Wednesday, 5 August 2009

Linux influenced start menu folders

I recently re-organised the programs folder on my laptop (Windows XP SP3 install) based upon my experience with a Linux distribution (PCLinuxOS). I had 58 seperate software installs (possibly more) so it was becoming painful to find the programs that I needed.

This is a relatively dull topic, but this is something that I wanted to share. 10 minutes worth of effort to make my start menu cleaner and more intuitive.

I won't list everything, but this is a flavour of how my start menu now looks.

Accessories - leave as default
Games - leave as default and move all games here
Communication Tools
  • Bluetooth
  • NIC
  • VPN
  • Browsers
  • Mobile devices
  • Skype
  • Office Live/Live meeting
  • MS Shared View
  • Messenger
Database Tools
  • ApexSQL
  • Cache
  • MySQL
  • SQL Server
  • Redgate SQL Bundle
Development Tools
  • Apache
  • HTML Help
  • .NET Framework/Tools
  • Subversion
  • Visual Studio
  • Eclipse
  • Ruby
  • Powershell
Media Tools
  • Picassa
  • Itunes
  • Channel 4 OD
  • Paint.net
Office Tools
  • Microsoft Office
  • Open Office

Hope you find this useful.

Cheers - Jon.

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