Something unique about one of my jobs at my university’s Learning and Support Services is that our main office and working area is basically a computer lab. We have a ton of random technology-related stuff lying around that would bring tears of joy to any young computer junkie whose mother won’t buy him everything he wants from Best Buy.

As a result, one thing I was able to do today was try out Windows 8 for the first time.

If you’re not already familiar, or if you just don’t keep up with Windows in general, Windows 8 is Microsoft’s newest operating system, after Windows 7. The 8 is derived from the shortened version of 8,000, which is the number of builds of Windows since its original release.

The public beta release candidate for Windows 8 came out a while back, but I didn’t really have the motivation or resources to try it out.

For example, back when Windows Vista was coming out, I was working at the Information Technology department at my high school, which provided me with a spare laptop on which I could try Vista, while keeping Windows XP on my regular computer. I didn’t have something like this for Windows 8, so I couldn’t really test it out without fully committing to the operating system on my primary laptop, which I was not willing to do.

And I’m glad I wasn’t willing to do that, because I saw a huge difference with Windows 8 – there is no more start menu.

I personally think that the Start menu is the most iconic thing about Windows. Why they took it out, I don’t think I will ever discover the true reason, but I can speculate a little bit.

In place of the Start menu, Windows 8 now has a grid of applications. Instead of each program installed on your computer taking up an entry in a list, everything now takes up a box in a massive table of stuff (that will extend pages upon pages if you have a lot of software installed). Windows 8 now apparently also provides applications, which are thrown in with all the other elements in the grid.

A simple guess as to why Microsoft chose to do this is simple – they just wanted to move towards the trends. As of right now, the application market is dominating the Internet. Everyone is getting apps on their phones, tablets, and Apple laptops.

Honestly, there’s nothing really different about applications and regular, conventional, Windows software. The only difference is the external appearance – for applications, they’re called apps and they have a connotation of being compact and simple. For software, they have a connotation of being large and complicated. In reality, the only usual differences are that applications are washed-down versions of software that don’t do their job to their fullest potential.

There’s obviously nothing I can do at this point, as this decision was definitely not taken lightly among Microsoft’s executives, and they apparently thought it would be best for their company. However, one thing that I really hope they had done, and I think is a huge mistake that they didn’t, is that they didn’t keep an option to keep the old Start menu. For those people who have been using Windows operating systems nearly exclusively since my first desktop computer using Windows 98, it’s really nice to have the Start menu where you feel like you have everything under control, available at your fingertips.

As for the other features of Windows 8, supposedly the task manager has seen great improvements. Again, when I opened the task manager, the “improvements” seemed more to be user-friendliness, and I feel like a lot of the core information that was provided in the older task manager is either missing or extremely difficult to uncover.

One key point to note is that the laptop on which I was trying out Windows 8 had the release candidate version of it, not the final version that’s on sale right now. There is definitely a great possibility that much as changed since when this version of Windows 8 was installed on that particular laptop (which apparently was the previous academic semester).

I’ll definitely be trying out Windows 8 again in the future when I get a chance, but I don’t think I will be switching from Windows 7 on my primary laptop if Microsoft hasn’t implemented an option to use the old Start menu.