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No Start Menu for You

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Re: No Start Menu for You

#221

Post by Tagbert »

zwaps wrote: post #34

I think search is hard generally. I switched to an M1 Mac pro recently, and it has its own set of challenges. For instance, there is no start menu but a search bar called Spotlight. You do your quick math in there (where you'd call calc.exe in Windows). However, it only accepts your query as math... sometimes. Like 50% of the times. Otherwise it searches the web. If you search for a program, it takes just that tiny s…

“ If you search for a program, it takes just that tiny second to update results such that if you type one letter too much, your top result goes from program to web search, and pressing enter opens Safari.”

The search in Windows start menu does the same thing. This is from progressive return on results intended to get something to the user fast while the searches are still not done. The downside is a shift like you see. I think subsequent results should only append to the end of the results, not change the order of existing results. As someone mentioned, you can turn off the web search results in Spotlight and it will eliminate most of this problem. I’m not sure if you can do that in the Windows Start Menu or not.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#222

Post by ridgered4 »

rightbyte wrote: post #133
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new calc app has always been a travesty. Taking at least a full second or more to load, with an obnoxiously large interface. The original calculator opened instantly and had a completely functional ui. I get angry every time I need to launch calculator on a machine I have not configured with SpeedCrunch. Almost better to use Excel.

I open the full bloody GNU Octave instead. I just timed it. Calculator: 13s Octave GUI: 5s The worst thing is that the calculator pretends to be running after like 2s but is unresponsive.

> The worst thing is that the calculator pretends to be running after like 2s but is unresponsive.

I can't stand this and it happens in a lot of places. It seems like pure metric chasing. We made it load faster boss. Well, no you can't use it but it yet but you should have been more specific!

If I open word doc over the slow VPN Word forces itself to the foreground only to show me a file loading dialog.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#223

Post by jpeter »

eviks wrote: post #129

> I tend to launch most programs on my Windows 10 laptop by typing the key, then a few letters of the program name, and then hitting enter. That's the mistake right there, use a proper app launcher (like https://keypirinha.com/ ) to avoid the freeze and many other issues (like having to move your focus off screen center) with this neglected core OS functionality. While you're at it, you could also rebind it to someth…

Hitting the key works better than the app launchers I have tried.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#224

Post by pxc »

PaulHoule wrote: post #192

For me it is a pet peeve that the start menu regularly takes a vacation. It's particularly bad when the machine is starting, it seems the machine would rather listen to the music in its head than take commands from me. I wish it would put a priority on getting the start menu up and running even if it meant caching the state of it ahead of time so it can resume quickly -- I mean, there are just a few commands that I t…

> It's particularly bad when the machine is starting

For me, this can be several minutes after boot. Windows takes forever to actually finish starting up on my work computer, presumably in part because many persistent background apps, even ones that run with elevated permissions, are GUI apps that don't start until the user session.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#225

Post by layer8 »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #216
layer8 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always install tne old calculator: https://win7games.com/#calc

That site is an amazing resource, thank you. I was having trouble finding a solitaire for my grandfather's new laptop

See also https://winaero.com/ for general Windows UI tweaking.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#226

Post by jbellis »

paulcapewell wrote: post #201
adzm wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For posterity, HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer DisableSearchBoxSuggestions DWORD Set its value to 1. Should work for Windows 11 and 10

I don't see an Explorer folder under that path on my installation.

Me, neither. The other one I see on Google is HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search, and that doesn't exist either.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#227

Post by joelmgallant »

alpaca128 wrote: post #146
coldtea wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh and for some reason, it's less stable than my prior windows machine. Apps just crash a lot, but that's probably due to the Arm64. For what is worth, I use dozens of apps, several big ones and lots of utilities, and no crashes (though I went for all being M1 native). So could just be the choice of apps or some other factor. Regarding typing to launch apps, you can try Alfred. It's free for basic use, and is what…

> click and keep clicked for a second or so the green window button, and it will give you option to put the window in a left/right tile and chose another for the other side But it won't let you just tile a single window to a side, it is mandatory to select another window for the other half of the screen. Also it moves those windows to a separate workspace for whatever reason, which causes a delay when entering/exitin…

Contexts is the app that I was looking for, and may be for you as well!

https://contexts.co

Re: No Start Menu for You

#229

Post by stuaxo »

msla wrote: post #5

I've long thought that Windows NT might make a pretty good OS if it weren't married to the Microsoft Windows interface. I know I'm abusing the terminology here, but only because the concept of a replaceable graphical shell is utterly foreign to an OS which began as one of many replaceable graphical shells for MS-DOS.

Friend of mine says he used to use Windows 2k, but with cmd.exe as the shell and launch module his module tracker from there.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#230

Post by stuaxo »

eviks wrote: post #217
distcs wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's the mistake right there, use a proper app launcher (like https://keypirinha.com/ ) to avoid the freeze and many other issues Sorry, no! I am not going to install a whole new application only to launch programs - the most fundamental operation that an OS should be able to do on its own. If the OS cannot launch programs using the Win key, it needs to be analyzed and fixed. The OP article does half of that very…

Don't get it, if it's the most fundamental operation, supposedly you want to be able to do that in the most excellent way, no? Waiting years for the OS fix doesn't help you in the interim

When I use GNOME on Linux, I can launch my apps like this very quickly, boot back into Windows occasionally and it's a disaster.

I'm going to try some of the recommendations, but can't believe the start menu of all things can be broken this badly.

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