Puzzled by the New Interface in Windows 8? Restore the Start Menu with these Utilities

Updated 28. October 2012 - 20:34 by v.laurie

Are you trying out the new Windows 8 and finding yourself lost because of the new start screen with tiles? Gone is the old familiar desktop with the Start button and menu. Clear up your confusion with one of the free third-party utilities that developers have been turning out. There are quite a few but here are two that I have tried.
Classic Shell

Many Gizmo readers will be familiar with this long-established program for restoring older interfaces. It has been updated to run on Windows 8. As shown in the graphic below, there is much more to this program than configuring the Windows 8 start menu and all those settings may be confusing to some. To replace the Windows 8 Start Screen, install "Classic Shell Update"



Classic Shell can be downloaded from Source Forge at this link
Pokki

A number of utilities provide a start menu that is not the classic Windows 7 presentation but has some of the character of the new Windows 8 look. Pokki is one of these. The graphic below shows an example of its version of a start menu.



Download and description is at this link.

Help us out - We are all new to Windows 8 so please share with the community any experiences that you have with these or other utilities for restoring the start menu.