Win 7 questions. Thanks!

Got my T510 yesterday. Still in the middle of installing software. I never used Vista before and so using Win 7 Professional is new experience for me. My questions are not Thinkpads specific, but I love to ask my fellow Thinkpad owners

I dont like Win7's display of applications/tools in a limited scrollable window after clicking lower-left corner Start->All Programs. I like XP's display all of ALL applications and Tools. Can I configure Win7 do this?

Thanks a lot!

 

Give it a month and you'll never manually search for a program again. Use Start Search and type in the first few letters of the program you want to run. Get used to this and you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

 

Could be true

Now back to my question. Is that display of all apps/tools a doable thing on Win7?

Thanks for your input!

 

There is several programs for mod start button and menu.

As example.
Get the Classic Start Menu in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

 

Without any 3rd party mods, the answer is no.

 

This really becomes a non issue depending on a couple of things. Pin some of your frequently used programs to the Start Menu.

Or create and turn on the Quick Launch toolbar. The default task bar isn't for everyone and I like to have quick access to about 20 programs.

 

Agreed. All I do is dock a few major programs in the start menu and then dock a few programs I use daily on the taskbar and call it a day.

 

I'm with the OP on this, I hate the scrollable list of programs. Particularly annoying is the way it never seems to be where I want it, so I often have to scroll up to find something basic like accessories.

I use the 2 Win 7 laptops for all sorts of things, but for most real work, I come back to the old XP machine I'm typing this on. It's so depressing.

Typing stuff into the search menu may be OK if you just use the machine for one or two things, but I always seem to end up with loads of garbage when I search for, say, a particular file.

 

this

i stopped navigating the xp start menu long ago, there was a program called launchy that did mostly the same as win7 search. you'd hit alt space and start to type the program and hit enter, so much better than wading through menus. now with win 7 just hit the win key and do the same.

seraching for files is different, you can use search parameters like size:<300MB ext:doc or such to narrow searches.

 

Exactly. When I had XP, I used to use Launchy, but upon switching to Vista and then 7, this functionality is built right in, so I had no use for 3rd party tools. If you know what you're looking for, it's far faster to type the first few letters of the program name than it is to hunt through a list of programs.

In W7, the classic start menu was removed, so there is no way to get a full list of programs without using some other program to "overlay" the default W7 orb. Instead of using this workaround, I'd suggest giving it a few days to get used to it, then deciding what to do from there.

You can't dislike what you haven't tried.

 

This might be a matter of personal preference. I bought Classic Start Memu and I like it!

 

I like Win7 more than XP, tho Ive worked mostly only with XP before.
At this moment Im using XP on my laptop because it came with, Ive tried to install Win7 (I have COA sticker) but it failed to boot multiple times so Ill give it a rest for now.

 

Personally I'd love some customisation options - the single small area for a scrollbox of programs is very annoying. I used to just remember approximate locations for apps on screen.

Having said that, on my laptop I'm almost always near the keyboard and find that typing the name of the program (if I can think of it off the top of my head) works quite well.