starting out in Windows 7

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I have spent most of the day loading Windows 7 Pro on my desktop machine. I’ve kept XP as a dual boot, so at least I’ll be able to continue working as I gradually sort out the invetable maze that MS seems to love leaving. Are they taking revenge on all the people who have dared to criticize them in the past.

Anyway, I seem to be having 2 very basic problems that I can’t seem to get round:

1 Favourites – No matter what I do I cannot get IE8 to import my IE7 favourites. I know favourites are really more than just IE but that’s all I use them for.

2 Start Menu – More MS revenge, no classic start menu and to make matters worse, totally inadequete instructions as to how to actually change things that matter. What I am trying to acheive is a result similar to the enclosed bmp file.

Can some one please refer me to some tutorial re the above. MS don’t seem to appreciate that the computer is a tool that should be EASY to use.

David

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Hi David:

To your first question regarding the transfer of IE7 favorites to IE8, refer to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/211089/en-us

As for the lack of a classic start menu in Windows7 there if you Google “Classic Start Menu Pro” or Classic Start Menu you will be presented with the opportunity to download
either a free version (Classic Start Menu) or a trial of the Pro version. To purchase the pro version it’s about $19.95 US funds which many folks find to be a little steep however, I find that it is worth it to get past all the hurdles Microsoft has thrown at us in this windows release. With both versions you can sort and nest directories / sub directories just like in Windows XP so, if you’re a bit of a neat freak like I am, you, I’m sure, will like the program.

Best of luck

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Instead of importing your favorites, why don’t you copy all favorites from your XP favorites folder into your Win 7 favorites folder. (C/ Users/ “Your Name/ Favorites for Win 7) I forget the location in XP.

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I was as annoyed as you with the start menu at first. I poked around until I learned how to master it, instead of it mastering me. What it boils down to is not revenge by MS, but simply that we have become so used to the “old” way that its hard for us to do it differently. Now I’m really annoyed by how clunky XP is compared to 7.

That said, things actually work very similarly to how they did in XP, and believe it or not, are much easier to do in 7. Here’s a couple of things you can experiment with. Copy/Cut/Paste still work fine for all shortcuts and folders on the Start menu. You can do it directly in the Start menu, or right click on “All Programs” and select either Open or Open All Users. You’ll be presented with a more traditional Explorer folder view where you can drag and drop things to suit your organizational taste. You can also drag anything you want to the Start button to pin it to the start menu. Better, you can change the order that they appear by simply dragging them to the position you want. I personally turn off the history list because I find it just clutters things up. To do this, right click on the Start button and select Properties. Under Privacy, uncheck the boxes for displaying recently opened items.

This page is an excellent resource for tweaking how things look and feel in 7: Windows 7 How to Articles

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