Microsoft is bringing back a familiar, anachronistic, and once-lampooned feature the users of Windows 8 were missing:  The “Start” button.

It won’t be called “start” on the latest version of Windows 8.1, but it will serve the same function as it always did, to take the user straight to a grid of applications.  Customers will recognize it as the Windows logo.

Windows 8 failed to set the world on fire, because tablet users were pretty much going with Apple’s iPads and the lower cost alternative Android;  Mouse-and-Keyboard lovers were alienated by the radically changed, tablet-like interface.

Windows 8.1 will be free to all current Windows 8 owners later this year.  It will come with Microsoft's latest browser, Internet Explorer 11, and lets the user restore the address bar and tabs to the screen view, which was missing in the initial version of Windows 8.

Maybe CareerSpot readers are too young to remember when Microsoft was the target of comedians, because users had to click the “start” button to “end” their computing session and turn it off!