Apna Techradar | Latest Technology News And Reviews

In our continuing quest to fix and finesse some of Windows 8  frolicsome foibles, we turn at last to the Start menu  that beloved button that has staked out the bottom left corner of your desktop for almost 20 years, only to be ignominiously removed from Windows 8 and replaced by the desktop-hating Metro Start screen. Despite Microsoft’s best efforts to ensure that the Start button and menu remain dead, a bunch of third-party replacements have emerged. Really, it just goes to show how devoted the Desktop Windows user base is  Microsoft company completely stripped out the underlying Start menu code to quash potential Luddite revolutionaries, and yet just weeks after the release of Windows 8 there are dozens of Start menu and Start button replacements. Let’s take a look at the best, cheapest, and most authentic apps for bringing back the Windows Start menu and button. Classic Shell Classic Shell is free, open-source donationware...

Did you know that, back in the Windows 3, 95, and 98 days, you could simply type in your password to log into your computer? It sounds crazy, I know, but it’s true. Since Windows XP, the process has become steadily more convoluted — picking your avatar from a list, or hitting Ctrl+Alt+Del before being allowed to log in (this was actually a security feature, believe it or not). Windows 8 is the worst offender yet, positively spitting in the face of keyboard users — but fortunately, it’s quite easy to disable the new Windows 8 lock screen. In essence, the new Windows 8 lock/login screen is meant to act as a dashboard, flashing up notifications for new email, IMs, and so on. On a tablet, where you swipe the lock screen away and then begin typing, this makes perfect sense. On a desktop PC, though, the lock screen is clunky (you might say this is a bit of a recurring theme in Windows 8). Yes, theoretically you only have to tap a key and it slides away, but for some reason Microsoft intr...