It had to happen sooner or later. News from those who somehow acquired copies of a Windows 8 "Consumer Preview" version (build 8220) that leaked this weekend indicates that Microsoft has finally decided to remove one of the staple elements of the Windows operating system: The start button.

Whether you know it more as a start button or start orb – the latter having replaced the flatter "start rectangle" in Windows Vista – the tiny little area that you'd previously click on to pull up a menu of applications, shortcuts, and search functionality is no more. The Windows Superbar, first introduced with Windows 7, now extends across the entirety of the bottom of Windows 8's "desktop mode." And it functions just the same as how you're already used to using it in Windows 7.

To Microsoft's credit, the "start button" transformed into a much different utility in Windows 8 versus previous versions of the Windows operating system. Since Microsoft's introduction of the full-fledged "Start Screen" as part of Windows 8's Metro UI, the start button – only viewable when a user switched from Metro to Windows' classic "desktop mode" – no longer pulled up a full list of apps and shortcuts for users to select.

Instead, clicking on the Windows 8 start button generated a simple menu: Settings, Devices, Share, Search, and Start. And clicking on the latter option, "Start," became a user's portal back to the Metro interface.

Since Microsoft's done away with the start button, the aforementioned start menu has also gone the way of the Clippy. Switching from Windows 8's desktop mode to the Metro interface, and vice versa, now requires users to mouse their cursors over to the lower-left hand corner of the screen. The hot corner will pull up a thumbnail preview of the interface that a user will be switching to, and clicking on this thumbnail completes the transformation.

It's presumed that some kind of swipe action will perform a similar routine when users access Windows 8 in "touch mode."

For more, see Windows 8: Early Speed Tests and Installing Windows 8 on a MacBook Air, as well as PCMag's Hands On with Windows 8 Developer Preview and the slideshow below.

For more from David, subscribe to him on Facebook: David Murphy.