Quote:
Originally Posted by
robbo2 
I was never able to find it cheap here in Australia anyway. Not that I looked very hard since I'm not interested.
Officeworks have it for $48.72. You won't find a retail copy cheaper anywhere else I don't think.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
RiverOfIce
Actually they went back to xp with windows 7. But I will argue that vista was not that far out of the cycle anyway. Windows 8, really is not windows.
Microsoft fired the only person that really pushed for the removal of the start menu. He had to bully the idea through the system and with him gone, there is no reason for them to bring it back.
Microsoft has sold 60 million copies of windows 8 to oem suppliers, retail store, and end users. But apps to return back the start menu, like pokki are insanely popular. In fact, pokki has been installed in more then 1.5 million windows 8 machines. When 1 in 60 of your total sales says you got it wrong, it is time to fix it.
Backflips look bad. Microsoft will not backflip. They need to appear to have some sort of vision if they want any chance of competing in the consumer market in the medium and long term, and bringing back "legacy" Windows components damages that razor thin vision. Besides, the people who are installing those start menu applications are mainly self-described "enthusiasts" who can't handle change. As sales increase that percentage will drop off, because the majority of sales always come from OEM machine sales and people who buy those will only install a start menu application if it replaces the Ask.com toolbar in the installer of some crappy antivirus trial.
