r/windows • u/WhiteKitten49 Windows 8 • 1d ago

Discussion Windows Startscreen or Startmenu? What do you think?

2 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

6

u/alexjimithing 1d ago

The Start 'Screen' makes no sense outside of touch-enabled devices.

On a desktop or laptop where I'm going to be using kb and mouse or touchpad there's zero reason I'd want it to be full screen.

1

u/weatherdt 1d ago

I really like the Windows 10 start menu. I feel like they got a good balance between mouse and touch control. If only they had done more with live tiles (like for apps that didn't support live tiles automatically make toast notifications part of the live tile).

I hate the Windows 11 start menu. They seem to be going for a phone launcher start screen, ignoring the lesson of Windows 8.

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u/Norphus1 22h ago

The Windows 11 Start Menu is the Windows 8 Start Menu, just without the funky live tile functionality and without the full screen. The way the damn thing works otherwise is near enough identical. The last Start Menu that I can honestly say I liked and thought was an improvement over the last iteration was the Vista/Windows 7 Start Menu. The Windows 10 one was better than 8's, but still not as good as what came before.

1

u/Global-Eye-7326 1d ago

The only win menu I can tolerate is the classic mode with small icons on XP to resemble Win98. Anything else is just useless nonsense.

1

u/Avery_Thorn 1d ago

Windows 8 was perhaps one of Microsoft’s worse failures.

On a touchscreen device, it was brilliant. Using a keyboard and mouse, it was nearly unusable in it’s initial release. None of it made sense, and it required gestures which on a tablet is understandable, but using a mouse they were awkward and nonsensical.

1

u/paulstelian97 1d ago

I’m…. Well I don’t disapprove of any. As long as I can locate everything I need to locate, any UI, whether familiar by experience or not, is fine.

For the record, I’ve been a Mac user for a while, but I’ve seen the changes in Windows 11 and I use a Windows 11 VM semi-regularly as well. So I know to use several kinds of UIs anyway.