Start8 for Windows

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For those who still find the Start Menu missing in Windows 8, there exist many alternatives. Stardock's aptly named Start8 brings along much more control to the boot and start up experience than the standard Windows alternatives that are present on the system. Find out why Start8 is so popular Start menu-replacing program. It's time to take advantage of this powerful program for tweaking your Windows experience to the one you like.

Start8 takes away all the boring background menus of Windows 7-style interface and substitutes them with a new boot splash page that loads with icons, allowing you to select a single application with a large button panel, a shortcut or many different options from your start menu. You also get customizable boot visual effects, taskbars, panel menus and taskbars, and the Start8 backup/restore utility makes it easy to restore your previous system settings. The program also provides task manager functionality and integrates Windows firewall to monitor start ups and shut downs.

The Start8 desktop environment is greatly different from its Windows 7 counterpart, where the Start icon takes up a significant portion of the desktop. The Start8 desktop environment allows you to start applications directly from the taskbar by pressing the right keyboard shortcut while the Start button remains grayed out making it impossible to start an application. This prevents freezing and hanging applications and allows users to use a Windows Explorer-like Start screen. Overall, start gives you a Windows 7-like start menu with lots of customizable tools that allow you to customize your computer experience to the point where you never have to touch the desktop button again.