I’m not normally one to complain about Windows, there’s more than enough people doing more than enough complaining about it that I don’t feel the need to add my own frustrations but the start menu made something snap inside me just now and I had to let those frustrations see the light of day.
It’s the start menu in Windows 10 I just can’t stand it any more. I normally do everything I can to avoid the start menu as it’s simply broken on every design level but today I had the displeasure of having to go in there after installing SQL Server 2016 CTP 3.1. Normally what I’ll do is pin everything I want to use to the task bar and launch it from there. I can go weeks without having to go digging in the start menu (do they even call it the start menu any more?). After installing SQL Server though I had to dig in because, of course, the applications aren’t pinned to the task bar yet.
So Windows 10 rather than going to a sensible hierarchy of applications it goes for a list in alphabetical order. On my whacking great 4k monitor that list takes up about an 40 mm of screen width in the corner- why can’t it take up more. In fact why can’t it take up enough that I can actually read the names of the things I’m expected to click on!
Seriously, there’s 700mm of horizontal screen space that menu could take up and it occupies just 40mm of it for absolutely no good reason. Get a damn grip! I don’t want to waste my time trying to guess what application I’m going to launch from the first two characters of it’s name.