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Classic Shell (shell alternative for Windows 10, 8, 7) - Mini-Review

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x16wda:
At home I have been using Win 10 (except for its file explorer), after using Start 8 on Win 8. But at work we have been putting Classic Shell on 2012 and 2012r2 boxes for our largest customer. It's not that you can't get stuff done without it, it's just a lot more efficient with it in place.

IainB:
Cross-posted from: Re: T-Clock 2.4.3 build 471 Display Properties throws error
@anandcoral:
Thanks for the response. Very interesting (to me).
If, as you write,
...It is the interface which has some learning curve. You may have to give your user some time to guide them "how to find in Win10 which was in WinXp/7" This is the biggest problem/change of this upgrade. And more is coming ... as we finding after each OS update.
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- then I would strongly suggest consideration be given to installing Classic Start Menu - refer Classic Shell (shell alternative for Windows 10, 8, 7) - Mini-Review
Classic Start Menu also provides an alternative XP, or Vista, or Win7 interface (take your pick). This could be useful for you with your users' needs (as you have described them).

In any event, this worked very well for me and my 2 favourite guinea-pigs (my now 15½ y/o daughter and 6 y/o son). They never noticed the migration from Vista-->Win7-->Win8/8.1-->Win10.

Ergonomically, Classic Start Menu seems to provide a far better GUI anyway (compared to the arguably ergonomically atrocious Metro GUI) and performance/stability seem to be unimpaired and the overhead seems to be minimal.

By providing a consistent and ergonomically sound interface as one migrates across OS upgrades, the process will be relatively transparent - i.e., hardly noticeable by users - and thus they will have little difficulty (minimal learning curve) after the upgrade. It's quite impressive to see this happening with users of the Classic Start Menu.

A lot of my perspective on GUIs comes from experience including, for example, managing the implementation of corporate-wide systems upgrades, where the greatest challenge was often trying to get a large population of users (e.g., knowledge workers in offices, or bank tellers in bank branches) up and running productively as quickly as possible - i.e., with minimum downtime/re-learning. Consistency with the old GUI and ergonomic efficiency were always a priority at the outset, during the system requirements analysis stage.
Good ergonomics may be a very real requirement, especially in military and office-based systems and where the ergonomics have already been been finely crafted to meet fairly stringent requirements in the first place.

My experience is that consistency and good ergonomics in the GUI generally tends to be universally beneficial and improves user-acceptance and take-up of the new system, whether it be in cases as above (the military, or banks) or (say) the family unit, or educational programmed-learning environments.
-IainB (May 24, 2017, 07:58 PM)
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IainB:
UPDATE 2017-05-25 1341hrs: Minor updates to the OP, including the latest version currently being v4.3.0.

dr_andus:
Yup, loving the "Classic with two columns" start menu replacement for Win7.  :Thmbsup:

IainB:
Yup, loving the "Classic with two columns" start menu replacement for Win7.  :Thmbsup:
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-dr_andus (May 25, 2017, 10:57 AM)
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Yes. Once trialled, rarely uninstalled, I suspect. Of the three components of Classic Shell, the older-styles of Classic Start Menu are arguably the most impressive and useful, but the other two components - the older-style Windows Explorer GUI and IE GUI - will probably have their adherents too.

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