Classic Shell: Forum

I'm so grateful to have found & installed this shell; I bought a laptop recently (nothing fancy for $550, just an Intel 2020 cpu, 6gb memory, intel hd graphics 4400, and a 500gb hd) to use as my 2nd machine, as I had some weird problem with my desktop (drive letters became swapped -luckily I could solve it). And this made me realize how dependent we've become on the pc...use it for just about everything.

Anyway, this laptop was pre-installed with Windows 8.1. When I took it home, first thing I did was putting Classic Shell on it; didn't even see the tiles, thank God. After configuring this as the classic XP look, I downloaded the Luna theme, patched Windows 8.1 with the ultraUXtheme patcher, put the classic green XP startbutton and Luna theme on it, and I finally had a laptop I could work with...pffff...

As this Windows 8.1 is 64bits, some ancient 16bit prgs don't work anymore, but I'm now installing Oracles' Virtual Box on the laptop with Windows XP in it, so I should be able to run these prgs in XP in a virtual box...I have DosBox installed too; sometimes, playing Xwing or Doom in DOS is fun; reminds you of other times...remember? 640kb memory was all one had...

Looking at some You Tube movies about Windows 10; well, it seems they're backtracking to Windows 7; but not completely, so Classic shell will be put on that system too, as soon as windows 10 becomes available. I hope they upgrade it to that windows version too!

I wonder how many Windows 8/8.1 users have downloaded and installed this Classic shell?

I believe the latest stable version 4.1.0 has been downloaded about 9-10 million times. I don't know how many installations that means, and how many people have uninstalled it right away - I don't track the individual installers.

By end 2013, I remember the total download count starting from the earliest version 0.9 was 15 million and then as the hosting changed to FossHub and MediaFire, the exact download count was lost. By November 2014, it 25 million+ but then there was no new release for a long time in between. I estimate the total number of downloads now to be 28-30 million. The monthly rate of downloads as of April 2015 is 600000 to 700000 downloads per month but higher when a new release is out.

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Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

I use Classic Shell with start menu

And classic explorer too