About 2 years ago, I built my first PC. It was a long time coming - I’d been using a friend’s older computer ever since mine went up in flames (dramatic, but also kind of literal) and it was really starting to lag terribly when I played games. I had decided that I wanted to build it myself in order to become more informed about the process, since I worked at a PC gaming/software company.

I’ll never do it again, but I learned a lot! One of the most notable differences for me was moving from Windows 7 over to Windows 10 - the new menu just wasn’t working for me. Before I came to Stardock, I honestly knew little-to-nothing about desktop customization and would have had no clue that I could fix this little problem of mine using Start10.

Fortunately, my squinting at the Start menu in confusion while I tried to find things was short-lived. After firing up and testing multiple games, I finally turned my attention toward optimizing a few things on my desktop. The first was that pesky Start menu.

Look, I’m all about change - change is progress! But when it comes to my Windows experience, I’ll be honest - I’m stubborn and I like what I like. This was just so much cleaner and easier for me to navigate:

To be honest, I have pretty simple wants. It wasn’t until I started thinking about writing this blog that I started to play around a little more with customizing. I found a ton of really fun Start menu buttons over on WinCustomize and, because I’m a giant nerd, I knew immediately which one I had to have. 

After adding my new button, I started to explore some of the color and transparency settings in the app. I also decided to go all-in with the theme (though I haven’t changed my desktop background yet - that’s another post!). Admittedly, the text is a little hard to see, but adjusting the transparency down to about 40% from the default 80% made it easier to look at. You could use any picture here - something personal like a family vacation or a child’s school picture, or something you’re a fan of like (in my case) Green Lantern.

I personally like using the modern style menu, and keep my taskbar a solid black color (rather than making it mostly transparent). I tried turning it green to fit my “theme,” just to see how I’d like it, and let’s just say...there’s such a thing as TOO much color, haha!

While I have a lot of fun messing with styles, colors, and pictures, the main reason I enjoy Start10 so much is because of how practical it is. It’s much easier for me to navigate in general, plus it integrates wonderfully with Fences - which is another app I just can’t live without anymore.

How do you customize your PC? What kinds of Start10 options would you want to try?

This PC is using Windows 10.  But not just Windows 10 on its own.  It's been upgraded a bit with Object Desktop. That's what Object Desktop does.  A lot of the things in Windows we see today first showed up in Object Desktop.  A few examples include transparencies, shadows, gadgets, ZIP files as folders, GUI skinning, etc.  There is a natural progression to the operating system.

On this screenshot I have Groupy, CursorFX, Fences, Start10 and a new app that hasn't been announced yet. 

The PC of the future series is going to explore where we think the desktop is going. This PC has 64 CPU cores and 128 logical processors.  It has 128 GB of memory and an extremely fast GPU.  So what are we going to do with this hardware? That’s what this series will explore.

Edit: Additional screenshots below.

Prior to coming to Stardock, I never got to work from home. I was the director of an afterschool program for K-4 kiddos and if you couldn’t be in the “office,” then you couldn’t work. Making the shift into an industry that is already largely digital was certainly different, and even though I would work the occasional day from home, I generally prefer to be in the office (there are some pretty great people there, after all). 

Now I’m working at home on the daily (like most everyone else), and the adjustment has been more challenging than I thought it would be. A day here and a day there working without all of the benefits I have at the office (like my 3-monitor, 2 PC setup) is no big deal, but now every day? I’ve had to make some adjustments.

We have an entire catalog of Windows customization and optimization software, and I put a solid few of them to good use, particularly in the office. Multiplicity, for example, allows me to control my dual PC setup without having to waste precious desk space on a second keyboard and mouse (because duh, that’d be less desk for my action figures, right?)

Now, I’m only working with one PC at home (although I do have my laptop for when I need it), so I don’t really need Multiplicity right now. But, I’m down a monitor and my setup isn’t as efficient as it is at the office. So, to that end, Groupy has been indispensable in helping me save space and navigate my tabs (sooooo many tabs) more efficiently.

Sometime last week, I needed to stream some Star Control: Origins on Steam for a promotion. My normal setup at the office involves 2 PCs, and El Gato, and (typically) a second person. I usually run production and monitor the chat while they play. Suddenly, I’m flying solo with less equipment, but I still needed to maintain and monitor the same amount of things - Teams, Steam Chat, X-Split scenes, etc - and so I turned to Groupy. I’ve had Groupy installed on my home computer since we released it, and while I do occasionally Twitch stream from home, I’ve never had to do it for work before.

Being able to hotkey between my tabs was absolutely essential. When you’re live streaming, you don’t want to break the viewers’ immersion, so not having to stop and drag windows around or squint at my messages was the key to keeping things running smoothly. For my hotkey, I use the default (Win+~), which works just fine for me.

Grouping Teams, XSplit, and my web browser together into tabs also saved me space. I have precious little to go around with my secondary monitor (obviously my first was taken up with the game), and this made it much more possible for me to keep everything up that I needed at one time. 

Now, if I’m being honest, I’m a fairly plebeian Groupy user. I know lots of other people, like our CEO Brad for example, who utilize the program to a much greater extent than I do. It works for them and they love it. While my needs are much simpler, Groupy has still allowed me an ease of use with my Windows programs that I never had before.

Are you a streamer and have you tried Groupy yet? Let me know how you use the app in the comments!