Windows 8 Update Won’t Use Aging ‘Start’ Menu

By Shira Ovide

It’s official: The venerable Windows “Start” menu is really dead, but there is a new kind of button.

A familiar fixture on Windows-powered computers for the last 18 years, the Start button in the lower left corner of display screens opened a menu that helped users find programs and documents and shut down their PCs Microsoft irked some longtime customers by removing the feature from Windows 8, the touch-oriented operating system delivered last fall–prompting speculation that Microsoft would bring the old button back in a forthcoming update to the software.

That is not to be, Microsoft has informed reporters in briefings about the updated software known as Windows 8.1 (and by the prior code name Windows Blue). But the spot once occupied by the Start button will be home to a new Windows logo that has a different function, allowing people to tap or click to move back and forth between a traditional desktop mode and a new-wave grid of tiles that represent apps, company officials say.

The fact that Microsoft was willing to tweak, but not reverse, one of the most polarizing look-and-use elements of Windows 8 underscores the company’s conviction that it is generally on the right course with the software.

Windows 8.1 has been billed as an attempt to smooth some of rough edges that have slowed the adoption of Windows 8, a product that is crucial to the company’s efforts to play a bigger role in tablets and update PCs with touch-based features that first took hold in smartphones.

Microsoft’s tile-based interface looks substantially different than the collection of icons used by Apple’s iOS and Google‘s Android operating system. So people familiar with other mobile devices had to learn a new scheme, while some other people who weren’t interested in touch-based features could not automatically go into the familiar Windows desktop mode.

Windows 8.1, in a change from the original version, will allow users a new one-click option to skip the touch interface and have their computers start up each time to the desktop screen.

The update includes many other small touches and other non-drastic changes that some users might not notice right away, such as improved search features and smoother ways to work on two things at once, like looking at a digital map while typing emails.

Microsoft also made Windows 8.1 look and work better on both large PC monitors, and on the small, 8-inches-or-fewer tablets that have boomed in popularity recently.

Microsoft has said the Windows 8.1 will be released before the holidays, and it will be available as a free update for people who already own PCs powered by Windows 8 software. A test version is expected to be available in late June, timed to a Microsoft developer conference.

The Wall Street Jourlnal