#START ORB WINDOWS 10 WINDOWS 7#
And sure, there are easier ways to launch programs in Windows 7 than by invoking them via Start: you can drag a shortcut on to the desktop, or pin a shortcut to the taskbar. Microsoft says that the "telemetry" from the user data returned to it by the Customer Experience Improvement Program suggested that people don't use the Start orb much.
Instead of one quick click, it means faffing about with the mouse to find the hot corner, or remembering which combination of keystrokes brings up the dialog you want. Or you can hit either Windows + w for the Metro search screen, or Windows + q for the Metro Start screen. Click on either Start or Search, and you'll be taken to the Metro screen for those tasks. (Duh.) Or you can mouse into the top right hand corner and the Charms bar floats into view. If you mouse over the hot corner, a thumbnail of the Metro start screen floats into view, which you can click on, and which takes you to the Metro start screen. Drop your eye down to the bottom left-hand corner and – it's gone. I think it will work well on touch devices, but on my desktop, I click straight through to the desktop, which reassuringly looks like Windows 7.Įxcept for the lack of the Start button.
#START ORB WINDOWS 10 INSTALL#
When you install Windows 8, you're first of all presented with the Metro UI, which is quite a surprise if you haven't dealt with it before. Like the best technology, it didn't impinge on your consciousness. It sat there, unobtrusive, in the bottom left-hand corner of your screen, and glowed gently when you moused over it. Yes, all of those.īy Windows 7, the Start orb was a fixture in our lives.
In the XP default theme, it looked like a green headache tablet, though if that gave you a headache, you could choose other themes, or even, if you preferred the vintage Windows 95 look, choose that.īy the time we got to Windows Vista in January 2007, the Start button had morphed into a glowing orb, from which you could launch programs, search for stuff, access the control panel and shut down your computer. In Windows 95, it was a rather ugly button. Usually, what you were looking for was right there. You just clicked, started typing the first couple of letters of what you were looking for – a document, an email, whatever – and the box was populated with offerings. As it matured through Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, it got a lot better: it became a nifty way to find stuff on your PC. The Start button made life so much easier: it was a quick way to launch programs.