Best Replacement for Missing Start Menu in Windows 8 & 8.1

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Windows 8 took away something useful we've been using since the mid 1990's (in Windows 95 & NT 4).  In unrelated news, Steve Ballmer has been fired.  But still--we have to live with the abomination which is Windows 8.  If you have a touch screen, it's somewhat usable.  But if you just have a pointing device, i.e. mouse, touchpad, pointing stick, etc.; tough.

 This is crap.

 The Windows 8.1 upgrade/update/patch/lipstick-on-a-pig gives us back a start button without the start menu (more crap), and the option to boot to the desktop, rather than the Metro interface or whatever they're calling it this week.  Crap-crap-crap.

 Yours truly has been using and customizing the Start Menu for years.  The classic Start Menu (an option in XP & Vista, but taken away in Windows 7) allowed quick access to additional icons, e.g. a new shortcut on the classic start menu in XP named "Word" meant two keystrokes opened Word--tapping the Windows key (on a 'Windows-compatible' keyboard, what BS), and then "W".  Do lots of people use this?  Probably not.  Is it helpful?  Youbetcha.

 How do we get back the Start Menu which we've had for years that is customizable?  Enter the fantastic people who maintain the FOSS project Classic Shell, which can be downloaded from their homepage here.

 Classic Shell includes the Classic Start Menu (which can look like almost any of the old Windows Start Menus and is ridiculously customizable).  During installation, I usually disable Classic Shell because all I want is what we used for over a decade, the [string of expletives] Start Menu.

 The Classic Shell's Classic Start Menu is one of my first installations on any clean Windows installation, right up there with Notepad++. What are some of yours?

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