[damien c]

Heard the same sort of thing as QAS said, Developer preview starting from September this year with the consumer preview coming around January or Febuary next year.

The "Start Menu" was supposed to return in August this year in what was supposed to be Windows 8 update 2, but apparently Microsoft decided to scrap it and focus on "Threshold" which is more commonly known as Windows 9, and not bringing the Start Menu back in Windows 8.X, according to rumours.

Either way I am not to fussed as most things I use are on the desktop so I never use the "Metro" interface really other, than creating a desktop shortcut for a program that didn't create one itself.

The only advantage to me for Windows 8.1 over Windows 7 though is when I am converting videos, Windows 8.1 uses all the threads and cores to around 90% compared to Windows 7 which only used each one to around 30%, regardless of what software was being used.

Games and general usage along with most other programs or benchmarks perform about the same, with some being faster on Windows 8.1 and some being faster on Windows 7, but I will stick with 8.1 as I am just use to it now and will see what the preview of Windows 9 is like when it's finally released.