The world's leading software company, Microsoft, released some information regarding the highly-anticipated Windows 8.1. The Start Button is not reinstated. For the past few days you may read some headlines that the well-known Start Button is back, then you are simply being misled.

Microsoft announcement states that although you can see the Start Button being added to the desktop bar, but unlike Windows 7 Start Button this doesn't produce hierarchical folder structure containing executables.

The function of the Start Button in the newest Windows 8.1 released is to take its users to the "flat-tile" Windows 8.1 Start Screen. It means that Microsoft just added the Start Button, but with completely different functionality.

When you click the new button you are then transported to the Start screen which is a big context switch if you were working on the desktop. The Start screen does not present you with a set of structure but with live tiles which are about as close as WinRT gets multitasking. Although this is good for touch-based tablet, but it is nonsense for a desktop environment.

The Windows 8.1 on the other hand has some more improvements such as the new tile sizes, universal search facility, apps can run on multiple monitors, apps can run in multiple but not overlapping, and better integration with SkyDrive to name a few.

For more information regarding the Windows 8.1 features just visit the official Windows Blog.