Laptops

[grizzle]

You dont need stardock or to spend $5 for a start menu or quicklaunch. Plus Microsoft will be patching Win8 and readding start menu & capability to skip metro this summer.

Windows is adding back the Start Button, but NOT the Start Menu. Clicking on the Win8.1 Start Button takes the user to the metro Start Screen. So, Stardock's Start8 will still be needed if you want the traditional Start Menu. Start8 also gives the ability to remove all of the annoying corner-hover menus, as well as the Charm Bar. Making it exactly like Windows 7.

The article you link to uses a bunch of other apps to use to do some of what I mention. Personally, I'd rather use a single app from a company I have hear of before than a handful of randomly produced apps by people I haven't heard of before. And $5 isn't going to kill anyone's bank. Not on this thread, at least.

And, Stardock's MetroMix allows the user to use any of the metro apps in Windows mode on the desktop, also something that Win8.1 isn't including.