It's not that it was so much work. It's exactly the opposite, in the first leaks, the start menu was there. At the moment, someone from MS explained that if yo

It's not that it was so much work. It's exactly the opposite, in the first leaks, the start menu was there. At the moment, someone from MS explained that if you give people a new and an old way to do something, they prefer the old way. So, to promote learning the new way, they had to remove the old one. It's the same that they did with the Classic Start Menu (win 95 style). There was an option in Vista, but they removed it in Win 7.