Pokki is ever increasing its app selection, and offers a variety of different apps for all ages and interests. Use unique features not available in any other Start menu replacements, like a smartphone-like home screen to manage your favorite apps and sites, a real-time notification center, free app recommendations, and the ability to customize your Windows 8 experience (i.e. Get free desktop apps and games from the included Pokki App Store Restart or shut down your PC from the desktop.īoot to the classic desktop and skip the Windows 8 Start Screen. Pin your favorite apps, sites, files and folders for one-click access. "Pokki is a much more ambitious program than many of the other Start menu replacements." InfoWorld "It's free, easy to use, and downright sexy." - IT World "Pokki for Windows 8 is one of my favorite Start menu programs, both for its design and its host of customizable features." - CNET "Pokki helps Windows 8 a lot." - The New York Times This file is donationware the developer offers it for free, but encourages donations toward its development.Access and search all your desktop and Windows 8 apps, files, folders, control panel, and power options on your PC faster and easier than ever before. Note: The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system. Its lean and customizable menu gets the job done with no fuss, and gives you the exact Start Menu you've always wanted, no matter which version of Windows it comes from. Much like Classic Start Menu, it is very customizable, so you don't have to use all of its features.īefore you spend any money on a Start Menu replacement for Windows 8, you absolutely must check out Classic Shell. In other words, Classic Start Menu is just like the Start Menu you know and love, only more customizable.Ĭlassic Explorer fixes Windows Explorer annoyances by adding a toolbar with common operations (copy/paste, go to parent folder, etc.), showing the free disk space and the total size of the selected files in the status bar, disabling breadcrumbs on the address bar, and more. Never use the Printers item? No problem, you can easily make it go away. You can pin items to the Start menu, and customize every aspect of it. Start typing to search for programs, hit Enter to launch. Hit the Windows key on your keyboard, and up pops a Start menu, just like you remember it from Windows 7 (or Windows Vista, or Windows XP–you can choose your own skin). These are interface patterns that worked and that Microsoft took away for reasons unknown.Ĭlassic Shell's most newsworthy component is Classic Start Menu. It doesn't try to invent anything new: In the project's own words, Classic Shell is "a collection of features that were available in older versions of Windows but were later removed." You're not going to find any groundbreaking UI innovations here, but that's a good thing. That tendency of software projects to grow and morph over time is exactly what Classic Shell sets out to fix. As software projects are wont to do, Classic Shell grew over time, and now consists of three separate parts: Classic Explorer, Classic Start Menu, and Classic IE9. That was version 0.9 (the first publicly available version), and today, more than three years later, it's at version 3.6.4. At the time, it was meant to fix interface annoyances in Windows Vista. Its first version came out in November 2009, long before Windows 8 was even close to public. Pokki ViStart Want a Start menu on your Windows 8 desktop While Microsoft no longer includes the Start button, opting instead for a click in a hidden corner and a new Start screen, there are quite a few Start menu replacements you can choose from. Unlike most Start menu replacements, Classic Shell has been around for a while. But you don't need to pay to get a Start button: There's one tool that's free, open-source, and very customizable. Until that happens, there's a flourishing niche of aftermarket utilities that bring the Start button (and menu) back to Windows 8, from excellent ones like Stardock's Start8, to ones that add value like Pokki. Maybe in time, Windows 8's Modern-style Start Screen will grow on users and it'll turn out Microsoft was right all along. If you don't think that's something that needs fixing, you're probably in the minority, at least for now.
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