Originally Posted by CalBear

And all this has to do with the invisible start button???

Sometimes thinking minds wander from original discussion intent and that's usually a sign of intelligence. I blame Dave76 and SIW2, maybe or maybe not in that particular order. lol

Is there much more to delve into about the missing Start button that we haven't touched on yet? Let's hear it so the thread can get back on track.

This article explains Microsoft ideas regarding the Start menu Evolving the Start menu - Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs Since the hotspot in the lower left corner of the desktop has much the same functionality as the Start button it would make sense to keep the Start button. That would have the additional benefit of avoiding the confusion when one starts up that Christmas present computer with Windows 8.

Well , the thread is a day old - it is bound to wander into more interesting areas.

They want to force metro apps. in front of people constantly.

What better way to do it than replace the start menu with a screen full of Metro apps?

Nothing to do with being good for the user.

Entirely to do with being good for MS.

Bad for the user.

Why is it invisible - to help you forget that it was ever there at all.

Remember, 99% of windows users kept the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, so did not have the luxury of the vertical taskbar with the start button at top left or right, or the horizontal taskbar with the start button at the top left.

I prefer the taskbar at the top, ever since using the SuperOS distro of Ubuntu 8.4, when Vista was unbearable on my new laptop. With Fedora, I went silly and had both top and bottom bars.

I imagine that 22-odd years ago, when many secretaries found their typewriters replaced with a PC and a black screen that had a friendly green C:\> prompt, that they too felt that they did not know what to do next, until someone showed them what typing 'wp' did, and within a few weeks, became expert typists on WordPerfect. Becoming expert wordprocessor operators took a little longer.

PCs were too expensive for Christmas presents in those days.

I think this is the first Windows Version where the majority of people are actively trying to revert to the "classic" look, which is probably another reason why Microsoft did not include an option to revert to the old ways. "No compromise" can be found in much of the PR literature relating to Windows 8. Elvis has left the room.

As far as forcing metro apps, I am not so sure - it is dead easy to unpin them all, and never see an app, unless they start to arrive unbidden in windows Updates.

I was thinking about this and I think I have a pretty good idea why it's invisible.

It's because of the app snap feature, where you take a metro app, snap a third of it next to another. But if you're in the Desktop, you snap a third of that app next to the Desktop interface. In the Developer Preview when you did that, the Start button gets pushed over along with the rest of the Desktop. So where you traditionally have the Start button gets awkwardly set over.

In the Consumer Preview, when you do that, you don't have the awkward Start button chilling a third over on the screen. That, I bet, is the main reason. I think though, the actual Start LOGO, not thumbnail, needs to come back to where it rightfully belongs. It should be hard coded into being in the lower left corner of the screen AT ALL TIMES. It shouldn't be like switching to a whole app, it's a Start Screen, it's the new start menu, not a Desktop-lite interface.

If that were to be done, I'd be fine with the Start button being invisible.