My prediction has always been that the start menu is gone in Win8 to force people into Metro-mode and bootstrap the tablet app ecosystem. Once the tablet ecosys

My prediction has always been that the start menu is gone in Win8 to force people into Metro-mode and bootstrap the tablet app ecosystem. Once the tablet ecosystem is well populated then there's no need to force users into Metro. Windows 8 is a write-off in terms of corporations- Microsoft expects very few to upgrade to Win8. So they sacrifice a bit of usability to kickstart tablets, then bring back the start menu to make corporations happy in Win 9.