14 DAY TRIAL // There was a lot of controversy about Microsoft’s plans to adopt a modern interface for Windows 8 and ditch the staple Start Menu in Windows. The company motivated their reasoning by providing a larger area that would bear the same functionality, the Start Screen.
As user requests to bring back the button fell on deaf ears, third-party developers came up with various alternatives for the original start button in Windows. Stardock was among the most prominent of them, with its Start8 application, but free alternatives soon emerged.
Last week, Stardock rolled out a new application launcher, this time for the modern part of Windows 8 and 8.1. It's called Launch8 and its purpose is to provide a stationary dock for Start Screen, where you can easily deploy applications without having to scroll to the desired shortcut.
Like all Windows 8 improvements from Stardock, Launch8 is not free of charge. It costs $4.99 / €3.70 and you can take it for testing for a period of 30 days with all features enabled.
Installing the utility is nothing fancy, but during the procedure you are offered to bring the Start8 ($4.99 / €3.70) application to the system. Apart from this, everything is smooth sailing until the end.
When deployed, Launch8 takes its place at the bottom of the Start Screen and is available there at all times, so there is no need to launch it manually when Windows starts.
Launch8 is basically a dock bar filled with user-defined shortcuts. By default, all added icons are automatically resized to fit in, but you can also enable the display of small, medium, large, or extra-large icons.
If there are numerous icons in the dock and the view is changed to a larger size, some of the shortcuts are dropped. We tested on a 1280x1024 resolution with a set of 12 shortcuts, with the launch bar at the bottom edge. Switching the view from small or medium to large icons showed only 11 of them.
By taking the experiment to the “extra-large” setting, only eight remained visible. The position of the launch bar can be changed to the upper edge of the screen; when we changed Launch8’s position we could access only 6 shortcuts.
Adding the possibility to scroll inside would solve this problem, though.
One of the advantages it comes with is that it is not influenced by the parallax feature characteristic to the Windows 8 Start Screen. As such, it will remain visible at all times regardless of the horizontal movement of the items in the modern UI.
Shortcuts are added easily, by dragging and dropping them in the desired position, straight from the modern screen. Alternatively, you can browse for the desired item. Stardock’s product detects installed applications automatically and you can choose from a list, or there is the possibility to add them from a specific location.
Some organization of the items in the dock is possible due to the availability of separators (very handy if you want to create groups) and the possibility to move any of them into a different position.
There aren’t too many configuration options available for the application, but the panel allows making the background translucent as well as enabling the display of Jumplists or the confirmation for deleting an item in the list.
Shortcuts with jumplists available are marked with a bar underneath, and hovering the mouse over them shows the actual options.
Another option that can be activated is the display of the clock. Start Screen does not show the time, and most users would not get an app specifically for this purpose.
Launch8 is designed as a productivity tool for the modern part of Windows. It is far from being complex, but it covers a simple functionality that can be useful for users who stay on the modern UI more (mostly those working with touch).
Although we did not come across too many glitches, we also did not benefit from a top experience like in the case of Start8. We did feel the need for more functions and extended functionality, such as the possibility to create folders or to replace the default icons with custom ones.
