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What is the Start Menu? The answer to this is, one of the most user friendly components of Windows dating back to Windows 95. If you are reading this, you are probably a new user who has just started using a computer, or you are a older user of Mac/Linux and have just switched to Windows.

Windows Start Menu is one of the most comprehensive, easy to use, component Windows has to offer. It holds all of the programs we use daily, and around the creation of Windows XP, it gained a Recently Used Programs List right on the opening of it so you can get to your programs as quickly as possible.

Depending on which version of Windows your computer is running, this will change the overall look of the Start Menu as the Start Menu is almost always changed from version to version of the operating system. In Windows XP Media Center Edition, you choose though all of the different Start Menu setups that XP has to offer. The different styles of Windows XP's Start Menus are as follows:


Just because those are the only Start Menus shown above, there can be others such as the Zune theme, that is commonly called Black XP. This changes the start menu to be orange for the button and black as shown in the illustration below:


The next version of the Start Menu came out in the newly designed Windows Vista Operating System. The Windows Vista Operating System is known for its high end graphics and friendly menu interface. One thing that has changed the most in Vista would definitely have to do with its Start Menu. For many years, the Menu had just had the button that stated "start" but, for the first time, it has changed to what is now called the Vista Start Globe. It has the Vista Logo, inside of a blue sphere, which is much more attractive and pleasing to the eye than the last versions. There are two main versions that the new Vista Start Menu comes in:


Please Note: You must have a Windows Vista Version/Graphics Card that supports the Windows Aero feature