If you haven’t customized your Windows 7 Start menu, find out what you’ve been missing. Right-click the Start orb, and select Properties from the pop-up menu. In the resulting Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box, click the Customize button to launch the Customize Start Menu dialog.

There, you’ll see a couple dozen ways that you can make the Start menu your own—and make it much more useful than it is by default. Many of the options there control the items that appear on the right side of the Windows 7 Start menu.

For instance, you can give yourself direct Start-menu access to features you probably considered the domain of other applications. Your browser’s Favorites menu, for example, can be ported directly to the right side of the Start menu, as can links to your network, documents, homegroup, downloads, and videos. You can even bring back the Run command, which was available by default in the Start menu of earlier version of Windows. You can also create more space in the Start menu by turning off the "large icons" option.

Finally, notice the "Number of recent programs to display" setting at the bottom of the Customize Start Menu dialog box. Adjust this number up or down to change how many recently-launched applications show on the top level of the Start menu—on the left-hand side. Increasing the number from the default of 10 will, of course, make your Start menu longer.

If you end up being unhappy with your customizations of the Start menu and want to return to the default settings, click the Use Default Settings button.