Speculation piled on top of more speculation, Hacker News indeed...

FTA: "Currently Microsoft isn't commenting on the subject, but an article published by USA Today points to the possibility."

From the USA Today "article":

"The canning of Steven Sinofsky 15 days after the launch of Windows 8 could signal the start of Microsoft dealing with lukewarm reception to its latest operating system."

My prediction has always been that the start menu is gone in Win8 to force people into Metro-mode and bootstrap the tablet app ecosystem. Once the tablet ecosystem is well populated then there's no need to force users into Metro.

Windows 8 is a write-off in terms of corporations- Microsoft expects very few to upgrade to Win8. So they sacrifice a bit of usability to kickstart tablets, then bring back the start menu to make corporations happy in Win 9.

That does seem to be the cycle they've been following, willing or not. Win2000/WinXP/Win7 for the corps; skipping every other Windows.

cough I had a feeling... cough

I'll just leave this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4793620

The UX is broken, but adding the start button would only break it more. I don't have much confidence in their design team, but I think they know there is no returning to the start button.

Classic Shell is free and open source. No need to buy Stardock. http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

Do people not understand the start screen works exactly the same as the start menu? Hit win key and type to search. Forget win+q or the charm.

I think the bigger gripe is due to lack of any visible innovation that should go with upgrades. I recall WinXP's selling point was the fastest boot time back then and a shiny interface to go with it. Vista couldn't deliver anything and ultimately people moved over to Win7 because the migration was painless.

With Win8, all you see is a wrapper screen of Apps which they have pulled around Win7 underneath. The Windows key on the keyboard was always around but now it is going to be the one key most-in-use, all because they eliminated the start button (so no need to use your mouse to get going).

If you have seen Joli cloud OS, you can tell that they did the same with Ubuntu a long time ago. They wrapped a Chrome browser over the base desktop OS, making it easy for average user to use Linux. But I don't think Jolicloud captured attention from anywhere. Microsoft on the other hand is a 800 pound gorilla and there is no doubt that in few years, we will all be asking Win7 users to get the hell out of their desktops.

Yeah, so much for 'power' users and tweakers.

Tomshardware is in fact double wrong: Win+Q and charms search lead to the application specific search (eg when in Music, you'll search music, when in Mail, mail).

Only when you are on the startscreen or desktop will you get the 'application' search as default via Win+Q.

Bullshit. Start menu is a prehensile tail. MS has better sense than this.

I don't get this analogy; you probably meant something different.

Prehensile tails are tails that can grasp things. In other words, prehensile tails are totally awesome.

Vestigial, perhaps?

The major drawback of Windows 8 is not just that it lacks the start button, but that it forces you into Metro. Get rid of that and I might consider whatever is coming next after Windows 8.

And stop combining the two UI paradigms in such a messy way. The Charms UI looks very out of place in the desktop UI. It's like they worked for 2 years on the Metro desktop, and in parallel at Windows SP2, and at the end they combined the two very quickly as an afterthought (proof that nothing really integrates between desktop mode and Metro mode), and the end result was what is now Windows 8.

> and at the end they combined the two very quickly as an afterthought

This 'lack of team play' is the reason Sinofsky was fired.

Yea, the Consumer Preview was the first to remove the Start menu and button. The Developer Preview still had them.

Launchy is your friend.