’m sorry, I couldn’t possibly wedge another iPhone up my arse” Mossberg.
My old watch had these things called gears and springs in it. I think it was powered by steam.
I’ve got to say that I am totally infatuated with my new Surface Pro tablet…I’m still getting used to it and I spend most of my time on the old school desktop but the more I use the other features the more I like them.
My biggest frustration was the damn Firewall…I use lots of proprietary software that establishes bidirectional communications with wireless equipment over the Telnet and FTP ports and I couldn’t just turn off the FireWall like I did with previous versions, I had to disable it in about a dozen different ways before I could get the programs to work. But I made them work and I just have to be careful not to undo it all with one keystroke as the machine keeps nagging me to “fix” the security issues.
But the ability to run this software was what drew me to the Surface…like Sheldon Cooper says " the stuff I want to buy hasn’t been invented yet"…and I have been jonesing for a tablet that could run these proprietary programs used for setting up building automation systems on construction sites for forever and I purchased my Surface within 10 minutes of finding out about its existence.
It really DOES make the iPad look like a toy.
Desktop icon
This.
This, this, this, this. This.
Give me back my fucking start button, Windows 8.
If I had known it’d pull that crap, I never would have gotten a computer that came with it pre-loaded.
And I agree that it’s not convenient at all.
is the one on your keyboard broken?
No…
Nor does it do what the Start button I’m used to does.
Nor does it have anything the other Start buttons did.
If I have to do anything more than having it already there (like the last ones did), then yeah, it’s my opinion it’s just not very convenient (as the OP said).\
If I still have to to do a search or “run” anything I want to ever find, that sort of makes the point of a start keyboard button redundant.
ETA: What Nemo says here sums it up nicely. The keyboard start button doesn’t bring up the calculator. Is there a way to put it on there? Maybe. Probably. Still doesn’t mean opening start and being able to do it with one click rather than having to set it among lots of other strange gobbletygook isn’t much easier..
Or the one that pops up when you move the mouse to the bottom left corner of the screen.
I got Windows 8 when I got my new laptop about a month ago, and I was all set to hate it from what I’d read. Instead, I’ve found it’s the best OS I’ve used. The few elements of the UI I dislike are trivial to change (installing Classic Shell, as mentioned earlier, because I prefer the old school start menu and booting to desktop, and changing focus to follow the pointer, which as far as I remember has always needed a minor registry edit). I think it took me about 90 minutes to get it working more or less how I wanted, with a few more minor tweaks.
It’s always been necessary to use third party programs in Windows to personalise it - indeed, that’s one of it’s strengths, and the main thing (for me) it has over a Mac. I do think it would have been preferable to not have the full screen Start menu as the starting point at boot, but it’s such a minor point, and as I said trivial to get rid of, that I’m not going to trash a significantly improved OS for it.
Some links, for those who are interested.
Microsoft’s Windows 8 End User guide.
How-To Geek on why Windows 8’s desktop is an improvement.
The same site on why it’s more secure than previous versions.
Blog article from one of their writers on how they came to love Windows 8.
For balance, another one of their writers on why they hate it.
All that said, whilst I think Windows 8 is great, with the exception of the new Task Manager, it’s not a vast leap ahead of 7, and if you’re happy with that, stick with it.