I was just wondering, will Minecraft be updated so it is compatible with Windows 8. Because my laptop next year will have Windows 8, and Minecraft doesn't function with Windows 8. This is very annoying. So if you know anything about this, please tell me.
I have heard that Minecraft does run on Windows 8 (although I can't confirm it myself). But I can understand the misconception as well; I'd been informed by multiple sources that any game not purchased in the Windows 8 store would not be supported by the ToS.
Windows 8 is just hell on your graphics software.. I had a fairly new (1.5 years old) HP laptop that ran MC at around 40FPS with windows 7
I upgraded to 8, and now it just gives me a graphics card error.
(And before you all try to "help" me, I've been working in IT for close to 10 years now, and yes I did DL the correct software for my card, and yes I did update the drivers.. etc.. etc....)
So after a few weeks of that I upgraded back to Windows 7 (8 is crap IMO, utter crap)
I can confirm that it's compatible with Windows 8.Oh, and for the haters, Windows 8 is awesome. You really are missing the smoothness and the easiness of using your computer.
We can agree to disagree, I'll keep using windows 7..
Hakbal, "Easiness" is not a word that describes Windows 8. As much as I love it, the fact that the start button is gone, and replaced with
"drag mouse into corner" takes some time getting use to. And the fact I can't seem to access my Appdata unless there's a shortcut for it on the desktop.
We can agree to disagree, I'll keep using windows 7..
I'm with you, Betty. Another IT vet here, and I'm starting to feel like we should just skip every other MS OS version as a matter of course. XP and 7 were solid, but ME and Vista, not so much. 8 seems to me to be perpetuating the trend.
Hakbal, I don't think pressing the "Windows" button on your keyboard allows you access the restart menu. Plus, I was always told to go to start and type in %appdata% to get to the appdata. It's not that it's not hard to get use to it, but if you've used XP-7, pressing the "Windows" key or moving your mouse to the corner is totally new.
Minecraft doesn't work with me, says bad graphic card drivers. I'm downloading the drivers as of now and will update you guys on this. And to everyone above who doesn't really like windows 8. I'll be a little non-hating and hating at the same time. I was personally more concerned about the UI and how it's so touch friendly, but now, after using it for two days I would say that's not what I am so worried about. Right now the problem is to set it up so it works and to get everything in working order. Usage-wise, if you've lived with anything pass XP you probably would take 1 week to get used to this. I am a pre-xp user and I'd say the usage is really smooth and simple. Just search for a cheat sheet and just go through everyshortcut. Once you do that, you're good.
Hakbal, I don't think pressing the "Windows" button on your keyboard allows you access the restart menu. Plus, I was always told to go to start and type in %appdata% to get to the appdata. It's not that it's not hard to get use to it, but if you've used XP-7, pressing the "Windows" key or moving your mouse to the corner is totally new.
I guess it depends on the person.
I've been using each Windows version since 3.1. When I first started using Windows 95, I used the mouse for the start menu. I couldn't use the Windows key, because my keyboard didn't have a Windows key. Then I learned about Control-Escape to open the start menu. It ruled. In fact I still use it occasionally without thinking about it on occasion.
So, what did I do with the win95 menu:
Control-Escape, R <command> this was the most common. In fact I ran most of my programs this way. winword, excel, etc.
The Programs menu
This replaced Program Manager groups, and allowed essentially subgroups. It was really just a menu-based view of the aggregate folders from All users\Start Menu and the current profile's start menu folder. Populated primarily with shortcuts. This was a novel idea, but it did make navigating to programs a bit harder. With Program Manager, you had ONE set of groups, each which contained icons, so they were no more than two double clicks away, activating Program Manager notwithstanding.
Windows 95's Start Menu complicated this. Think about it: to start, say, Paintbrush in Windows 3.1 took two double-clicks from the desktop. With win95, you had to click the start menu or press control/escape or the windows key, go into Programs, go into Accessories, and click Paint. The bigger cost was actually in the navigation. It worked, and at the time people were getting SO many programs it made sense to allow the groups to be further grouped, but over-organization is as much a problem as not enough, since it can just as easily make things hard to find.
Windows 98SE was what I used next. Mostly the same. I had a keyboard with the windows key so I slowly switched over to using it instead of Control Escape, as well as learning the various shortcuts such as Win-E and Win-D and whatnot. (I don't know if these were in win95, not having a windows key at the time and all). Other than that, usability was pretty much the same. Crappy but usable.
Next I used Windows XP. This was more of a jarring switch. I originally switched the start menu to classic as well as the theme. The former because I thought the new layout to the start menu was oversized and confusing, the latter for performance reasons mostly (I only had an ATI Rage Pro Turbo at the time).
Eventually I warmed up to it and switched to use the theme as well as the XP start menu. It half-solved some of the older start menu problems, in particular it allowed for pinned programs, and didn't expose an API to programs for it. This way, the User determined what got pinned. This is in contrast to earlier versions- install Office 97 and it puts itself right on your start menu. Among other intrusive behaviours. It was still limited though, and the All Programs menu still sucked.
Then they got to thinking about the problem. Why have a heirarchal arrangement of menus when we could just have a box that let you search through some of your stuff? Thus the Search Bar was born. Typing directly into the Start Menu to list search results was a freakin genius idea, and IMO increases usability by about a bajillion. And it expands environment variables, too, thus why %APPDATA% works.
Vista's implementation didn't make the best use of screen real-estate for the feature, and Win7 toggled it up, and made the search results take up the entire Start menu popup. 7 also increased usability across the board and made minor tweaks to some old features, as well as implementing a few other "whiz-bang" enhancements.
Windows 8, I feel, really extends upon the entire philosophy.
How many of us really use the Start->All Programs menu in Vista and 7? I used it for a little while after switching to Vista originally from XP, but once I started to use the Search Bar, it's become a novelty. In fact, every single other entry in the Start Menu is practically wasted space- for me, since I never use it. I'd imagine the Win8 Shell team got usability results back and discovered that a lot of the features of the Start Menu were really wasted space.
Win8 extends this by removing the Start Menu entirely, replacing it with the Start screen. This is a bit of a jarring change to those of us used to the little popup in the corner, but IMO it's not a bad one as people suggest.
1.The start menu was old and disgusting. The All Programs menu is a freaking Joke, and hardly anybody uses anything but search, unless you are on XP. When I have to use Windows XP, not having the search bar almost feels like I'm missing a limb, and the time wasted going through the ridiculously nested All Programs menu to find something that should be a simple search is frustrating.
They expanded it. It is no longer a Start Menu, but a start screen. And it expands the search feature- that is, the feature for which the start menu is most often used- quite a lot.
Semantically, it still works the same as Win7, it just presents the information differently. It's worth noting that I just tested it. in Windows 7, pressing the Windows Key and typing "%APPDATA%" and enter takes me to my Roaming folder. When I do the same in windows 8, it... well it takes me to my roaming folder, so I really think you might have made up that little morsel, or you are doing something differently. Personally I usually used Windows Key R and typed "explorer %APPDATA%" into the run dialog, which works the same in both. And yes I know the "explorer" there is redundant.
Also.... Control-Escape STILL shows the Start Screen, that's freaking awesome. I don't even have to change the latent muscle memory that goes back to Windows 95 for win8.
As far as restart/shutdown, I have to acquiesce there. It's different than Windows 7. However, I would also argue that it is actually more sensible. I still have to do a double-take when dealing with that on win7. (the button says what it will do, but I always expand it and want ot select that default in the menu, and of course it's not there).
Of course, a modern machine you can save all your work and just press the reset or power button on your PC case and it does that action in the OS, so one could also argue that having that feature in the OS at all is overbearing, in a way.
Given that I've been using Windows ever since you had to type the very pragmatic sounding "win" into a DOS command prompt to start it, and I haven't had any major difficulties adjusting, I'd say that a lot of the noise about it is either "it's different so now it sucks" or simply a case of chicken-littling those changes. Or even inventing scenarios (eg. "I was always told to go to start and type in %appdata% to get to the appdata.") Which is fine, because that still works the same way on Windows 8. The big difference is in how the information is presented and that it shows a lot more information, which is a good thing because Search is one of the most commonly used features of Vista and 7. MS focussing on and attempting to improve a feature that is used frequently- and managing to do so without changing the semantic and "muscle memory" of it, is actually pretty cool.
I won't deny that when I use my laptop and go to search for something there is a moment of uncertainty because pressing the windows key now changes the entire screen, but Most of what I actually do requires me to do very little differently. Again, perhaps it's just me, but Like I said it's not like Windows is a new environment to me.
A lot of the issues people are having might be if they switch from XP to Windows 8. Then there is a usability barrier- but that barrier is no different than it would have been with Vista or 7. Which is to say, you basically have to learn to use the Search Bar. With Vista and 7 it provides pretty much the same stupid and fecking pointless "All Programs" menu where companies can advertise their crap. "Start->All Programs->Microsoft Office->Microsoft Office Tools...", so people could always fall back to using the inferior method they were used to. Eventually, people would learn about the search bar- I mean it's hard to miss, really- and type something. Poof. Their result was there. And over time they used it more and more until the All Programs menu was never used, as it should be.
Basically, the Start Menu- more specifically, the "Programs" or "All Programs" menu worked for Windows 9x. This was because the systems simply were not powerful enough to perform on the fly searches. But hardware has inexhorably marched forward, and it is stupid for us to have to fidle through menus searching for that "somewidget" program, when we could have the computer do that search for us. Thus teh search bar. Type somewidget and press enter and there it is.
if I was using XP and the programs I use ran on it, starting them would be something like this:
Visual Studio 2010:
Start->All Programs->Microsoft Visual Studio 2010->Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
Visual Studio 2012:
Start->All Programs->Microsoft Visual Studio 2012->Microsoft Visual Studio 2012
Visual Basic 6:
Start-All Programs->Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0->Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0
etc.
On Win Vista/7 and Win8, it is now:
Visual Studio 2010:
Windows Key type "2010" and press enter.
Visual Studio 2012:
Windows Key type "2012" and press enter.
Visual Basic 6:
Windows Key, type "Visual Basic" and Press enter*
Usability skyrockets. I'm happier because I don't have to bend to antiquated software methodologies of searching through a menu when I know what I'm looking for, and I save time because I don't have to do that as well.
I've been using each Windows version since 3.1. When I first started using Windows 95, I used the mouse for the start menu. I couldn't use the Windows key, because my keyboard didn't have a Windows key. Then I learned about Control-Escape to open the start menu. It ruled. In fact I still use it occasionally without thinking about it on occasion.
So, what did I do with the win95 menu:
Control-Escape, R <command> this was the most common. In fact I ran most of my programs this way. winword, excel, etc.
The Programs menu
This replaced Program Manager groups, and allowed essentially subgroups. It was really just a menu-based view of the aggregate folders from All users\Start Menu and the current profile's start menu folder. Populated primarily with shortcuts. This was a novel idea, but it did make navigating to programs a bit harder. With Program Manager, you had ONE set of groups, each which contained icons, so they were no more than two double clicks away, activating Program Manager notwithstanding.
Windows 95's Start Menu complicated this. Think about it: to start, say, Paintbrush in Windows 3.1 took two double-clicks from the desktop. With win95, you had to click the start menu or press control/escape or the windows key, go into Programs, go into Accessories, and click Paint. The bigger cost was actually in the navigation. It worked, and at the time people were getting SO many programs it made sense to allow the groups to be further grouped, but over-organization is as much a problem as not enough, since it can just as easily make things hard to find.
Windows 98SE was what I used next. Mostly the same. I had a keyboard with the windows key so I slowly switched over to using it instead of Control Escape, as well as learning the various shortcuts such as Win-E and Win-D and whatnot. (I don't know if these were in win95, not having a windows key at the time and all). Other than that, usability was pretty much the same. Crappy but usable.
Next I used Windows XP. This was more of a jarring switch. I originally switched the start menu to classic as well as the theme. The former because I thought the new layout to the start menu was oversized and confusing, the latter for performance reasons mostly (I only had an ATI Rage Pro Turbo at the time).
Eventually I warmed up to it and switched to use the theme as well as the XP start menu. It half-solved some of the older start menu problems, in particular it allowed for pinned programs, and didn't expose an API to programs for it. This way, the User determined what got pinned. This is in contrast to earlier versions- install Office 97 and it puts itself right on your start menu. Among other intrusive behaviours. It was still limited though, and the All Programs menu still sucked.
Then they got to thinking about the problem. Why have a heirarchal arrangement of menus when we could just have a box that let you search through some of your stuff? Thus the Search Bar was born. Typing directly into the Start Menu to list search results was a freakin genius idea, and IMO increases usability by about a bajillion. And it expands environment variables, too, thus why %APPDATA% works.
Vista's implementation didn't make the best use of screen real-estate for the feature, and Win7 toggled it up, and made the search results take up the entire Start menu popup. 7 also increased usability across the board and made minor tweaks to some old features, as well as implementing a few other "whiz-bang" enhancements.
Windows 8, I feel, really extends upon the entire philosophy.
How many of us really use the Start->All Programs menu in Vista and 7? I used it for a little while after switching to Vista originally from XP, but once I started to use the Search Bar, it's become a novelty. In fact, every single other entry in the Start Menu is practically wasted space- for me, since I never use it. I'd imagine the Win8 Shell team got usability results back and discovered that a lot of the features of the Start Menu were really wasted space.
Win8 extends this by removing the Start Menu entirely, replacing it with the Start screen. This is a bit of a jarring change to those of us used to the little popup in the corner, but IMO it's not a bad one as people suggest.
1.The start menu was old and disgusting. The All Programs menu is a freaking Joke, and hardly anybody uses anything but search, unless you are on XP. When I have to use Windows XP, not having the search bar almost feels like I'm missing a limb, and the time wasted going through the ridiculously nested All Programs menu to find something that should be a simple search is frustrating.
They expanded it. It is no longer a Start Menu, but a start screen. And it expands the search feature- that is, the feature for which the start menu is most often used- quite a lot.
Semantically, it still works the same as Win7, it just presents the information differently. It's worth noting that I just tested it. in Windows 7, pressing the Windows Key and typing "%APPDATA%" and enter takes me to my Roaming folder. When I do the same in windows 8, it... well it takes me to my roaming folder, so I really think you might have made up that little morsel, or you are doing something differently. Personally I usually used Windows Key R and typed "explorer %APPDATA%" into the run dialog, which works the same in both. And yes I know the "explorer" there is redundant.
Also.... Control-Escape STILL shows the Start Screen, that's freaking awesome. I don't even have to change the latent muscle memory that goes back to Windows 95 for win8.
As far as restart/shutdown, I have to acquiesce there. It's different than Windows 7. However, I would also argue that it is actually more sensible. I still have to do a double-take when dealing with that on win7. (the button says what it will do, but I always expand it and want ot select that default in the menu, and of course it's not there).
Of course, a modern machine you can save all your work and just press the reset or power button on your PC case and it does that action in the OS, so one could also argue that having that feature in the OS at all is overbearing, in a way.
Given that I've been using Windows ever since you had to type the very pragmatic sounding "win" into a DOS command prompt to start it, and I haven't had any major difficulties adjusting, I'd say that a lot of the noise about it is either "it's different so now it sucks" or simply a case of chicken-littling those changes. Or even inventing scenarios (eg. "I was always told to go to start and type in %appdata% to get to the appdata.") Which is fine, because that still works the same way on Windows 8. The big difference is in how the information is presented and that it shows a lot more information, which is a good thing because Search is one of the most commonly used features of Vista and 7. MS focussing on and attempting to improve a feature that is used frequently- and managing to do so without changing the semantic and "muscle memory" of it, is actually pretty cool.
I won't deny that when I use my laptop and go to search for something there is a moment of uncertainty because pressing the windows key now changes the entire screen, but Most of what I actually do requires me to do very little differently. Again, perhaps it's just me, but Like I said it's not like Windows is a new environment to me.
A lot of the issues people are having might be if they switch from XP to Windows 8. Then there is a usability barrier- but that barrier is no different than it would have been with Vista or 7. Which is to say, you basically have to learn to use the Search Bar. With Vista and 7 it provides pretty much the same stupid and fecking pointless "All Programs" menu where companies can advertise their crap. "Start->All Programs->Microsoft Office->Microsoft Office Tools...", so people could always fall back to using the inferior method they were used to. Eventually, people would learn about the search bar- I mean it's hard to miss, really- and type something. Poof. Their result was there. And over time they used it more and more until the All Programs menu was never used, as it should be.
Basically, the Start Menu- more specifically, the "Programs" or "All Programs" menu worked for Windows 9x. This was because the systems simply were not powerful enough to perform on the fly searches. But hardware has inexhorably marched forward, and it is stupid for us to have to fidle through menus searching for that "somewidget" program, when we could have the computer do that search for us. Thus teh search bar. Type somewidget and press enter and there it is.
if I was using XP and the programs I use ran on it, starting them would be something like this:
Visual Studio 2010:
Start->All Programs->Microsoft Visual Studio 2010->Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
Visual Studio 2012:
Start->All Programs->Microsoft Visual Studio 2012->Microsoft Visual Studio 2012
Visual Basic 6:
Start-All Programs->Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0->Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0
etc.
On Win Vista/7 and Win8, it is now:
Visual Studio 2010:
Windows Key type "2010" and press enter.
Visual Studio 2012:
Windows Key type "2012" and press enter.
Visual Basic 6:
Windows Key, type "Visual Basic" and Press enter*
Usability skyrockets. I'm happier because I don't have to bend to antiquated software methodologies of searching through a menu when I know what I'm looking for, and I save time because I don't have to do that as well.
I am using windows 8 for minecraft... one problem... It has a chance to make it so your f-keys don't work(Only for minecraft)... sadly but truly, that has happened to me, i asked Google and everyone said "Hold Fn when using them" yeah... no.... UGH i hate that! if you know how to fix this, be my guest.
I upgraded to 8, and now it just gives me a graphics card error.
(And before you all try to "help" me, I've been working in IT for close to 10 years now, and yes I did DL the correct software for my card, and yes I did update the drivers.. etc.. etc....)
So after a few weeks of that I upgraded back to Windows 7 (8 is crap IMO, utter crap)
We can agree to disagree, I'll keep using windows 7..
"drag mouse into corner" takes some time getting use to. And the fact I can't seem to access my Appdata unless there's a shortcut for it on the desktop.
I'm with you, Betty. Another IT vet here, and I'm starting to feel like we should just skip every other MS OS version as a matter of course. XP and 7 were solid, but ME and Vista, not so much. 8 seems to me to be perpetuating the trend.
I guess it depends on the person.
I've been using each Windows version since 3.1. When I first started using Windows 95, I used the mouse for the start menu. I couldn't use the Windows key, because my keyboard didn't have a Windows key. Then I learned about Control-Escape to open the start menu. It ruled. In fact I still use it occasionally without thinking about it on occasion.
So, what did I do with the win95 menu:
Control-Escape, R <command> this was the most common. In fact I ran most of my programs this way. winword, excel, etc.
The Programs menu
This replaced Program Manager groups, and allowed essentially subgroups. It was really just a menu-based view of the aggregate folders from All users\Start Menu and the current profile's start menu folder. Populated primarily with shortcuts. This was a novel idea, but it did make navigating to programs a bit harder. With Program Manager, you had ONE set of groups, each which contained icons, so they were no more than two double clicks away, activating Program Manager notwithstanding.
Windows 95's Start Menu complicated this. Think about it: to start, say, Paintbrush in Windows 3.1 took two double-clicks from the desktop. With win95, you had to click the start menu or press control/escape or the windows key, go into Programs, go into Accessories, and click Paint. The bigger cost was actually in the navigation. It worked, and at the time people were getting SO many programs it made sense to allow the groups to be further grouped, but over-organization is as much a problem as not enough, since it can just as easily make things hard to find.
Windows 98SE was what I used next. Mostly the same. I had a keyboard with the windows key so I slowly switched over to using it instead of Control Escape, as well as learning the various shortcuts such as Win-E and Win-D and whatnot. (I don't know if these were in win95, not having a windows key at the time and all). Other than that, usability was pretty much the same. Crappy but usable.
Next I used Windows XP. This was more of a jarring switch. I originally switched the start menu to classic as well as the theme. The former because I thought the new layout to the start menu was oversized and confusing, the latter for performance reasons mostly (I only had an ATI Rage Pro Turbo at the time).
Eventually I warmed up to it and switched to use the theme as well as the XP start menu. It half-solved some of the older start menu problems, in particular it allowed for pinned programs, and didn't expose an API to programs for it. This way, the User determined what got pinned. This is in contrast to earlier versions- install Office 97 and it puts itself right on your start menu. Among other intrusive behaviours. It was still limited though, and the All Programs menu still sucked.
Then they got to thinking about the problem. Why have a heirarchal arrangement of menus when we could just have a box that let you search through some of your stuff? Thus the Search Bar was born. Typing directly into the Start Menu to list search results was a freakin genius idea, and IMO increases usability by about a bajillion. And it expands environment variables, too, thus why %APPDATA% works.
Vista's implementation didn't make the best use of screen real-estate for the feature, and Win7 toggled it up, and made the search results take up the entire Start menu popup. 7 also increased usability across the board and made minor tweaks to some old features, as well as implementing a few other "whiz-bang" enhancements.
Windows 8, I feel, really extends upon the entire philosophy.
How many of us really use the Start->All Programs menu in Vista and 7? I used it for a little while after switching to Vista originally from XP, but once I started to use the Search Bar, it's become a novelty. In fact, every single other entry in the Start Menu is practically wasted space- for me, since I never use it. I'd imagine the Win8 Shell team got usability results back and discovered that a lot of the features of the Start Menu were really wasted space.
Win8 extends this by removing the Start Menu entirely, replacing it with the Start screen. This is a bit of a jarring change to those of us used to the little popup in the corner, but IMO it's not a bad one as people suggest.
1.The start menu was old and disgusting. The All Programs menu is a freaking Joke, and hardly anybody uses anything but search, unless you are on XP. When I have to use Windows XP, not having the search bar almost feels like I'm missing a limb, and the time wasted going through the ridiculously nested All Programs menu to find something that should be a simple search is frustrating.
They expanded it. It is no longer a Start Menu, but a start screen. And it expands the search feature- that is, the feature for which the start menu is most often used- quite a lot.
Semantically, it still works the same as Win7, it just presents the information differently. It's worth noting that I just tested it. in Windows 7, pressing the Windows Key and typing "%APPDATA%" and enter takes me to my Roaming folder. When I do the same in windows 8, it... well it takes me to my roaming folder, so I really think you might have made up that little morsel, or you are doing something differently. Personally I usually used Windows Key R and typed "explorer %APPDATA%" into the run dialog, which works the same in both. And yes I know the "explorer" there is redundant.
Also.... Control-Escape STILL shows the Start Screen, that's freaking awesome. I don't even have to change the latent muscle memory that goes back to Windows 95 for win8.
As far as restart/shutdown, I have to acquiesce there. It's different than Windows 7. However, I would also argue that it is actually more sensible. I still have to do a double-take when dealing with that on win7. (the button says what it will do, but I always expand it and want ot select that default in the menu, and of course it's not there).
Of course, a modern machine you can save all your work and just press the reset or power button on your PC case and it does that action in the OS, so one could also argue that having that feature in the OS at all is overbearing, in a way.
Given that I've been using Windows ever since you had to type the very pragmatic sounding "win" into a DOS command prompt to start it, and I haven't had any major difficulties adjusting, I'd say that a lot of the noise about it is either "it's different so now it sucks" or simply a case of chicken-littling those changes. Or even inventing scenarios (eg. "I was always told to go to start and type in %appdata% to get to the appdata.") Which is fine, because that still works the same way on Windows 8. The big difference is in how the information is presented and that it shows a lot more information, which is a good thing because Search is one of the most commonly used features of Vista and 7. MS focussing on and attempting to improve a feature that is used frequently- and managing to do so without changing the semantic and "muscle memory" of it, is actually pretty cool.
I won't deny that when I use my laptop and go to search for something there is a moment of uncertainty because pressing the windows key now changes the entire screen, but Most of what I actually do requires me to do very little differently. Again, perhaps it's just me, but Like I said it's not like Windows is a new environment to me.
A lot of the issues people are having might be if they switch from XP to Windows 8. Then there is a usability barrier- but that barrier is no different than it would have been with Vista or 7. Which is to say, you basically have to learn to use the Search Bar. With Vista and 7 it provides pretty much the same stupid and fecking pointless "All Programs" menu where companies can advertise their crap. "Start->All Programs->Microsoft Office->Microsoft Office Tools...", so people could always fall back to using the inferior method they were used to. Eventually, people would learn about the search bar- I mean it's hard to miss, really- and type something. Poof. Their result was there. And over time they used it more and more until the All Programs menu was never used, as it should be.
Basically, the Start Menu- more specifically, the "Programs" or "All Programs" menu worked for Windows 9x. This was because the systems simply were not powerful enough to perform on the fly searches. But hardware has inexhorably marched forward, and it is stupid for us to have to fidle through menus searching for that "somewidget" program, when we could have the computer do that search for us. Thus teh search bar. Type somewidget and press enter and there it is.
if I was using XP and the programs I use ran on it, starting them would be something like this:
Visual Studio 2010:
Start->All Programs->Microsoft Visual Studio 2010->Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
Visual Studio 2012:
Start->All Programs->Microsoft Visual Studio 2012->Microsoft Visual Studio 2012
Visual Basic 6:
Start-All Programs->Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0->Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0
etc.
On Win Vista/7 and Win8, it is now:
Visual Studio 2010:
Windows Key type "2010" and press enter.
Visual Studio 2012:
Windows Key type "2012" and press enter.
Visual Basic 6:
Windows Key, type "Visual Basic" and Press enter*
Usability skyrockets. I'm happier because I don't have to bend to antiquated software methodologies of searching through a menu when I know what I'm looking for, and I save time because I don't have to do that as well.
That is just my experience.
TL:DR