Colorado State University

This post is marked as Deprecated and therefore contains outdated information.

With the Consumer Preview out for Windows 8 – it seems as though we are stuck with running the new Metro Start Menu/Screen (without 3rd Party Software that is).  So, I started to look around a bit to see what I could find on making that a little more useful for an actual business environment.  I came across this great tutorial from ZDNet, and followed these directions on my Beta machine build (http://wp.natsci.colostate.edu/cnsit/windows-8-beta-first-look).

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/the-metro-haters-guide-to-customizing-windows-8-consumer-preview/4610

One of the great features of this tutorial involve how to separate and create different blocks of programs.  You can see in my custom view, that I have created a Documents group which contains the common local folders as well as a link to my Pangea space.  I also have a group called Productivity that contains my Office and related software links.  Many of you may create groups for your scientific crunching programs as well.

There are also ways to create custom links for shutdown and restart.  I didn’t actually follow those, but it seems like you can use those methods for a number of custom ‘command line’ operations.

Before Customization

After Customization

 There are still a number of this missing I feel, mainly int he aesthetics department.  Metro just seems clunky and impersonal, even after the customizations.  I am really hoping for custom background support at the very least.  Enjoy!