interesting; fwiw; I think they should keep the start "circle" like in win 7. But on the other hand; it might be easier for some if microsoft brings the start menu back. Easier as in easier to nagivate, etc. Just my thought here....

Hi there

I've found that if you really want to keep the old classic menu for Windows 8 / 8.1 the BEST way IMO is to run Windows 8 in a Virtual Machine and use UNITY MODE

Here's a couple of screenshots of what I mean running W8. Enterprise on a DEBIAN WHEEZY HOST (Linux for those not aware of all these distributions).

The example shows the Windows applications directly from the Linux desktop and I'm running EXCEL in the Linux workspace -- and have bought up the standard Linux start menu for my distribution using the KDE GUI.

Now I prefer to run VM's usually in full screen mode but this is just an example of what the UNITY mode does -- far far better than the cludge Microsoft offered as XP MODE. You can set the menus so only the actual windows programs you want to run from your desktop are shown.

The FREE vmware player I believe has unity mode (I'm using vmware workstation). VBOX has similar called seamless.

Modern hardware is so good these days that running a vm even on a laptop gives response almost as good as native (so long as you've got enough RAM and a sensible graphics card).

I find myself only booting into a physical Windows machine really rarely these days and that only if I have to use specific hardware or need extra super dooper 3-D acceleration. I'm not a gamer so the whole graphics bit doesn't bother me unless I'm using a sophisticated CAD Engineering package. Office and Photoshop run just fine in Unity mode !!! -

I don't like the way a lot of vendors are going these days with SUBSCRIPTION MODELS - for example Office 365 and ADOBE Photoshop. Running on a VM allows me to explore a lot of other alternatives (there's a HUGE amount of really good open source out there now) while still using the programs I use daily at work.

So the point is that the whole start menu for Windows 8.2 is essentially a dead discussion -- people who want a start menu have found various ways of implementing schemes while others are just happy to use the new method.

(My 80+ year old Dad now like the new Windows method far better than the old version - although he didn't like it straight out of the box. Showing him what to do in both the old and new systems didn't take that long and he decided after the initial confusion he liked Windows 8.1).

Of course for people at work Windows 7 is just fine and presumably will remain the system of choice - but there's a lot to be said also in the workplace for Desktop Virtualisation with Unity mode. Easier for the IT staff to manage and also harder for users to hose up their systems.

You can see in Unity mode the Metro apps are also accessible from the desktop menu. The new Windows 8.2 if rumours are to be believed will allow these to run in floating re-sizeable windows (like classic windows).

(Another Linux advantage is that you can have as many COMPLETE desktops as you like so you can have a different set of menus etc etc for all of them and either a simple keyboard or mouse switch will take you to the relevant desktop -- Windows had this partially implemented in XP but later implementations are just HORRIBLE including the latest from the sysinternals suite).

cheers
jimbo

That's great. I would look forward to it. It likes regresses to the style of classical windows