It’s not the most detailed look, but it is a cameo of the newest Start Menu in a Windows 8 video demo. It looks… pretty bare. Stark white-on-black text, very few buttons, and, importantly, where are the programs?
Whereas Windows 7’s Start Menu offers a multitude of ways to get at your software — favourites, search, ye olde giant list of applications — this Windows Phone 7-inspired Start Menu has none of that. Just a search box. Unless we’re missing something from this screenshot, which is entirely possible, this looks like a pickle. Are we meant to search for whatever we want to use, as we might via OS X’s Spotlight? Are there context-specific buttons that spring up? With Microsoft revealing more and more about their next titanic OS, we’ll probably find out soon. [Tom’s Hardware]