Keep your Start Menu clean with Tidy Start Menu

If you have a long and overwhelming start menu program list, you should check out Tidy Start Menu. This nifty program can help you clean it up. By using this program, you can reduce multi-page, scrollable start-menus to a virgin looking ones that you get with a fresh copy of Windows.

What this application offers is to organize your programs according to the purposes you use them for. For instance, ,all office reletad programs can be place in ‘office’ folder, while all internet programs can be included in the ‘internet’. After playing around with it for the first time you can reduce your menu into small list of categories with related programs within. See it in action below

The program can work in two modes; simple mode(illustrated above) and Explorer Mode which is a little more advanced and completely imitates the features of standard Windows Explorer. The basic version of the program is free, there is also premium version with few more features. See the differences below

Free Version
Premium Version
  • Configure the menus for all users of your PC and decide who will see what(children, employees, spouse and etc)
  • delete obsolete shortcuts
  • import/export your menus to XML files
  • start menu backup/restore options
  • all that you get with a free version and
  • new start menu icon wizard, can be used to set your own icons to the start menu links
  • add your own categories in addition to default ones
  • free susbcription to all future releases
  • uninstall any program through right-click menu on its shortcut
  • priority support

Normally, whatever this program does, can be done manually but it won’t be easy and will take some time. And why would you even do it manually when there is a free version that can do it for you? Oh, program currently available only to windows users(win98 and above), I have also sent email asking if there anything coming up for Mac users. So, if you wan it you can download it from here, for some more screenshots go here.

Tidy Start Menu was created by young ukrainian programmist Denis Nazarenko. ‘Thank You’ Denis for a free version, for a paid version well, let money do the talking.

Overall I like the program and find it useful, however I am not sure for now If would go beyond free version as it is good enough and whatever is missing can be added manually.

Steve Bass fom PC world.com names it tool of the month here

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    2 Comments » Leave One...

    Comment by Aibek
    2006-10-25 17:05:46

    Just wanted to add to Kaly\’s post that in addition to english program is available in dutch, french, german, italian, russian, spanish and ukranian languages.

     
    2006-10-30 16:56:35

    [...] if there are several other people who have access to your computer make sure that your private and sensitive information is not indexed. On home computers you can limit what other users can see by using recently reviewed Tidy Start Menu program. Or you can setup a password for search feature on Google desktop [...]

     
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