Imagine the scenario. You’re going about your business in all innocence, gaily enjoying the fruits of your computing while using Windows XP, when all of a sudden, wham…along comes some people from Redmond, Washington who change things all around and tell you must use Windows 8 from now on, complete with a whole new strange and intimidating interface design. What to do?

Well panic not, fair traveler, for you can now avail yourself of the Classic Shell freeware suite, which returns your life to some form of normality. Instead of touchscreen oriented slabs of color, you can enjoy menu systems as they used to be. Toolbars with familiar icons, dialog boxes which you have used happily for years.

It could save your marriage, job or sanity and not necessarily in that order. The set of ‘enhancements’ include Start Menu skins, Windows Explorer toolbar and status bar and Internet Explorer re-grades. All free and open source and compatible with Windows 7, Vista and Windows 8.