The Windows 8 Start Button Is Making A Comeback

The Windows 8 start button is making a comeback! Or so the rumors suggest. Business and every-day Joe users of the world’s most widely used operating system can now feel better that their familiar desktop environment will be on its way back once Microsoft releases its forthcoming update Windows Blue (or 8.1).

Microsoft upset its customers with the release of Windows 8. The seemingly omnipresent “start menu” was gone, and in its place was the jarring “start screen,” which was, and still is, more at home on touch devices than traditional computers. This, along with the inability to boot directly to the desktop, alienated mainstream and business users of Windows. They are not at all interested in change, even though in this mobile devices era that we now live in, Microsoft has no choice but to push forward in the way that they have if they want to survive as a major market force in technology.

With a flood of complaints hitting the venerable tech giant, and a slow start in sales for Windows 8, senior management has apparently decided that a “start button” is going to be re-instated to the Windows Desktop. That is to say, a button (not unlike the start menu button), will reappear on the desktop to satisfy its entrenched user-base. This Windows 8 start button will only take you back to the “start screen,” and it will not pop up a start menu as in previous Windows versions.

It seems ridiculous that Microsoft would need to do this, but perhaps it speaks to the fact that they pushed too hard and fast with Windows 8 in the first place. Users weren’t ready, and this “start button” push reads more like an act of reassurance than an actual improvement in functionality. Windows 8 still needs work, but this is not going to do much more than make regular and business users sleep better at night knowing that something that has been so familiar to them will be coming back, or at least sort of.

Hopefully Microsoft can survive this transition from a desktop operating system to a mobile operating system, as this is where the world is going. It must have been hard for them to tamper with their flagship product so extensively, but if they hadn’t done so, they would have been left behind.