# Win 8 to Win 7 **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 5, 2013, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win-8-to-win-7/668118 "2013-09-05T22:03:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Blakeyrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecd19e/32.png) [@Blakeyrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blakeyrat)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win-8-to-win-7/668118/21 "2013-09-06T17:08:31Z")
My Start menu use is “hit Windows key, type name of program, hit Enter”. Windows 8 doesn’t change that workflow one iota. It just looks slightly different on the screen. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win-8-to-win-7/668118/22 "2013-09-06T18:01:57Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Does MS even know that some people simply won’t buy a new computer on account of not wanting to have to unlearn everything they have painfully learned over the years. My wife has a 14 yo old computer she won’t allow me to replace. It had an upgrade to XP (along with a new HD) and she is happy with that. But it is slow and running out of disk space. I have Win 7 and would prefer XP. (Why? I cannot turn off aero; my eyes are not good and I find it hard to read the menu bar on my editor depending on what is underneath it. Who ordered that and what purpose does it serve?) It’s not really a forced upgrade, but new versions are necessary. I upgraded to Vista way back just to use DirectX 10 (BTW was that planned obsolescence or needed?). Regular XP won’t support modern RAM sizes and XP-64 is supposed to be piss-poor. There should be accessibility options for vision, either in Windows or 3rd party. I assume those weren’t enough though? > [@Blakeyrat](#): > > My Start menu use is “hit Windows key, type name of program, hit Enter”. Windows 8 doesn’t change that workflow one iota. It just looks slightly different on the screen. I really don’t use the start button at all, so Win8 wouldn’t do much for me. All I really use is things like “Run,” and even then I access that 99% of the time by pushing WinKey+R. I don’t have much against Win8, I think it should just be a fork of Windows CE or something, not a continuation of their main line. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win-8-to-win-7/668118/23 "2013-09-06T18:03:14Z")
> [@Blakeyrat](#): > > My Start menu use is “hit Windows key, type name of program, hit Enter”. Windows 8 doesn’t change that workflow one iota. It just looks slightly different on the screen. That’s what I do now (it wasn’t when I had XP though). At work though, on Win7, the jump lists in the Start menu are very useful. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win-8-to-win-7/668118/24 "2013-09-06T18:19:06Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > This. For $5, Start8 gives you the best of both worlds. It feels just like Windows 7, but it’s faster, you get a much better copy dialog and task manager, cross-device syncing, etc. And you never have to use or even see the obnoxious new “Metro” elements. I would recommend this too. Give it a try, you only have $5 to lose versus a whole lot more for Win7. ---
**Author:** ![Kimballkid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b5a626/32.png) [@Kimballkid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimballkid)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win-8-to-win-7/668118/25 "2013-09-06T18:24:45Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > better file history (backup utility) I tried using that and couldn’t get it to work, so I just use the Windows 7 Backup and Recovery. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win-8-to-win-7/668118/26 "2013-09-06T19:43:53Z")
> [@Kimballkid](#): > > I tried using that and couldn’t get it to work, so I just use the Windows 7 Backup and Recovery. Are you saying you’re running Windows 7? If so, yes, File History was apparently a bit tricky in Win7, but is better in Win8 (it just worked for me, there’s almost nothing to configure). Or are you running Windows 8? (in which case, how are you running Windows 7 Backup and Recovery?) 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Kimballkid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b5a626/32.png) [@Kimballkid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimballkid)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win-8-to-win-7/668118/27 "2013-09-06T19:47:57Z")
Windows 8. Windows 7 Backup and Recovery is in the Control Panel on mine. It should be on yours too or it may be something that Gateway put on there, but I doubt it. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win-8-to-win-7/668118/28 "2013-09-06T19:53:44Z")
I found something called Windows 7 File Recovery - I guess that’s it. What actually went wrong with File History for you? Mine took a long time to run first time (as it is an incremental ‘time machine’ type thing, but now it just works - prompts me every now and again to plug in the removable drive I use for it. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win-8-to-win-7/668118/29 "2013-09-06T19:55:00Z")
I don’t see how the Start Screen will help you if your Start Menu was too disorganized, since every time you install something, it will get an icon the exact same way it would get a group in the Start Menu. Heck, if your program actually needed a Start Menu group, it’s even worse, since you’ll get multiple icons instead of just one folder. And, unlike the Start Menu, you won’t have your most commonly used programs in easy reach. It’s not the GUI. It’s that they intentionally crippled the interface that bugs me. I have to manually pin apps I frequently use to the taskbar. Why? They still keep track of what you use–so it’s not that. The Start Screen is a more logical replacement for the DESKTOP; just add a few features, and it would just look and feel like an upgraded Desktop. Keep the Start menu, and have the “all programs” icon take you to the All Apps screen. And am I the only person who doesn’t like typing in programs to start them? It means I have to actually remember the name of the app. It’s much easier to recognize the name and icon from a list. I spend way too much time trying to remember the name of any program I don’t use too often, to the point that I’m having to rename them and add what they actually do. Oh, and to answer the OP’s question: [StartIsBack](http://www.startisback.com/) actually uses the leftover code in Windows 8 to recreate the Start Menu, so it supposed to be better than Start8–and it’s $3 for two computers. That said, I’ve never used it, and only used Start8 in beta (and didn’t like it at all.) ClassicShell is free, but it doesn’t have a frequently used programs list (it uses recent instead), so it’s completely useless to me. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win-8-to-win-7/668118/30 "2013-09-06T20:26:14Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I don’t see how the Start Screen will help you if your Start Menu was too disorganized, since every time you install something, it will get an icon the exact same way it would get a group in the Start Menu. The Win8 Start screen itself didn’t help me get over the disorganised mess of my XP Start menu (which really was horrific, as I had lots of installed software). It was the absence of the Start menu that made me adopt the habit of hitting the windows key and searching for what I want - it’s fewer keypresses than I previously had mouse clicks, and it finds things much faster than I used to by hunting through the big, nested mess of my Start menu. Obviously that’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but it is mine. I hardly use the Start screen (except to search), or Modern UI apps at all. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win-8-to-win-7/668118/31 "2013-09-06T20:53:48Z")
I’ve been using Win8 for a couple of months now, and I can’t remember the last time I actually used my desktop. Win, go to start page, select icon. Click icon on taskbar. Win+e to go to explorer. Win+r to run. Aaand, that’s about it. I never go to desktop and click a desktop icon to run an app. ---
**Author:** ![Kimballkid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b5a626/32.png) [@Kimballkid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimballkid)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win-8-to-win-7/668118/32 "2013-09-06T20:54:31Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > What actually went wrong with File History for you? I can’t remember exactly, but I think it couldn’t find the drive even though I could see it on the drive list. Or maybe it kept telling me it was full when it was brand new or something. I’m content with the way it works now because at least I have something that works and I spent far too much time trying to get the other to work. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win-8-to-win-7/668118.md?page=1)